Romans 7:10–11, Romans 7:13
No, although it may seem as though he suggests as such in Romans 7:10: The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me.
We should not interpret this as referring to physical death, since Paul is obviously still alive when writing this. Rather, one could here think of the death penalty given for a guilty party. The commandment took away Paul’s sense of innocence, as he himself experienced the truth and reality of what he wrote earlier, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God
(Romans 3:23).
The way Paul writes about his past as a believer reveals that not all Pharisees were like the self-righteous Pharisee from the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector (Luke 18:9–14). In fact, many Pharisees were more akin to Augustine in his Confessions. Their endeavour to live strictly according to the righteousness of the law was often based on a deep awareness of their inclination to sin combined with a resolute determination to always struggle against sin.
Paul applies the general truth of Romans 7:8 to himself personally in Romans 7:11: sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me.
Sin is the guilty one, especially because it misuses the law that leads to life in order to raise up sin as guilt before God and truly make it into sin.
Furthermore, as he so often does in this letter (Romans 3:1, Romans 3:9, Romans 3:27, Romans 4:1, Romans 6:1, Romans 6:15, Romans 7:7), Paul raises a rhetorical question in Romans 7:13: Did that which is good, then, bring death to me?
To pose that question is to answer it: By no means!
By beginning a new passage in this way, Paul immediately draws our attention to another possible cause of death: It was sin.
Paul lived under the law and as such obviously did not grow up in the world of the Gentiles or the sinners. Wouldn’t he then have been safeguarded from sin? In his answer to this question Paul harks back to what he had already explained in Romans 7:8–11: It was sin, producing death in me through what is good.
In this way he makes it very clear how sin stands in opposition to the holy God. By tempting someone who lives under the good law to breach that law, sin shamelessly portrays itself as sin that wants to be sin: [I]n order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure.
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10 The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me.