Daily Bread - NOV/22/07

Romans 5:13 - For sin was in the world before the law but there was no accounting of it without the law.

A terrible false doctrine is preached that because the law of Moses has been removed that sin is no longer counted against us. The idea that Paul was ministering such a concept is completely foreign to everything that we know about Paul's message and the message of the Bible. The truth of what Paul is communicating can be easily understood simply by viewing God's response to man's sin before the law. When Adam sinned he was cast out of the garden; when Cain sinned he was driven away from his family and became a wanderer. When all of mankind gave themselves completely over to sin God sent a flood and destroyed them all. When Sodom and Gomorrah sinned, God rained down fire and brimstone upon their cities. All of these things took place when there was no law. Therefore, to somehow conclude that God does not hold men responsible for their sins when there is no law is false. Paul then has to be referring to man's inability to account for sin in his own conscience and judgments; for it is certain that God counted it and held men responsible for it. Although men may have been unaware of their transgression, God was very aware of it and brought judgment upon those who did it both in this life and the life hereafter.

Paul was making the point that men ruled and governed by death would not have known what sin was without the law. Mankind had become so corrupt because of their spiritual blindness of heart that they could not understand lust as sin without the law saying "you shall not covet" (Romans 7:7, 13; 5:20). Paul was referring to man's knowledge of sin and was in no way negating an accountability for it (Romans 3:20). He also made it painfully clear that those who were trusting in the law to make them acceptable to God would only discover the condemnation and failure of their own evil nature.

Today, the law has been destroyed and there are many people who neither accept the life that is in Christ Jesus nor the validity of the law; are they still accountable for their sin? Most definitely! Jesus said, "He that believes on the Son has everlasting life: he that does not believe the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abides on him" (John 3:36). Paul preached that there was still a wage for sin, and that wage was death (Romans 6:23). He listed the deeds of sin several times and made it very clear that they who did such things had no part in the Kingdom of God nor inheritance with Christ (Galatians 5:21; Ephesians 5:5; Colossians 3:6; 1 Corinthians 6:10). The only way to be rid of the sin and the law that condemns it is to receive the life of God granted to us through the salvation that is in Christ Jesus (2 Corinthians 3:6-9). As a result, we now live in the law of the Spirit of life and have been set free from the law of sin and death (Romans 8:2).

Be blessed,

Pastor Mark Spitsbergen
abidingplace.org