“I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death.”
Romans 7:10 (NIV)
Paul wants us to know God’s law is not evil. It doesn’t produce sin or make us sinful. Without the law, we wouldn’t have known we were sinning. He points us to coveting: he wouldn’t have known what it was unless the law named it. But once sin found out coveting was wrong, it produced every kind of covetousness in his life. What was meant to give life brought death.
I think Paul is saying our sinful nature turned a life-giving law into a temptation. By reading the letter of the law, we miss the heart of it. In Luke 10, a man asks Jesus how to have eternal life, and Jesus points him to the law. The man gets to the heart in two commands: love the Lord your God, and love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus says, do that and you will live. Still, the law was never a checklist to find God. It describes what a life looks like when someone walks with Him.
In 2 Corinthians 3, Paul reminds us that the law was etched in stone and led to death. Yet the law came from the glory of God, so much so that Moses veiled his face. If the old covenant, which condemns us, was glorious, how much more glorious is the new covenant that makes us right with God? But a veil still covers our minds, so when the law of Moses is read, we can’t get to the heart of it. Only Christ can remove this veil.
When we turn our lives over to God through Jesus, He removes the veil. The Lord who does this is the Holy Spirit, and where the Spirit of God is, there is freedom. That’s what makes the new covenant different: relationship with Jesus, who gives us the Spirit, not only to understand God’s desires but to accomplish them with a power beyond ourselves. Holy Spirit draws us to the heart of God and makes us mirrors of His glory. What about you today? Are you still working on the letter of the law, or learning to follow its heart by the Spirit of the One who wrote it?