The Fundamentals modern New Testament scholars, though Augustine and a few modem New Testament scholars think the passage refers to the experience of a Christian). “Sin, finding occasion through the commandment, beguiled me and through it slew me . . . that through the commandment sin might be come” (be shown to be) “exceeding sinful. For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin. For that which I do I know not; for not what I would, that do I practise; but what I hate, that I do . . , . Wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out of the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord”. So we see that Paul by his experience with the law was led to see that “in him, that is, in his flesh, dwelt no good thing;” that in his members is the sin principle enslaving him so that he “is sold under sin”, that is, under the sway of this sin principle. He thought the law could help him to be righteous. All it could do was to show him his helplessness as a sinner and drive him in his despair to Christ as his only Rescuer “out of the body of this death”. All the righteousness he could achieve was insufficient. Only God’s own righteousness, given through faith in Christ Jesus, could satisfy the conscience of the awakened sinner or be acceptable to God. THE ORIGIN OF SIN The apostle does not discuss the larger problem, the origin of sin in God’s moral universe. Whence and how did sin originally enter the moral universe? Paul does not under take to solve this problem. Only the relative and temporal origin of sin, its entrance into the human race on earth, not its absolute and ultimate source, engages the thought of Paul. But what is his testimony as to how and when sin entered the human race? The classic passage on the source of human sin is Rom. 5:12-21. Let us consider it. Paul testifies that sin entered our race in and through the disobedience of ¡Adam. “As through one man sin [a/ lapria , hamartia, the
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