“What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin.” (Romans 7:7 ESV)
Purpose of the Law
I have an Orthodox Jewish friend in Israel, Moshe of Jerusalem. I once asked Moshe to describe his understanding of the Mosaic Law’s purpose. I was expecting him to relate the typical Jewish answer that the Law makes you holy. He surprised me instead with a brilliant response: “The law draws me closer to a holy God who makes me holy. The Law does not make me holy, but it shows my need for God.”
When I opened my Bible and showed Moshe Romans 7:7, he read it, smiled, and said, “Rabbi Saul/Paul was very wise. Most Jews and Christians don’t understand this.”
Don’t look down!
As a kid, I absolutely lived for the Bugs Bunny cartoons on Saturday mornings. Therefore, I thoroughly enjoyed this note that came after we studied Romans 7 at our church:
While listening to your excellent explanation of Romans 7, I was struck by a memory from cartoons I’d watched as a kid. Specifically, I thought of the Looney Tunes scene where one of the characters (e.g., Wile E. Coyote) would walk off a cliff and keep on walking on air. That experience would be spoiled when his nemesis provided him with a book or sign informing him about the law of gravity. Only then did he realize that what he was doing wasn’t right; at which point his transgression would send him plummeting to the ground in what would (outside of the cartoon world, at least) result in certain death. Thinking about this, I stumbled on a page of TV tropes titled, “Gravity is a Harsh Mistress.” Look what it said about Romans 7 and Saturday morning cartoons…
“The trope [“Gravity is a harsh mistress”] is named for a line in The Tick (who complains about gravity working all too well, at the time.) The author may or may not have stolen it from an earlier Garfield strip, which itself is a riff on the title of the novel The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein, and where varying gravity is an important plot point. Which is in turn a play on the sailors’ saying ‘The sea is a harsh mistress.’ Which probably goes back to The Bible ‘The Law is a harsh master (Romans 7, 1-6).'”
So cool! I of course replied, “Beep! Beep!” [Which translated means, “It’s great to grow up with you in Christ!”]