‘What then? Will we say ‘The Law of self-forfeiture and loss’? May it not be caused to happen! However, I would absolutely not know self-forfeiture and loss if not by means of Law, for also I would absolutely not know covetousness if the Law had not said, ‘You will not covet’,’ (Romans 7 v 7).
In verse 5 Paul said that ‘when we existed within the flesh, the passions, the self-forfeiture, actively and effectively worked within our limbs and members through the means of the law, penetrating towards the bringing forth of fruit, the death’. Paul also says elsewhere that ‘law entered close beside in order that the falling away became greater in number’, (Galatians 5 v 20). Law increases the amount of transgressions and the wayward raw passions and energies inherent in the fabric of our fleshly constitution are working in our limbs by means of the law. In other words, divine law is not leading ‘outsiders’ or unbelievers to live a life of set apart cleanliness at all. But when Christians are brought forth by God they are rendered idle with regard to serving God within the sphere of the law.
So Paul immediately anticipates another objection from those who know the law. He frames the objection in terms of a rhetorical question. ‘What then? Will we say ‘the Law of self-forfeiture and loss’?’ Will we say that the Law is at fault? Is Law failing in the purpose of producing cleanliness? Is the Law creating self-forfeiture and loss in us? He answers immediately. ‘May it not be caused to happen!’
To illustrate his point he quotes the beginning of the tenth Commandment, ‘You will not covet’, (Exodus 20 v 17; Deuteronomy 5 v 21). The word ‘covet’ means ‘to have focused passion’, ‘to yearn for’, ‘to greatly desire to do or have something’, ‘to long for’, ‘to desire very much’, or ‘to lust after’. Mosaic or Sinai Covenant Law takes an enormous step forward in advance of many other ancient codes, because most of them stopped short at actual action or behaviour. Just a few went on to speech, but few if any laws addressed an individual’s thoughts or passions. But divine law says, ‘You will not covet’, you will not hold on to the thought and passionate desire for something. Coveting proceeds from our heart or deep inner core, (Proverbs 6 v 25), and when it carries across into our behaviour it brings forth self-forfeiture and loss, the thought and desire is brought to completion in the act.
Paul says ‘in the absence of divine law I would not know that if I covet then I self-forfeit incurring loss. Covenant Law is the means by which I know that I am self-forfeiting. Until the law revealed it, I had no knowledge or consciousness of divine disapproval, self-forfeiture and loss with regard to coveting.’ Without doubt there were those who desired their ‘neighbour’s wife, or his manservant, or his maidservant, but before the giving of Covenant Law this would not be readily perceived as a divinely disapproved-of desire for that which was forbidden. Because no written code existed to reveal that God disapproved of such passionate desire. The Apostle did not know covetousness as something that was disapproved-of by God until he was confronted with the law opposing it. The desire might have existed within him, but he would not have known that God disapproved of it to the point of his self-forfeiture and loss. The written codes of divine law place boundaries on his desires, as well as his speech and behaviour, teaching him what God judicially approves of and what He disapproves of. Divine law teaches where lawful indulgence ends, and where self-forfeiture and loss begins.
It is not Divine Law itself that is missing the mark, nor is it failing. So what is the dynamic process that happens? Paul is about to tell us.
