The Gift of the Holy Spirit under the New Covenant replaces Torah Observance and the New Covenant's fulfillment of Torahs' righteous requirements is the key to one of the nagging questions in our reading of Paul.
Understanding Paul's View of the Law. [continuity and Discontinuity].
Eg. 1. Paul speaks of the Law as bringing knowledge of Sin.
Rom 3:20 For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.
The Law and Sin
Rom 7:7 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. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.”
Rom 7:8 But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead.
Rom 7:9 I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died.
Rom 7:10 The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me.
Rom 7:11 For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me.
Rom 7:12 So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.
2. Then the Law "arouses sin"
Rom 7:5 For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death.
3. Trespass increases.
Rom 5:20 Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more,
JFB's Commentary."Moreover the law — “The law, however.” The Jew might say, If the whole purposes of God towards men center in Adam and Christ, where does “the law” come in, and what was the use of it? Answer: It
entered — But the word expresses an important idea besides “entering.” It signifies, “entered incidentally,” or “parenthetically.” (In Gal_2:4 the same word is rendered, “came in privily.”) The meaning is, that the promulgation of the law at Sinai was no primary or essential feature of the divine plan, but it was “added” (Gal_3:19) for a subordinate purpose - the more fully to reveal the evil occasioned by Adam, and the need and glory of the remedy by Christ.
that the offence might abound — or, “be multipied or increased. But what offense? Throughout all this section “the offense” (four times repeated besides here) has one definite meaning, namely, “the one first offense of Adam”; and this, in our judgment, is its meaning here also: “All our multitudinous breaches of the law are nothing but that one first offense, lodged mysteriously in the bosom of every child of Adam as an offending principal, and multiplying itself into myriads of particular offenses in the life of each.” What was one act of disobedience in the head has been converted into a vital and virulent principle of disobedience in all the members of the human family, whose every act of willful rebellion proclaims itself the child of the original transgression.
But where sin abounded — or, “was multiplied.”
grace did much more abound — rather, “did exceedingly abound,” or “superabound.” The comparison here is between the multiplication of one offense into countless transgressions, and such an overflow of grace as more than meets that appalling case.
4. To be under the Law is to be In prison or in slavery.
Gal 3:23 Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed.
Gal 4:1 I mean that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no different from a slave, though he is the owner of everything,
5. It means to be a descendant of Hagar rather than Sarah.
Example of Hagar and Sarah
Gal 4:21 Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not listen to the law?
Gal 4:22 For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and one by a free woman.
Gal 4:23 But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free woman was born through promise.
Gal 4:24 Now this may be interpreted allegorically: these women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery; she is Hagar.
Gal 4:25 Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia; she corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children.
Gal 4:26 But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother.
Gal 4:27 For it is written, “Rejoice, O barren one who does not bear; break forth and cry aloud, you who are not in labor! For the children of the desolate one will be more than those of the one who has a husband.”
Gal 4:28 Now you, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise.
Gal 4:29 But just as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so also it is now.
Gal 4:30 But what does the Scripture say? “Cast out the slave woman and her son, for the son of the slave woman shall not inherit with the son of the free woman.”
Gal 4:31 So, brothers, we are not children of the slave but of the free woman.
6. After increasing the Transgression it led to CONDEMNATION.
2Co 3:9 For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, the ministry of righteousness must far exceed it in glory.
7. With this Condemnation the Law was helpless to do anything about it.
Rom 7:14 For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin.
Rom 7:15 For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.
Rom 7:16 Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good.
Rom 7:17 So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.
Rom 7:18 For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.
Rom 7:19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.
Rom 7:20 Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.
Rom 7:21 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.
Rom 7:22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being,
Rom 7:23 but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.
Rom 7:24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?
Rom 7:25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.
Rom 8:3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh,
8. It deals with death not LIFE.
2Co 3:6 who has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
Gal 2:19 For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God.
Rom 7:5 For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death.
Rom 7:9 I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died.
With the Coming of Christ and the Holy Spirit therefore the time of the Torah has ended.
Rom 7:12 So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.
Rom 7:13 Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure.
Rom 7:14 For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin.
These passages all emphasize the Discontinuity of the Torah.
