Do you remember your parents telling you not to do something and as such you had an almost insatiable desire to do it now that they said not to? I know that I do. I remember with my first B.B. gun I was told not to point at something that I did not intend to shoot. Well, I did and pulled the trigger and shattered the back window of my uncle’s pickup. I did it because I was told not to. This is the effect of sin in our lives as well.

I know it sounds as though I am making an excuse for sin, saying that it was or is the law that made me do it. I am not doing that. I am saying that we know about the negative impacts of sin through the law that tells us not to do and our nature is such that we are drawn to that thing to really test the validity of the law.

“⁷What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, ‘You shall not covet.’ ⁸But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead.” – Romans 7:7-8 (ESV)

We see here that Paul is saying just that. He would not know what is or how to covet, had the law not indicated that it should not be done. And as he now knows, he is drawn to it like the moth to the flame, ultimately to his detriment. Had he not known of this thing called covetousness, he would not have been drawn to it. As he notes in the last part of verse eight, if he had not known, the he would not have sinned.

Now, as I have read, studied and written, just because we don’t know does not absolve us of the sin. I may not sin consciously, but I do sin subconsciously every day. And I pray for forgiveness every day. I am still accountable to all of my sin whether conscious or subconscious. The difference is in my heart. Without knowing of the sin through the law, I am not looking to sin. I am aware and do it because of my nature to test the bounds of the law. Without the law, I am working through things based on what is written on my heart thanks to God.

“⁹I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died.” – Romans 7:9 (ESV)

So, I was alive and now I am dead. Not physically, but I am no longer free to simply live by way of the law on my heart that is placed there by the LORD. I am a slave to the law in knowing that this and that are against the LORD and thanks to my nature, I choose to do them anyway because I know. I choose sin thanks to knowing of sin through the law.

What is the law to you? Are you of the view that it keeps you from sin? What if you consciously sin because of knowing the law and what if you leaned on the law of your heart as the LORD wrote there?