What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.
What shall we say then? See the notes on this phraseology in Romans 6:1.
Is the law sin? God forbid - q.d., 'I have said that when we were in the flesh the law stirred our inward corruption, and was thus the occasion of deadly fruit: But is the law to blame for this? Far from us be such a thought.'
Nay, х alla (G235)] - 'On the contrary' (as the same conjunction means in Romans 8:37 and 1 Corinthians 12:22), I had not known sin but by the law. From these words downward, through the whole chapter, the apostle speaks-no longer in the first and second persons plural, but-wholly in the first person singular: not thus personating either the Jewish nation or mankind in general (as some of the fathers, and several modern critics quite erroneously conceive), but depicting his own views and feelings, his own state and character, at different periods of his religious history. But another thing, of even more importance, will be observed. From Romans 7:7 to the end of Romans 7:13 the apostle speaks entirely in the past tense; whereas from Romans 7:14 to the end of the chapter he speaks exclusively in the present tense. And as the words of Romans 7:9, 'I was alive without the law at one time' х pote (G4218)], clearly refer to his unconverted state, so we shall see, when we come to expound them, that all from Romans 7:14 to the end of the chapter is a description of his converted state, and can only be thus properly understood.
When the apostle here says, "I had not known sin but by the law," it is important to fix precisely what he means by the word "sin." It certainly is not sin in act (as Fritzsche views it-who says, 'he who sins knows sin,' that is, by experience) - for this will not at all suit what follows. Nor is it sin in general-I had not known 'such a thing as sin,' to use the words of Alford, who seems to take this view; for though it is true that this is learned from the law, such a sense will not suit what is said of it in the following verses, where the meaning is the same as here. The only meaning which suits all that is said of it in this place is 'the principle of sin in the heart of fallen man.' The sense, then, is this: 'It was by means of the law that I came to know what a virulence and strength of sinful propensity I had within me.' The existence of this it did not need the law to reveal to him; for even the pagans recognized and wrote of it: but the dreadful nature and desperate power of it the law alone discovered-in the way now to be described.
For I had not known lust, [ epithumian (G1939 )], except the law had said, Thou shall not covet, х epithumeeseis (G1937)].