Sin in the heart

“But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire. For apart from law, sin is dead.” Romans 7:8
Have you ever noticed that people will walk past a wall without a second glance at it, but if you put a sign up saying ‘Wet paint – Do not touch’, they have to touch it? That’s the kind of thing that Paul is talking about here, as he describes how he himself came to realise his sin. It’s only when we are told not to do something, that the temptation arises to do it – otherwise it might not even occur to us.
Before Paul was saved, he lived as a Pharisee, according to their strictest regulations (Acts 26:5). At the time, he thought he was free from sin. He kept all of the regulations regarding sacrifices, feasts, avoiding uncleanness, and so on as instructed by the Law of God, and many others that had been added by the rabbis over the years. He said of himself at that time, he was “as for legalistic righteousness, faultless” (Phil. 3:6).
But Paul was convicted over one of the Ten Commandments, which he had not kept: “Do not covet.” It had probably slipped his notice, since as a Pharisee he would have been entirely focused on making sure his outward actions were in complete obedience to the law. But God’s law is not only about our outward actions. It addresses those as symptoms of sin in our hearts. You can’t tell if someone is coveting something in their heart – you can only see the outward manifestations of it (e.g. stealing). But God sees. And when Paul realised that God could see this in him, he knew that he was doomed. He had to seek God’s forgiveness for entertaining these covetous thoughts. He later wrote to Timothy, “The sins of some men are obvious, reaching the place of judgement ahead of them; the sins of others trail behind them” (1 Tim. 5:24). We might be able to hide our sin from other people, but there’s no hiding from God. Have you sought His forgiveness for your sins today?