Romans 7:13

Freedom from the domination of the law

The law may be good, but what about its death-dealing aspect? That certainly is a feature that can’t be ignored. Paul addresses that issue with a theoretical question:

Did that which is good, then, become death to me? By no means! But in order that sin might be recognized as sin, it produced death in me through what was good, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful.

There is no denying that the law condemns the sinner to death, but even that verdict of death serves a useful purpose. It shows how serious sin is and thereby becomes a call to repentance. When I see the slippage between what God asks of me in his law and what I do in my life, I then realize how utterly sinful I am and what trouble I’m in. I need help; I need a Savior. Fortunately, that Savior is there for all of us in the person of Christ Jesus.

The need for a Savior from sin doesn’t disappear when a person becomes a Christian. Conversion to faith in Christ doesn’t just give us a start so that we can become good enough to be acceptable to God on our own. No, faith in Christ accepts the perfect righteousness Christ has earned for us. God credits that righteousness to the believer. God looks at the believer as perfectly holy. He declares the believer to be just and holy. Hence justification is one hundred percent completed.

The new life of faith, however, the Christian’s walk with God, is in a constant state of becoming. The Christian’s life of holiness, often called sanctification, grows and matures as the Christian experiences continually new outpourings of grace and goodness from a loving God.

The very fact that one needs to speak of growing and maturing indicates that the Christian’s sanctification is an ongoing thing; it’s never completed here in this life on earth. The Christian life, in fact, is marred by frequent lapses into sin that call for repentance and forgiveness. The first of Luther’s Ninety-five Theses began with that thought when it stated, “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, ‘Repent’ [Matt. 4:17], he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.”*

* Luther’s Works, American Edition, Volume 31, page 25