7 Or do you not know, brothers—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives? 2 For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage. 3 Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress.
4 Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. 5 For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. 6 But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.
7 What 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.” 8 But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. 9 I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. 10 The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. 11 For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. 12 So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.
13 Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure.
Most of the time I remember hearing people say the Law kills Sin within me. But St Paul is saying that the Law makes sin alive and active. He did not know what it was to covet until the Law told him not to covet. Likewise, without the Law sin would be died, because through the commandment sin seizes its opportunities.
Not only on Reformation Day, but often I think of Luther as a monk torturing himself concerning all the little things he has done wrong. Luther knew of his various sins. Luther recognized them as sins, and knew that on account of them they separated him from the love of God. He therefore spent many days confessing his sins.
During the Reformation, Luther recognized the good news of Jesus Christ. It is not our following the Law or the Commandments which makes us alive. It is separate from the Law, through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ that you are made alive. The Law gives opportunity to sin. But the Law also points out our sinfulness. The Law both keeps sin Alive in us, and also points sin out to us.
It is sin that makes us dead. It is Christ that makes us alive. God gives us the power in order that we may bear fruit for God. How does one bear this fruit? By being holy and righteous and good.
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