You have an external written down law, that is not where the law is now for the beleiver.
No clarification neccessary
In Romans 7:25, Paul said that he served the Law of God with his mind in contrast with serving the law of sin with his flesh, so the law of sin does not refer to the Law of God. Paul did not mention the sacrificial system in Romans 5-8, so you are making up something that you think fits the description of the law of sin and death rather than deriving your understanding of it on based on what Paul said about it. Paul said that the Law of God is good, that he wanted to do good, that he delighted in obeying it and that he served it with his mind in contrast with the law of sin, which was working within his members to cause him not to do the good that he wanted to do, which was waging war against the law of his mind, which he served with his flesh, which held him captive, and which the Law of the Spirit has free us from. Moreover, in Romans 8:4-7, Paul contrasted those who walk in the Spirit with those who have minds set on the flesh who are enemies of God who refuse to submit to the Law of God. So verses that refer to something that would be absurd for Paul to delight in doing should not be interpreted as referring to the Law of God while verses that refer to a law that is sinful, that causes sin to increase, or that hinders us from obeying the Law of God should be interpreted as referring to the law of sin.
In Titus 2:14, Jesus gave himself to redeem is from all lawlessness and to purify our himself a people of his own possession who are zealous for doing good works, so the way to believe in what he accomplished through the cross is by becoming zealous for doing good works in obedience to the Law of Moses (Acts 21:20). It is by the Law of Moses that we have knowledge of what sin is (Romans 3:20), so being set free from sin is being set free to live in obedience to the Law of Moses.
Romans 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.
You are conflating the Law of God with the law of sin. If it were not for the law of sin, then sin would lie dead, so God would commanded against coveting m we would simply refrain from coveting, and that would be all there is to it. The problem is that there is the law of sin working within us that is reacting to the command against coveting to cause coveting to increase and it is this that we need the Spirit to free us from so that we can be free obey the Law of God (Romans 8:1-4).
While I agree that we can't earn our salvation as even as the result having perfect obedience to the Law of Moses, Jesus graciously teaching us to experience being a doer of it is intrinsically the way that he is giving us his gift of saving us from not being a doer of it. This is not mean to force the Law of Moses into the salvation equation, but rather it is intrinsically part of the concept.
Works based salvation is the position that we are required to have first done enough works in order to earn our salvation as the result, which is not my position. Jesus said that salvation is of the Jews (John 4:2), so the concept of salvation can't be removed from that context. It is contradictory for someone who thinks that they have no obligation to refrain from doing what the Law of Moses reveals to be sin to also think that they need salvation from sin. In Matthew 28:16-20, Jesus commissioned his disciples to teach to the nations everything that he taught them, so he did not intend to for what he taught to only be followed by the people that he spoke to.
The works-based system of salvation is itself floating in the outer space of falsehoods because it has no footing. When one points to the writings that were directed toward we of Israel, they are not what is relevant to us today when looking to what Paul stated that is relevant to the body of Christ today and ever since the fall of Israel. Yes, what Jesus and the apostles taught Israel was all indeed true...FOR those to whom it was all addressed. Water baptism today doesn't remit sins. That was true FOR those to whom it was spoken and written, in the time and dispensation under which it was actively true for those people at that time. Failure to rightly divide that from what is true FOR us today, that only introduces the confusions and dichotomies that define your current stance.
In Titus 2:14, the content of our gift of salvation is described as being trained by grace to do what is godly, righteous, and good, and to renounce doing what is ungodly, so the reason why we should obey the Law of Moses has absolutely nothing to do with having a good enough performance in order to earn our salvation as the result, but rather the reason why were required to be a doer of the Law of Moses is because God graciously teaching us to experience being a doer of it is part of the content of His gift of salvation. If someone is being trained by grace to experience content of their gift of their salvation by being a doer of those works in obedience to the Law of Moses, but then they reject the content of their gift of salvation by becoming a doer of what is ungodly and renounce being a doer of what is godly, righteous, and good, then they are no longer experiencing the content of their gift of salvation. We can't lose our salvation on accident, but deliberately turning our back on God is another issue.
Grace is a gift and gifts can't be earned, so grace is incompatible with works insofar as they are done in order to earn a wage, however, there are many other reasons that someone could have for doing works that are compatible with grace, which is why the Bible repeatedly states that God is gracious to us by teaching us to obey His law. In Psalm 119:29-30, he wanted to put false ways far from him, for God to be gracious to him by teaching him to obey His law, and he chose the way of faith by setting it before him, so this has always been the one and only way of salvation by grace through faith. Please interact with this point rather than continuing to ignore it in favor of continuing to burn the straw man of earning our salvation. God did not give His law as a way of earning our salvation or so that we would have something to boast about, so that has always been a fundamental misunderstanding of the goal of why we should obey it.
The content of a gift can be the experience of getting to do something, such as giving someone the opportunity to experience driving a Ferrari, where the gift intrinsically requires them to do the work of driving it in order to experience driving it, but where doing that work contributes nothing towards earning the opportunity to drive it as the result.
Our salvation from sin would be incomplete if we were only saved from the penalty of sin without being saved from being a doer of sin, so there is an aspect of our gift of salvation that we are experiencing in the present by repenting and becoming a doer of the Law of God. Jesus graciously teaching us to experience being a doer of the Law of God is intrinsically part of the concept of him saving us from not being a doer of it. For example, Jesus graciously teaching us to experiencing honor our parents is intrinsically the way that He is giving us his gift of saving us from not honoring our parents, and so forth for everything else in the Law of God.
I agree insofar as those works are done to earn our salvation as the result, however, there are correct reasons for why our salvation requires us to choose to be a doer of good works, such as faith.
He did not say anything about becoming Jews, nor was that ever changed. Abraham was justified before there were any Jews. Sin and salvation from sin is based on God's eternal character traits, not on whether or not someone happens to be a Jew.
It remains is contradictory for someone who thinks that they have no obligation to refrain from doing what the Law of Moses reveals to be sin to also think that they need salvation from sin. In Matthew 28:16-20, Jesus commissioned his disciples to teach to the nations everything that he taught them, so he did not intend to for what he taught to only be followed by the people that he spoke to.
We are not required to do works in order to earn our salvation as the result and we are not required to do works as the result of having firs been saved, but rather we are intrinsically required to be a doer of good works in obedience to the mosaic Law because the delight of getting to be a doer of the Law of Moses is the aspect of our gift of salvation that we are experiencing in the present.
Paul’s point in Romans 7 becomes much clearer when you see that he is quietly invoking the entire sacrificial system without naming it. He takes the Jewish law of marriage—a wife bound to her husband while he lives—and uses it as an analogy for his own spiritual history. The “old husband” is the Mosaic Law, the whole covenantal structure in which sacrifice, obedience, and ritual purity were the means of seeking God’s favor. Paul had lived under that system with total sincerity, but the Law exposed his sin rather than removing it. In that sense, he “died to the Law”: he came to the end of that covenantal route to righteousness. And just as a widow is free to marry another, Paul became free to belong to a new husband—Christ crucified—whose body, not the sacrificial system, now grants access to God. The analogy shows that finding favor with God is no longer tied to the old covenant’s demands but to union with Christ, who accomplishes what the Law could only diagnose.
Paul’s claim that “sin increased” under the Law is not a statement about committing more sins but about becoming conscious of more sin. The Law is good—Paul says that outright—but its goodness lies precisely in its ability to expose what was already present but hidden. When the commandment came, Paul didn’t suddenly become more rebellious; rather, he finally saw the depth and reach of the rebellion that had always been there. So when someone argues that Romans 7 must distinguish between “the Law of God” (good) and “the law of sin” (bad) based on whether Paul delights in it, they miss the point of Paul’s argument. The Law is good even when it increases sin, because the “increase” is diagnostic, not behavioral. It uncovers the internal corruption that Paul had never recognized until the commandment confronted him. That is why Paul can both delight in the Law and confess that it revealed far more sin than he ever imagined—there is no contradiction, only a deeper anthropology.
Paul is not arguing in Titus 2:14 for a return to Mosaic praxis, and reading it that way collapses two very different categories in Paul’s thought. When Paul says Christ redeemed us from “lawless deeds,” he is talking about moral disorder, not Torah‑nonobservance. Titus is a Gentile congregation; Paul is addressing pagan vices, not covenantal stipulations. And when Paul says Christ purified a people “zealous for good works,” he does not mean renewed zeal for Mosaic ordinances but the Spirit‑empowered life that fulfills the moral intent of the Law apart from the Law’s covenantal framework. To take Titus 2:14 and Acts 21:20 as a mandate to return to Jewish praxis ignores Paul’s consistent argument that righteousness does not come through the Law and that Gentiles are not to be placed under it. The Law reveals sin—its diagnostic role—but it does not define the shape of Christian obedience. Paul’s vision of being “set free from sin” is not freedom to keep the Mosaic code; it is freedom to walk in the Spirit, where the righteousness the Law described is now fulfilled in those who belong to Christ rather than to the old covenant.
Paul’s wording in Romans 7 points us toward discovery, not production, of sin. When he says, “sin… produced in me all kinds of coveting,” he immediately frames it with the interpretive key: “I found…” That is the language of realization, not escalation. Paul is describing what happened in his understanding when the commandment confronted him—he became aware of desires that had been operating unnoticed. To say the Law caused sin to increase in the sense of more sinning misses Paul’s point. The Law is holy and good precisely because it exposes the hidden workings of the “law of sin,” the inward principle that was already present. So the “increase” Paul speaks of is an increase in recognition, not an increase in behavior. The Law did not make Paul covet more; it made Paul finally see how deeply covetous he already was. That is why Paul can honor the Law while still saying sin “sprang to life”—the Law awakened his conscience, not his rebellion.
Paul’s statement in Romans 5:20 that “the Law came in to increase the trespass” fits perfectly with the idea that the Law **exposes** sin rather than **creates** more sinful behavior. Romans 3 makes this explicit: “through the Law comes knowledge of sin.” Paul’s whole argument in Romans 1–3 is that the Law functions as a universal indictment, bringing the hidden reality of sin into the open so that “every mouth may be stopped.” So when he says in Romans 5 that trespass “increased,” he is describing the same dynamic he narrates personally in Romans 7: the commandment brings sin to light, naming it, defining it, and revealing its true extent. The Law’s purpose was never to generate more rebellion but to make the world conscious of the rebellion already present. That is why Romans 3 and Romans 7 align: both teach that the Law uncovers sin so that grace can address it, not that the Law causes people to sin more.
Sin can take occasion of the commandment to increase sinfull desires in a person.
Paul is not saying in Romans 7:5 that the Law caused sin. The best reading—supported by the major commentaries—is that the Law revealed, exposed, and provoked into visibility the sin already present in the flesh, not that the Law generated new sin. The key phrase “sinful passions aroused by the law” is consistently explained by scholars as meaning “brought to light,” “stimulated,” or “provoked into activity,” not “created.”
Paul makes very plain statements on this subject:
Those who will be judged by the law at least have the opportunity to have a positive judgement if they persist in doing good, which is far better than those who perish without the law. In Romans 5-8, Paul spoke about the Law of God as being the good that he wanted to do and the law of sin as being something that was causing him not to do the good that he wanted to do, so we need to die to the law of sin in order to be free to embody the Law of God, not the other way around.
In Romans 7:1-4, at no point was the woman set free from needing to obey the Law of God and if she were to get married to another man after the death of her first husband, then she would still be required to refrain from committing adultery, so there is nothing that leads to the conclusion that in the same way we have been set free from the Law of God. The reason why Jesus went to the cross was not in order to free us to become doers of what the Law of God reveals to be impurity, lawlessness, and sin, but just the opposite he have himself to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people of his own possession who are zealous for doing good works (Titus 2:14), there is no sense in interpreting Romans 7:4 as saying that we have become dead to the Law of God by the body of Christ, or as saying that the way to become joined with God's Word made flesh is by dying to God's Word, or as saying that we need to die to God's instructions for how to bear fruit for Him in order to be free to bear fruit for Him, but rather we need to die to the law of sin in order to bear fruit for God by obeying the Law of God.
In Romans 7:22-23, Paul said that he delighted in obeying the Law of God in contrast with saying that the law of sin held him captive, so it would be absurd to interpret Romans 7:6 as if Paul delighted in being held captive to sin, but rather it is the law of sin that he described as holding him captive. In Romans 8:2-7, Paul said that the Law of the Spirit has freed us from the law of sin and he contrasted those who walk in the Spirit with those who have minds set on the flesh who are enemies of God who refuse to submit to the Law of God, so we are being released from the law of sin, not the Law of God.
The law of sin is taking the occasion through the Law of God to stir up all kinds of sin. Sin would be dead without the law of sin because without it staring up sinful passions in order to bear fruit unto death, God would command against coveting, we would simply refrain from coveting, and that is all there would be to it.
Again, the way to live for God is not by dying to His instructions for how to live for Him but by dying to a law that was hindering us from following those instructions, which is the law of sin. It is also true that Christ is dead in vain if we return to the lawlessness that he gave himself to redeem us from.
The way to be judged favorably is not by refusing to obey what God has commanded.
The Law of God is not sinful but how we know what sin is (Romans 7:7) whereas the law of sin is sinful and stirs up sinful passions in order to be fruit unto death (Romans 7:5). Christ embodied the righteousness of God through his works by setting a sinless example for us to follow of how to walk in obedience to the Law of God so that is also the way that we get to live by being imputed with His righteousness. Moreover, those who are in Christ are obligated to walk in the same way that he walked (1 John 2:6), so verses that refer to those who are in Christ are only referring to those who are following his example of walking in obedience to the Law of Moses. The way to believe in what Jesus accomplished through the cross is by becoming zealous for doing good works in obedience to the Law of God (Titus 2:14).
It is contradictory to by led by God instead of His instructions. God has not instructed anything that is not in accordance with walking in the Spirit, but rather the Law of God is His instructions for how to embody His character traits and his character traits are the fruits of the Spirit, which is why the Spirit has the role of leading us to obey it (Ezekiel 36:26-27). In Romans 8:4-14, Paul contrasted those who are born of the Spirit with those who have minds set on the flesh who are enemies of God who refuse to submit to the Law of God.
Everyone who will be justified will also be saved and vice versa, so I don't see any grounds for making that distinction.
The issue of the way to become righteous is different that the issue of what describes the behavior of the righteous. The only way to become righteous is through faith apart from being required to have first done enough righteous works in order to earn it as the result, but what it means to be righteous is to be a doer of righteous works in obedience to the Law of God (1 John 3:4-7, Romans 3:28-31, Isaiah 51:7). The Law of God was never given as a way of becoming righteous even as the result of having perfect obedience, but rather it was given to describe the behavior of the righteous as it describes the behavior of Christ, so it is what we get to experience by being given the gift of righteousness through faith. Being saved from not being a doer of good works intrinsically involves being a doer of good works, but not in order to earn it as the result.
Jesus was sent as the promised seed to bless us by turning us from our wickedness (Acts 3:25-26), which he accomplished through his ministry and through the cross by leading repent from our disobedience to the Law of Moses (Matthew 4:15-23, Titus 2:14).
The Law of Moses is not a curse for those who submit to it but is only a curse for those who refuse to submit to it. If someone is a doer of the Law of Moses, then they are being saved from not being a doer of it, but if someone refuses to be a doer of it, then they are not being saved from not being a doer of it. In Exodus 33:13, Moses wanted God to be gracious to him by teaching him to walk in His way that he and Israel might know Him, and in Matthew 7:23, Jesus said that he would tell those who are workers of lawlessness to depart from him because he never knew them, so the goal of the Law of Moses is to graciously teach us how to know God and Jesus, which is His gift of eternal life (John 17:3).
There are many verses that describe the Mosaic Covenant as being a marriage between God and Israel, such as with God being described as her husband (Jeremiah 31:31), so the purpose of of the Law f Moses is to teach us how to have an intimate relationship with Him. The Hebrew word “yada” refers to intimate relationships/knowledge gained by experience, such as with Genesis 4:1 where Adam knew (yada) Eve, she conceived, and gave birth to Cain. God’s way is the way to know (yada) Him and Jesus by having the experience of embodying His character traits, which is the narrow way to eternal life (John 17:3). For example, in Genesis 18:19, God knew (yada) Abraham that he would teach his children and those of His household to walk in His way by being doers of righteousness and justice that the Lord might bring to him all that He has promised. In Exodus 33:13, Moses wanted God to be gracious to him by teaching him to walk in His way that he and Israel might know (yada) Him, and in Matthew 7:23, Jesus said that he would tell those who are workers of lawlessness to depart from him because he never knew them, so the goal of the Law of Moses is to graciously teach us how to experience an intimate relationship with God and Jesus by walking in His way, which is His gift of eternal life.
The problem is that it says that it causes sin to increased, not to become conscious of more sin, and being conscious of more sin has nothing to do with the context. In Roman 7:5, Paul spoke about a law that stirs up sinful passions in order to bear fruit unto death, which is clearly doing more than just making him more conscious of sin. Likewise, in Romans 7:12-21, Paul spoke about a law that is the good that he wanted to do in contrast with a law that was causing him not to do the good that he wanted to do, not just made him conscious of sin. In Romans 7:22-23, Paul said that he delighted in obeying the Law of God in contrast with the law of sin that held him captive and that was waging war against the law of his mind, so I don't see how you take the position that they are the same law. In Romans 8:2-7, Paul said that the Law of the Spirit has freed us from the law of and and death and he contrasted those who walk in the Spirit with those who have minds set on the flesh who are enemies of God and refuse to submit to to the Law of God, so again it doesn't work to treat them as being the same law.
Jesus went to the cross to pay the penalty for our sin and it is by the Law of Moses that we have knowledge of what sin is (Romans 3:20), so I don't see how you can deny that Paul arguing for a return to Mosaic praxis. The Bible consistently uses "lawlessness" in contrast with the Law of Moses. Morality is based on God's character traits and everything in the Law of Moses was given to teach us us to know God through embodying His character traits, so everything in it is inherently a moral law and Torah-nonobservance is moral disorder. Titus 2:14 shows that Jews who were becoming zealous for the Torah in Acts 21:20 were correctly responding the the Gospel message. Good works are based on what is in accordance with God's character traits, not on whether or not someone has pagan vices. God's character traits are the fruits of the Spirit, which is why the Spirit-empowered life is one that is in obedience to the Law of Moses. The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact likeness of His character (Hebrews 1:3), which he embodied through his works by setting a sinless example for us to follow of how to walk in the Spirit/how to walk in obedience to the Law of Moses.
While Paul discovered something, that does not mean that what he discovered was not a production of sin.
It also fits with the interpretation that the law of isn causes sin to increase. While Paul spoke about the how the Law of God is not sinful but reveals what sin is, that is something different than the law of sin that is sinful and causes sin to increase. The Law of God was never given for the purpose of transforming us, but rather it was given to describe the behavior of those who have been transformed.
