Continuing in Paul's letter epistle to the Romans, and we are in chapter 7 at this point. Last week we looked at the first six verses of Romans chapter 7, and this week we are looking at verses 7 through 13. As our text for this morning, please, as always, listen carefully, listen attentively, Actively, conscionably listening to the holy and inerrant and inspired word of God. What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Certainly not. On the contrary, I would not have known sin except through the law. For I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said, you shall not covet. But sin, taking opportunity by the commandment, produced in me all number of evil desires. For apart from the law, sin was dead. I was alive once without the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died. And the commandment, which was to bring life, I found to bring death. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me and by it killed me. Therefore, the law is holy and the commandment holy and just and good. Has then what is good become death to me? Certainly not. but sin, that it might appear sin, was producing death in me through what is good, so that sin, through the commandment, might become exceedingly, exceedingly sinful. This is the reading of God's word. May he add his blessing, not only to the hearing of it, but to the doing of it in our lives as well. So in the first six verses we looked at last week, Paul taught us this wonderful truth that because according to God's gracious decree, we are seen by God as having died to the law when we died in Christ, that we are no longer bound to the law in the sense of having to perfectly keep that law in order to have salvation. And in the sense of no longer living under the condemnation of the law because we can't keep it. Because we're united to Christ, we now experience the fulfillment of God's promise through Ezekiel and through Jeremiah, especially Jeremiah, that he would put his law in us and that he would write that law on our hearts. So that, as Paul said in that last passage, we can now serve, serve God, but serve him in the new way of the spirit, from the heart, of thankful obedience for what he has done for us in Christ and no longer in that old way of the written code that was just this external thing that threatened us and that condemned us for our failure. In other words, what we noted last week in closing was that the law still applies to us and we are still obligated to the law, but our relationship to the law has changed now because we are united to Christ. That much we got in the first six verses last week. But Paul still hasn't really completely answered the entire question that he's raised about the law through this teaching about justification by faith. He has said in his earlier writing here that no one can be justified by God by the works of the law. He's also said in chapter 5 verse 20 that the law entered to increase the trespass. And he added in chapter 7 verse 5 that we looked at last week that the law actually aroused or stimulated our sinful passions. And so to some who are listening to Paul and hearing this teaching, to some it sounds like the law is actually working hand in hand with sin. Or perhaps that the law is even sin itself. And so Paul now in this passage begins to address this potential misunderstanding of the law by telling us in these verses three important things that we need to know and understand in regard to the law and as it regards us. First of all, he tells us the law is not sin. And secondly, he tells us that the law Although it's not sin, that sin uses the law as a base of operations, if you will, in order to carry out its campaign against us to stir up our sin and to stir up our sinfulness. We'll talk about how that happens. And thirdly, what Paul tells us, although not in so many words, is that the law prepares us for the gospel of grace in Jesus Christ. So let's turn to our text first of all and let's look at this first point that Paul, you will notice again, wants to drive home just as strongly as he can. Notice he begins with this question, what shall we say then? And what he's asking here is, I said back in verse 5 that the law actually aroused our sinful passions while we were in the flesh. With that being true, what are we supposed to think about that? How are we supposed to understand that? What do I mean by that? Is the law sin, then, if it's stirring up our sinful passions? And you notice Paul's characteristically strong, really strong, emphatic response. Certainly not, by no means, may that never be, God forbid, are the various ways it gets translated. Well, if his answer is so strongly in the negative, then what's his reasoning? How do these things fit together? Well, pay attention carefully to the Apostle's argument here. Yes, it is true that while we were in the flesh, and remember, in the flesh means before we were united to Christ, while we were still united to Adam in our sinful state, while we were in the flesh, our sinful passions were aroused. They were stirred up by the law. But notice what he says now, yet, yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. See, if the law was sin or if the law was sinful, how could it be that the law would make Paul and us able to come to know and recognize sin? The law doesn't want to do that. The law wants to go under the radar. The law wants us to think, or the sin rather, wants us to think there is no law. There is no sin. Everything is okay. Whatever you want to do is fine. So sin is not going to come up and say, hey, I've got something really wicked I want you to do that's going to punish you for all of eternity. Sin is going to say, hey, do what you want. It feels good. It's right. It's yours. Do it. So it's also likely here though that it's significant that Paul is using that particular word sin. Paul doesn't talk here about people who are doing something wrong, or people who are making a mistake, or people who maybe have misjudged something. words that's used for sin here is one that can just mean generally wrongdoing, but in Scripture it almost always particularly refers to wrongdoing that is in rebellion to the Law of God, that is sin against a holy God. Although he is talking about the law in general at first, if it hadn't been for the law, I wouldn't have known sin. He's not content with that, though, and Paul goes on now to give us an example of how the law has worked this way in his life. He identifies a specific commandment, and it's interesting, is it not, to notice the commandment that Paul picks as he wants to illustrate this point for us. You see, in a way, the other commandments are focused, particularly in the second table of the laws that applies to us, the other commandments are focused more on outward, actual, physical actions, things that we actually do. that are sinful. Stealing from people. Committing adultery with people. Murdering people. Those are actual physical acts. You can look at those and, well, it's maybe not 9 out of 10 people today, but a lot of people are going to look at that and say, yeah, that's wrong. That's sinful. But notice where Paul goes. He goes to the 10th commandment. You shall not covet. He's talking about coveting now. What's the difference here? because it's dealing with the area that Paul has been really focused on in these recent passages. It's dealing with the heart before the actions are actually committed. Cranfield, one of the commentators I'm using, looks at this passage and says, it is a particularly instructive example in that it directs attention to the inward root of man's outward wrongdoing. You understand what Cranfield's saying? We covet first and then we carry out things to satisfy our coveting. You want what another person has and so you go out and steal it so that it's yours instead of his. When I say this ties to what Paul's been teaching already, you remember how he gave thanks to God that those of us who had once been slaves of sin had now shown obedience from the heart in becoming slaves of righteousness. Not just rigid outward conformity, but obedience from the heart. And that we saw was amplified when he talked in the last passage about us now being able to serve in the new way of the spirit rather than just in that old letter of the law, the outward conformity that had no heart worship and obedience involved in it. So what Paul is saying here is that the law gives him, even the law gives us, a knowledge, an awareness of our sin and its sinfulness. Well, that's a good thing, isn't it? That's not sinful. That's a good thing that the law does. But that isn't all Paul has to say about this. If the law isn't sinful then, how is it that it stirs up sinful desires in us? And this is the second point that Paul is making in the text here. Take careful note again now in verse 8, where Paul begins with two particular words, but sin. That's sin. And he goes on to say, but sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. You hear how Paul, in using those first two words, is personifying sin. It's making sin like it is a person or a force, a living force that is active and engaged and exerting its power and influence here. What he intends to teach by this is to teach us that in each one of us, inside each one of us, dwells a principle of sin, if you want to call it that. A principle of sin that leads to these sinful desires, and those sinful desires then lead to our sinful actions flowing out of those desires. So if we ask ourselves, what is then the relation between God's law and sin and the stirring up of our sinful desires and passions, don't miss what Paul just said. Sin seized an opportunity through the commandments. The phrase there, seized an opportunity, is one that means that sin took advantage of something. It's a word that is used to talk about creating a base of operations. In military terms, you would call it creating a beachhead. Think about World War II. You remember in World War II, the Germans had conquered essentially all of continental Europe. And they're threatening to cross the channel and take England and making threats even toward the United States. And the Allies need some way to be able to bring the war to bear on Hitler and the Germans. But how do you do it? He owns the whole area. Well, the allies decide to take some deception to use means to deceive the Germans into thinking they were going to do one thing while in fact they concentrated their forces and attacked a small place called Normandy where they poured their troops in and conquered a small place, a beachhead, a place of advantage, a base of operations where they could then pour in their men and equipment to start fighting the Germans face-to-face, head-to-head, and to bring about their defeat. That's what Paul is saying that sin does with the law. Sin takes the law and establishes a beachhead on it. goes to the law and uses the law in a way it's not intended to be used, to use it against us. That beach at Normandy belonged to the Germans, but the Allies took it and used it against them. And that's what Paul is saying sin does with the law and with the commandment. Sin, and by this, that internal principle of sin that Paul's talking about here is our sinful, corrupt nature, our old man. That sinful, corrupt nature takes the law and sort of turns it against us. What does he mean by that? Well, he goes on to explain. Apart from the law, Paul says, sin lies dead. again you have to read all of Paul, you can't just cherry pick a verse and try to figure out what Paul is talking about here. Paul does not mean by this that without the Law there is no sin. He's already told us way back that even when the Law hadn't be given sin still existed in the world. He's already made that clear. And he also told us that sin entered the world through Adam. That's clear back at the beginning, way before the formal law of God had been given. The law was given, remember, with a promise of life and happiness. God told Adam, obey me and live. But if you disobey me and eat that fruit, you're going to die. The law has always been given with that promise. Do this and live. Don't and suffer the curse. But you see, the law is given with this promise of life and happiness. The problem is that the law has no power to produce life and happiness. It doesn't have any power to produce holiness in us. So, sin lies dead without the law in the sense that sin as sin against God lies dormant in us, inactive in us. It's not that we aren't sinning, but it is not a specific reaction of sinning and rebelling against God that's in our conscious awareness. We're just living our lives and doing what we want to do and what seems right to us. But you see, when the law comes, that changes. The problem is, though, the law doesn't bring with it the or the strength to be able to submit to the law, to be able to keep it. Instead, Paul says, what happens is that the very restrictions that the law places on us cause our sinful nature, sin, to rise up in rebellion against that commandment and actively try to do the very thing that's been forbidden. James Boyce, in his commentary, gave an example that I found to be just really helpful, really illustrative about this point, and it's an example from his own life. When Boyce was a little boy, he remembers being in grade school, and one day, just before lunch, he remembers the principal coming into the classroom and giving an announcement that they understood that there were certain children who were bringing fireworks to school. and that this was a very dangerous thing. It was forbidden by school policy, and he was warning them that any child who brought fireworks to school would be immediately expelled. Boyce says, you know, I have to tell you that up to that point, I hadn't even been thinking about fireworks. Not at all. But as soon as the principal was done, they released us to go home for lunch. And on the way home, walking home from lunch, he was talking with a friend and they remembered that a friend of theirs had some fireworks. And the first thing they did was to go to the friend's house and get one and take it back to school with them when they returned after lunch and went into a closet off of the classroom and lit it. Now, the plan was that the boy holding it was supposed to pinch the fuse before it went off. He says what we didn't count on was that the burning fuse would burn the boy's fingers and he would drop it instead of putting it out. And instead, the firework explodes in the little closet. And he says, you can't imagine how loud that is in a small closet, number one. And you can't imagine how fast the principal can show up in the classroom after it goes off, number two. Now, that's a humorous story in a lot of ways. But think about how well it illustrates exactly the point Paul's making here. He wasn't thinking about fireworks at all. The principal lays down the law, if you will, and the first thing he says is, let's break it. Let's see if we can get away with it. You see, the law isn't the problem. It merely does what it intended to do by setting before us God's righteous standard. Here's what you must do and what you must not do. The evil, the sin that is stirred up in us isn't the fault of the law, it's the fault of that sinful principle within us, our old corrupt nature that dwells inside of each one of us. That's Paul's point here. And then in verses 9 to 12, Paul provides evidence for his third point. The point that the law shows its essential goodness in the way that it prepares us for the gospel of grace in Jesus Christ. Now, you may not see that in there yet. In fact, if you were listening when I read those verses, or if you've been rereading them as we've been going through this passage, you might be wondering how exactly verses 9 through 12 would prove in any way that the law prepares us for the gospel of grace. After all, what Paul is doing in those verses is he's remembering a time apart from the law when he says, I was alive. And sin was dead. Now that sounds like a good time, right? I'm alive, sin's dead, but it's apart from the law. However, he says, when the law came, sin came alive and I died. Now that doesn't sound good. And then he says, and the commandment which was to bring life I found to bring death. for sin taking occasion by the commandment deceived me and it killed me." Now, does that sound like a positive thing? After hearing that and reading that, does Paul's conclusion in verse 12 surprise you at all? Therefore, the law is holy and the commandment is holy and just and good. You almost kind of need to stop there and say, wait a minute, is there a disconnect here? These don't seem to fit together. See, the problem is that we really need to understand what Paul's really saying in those verses to really understand his conclusion. And the truth is that to do that, I want to actually back you up again and review something in verse 7 as well. You remember, Paul said that he would not have known sin or known covetousness if it hadn't been for the law. Well, it's important, it's essential, in fact, for us to realize that this knowing that Paul's talking about in that verse isn't simply an intellectual awareness of something. It isn't as if Paul just becomes aware when the commandment comes that there's such a thing as sin, or that there is such a thing as covening. Rather, what Paul's talking about here is knowing and being convicted of something. It's knowing it and knowing that you're guilty of it, that it's you. that this is describing. That's what Paul is talking about here. I think actually the ESV captures this well in its rendition of this verse when it says, for I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said you shall not covet. See, it isn't just that I wouldn't have known what coveting was. I could look that up in Webster's Dictionary. The point Paul is making is I wouldn't have known that I'm coveting. I wouldn't have known what it is to actually covet if the law hadn't said, yeah, that's what it is. See, Paul came to be convicted that you don't have to commit blatant physical sins like murder to be guilty of sinning. but that even his, even our desire for wrong things is sin in and of itself. In other words, Paul came to know that I am a sinner. Well, that's fair enough, but how did that realization and conviction come to be impressed on Paul? After all, we know a few things about Paul. He tells us some things about him, especially later in Philippians. We know that Paul was familiar with the law probably from a very little child, right? He was steeped in this stuff. Paul has known the law, so he has known thou shalt not covet since he was very, very little, very, very small. When he talks about how the commandment came, when he says when the commandment came, he can't mean when the commandment showed up because that's been in his life all of his life. What he has to mean here is when the commandment finally came to him personally with absolute clarity and conviction on his own heart. Because until then, Paul had been deceived by the law. You remember where he says that sin taking opportunity by the commandment deceived me? What does he mean by that? Do you remember Paul's description of himself in Philippians? When he says that prior to being converted, according to the law, I was what? Blameless. See, Paul would have looked at thou shalt not covet and Paul would have said, yeah, I'm good. But the commandment came one day to his heart and said, no you're not. You are a covetor. And Paul became convicted of that truth. And so until that time, Paul had been deceived regard to the law by sin his sinful nature had deceived him the law was there and he was dealing with it regularly and and Sin took the law and said yeah Paul see the law you are doing really well, man You don't have to worry about this at all. You've got this covered You see the point is that when it comes to the law we can be deceived in a number of different ways and We may be deceiving and believing there is no law, so we don't need to keep a law. There is nothing to obey. We can do what we want. But you can also be deceived, like Paul was, into saying, like many of us are, by the way, into believing that, yeah, the law is there, and we are law-abiding citizens. We keep it, and there's no blame for us in regard to that. That's what Jesus was talking to people about in Matthew 5, right? You think the law says don't commit murder, and you think you've kept this, but have you been angry at one of your brothers for no reason? Murder. See, this is how sin seized an opportunity through the law and deceived Paul. It deceived him into believing he was keeping the law blamelessly with no threat of condemnation from the law at all. The law was not a threat to him in any way. In that sense, sin was dead and Paul was alive. But when the truth and conviction came to him, he realized that in fact, sin was alive and he was dead in his sins, and he felt the weight of the condemnation of the law on him. Now again, Paul is not the only one that sin has deceived in regard to the law. We all suffer from this same malady. Most of us suffer from exactly the same problem. When you pray, one of the things we're supposed to do is to confess our sin to God, is it not? I'm not going to ask anybody to raise hands or speak out here, but I wonder how long that portion of your prayer is. Do you really understand the law? Do you really understand what it requires of you that you maybe just say, forgive me for my sins and go right on to I need, I need, I need, please do, please do, please do. We don't generally spend a lot of time in that area because we don't generally see ourselves as being much in the way of sinners. We're being deceived, not by the law. Sin, our sinful nature is deceiving us about the law. The truth though is that I think that Paul's not only thinking about him and us, I think that Paul, he is talking about himself in this passage, I, I, I. But I think Paul is doing that representing all of us who have been united to Christ, all of us who share this same kind of experience. But also the truth is that based on the language Paul's using here in this text, I'm pretty sure that he's also thinking about specifically our first parents, Adam and Eve. Because think about this, Adam and Eve too were alive before the law, right? Before God gave the commandment, that tree, don't eat from that tree because if you do, you die. They were alive before that happened. God gave them the law and sin came alive, did it not? God gives them the law and what's the first thing that seems to happen? Along comes Satan and the serpent and tempts them to break the law, to break the commandment. Sin came alive and presented itself to them through that commandment. And they were also deceived by sin in regard to that law, were they not? Satan didn't come up and say, this is really a good thing God's telling you here, but I want you to break it anyway just because he's no good. That's not what they said. They said, did God really say that? Did you really understand Him correctly when He talked to you? Do you understand that this is actually a really good thing and God's just keeping it from you because He doesn't want you to have it? Do you understand if you did this, you'd be just like Him? You wouldn't need Him because you'd be just like Him. That's what He's trying to keep you from. See, sin established a beachhead on the commandment of God, and from that beachhead began to expand into their minds and their hearts, and to lead them into temptation to disobey, to rebel against the commandment of God. And they also found, by the way, that when conviction about the truth and the finality of the law finally set in on them, that they were killed by the law, in a sense, because they broke it. Sin killed them through the law. The law that was to bring life for them, they found to bring death. Now, prior to his conversion, when the law and the commandment brought this true knowledge and true conviction to him, Paul was alive and sin was dead in the sense that Paul didn't see anything in his life as sin. He didn't see a problem. Everything was good. He was secure, he was complacent in the righteousness that he believed he was achieving through keeping the law so well. But when true knowledge and true conviction of the commandment was brought home to his heart and to his mind, then sin became a living thing to him. He realized, he recognized it for what it was and felt it, the weight of it. He was able to see it then all over his heart. Notice how he says, sin produced in me all kinds of covetousness. Paul was able to see now that what he thought was good behavior was actually just coveting in disguise. He'd been doing it all over the place. And he died as he found himself falling under the condemnation of the law. See, the law, the commandments of God promised life to those who keep them. Do this and live. And Paul has said in verse 10 that the very commandment that promised life to me proved to be death to me. And yet in spite of that, Paul concludes right after that that therefore the law is holy and the commandment is holy, just, and good. Those three words piled together, the way Paul does that, he couldn't have emphasized the essential goodness of the law any more strongly than that. But how can both be true? How can the law do that and how can the law still be wholly just and good? And that's the question Paul asks in verse 13. Did that which is good then bring death to me? Was it the law that brought death to me then? Would that be doing good? And once again, his response shows how preposterous, how absurd, how actually abhorrent The very suggestion of that is certainly not. That could never be, God forbid. But what's the answer then? How do we answer the question that Paul has asked? Well, again, Paul tells us it wasn't the commandment that brought death to Paul and that brings death to us. It was sin producing death in us through what is good, through God's commandment. As he has shown, as we've talked about over the last several minutes, sin, our sinful nature, uses the commandment, which is a holy, good, righteous thing, and uses it to incite us against God's law, just like Satan did to our parents in the Garden of Eden. And yet the commandment still fulfills its holy, righteous, and good purpose, Paul says, because what the commandment does in this whole process is to end up showing that our desires and our subsequent actions to be exactly what they are. Sin. Not okay. Not something that just may be a mistake. Sin against a holy God. And because sin is an offense against an infinitely holy God, the commandment shows us that our sin then is sinful beyond measure. Utterly sinful is what Paul says. That's what the law accomplishes. Sin brings death. The law makes us aware of our sin and our sinfulness and the extremity of it. Now we've talked about Adam and Eve, but when Adam and Eve sinned, there was an essential difference between their sin and ours. They didn't have an internal principle of sin operating in their hearts and lives. They had been created by God upright, right? There was no corrupt nature in them that tended them towards sin. The truth is that with Adam and Eve, Satan himself had to come in person in the form of the serpent to personally present the commandment to them and the temptation through the commandment to rebel against God. He took the holy commandment that God had given them and he used it to tempt them to what? To covet, to covet what they thought had come to think now that they should have had and didn't. or to covet what they should have been and God wasn't allowing them to be. You see Paul's application of that commandment of coveting and how well that it fits. Now the truth is that although Satan may personally come and influence each of us at some point or other in our lives, The truth is that he doesn't have to do this with us personally, as he did with Adam and Eve, because since Adam fell, we all now have that sin principle, that old corrupt nature inside of us that does Satan's work for him. Constantly standing at our side, whispering in our ear, stirring up desires in our heart to break God's law and violate it, and believe that that's okay. working in us our old sinful corrupt nature at all times to produce sin in us. You see, Paul's teaching here is that it is that sinful corrupt nature that's the problem. That's what brings death on us, not God's law. Paul could hardly have used a better commandment to make this point. I've said this over and over again. In every age, we've shown from Adam all the way up to our present day, this particular sin has in many ways been understood to be the root of almost all sin. Think about our current modern culture that we live in here in America. Everything around us drives us to covet, does it not? That's what the whole marketing strategy of every company in the country is based on. Show somebody else having something and make you want it and think, why do they have it and I don't? That's the whole point of the marketing that we have. And it isn't just in our marketing either, is it? We do it in raising our kids, don't we? Look at so and so's kid. Their kid went to this school, and they got this degree, and they got this great job, and they got all this money, they got a nice car. What are you doing with your life? We drive our kids even to covet what other people have. Our politics drive us to covet, don't they? Our politicians continually push us to look at what other people have and say, see, you don't have it. You need somebody to take that from them and give it to you. It's not right, and it drives us to want what other people have. covenant is so thoroughgoing, it is so deeply embedded in that corrupt, sinful nature that we have. But still, what about Paul's third point? Have we demonstrated Paul's third point, that the law prepares us for the gospel of grace? I might just as well have phrased that in a different way and said that the law, how can the law then be holy and good if it stirs up our sinful passions, leading us to sinful actions, causing us to be dead in our sins? Let me ask you a question. Do you think that every person out there in the world who is breaking God's law is aware that they are sinning against God and that what they are doing is utterly sinful? Do you think everybody thinks that way? You know they don't. You know the vast majority of people don't even think about that for a second in their lives. Do you think that when they do these things, they think, oh man, I'm bringing death on myself. God is really going to pour out his wrath on me for that. No. They don't think it at all. Of course not. It's only those who have been united to Christ who have this grace extended to them. That's been Paul's point all through here. Remember, this doesn't stand by itself. He's been preaching the gospel. For those people who have been united to Christ by grace, through faith in Him, who have had this grace extended to them to be able to see through the law that what they are doing is sin against the Holy God and that it is utterly sinful, and I trust that that's true for us today as we're gathered here. For those people, God causes the commandment in our hearts and in our lives to show us sin for what it really is. It's not just a mistake. It's not just an error. It's not something that's okay for me, but maybe not okay for you. It's sin. It's an offense against an infinitely holy God. And when it shows us what it really is, then it finally begins to allow us to see sin then as being utterly sinful. because it is against an utterly holy God. Well, what's the effect or result of that when that happens in our hearts and in our lives? When sin, when the law causes us to see sin as that awful and therefore we see ourselves as sinful and utterly sinful, what's the result of that? Because remember, we said the law can't save us and the law can't make us holier. It doesn't have the power to do that. It is only when we are brought to the place where we recognize our actions, our lives, as sin against a holy God, and we are brought to realize that because of the utterly sinful nature of what we do and what we think and feel and are, that we have done things that are truly deserving of God's wrath of death, spiritual and physical, it's only then that we are prepared to hear and respond to the gospel of grace presented to us in Jesus Christ. It's only then that we see our need. Otherwise, we think we're fine. You remember when Jesus came to this earth and was walking around in his own ministry, what did he tell people? I haven't come here to call the righteous Not that there are any. I haven't come here to call the righteous. I've come to call who? Sinners to repentance. People who realize by God's grace that they're sinners. Christ came to redeem them and bring them from the dead to new life in him. And so if you're somebody who is a believer here today and you're hearing these words of Paul, this is not just a message for the lost people. This is a message for you. You need to understand that the sin principle is still operating in you. It's not been eradicated. It will still take the commandment that's holy and just and good and deceive you and end up having you sin against your God as a result of it. And you have to be aware of that. And you have to be on guard against that. And by the power of the spirit and his word, pray that he would help to keep you from it and to be repentant when it happens and turn away from it. If you're not a believer, if you're somebody who is here today and has not come to be united to Christ by faith, then this is a warning for you. This is a call for you to be able to see what things could be like for you. You're being deceived all through your life. You think you're fine, when in reality, the sin through the law is killing you. And the only hope you have for life is faith in Christ, the one who kept the law for you. And true faith in Him has redeemed you from that lost estate. Let's pray. Father, we come to you and we thank you for the grace that is ours in Jesus Christ. Peter was right when he said that there are some things Paul teaches that are hard to understand. And we're working through one of those passages that can be really tough. And yet we know that you have promised us that we can understand the more difficult places by looking at the places that are more clear, by falling back on what we know to be true. And so we pray that you would be at work in our hearts and lives using your word and your spirit to clarify this truth for us, helping us to see that we get deceived by sin through the commandment all the time. and that we can only trust in Christ, not in the law, not in our ability, but only in Christ, to be able to saved from that sin, but also in order to be able to be made holy and righteous before you. We ask these things in Christ's name and for his sake. Amen.