Sermon: What Good is the Law? (Pt 1)

What Good is the Law? (Pt. 1)
Romans 7:7-8
April 29, 2018

I’m not sure why, but the main Christmas gift I received in sixth grade remains the least-used, most under-appreciated Christmas gift I’ve ever received. It was an erector set by Meccano. Given how much I like to tinker and do maintenance and repair jobs around the house, I’m not sure why that gift didn’t resonate with me, but it didn’t. I opened it on Christmas day, looked at it, and I vaguely remember later pulling it out once or twice, but I don’t recall ever actually building anything with it.

Maybe you’ve received similar kinds of gifts — expressions of love that left you thinking something like, “I appreciate the gift, but what am I going to do with this?” And, “what good is this to me?” “How will I benefit from this?”

There is a spiritual gift that God has given His people that often results in them asking the same thing: “What good is this?” The gift is the Law, and as Paul has explained in Romans 7:1-6, if someone is in Christ Jesus, he no longer lives by the Law (7:1, 4) but by grace (6:14). And in fact the Law actually worked to arouse sinful desires in the believer (7:5). So what is the value of the Law? Or is there any value in the Law? Can we — dare we — even say that because the Law results in more sin, that the Law itself is sin? This is the question that Paul asks in Rom. 7:7, and it provides an opportunity for Paul to explain that the Law is a benefit to the believer and is in fact both holy and good (vv. 12-13).

Here is Paul’s premise about the benefit of the Law of God —

The Law is good, because through it we see the extent of our sin.

In this passage Paul reveals five benefits of the Law (we will look at the first two today):

1. The Law Makes Us Know Our Sin (v. 7)
2. The Law Manifests Our Heart of Sin (v. 8)
3. The Law Reveals the Deadliness of Sin (vv. 9-10)
4. The Law Exposes the Deceitfulness of Sin (v. 11)
5. The Law is Holy and Good (When Used Lawfully) (vv. 12-13)

Download the rest of this sermon on Romans 7:7-8.

The audio will be posted on the GBC website by tomorrow.