Biblion Bible Commentary
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Sold Under Sin
Romans 7:13-16
13 Did then that which is good become death to me? May it never be! But sin, that it might be shown to be sin, was producing death in me through that which is good; that through the commandment sin might become exceedingly sinful. · WEB
The good law is cleared of causing death, the present tense begins, and the divided man's first discovery is that he agrees with the law.
Did then that which is good become death to me? May it never be! But sin, that it might be shown to be sin, was producing death in me through that which is good; that through the commandment sin might become exceedingly sinful.
The last objection against the law is dismissed with a purpose clause worth slowing over. God's design in the arrangement was exposure: that sin might be shown to be sin — unmasked, caught in the act of using a good thing to kill — and might become exceedingly sinful: displayed at full malignancy. A poison is never so evident as when it corrupts medicine. The law's role in the tragedy was the role of the good thing sin abused, and the abuse is sin's indictment, not the law's.
Then verse 14, and the grammar of the whole chapter changes: for we know that the law is spiritual, but I am fleshly, sold under sin.
The tenses turn present here and stay present to the chapter's end — the I was of verses 7 to 13 becomes I am, a live report. Whether the speaker is Paul remembering life under the law from inside its logic, or the believer's continuing war with the flesh, is among the oldest open questions in the letter's interpretation, and the tenses are the chief evidence on the second side, as verse 9's I was alive once is on the first. The blocks keep the certainties in front: the law is spiritual — God-breathed, belonging to the Spirit's realm — and the problem is located entirely in the I: fleshly, sold under sin, slave-market language for a person whose willing cannot deliver.
Verse 15 states the dividedness with a candor that has made the passage every honest reader's mirror: for I don't understand what I am doing. For I don't practice what I desire to do; but what I hate, that I do.
Desire and performance have come apart. The man is opaque to himself — I don't understand what I am doing — willing one thing, watching himself do another.
And verse 16 finds the first solid ground in the wreckage: but if what I don't desire, that I do, I consent to the law that it is good. Even the failure testifies. Hating one's own sin is agreement with the law's verdict on it — the divided man's very misery is a signature on the law's goodness, and the chapter files it as evidence.
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