Ver. το. The result is that the com- mandment defeats its own intention; it has life in view, but it ends in death. Here also analysis only misleads. Life and death are indivisible wholes.
Ver. 11. Yet this result is not due to the commandment in itself. It is in-
dwelling sin, inherited from Adam, which, when it has found a base of operations, employs the commandment to deceive (cf. Gen. iii. 13) and to kill. ‘Sin here takes the place of the Tempter” in Genesis (S. and Η.).
Ver. 12. The conclusion is that the law is holy (this 1s the answer to the question with which the discussion started in νετ. 7: 6 νόμος ἁμαρτία:), and the commandment, which is the law in operation, holy and just.and good. ayia means that it belongs to God and has a character corresponding; δικαία that its requirements are those which answer to the relations in which man stands to God and his fellow-creatures ; ἀγαθή that in its nature and aim it is beneficent ; man’s weal, not his woe, is its natural end. There is no trormal con- trast to 6 μὲν νόμος, such as was perhaps in the Apostle’s mind when he began the sentence, and might have been intro- duced by 4 δὲ ἁμαρτία; but a real con- trast is given in ver. 13.
Ver. 13. The description of the com- mandment as ‘‘ good” raises the problem of ver. 7 in anew form. Can the good issue in evil? Did that which 1s good turn out to be deathto me? This also is denied, or rather repelled. It was not the good law, but sin, which became death to the Apostle. And in this there was a Divine intention, viz., that sin might appear sin, might come out in its true colours, by working death for man through that which is good. Sin turns God’s intended blessing into a curse; nothing could more clearly show what it
6—17.
τὴν ἁμαρτίαν.
θέλω, τοῦτο πράσσω: ἀλλ ὃ μισῶ, τοῦτο ποιῶ. μα
A a ~ a , θέλω, τοῦτο ποιῶ, Σσύμφημι τῷ νόµω ὅτι καλός.
is, or excite a stronger desire for deliver- ance from it. The second clause with ἵνα (ἵνα γένηται καθ᾽ ὑπερβολὴν ἁμαρτωλὸς ἡ ἁμαρτία) seems co-ordinate with the first, yet intensifies it: personified sin not only appears, but actually turns out to be, beyond measure sinful through its perversion of the commandment.
Vers. 14-25. The last section of the chapter confirms the argument in which Paul has vindicated the law, by exhibit- ing the power of sin in the flesh. It is this which makes the law weak, and defeats its good intention. ‘* Hitherto he had contrasted himself, in respect of his whole being, with the Divine law; now, however, he begins to describe a discord which exists within himself” (Tholuck).
Ver. 14. 6 vépos πνευματικός: the law comes from God who is Spirit, and it shares His nature: its affinities are Divine, not human. ἐγὼ δὲ σάρκινός εἶμι, πεπραµένος ὑπὸ τὴν ἁμαρτίαν: I, as opposed to the law, am a creature of flesh, sold under sin. σάρκινος is pro- perly material = carneus, consisting of flesh, as opposed to σαρκικός, which is ethical=carnalis. Paul uses it because he is thinking of human nature, rather than of human character, as in opposition to the Divine law. He does not mean that there is no higher element in human nature having affinity to the law (against this see vers. 22-25), but that such higher elements are so depressed and impotent that no injustice is done in describing human nature as in his own person he describes it here. Flesh has such an exclusive preponderance that man can only be regarded as a being who has no affinity for the spiritual law of God, and necessarily kicks against it. Not that this is to be regarded as his essential nature, It describes him only as πεπρα- µένος ὑπὸ τὴν ἁμαρτίαν: the slave of sin. “To speak of man as “flesh” is to speak of him as distinguished from God who is ‘“‘ Spirit” ; but owing to the diffusion of sin in humanity, and the ascendency it has acquired, this mere distinction be- comes an antagonism, and the mind of “the flesh” is enmity against God. In σάρκινος there is the sense of man’s weakness, and pity for it; σαρκικός would only have expressed condemna- tion, perhaps a shade of disgust or con-