CONVERSION OF A PHARISEE

Rom.7:7 – What shall we say then? Is the Law sin? May it never be! On the contrary, I would not have come to know sin except through the Law; for I would not have known about coveting if the Law had not said, “YOU SHALL NOT COVET.”

Romans 7 unveils the conflict in all of us as we come to the painful conclusion, I am a sinner in need of a Savior. That was especially hard for someone like Saul of Tarsus who had spent his entire life studying and building his life on the law of God. At some point in Saul’s journey one of the Ten Commandments, “You shall not covet”, finished the future Apostle Paul off. Apparently covetousness was a problem for Saul. He was undone, he was the sinner he had spent his life trying to instruct and even condemn. This Pharisee had been convicted by the law and found himself in need of the Savior’s redeeming blood. Here is how Matthew Henry describes this important passage.

“He thought himself to be in a very good condition, self-confident of the goodness of his state. This is how he was once, in former times, when he was a Pharisee, and the reason was that he was then without (apart from) the law. Though brought up at the feet of Gamaliel, a teacher of the law, though himself a strict observer of it, nevertheless, he was without the law. He had the letter of the law, but he did not have its spiritual meaning — he had the shell but not the kernel. He had the law in his hand and in his head, but he did not have it in his heart. But when the commandment came — not only to his eyes but to his heart — sin revived (sprang to life), as the dust in a room rises, or appears, when sunshine is let into the room. Paul then saw in sin what he had never seen before sin in its terrible consequences, sin with death at its heels, sin and its inherited curse.”

Paul’s story is really all of our stories. Martin Luther lived as an Augustinian monk but was tormented by the Bible’s demand for righteousness. Luther realized that he fell short of God’s righteousness and discovered that a sinner is declared righteous by faith in the death of Christ. It was in reading Romans that Luther saw it for himself, he was a sinner and salvation is a free gift of God’s grace received by faith. Both Paul and Luther were used by God to change their world. It all started with an acknowledgment of their sin and receiving God’s gift of righteousness by faith.