Into the Heart of Romans: A Deep Dive into Paul's Greatest Letter

by Tom Wright

The problem of chapter 7, in fact, was that Israel was itself composed of Adamic humans; and all that Torah could do with Adamic humanity was to produce more sin and death. Thus it had been when Torah first arrived in Israel, with Moses coming down the mountain to behold Aaron and the people cavorting around the golden calf. Torah’s only proper response to such pagan idolatry was to condemn it. But in this passage, we begin to see the point. God’s plan to rescue the human race (and thereby the whole creation) was focused on Israel; Israel found itself in the same plight as all other people; but, as Paul says in verse 13, all this happened in the divine purposes in order to draw ‘sin’ on to one place, and to show it up in its true colours. The repeated hina (‘in order that’) in verse 13 expresses the strange divine purpose in giving Torah: in other words, even the point about Torah appearing to make sin ‘very sinful indeed’ had the positive purpose of preparing for the climactic and decisive moment when God would condemn it once and for all (8.3).