25 How Law Activates Sin

The apostle considering an objection to what he has said, formulates as one questioning him by asking the question, Is the law sin? So then if the sinful actions of humans are by the Law, then it instigates it and entices men to sin. It leads them and forces them to commit sin and therefore must be the cause of sin. Then if the cause of sin is the Law, then it must be sin itself. What shall we say then? how shall we remove this difficulty, and answer this objection? To this he replies by the strongest terms, God forbid! As we have seen this is a way responding by the apostle, when any wrong consequence was summarized from, or any shocking objection was made to his doctrine. The appropriate observation of the Law is that it discovers sin, it does not compel or originate it. The manner in which it does this is by forbidding it. Essentially. The Law is so useful to discover, and so to fluster sin, so that therefore it cannot be sin, or its design to purposefully evoke sinful behavior.