Romans 8:1-4

 

The main theme of Romans 5-8 is transformation, the change God makes in the heart and the life of the believer as a result of justification. But this change is not a simple, easy thing. It is a battle. This is war. To understand the thread of the argument, we need to go back and read one of the key verses from Romans 7:5: “For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death.”

Paul has pictured this strange, even bizarre alliance between the flesh, the law, and sin--or, more specifically, the law of sin. For the man under the flesh, the law of sin, the motions of sin, the nature and natural processes of sin, are going to bring forth sin. And the law of God, so far from helping or alleviating this situation, is actually the only thing that allowed it to happen and, at least sometimes, made it worse.

This is the picture of Romans 7. This situation, this state, this conflict that Paul has been painting so poignantly is a state that will bring forth sin. And sin, when it is finished, brings forth death because death is the wages—that is, the natural, obvious, expected result—of sin. Being in or under the flesh is going to lead to this conflict, and this conflict will lead to sin, and sin to death. That is the general process Paul has laid out. For the Christian who is in this position, there is a counterforce at work, but that doesn't change the essential nature of the situation. We could say that a man is holding a crushing weight even if he has not yet been crushed by it, or that he was in a deadly situation even if he was not yet dead and even had hope of escaping alive.

Because there is a hope of escaping alive. After the dark cloud of Romans 7, Romans 8 begins like an explosion of light. In the midst of the battle, a bugle call proclaims that the cavalry has arrived. The dawn has arrived to dispel the darkest hour. As Paul often does, he lays out his general proposition, stating the main idea in the first four verses, while the next several verses develop the idea.

The first word to notice in this passage is the word condemnation. Condemnation technically means 'to pass sentence against' or 'to pronounce guilty' as a man is pronounced guilty by a court. And obviously, taken in that sense, there is a clear meaning in verse 1—the fact that those who are in Christ have found deliverance from the guilt and sentence of sin, that there is forgiveness and justification. 

However, while all that is true, it doesn't seem to be Paul's meaning here. This section isn't about justification and the knowledge that God gives us forgiveness from sin doesn't change the reality of the battle we have been seeing—especially given that, as I said in our last lesson, it is clear that the struggle pictured in Romans 7 does apply to some Christians or some phase within the Christian life. In other words, finding justification and escape from condemnation in the sense of the sentence and guilt of sin, does not automatically make us free from the law of sin and death or guarantee that the righteousness of the law will be fulfilled in us.

Furthermore, verse 3 says that through the incarnation God 'condemned sin in the flesh.' There is a sense in which the incarnation is a condemnation of sin—the fact that sin required such extreme measures does act as a sort of an official statement from God regarding sin. However, this is a strained and somewhat convoluted interpretation.

What all that shows is this—that, as many commentators agree, in these verses, Paul is using the word condemnation in a slightly different way; meaning more than simply the sentence against something.

And that brings us to one of the most confusing aspects of Romans 7 and 8. The condemnation comes because of the law—and what is so confusing is that Paul is using the word law for several different things. 

We have already talked about the law of God and the law of sin, which make an appearance again in these verses. (I am assuming that "the law" in verses 3 and 4 is the law of God since the usage here fits with what Paul has said before regarding the law of God.) Verse 2 also introduces another law, the "law of the spirit of life" or, the "Law of the Life-giving Spirit", as the NET Bible puts it. And just at the face of it, this all seems a little confusing, especially when we have all these different laws almost fighting among themselves, as it were.

That is why we have to consider this word condemnation again. Suppose a man breaks the law and commits some serious crime. He has broken the criminal law and that law—operating through the police and the judicial system—passes judgment against him. It states that he has broken the law, that he is a criminal, and that he is worthy of punishment. That is condemnation.

But that condemnation, which is in a sense a legal abstraction, does have quite real, definite consequences. The man is delivered into the authority of guards and jailers and placed in prison. He becomes a prisoner, locked away and under guard. And because this is the punishment inflicted as a result of his sentence, you can broadly say this a part of his condemnation. He will spend years, perhaps the rest of his life, within that prison because, and solely because, he was condemned by the law. That seems to be the way Paul is using the word condemnation here; to refer not merely to the actual verdict, but to the punishment and consequences which follow upon it. 

I've never been in prison and everything I know about life inside a modern prison comes from highly unreliable sources, but from my understanding, a prison is really its own society, with its own culture and its own rules. Certainly, the life of a man in prison is very different from what his life would be outside. He is subjected to a manner of living that is distinct, even foreign to the life of an ordinary citizen. In fact, we can broadly say that he is under a new law, the law of the prison. Because he broke the criminal law, he has been condemned and his condemnation is to be subjected to the law of the prison, something which might, in many cases, actually be different or even opposed to the normal criminal law, but he is subjected to this law because he was condemned by that other law.

Now, suppose this man receives a pardon from the governor and is let out of prison. A pardon is also a matter of law; it is a legal procedure, even if it is something separate from ordinary criminal law. The man is completely set free from the law of the prison. The authority of guards and other prisoners alike become meaningless. He is not set free from criminal law; he is still bound to obey it; but he is no longer condemned by it. It not performing its action of sentencing him and delivering him into prison. In other words, the law delivered him into the power of another law through condemnation but a higher law set him free.

That isn't a perfect analogy, but it somewhat pictures what Paul is saying in Romans 7 and 8. Man had broken the law of God and the consequence of that, the result of man's condemnation, was to be enslaved to the law of sin. Therefore, the law of God—the very thing that had caused this condemnation—could not deliver man from it. But the law of the Spirit, something connected to the law of God but higher, entered the picture and did what the merely moral law could not.

There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, because in Christ Jesus is the law of the Spirit of life which makes us free from the law of sin and death. But while the Law of the Spirit is something different from the Law of God—as a governmental pardon is something different from ordinary criminal law—they are not opposed. Look at verse 4: “That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us.” 

A pardon is not—in theory, anyway—an attack on the law. If you give a criminal a pardon and let him out of jail, the hope is that he has learned his lesson and will not go back to his criminal ways; that once he has been freed from the condemnation of the law he will go on to follow the law and not become condemned again. God delivers us from the condemnation of the law, not so that we can break the law, but so that the law can be fulfilled in us. The law of God—the law of righteousness, the code of ethics and morality, the thing which defines right and wrong—is not abolished. 

I want to reiterate something Paul has said several times throughout this passage. Even though there is a certain negative emphasis regarding the law of God throughout Romans 7, the problem isn't that the law is bad. Human laws change; the government may realize that a law was bad or that it was good at one point but it no longer makes sense. But that isn't what is happening here. God did not decide to repeal His law because there was some problem with it. As Paul said very clearly in chapter 7, God's law is holy, just, and good. That is not the problem; the problem with the law is in verse 3--the law was weak, feeble; it could not do what needed to be done.

The law cannot bring justification and it cannot bring transformation; it is too weak. It is unable to do that and, to be fair, it was never intended to do that. But we should note exactly where the weakness lay. It was weak 'through the flesh.' The source of its weakness, its futility was the flesh. There was something in human nature which could not be cured or corrected by the law. The law could condemn men; it could not change them. 

But God had other options besides the law. God had an answer to the problem of sin which was not the law. He sent His own son for sin; that is, because of sin, on account of sin, in order to deal with sin. But the important point is that Jesus came in the likeness of sinful flesh. I said that there is something in human nature that is opposed to God and God's law. But Jesus had a human nature and a human body. “For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” (Hebrews 4:15) Jesus experienced human life without experiencing human sin; he knew moral conflict without moral defeat. He was in the flesh without having the nature of flesh.

All of that proves that the thing is possible To be human and to be sinful are not identical. Physicality and carnality are or at least can be separated. But that is not the most important part. The most important part is the end of verse 3: God, through the incarnation “condemned sin in the flesh.” I said before that Paul seems to be using the word condem to mean not merely the sentence against a thing but also the consequences, the penalty or punishment. To say that God condemned sin in the flesh doesn't merely mean that God put up a sign over sin saying: “This is bad.” It means that He has passed sentence against it; it is being carted off to prison or to the gallows. The power of sin in the flesh is canceled—but that happens solely because of Jesus' work in the incarnation.

Just as the only answer to the problem of the guilt of sin was faith in the atonement provided by the death and resurrection of Christ, so the only answer to the problem of the reality and the power of sin is faith in the atonement provided by the death and resurrection of Christ. Christ lived the only purely sinless life; only Christ lived a life in the flesh without sin; the only way we can live a life in the flesh without sin is if we are living the life of Christ; that is, if the life of Christ is living in and through us--if we are, as Paul says in verse 1, “in Christ Jesus.”

But how can we, ordinary human being born under the curse of sin, have the life of the sinless one? How can the life of Christ become ours? Well, how did the life of Christ in the likeness of human flesh begin in the first place? “Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost.” (Matthew 1:18) The incarnation took place by the Holy Spirit; it was the Holy Spirit who made it possible for Jesus to be conceived and born in the flesh. And who are those who find Jesus living in them so that the righteousness of the law is fulfilled in them? We find the answer at the end of verse 4—it is those who walk after the Spirit.

There is more to be said regarding the meaning and relationship of flesh and spirit. But I want to save that for the next article. The main point to grasp here is this: it is God's will that we be transformed, that we be changed, that we be completely delivered from the power of sin. The law—that is, the moral law—cannot accomplish that. It can only bring condemnation. It is the law of the spirit that brings about this transformation because the Spirit brings life, the life of Christ which is a life of victory over sin. The only way out of the dark and desperate situation of Romans 7, the only hope for deliverance from the power of sin, the only chance for victory in the long dark fight is through the life of Christ and the power of the Spirit.

But it is a choice. The keyword of verse 4 is “walk” which is an active verb. It implies somebody doing something. And it is not the only possibility. The house of the Spirit isn't the only house on the block. There is more than one path to walk. All of which suggests the picture of a choice. The just live by faith, but faith is a decision and it is a decision that we must make; we must choose to be of the number of those who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit.