Romans 7:7

First question Is the law sin? 7-12.

7. Is the law sin? In thus making deliverance from law the Christian principle, do you identify the law as sin? Not only as satisfying the sensitive Jew, but as a neutralizer of all antinomianism, (which abolishes obligation to holiness,) the apostle must honour the divine law.

Had not known sin So far from being sin, the law is the detecter of sin, revealing its existence and odiousness to the moral consciousness of the unreflecting sinner. Sin, like a heinous monster in the dark, lies concealed in the soul; the law comes like the sun and reveals his awful deformity.

Shalt not covet Shalt not entertain the evil desire of the heart. The sinner knew external crime against human law, against society, against honour. But sin, the motion of the inner man infringing God’s law, he was ignorant of, or unconsciously ignored. We need not go to childhood, as many commentators do, to find this state of darkness and unconsciousness. It is the state of the world. With the busy worldly world the law of God has gone up into invisibility in the skies; and the world-law, that knows only crime and not sin, is solely and persistently known.