Paul uses this expression in Romans, at the end of an explanation about the limitations of the torah. He actually addresses those who would quote the torah to him and uses the example of marriage.
Rom 7:1 Are you ignorant, brothers- for to those knowing torah I speak - that the torah has lordship over the man as long as he lives?
Rom 7:2 for the married woman to the living husband has been bound by torah, and if the husband may die, she has been free from the torah of the husband;
Rom 7:3 so, then, the husband being alive, an adulteress she shall be called if she may become another man’s; and if the husband may die, she is free from the torah, so as not to be an adulteress, having become another man’s.
He says that those living by the torah are bound by the torah for their lifetime. If they die, then their wives are free from their obligations to the torah. If, however, a husband is alive and the wife would go to another man, she would be an adulteress by the torah, until her first husband has died.
He says that the torah awoke sinful passion by means of the conflict between our flesh and the spirit, which only ends in death. To be free from death, we must be freed from such sinful passion – but this is the living strength in our limbs. It creates the inconsistency of our lives, the lop-sidedness towards hypocrisy and insincerity, and the reason for our inability to accept it.
He argues that, to free us from this dilemma, the death of Christ is a substitutional death for us, freeing us from the obligation of the torah, preparing us to bear spiritual fruit as the resurrected body of Christ. The substitution of the Son of the Father for the whole of mankind presents a conflict by encountering us with our own sinful state, recognising that the death of the man from Nazareth was unjust:
Isa 53:4 Surely our sicknesses he hath borne, And our pains - he hath carried them, And we - we have esteemed him plagued, smitten of God, and afflicted.
Isa 53:5 And he is pierced for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace is on him, And by his bruise there is healing to us.
The age old prophecy is given a new meaning in the Cross of Jesus, he is seen as the “man of sorrowsâ€. Originally it was not really sin that was spoken of, but the malevolence which human beings are subject to, which is not always a clear and direct consequence of some apparent sin. However, Jesus was concerned to relieve this malevolence in all its forms, whenever it came his way in the exercise of his ministry, and the implied relief was seen as a consequence of his actions, even if the bearing and lading which are primarily noted here we not always as evident as when he carried his cross.
Rom 7:4 So that, my brothers, you also were made dead to the torah through the body of the Christ, for your becoming another’s, who out of the dead was raised up, that we might bear fruit to God;
Rom 7:5 for when we were in the flesh, the passions of the sins, that through the torah, were working in our members, to bear fruit to the death;
Rom 7:6 and now we have ceased from the torah, that being dead in which we were held, so that we may serve in newness of spirit, and not in oldness of letter.
Rom 7:7 What, then, shall we say? the torah is sin? let it not be! but the sin I did not know except through torah, for also the covetousness I had not known if the torah had not said:
Rom 7:8 `You shall not covet;’ and the sin having received an opportunity, through the command, did work in me all covetousness–for apart from torah sin is dead.
Paul is keen to make sure that we understand that the torah itself was not sin, but it only made us see our sin by confrontation. It is only when we awaken out of the ignorance of bliss and are encountered by the moral instance that we can appreciate our disparity and our prejudice. It isn’t necessarily some morally abhorrent deed, as is often suggested, but our inability to gain a balanced view of the Unity in God. We are caught up in polarity and don’t even notice our imbalance – until we are confronted by the torah. Then we see that evil is not something “out thereâ€, but an attribute of our existence. We bring death and are doomed to death. But the newness of the spirit lifts us out of the oldness of the letter, leaving the obligation to the torah in the dead body of sin.
Rom 7:9 And I was alive apart from torah once, and the command having come, the sin revived, and I died;
Rom 7:10 and the command that is for life, this was found by me for death;
Rom 7:11 for the sin, having received an opportunity, through the command, did deceive me, and through it did slay me ;
Rom 7:12 so that the torah, indeed, is holy, and the command holy, and righteous, and good.
It is the confrontation with the wholesomeness and unity of the torah that is like poison to the body of sin, disparity and prejudice. We are proved wrong over and over again, at odds with reality, at odds with all that is beneficial and righteous, at odds even with ourselves. Even the good we do accuses us, since it shows how we know the difference between good and bad, but we can’t see where we are in relation to that good. Even the good we mean to do is guided by prejudice.
Rom 7:13 That which is good then, to me has it become death? let it not be! but the sin, that it might appear sin, through the good, working death to me, that the sin might become exceeding sinful through the command,
Rom 7:14 for we have known that the torah is spiritual, and I am fleshly, sold by the sin;
Rom 7:15 for that which I work, I do not acknowledge; for not what I will, this I practise, but what I hate, this I do.
My predicament is that I know but I can not do good. Every attempt is unstable, iniquitous, and biased. In this state I am doomed to hypocrisy, doing the wrong thing I do not want to do, and failing to do the good that I want to do. The confrontation with the holistic goodness of God reveals my atomistic mind-set and denounces me.
Rom 7:16 And if what I do not will, this I do, I consent to the torah that it is good,
Rom 7:17 and now it is no longer I that work it, but the sin dwelling in me,
Rom 7:18 for I have known that there doth not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh, good: for to will is present with me, and to work that which is right I do not find,
Rom 7:19 for the good that I will, I do not; but the evil that I do not will, this I practise.
Rom 7:20 And if what I do not will, this I do, it is no longer I that work it, but the sin that is dwelling in me.
This isn’t an excuse that Paul is presenting here, but the simple truth that I am doomed to work against the Unity of God, because I am possessed by the very disparity I want to avoid. There is something working within me that I can’t see, but whose effects I feel. It is my dependence upon polarity to understand the world, my incessant assumption that I have a balanced view, whilst I am blind to the full reality. I only see in part, I can only think in part, I lack the full picture, although I am often sure I know what reality is about.
Rom 7:21 I find, then, the torah, that when I desire to do what is right, with me the evil is present,
Rom 7:22 for I delight in the torah of God according to the inward man,
Rom 7:23 and I behold another torah in my members, warring against the torah of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the torah of the sin that is in my members.
Rom 7:24 A wretched man I! who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?
Rom 7:25 I thank God – through Jesus Christ our Lord; so then, I myself indeed with the mind do serve the torah of God, and with the flesh, the law of sin.
My only hope therefore is to rely on the salvation that is worked for me. I must turn remorsefully and accept that I couldn’t see, and cannot see the full picture – only through revelation do I get an insight and understand that my only way is the acceptance of a righteousness that I feel is inherently unjust that substitutes my unrighteousness. The cross reveals to me in vivid pictures the consequences of my unrighteousness, my blindness, my disparity and prejudice. I can only humble myself and thank God that there is a deliverance, although I could never have achieved it myself.
Shalom