Romanos 7:8

‘But sin, finding occasion, wrought in me through the commandment all manner of coveting.'

And from that time of illumination onwards he had found himself coveting more and more, because the principle of sin was at work within him. Sin had taken the opportunity of his new knowledge, which in itself was so worthy, to arouse within him his fleshly desires and cause him to covet more and more. To a man who had striven so earnestly to be perfect by the standard of the Law it must have come as a huge shock. And it had then made him recognise that, in accordance with that Law, he was now under sentence of death.

Sin is like that in us all. For a long time there can be a certain sin at work within us of which we are unconscious, until the word of God speaks to us, either through a preacher or in our private reading, and we then suddenly recognise how awful it is. But we do not necessarily immediately abjure it. Rather we may become obsessed by it, and find ourselves indulging in it more and more because it has become a habit in our lives, with ‘sin' driving us on as a result of our sinful desires. Many Christians have been caught up with indecency on the internet, where they can keep it under cover, only to be convicted of it, and then, rather than abjuring it, to continue enjoying it more and more because it has been exposed to them ‘by the Law' (by God's word) as a desire of the flesh, even as they fight against it. That is the nature of man, even of Christians.

‘For apart from the law sin is dead.'

For until the Law comes on the scene sin is able to continue its work unnoticed. It is as though it was dead. It lies there unnoticed and seemingly dormant, yet working all kinds of things within people, until suddenly it is exposed. And then they are faced with the decision as to whether they should repent and seek God's mercy. This activity of sin of which they are unaware, is something experienced by all people, although sadly in many cases they die with it unnoticed, and therefore die without hope. But most of us can look back to sins that we had committed for years without recognising that they were sins, and to the moment of illumination when we said, ‘God forgive me, what have I been doing?'. Without the intervention of the Law sin remains unexposed and seemingly ‘dead'.