by no scruples. And all this time sin,
considered as a moral tyrant, was as if dead. I had no defined moral
ideal and consequently no struggle and no failure. Then comes the law
with its 'Thou shalt not covet' (or do this or that). It imposes
limits in the name of God on my life of instinct. It cries 'Hands
off!' At once I find opposition between me and the law. I do covet
this and that which the law says I must not have. I find myself in the
eye of the moral law a transgressor. And there is something more than
my own lawless desire in opposition to the law. I become conscious of
a great power of sin at work in the world and in me--something greater
than myself, which intervenes in the struggle and reinforces the
opposition to the law. The tyrant Sin rouses himself on the pretext
afforded by the hostile commandment, and exercises his power both by
stimulating my desires, like Eve's (ver. 8), and {247} deceiving my
intelligence, like hers, to believe that good is evil (ver. 11), and so
brings me by means of the commandment into a state of flat disobedience
to the law, which is death. For the law was given for life--'This do,
and thou shalt live'; but there is the necessary converse--'This
transgress, and thou shalt die' (vers. 7-11).

The law then, it is quite plain, is the expression of the will of God.
And the particular commandment is holy and righteous and good. Is the
good then my poison? No. But what has happened is this--the
expression of the good in the law has brought the tyranny of sin out
into the light. It had me in its power before, but I did not know it
and I did not struggle. But as soon as the law aroused in me the
beginning of moral consciousness, sin used the commandment as its knife
to kill me; and so showed its hideous character--which indeed it was
the divine intention to uncloak by means of the law (12-13).

For this it is that we must recognize as the true state of the case.
On the one hand a spiritual law proclaimed over me. On the other hand
a man who in virtue of my fleshly nature have been sold to be a slave
of sin, and who as a slave {248} find myself doing acts by force of
circumstances, the true nature of which I do not understand, and which,
so far from choosing, I hate (vers. 14, 15). For I am not only of this
fleshly nature; I have also a conscience which responds to the claim of
the law and recognizes it as right. But my wish to obey the law is not
strong enough to