Romans
8:1-4 (NASB)
1Therefore there is now no
condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2For the law of the
Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of
death. 3For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the
flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an
offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, 4so that the
requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to
the flesh but according to the Spirit.
Jesus
is still the Answer
Romans 7 described graphically the
only thing that the Law can accomplish in the life of the believer: fear,
shame, hopelessness and destruction.
Paul was left with nothing but “O wretched man that I am.” In Romans 8:1 he turns a corner. That change in tone and attitude is based on
the realization of the complete sufficiency of the life of Jesus Christ within
us. Christ in the believer, and the
believer in Christ.
Romans
8:1
Therefore there is now no
condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus
Therefore
“Therefore” is a logical
connective. Trying to live under the Law
as a believer brought Paul to a place of absolute hopelessness and left him
asking who would save him. What follows
is the logical need to the fact that we are totally helpless in our struggle
against our sin nature. Many believers
live their entire lives in struggle to try to prevail against their sin nature
and never have a single day of life, peace and joy that they were meant to have
in Christ Jesus.
Now
Shockingly, “now” means “now”! Right now.
At this very moment this statement of fact is in effect. This is not something that is contingent upon
something else. This is not a statement
of probability, or a statement of what will be true in the future. This is the present moment.
No
condemnation
As a point of interest: the Greek
language does not rely on word order to derive meaning. In English we know how a word is functioning
in a sentence by where it is place. Our
basic structure is <subject> <verb> <object>. So in English the sentences: “The boy hit the
ball” and “The ball hit the boy” mean different things. In Greek, however, the information of what is
the subject and the object is built into the very conjugation of the word. This allows them to use word order for a
different purpose, emphasizing the most important word by placing it first in
the sentence. In English we would use
italics or underlining to do this type of emphasizing.
The emphasized word in this sentence
is the word “no”. Paul is especially
drawing our attention to the fact that there is absolutely no single word of
condemnation. For the saint who is in Christ Jesus.
“Condemnation” means a sentence
pronounced against someone. It was a
word used in the legal realm when a person was declared guilty, they were
condemned. Condemnation is the chief
ability of the Law. If you keep it you
are commended, if you disobey it you are condemned. Paul faced constant condemnation and
inability throughout chapter seven as he tried to live up to a righteous
external standard and met only with His own failure. His solution is that there is “no
condemnation” in Christ Jesus. And that
makes all of the difference. Our unrighteousness
cannot be accrued to us because we are draped with Christ’s perfect and
unmarred righteousness.
Who
are In Christ Jesus
If there could be two words that are
most important in an understanding of our salvation they would be the wonderful
words “in Christ.” The first question to
ask is:
Who
is this person who is “in Christ Jesus”?
How did they get there?
We see throughout the New Testament
how we get to be in Christ Jesus. We are
placed in Christ Jesus by the Father when we placed our faith in Jesus Christ.
3Or do you not know that
all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His
death? 4Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into
death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the
Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. 5For if we have
become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be
in the likeness of His resurrection, 6knowing this, that our old
self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away
with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; 7for he who has
died is freed from sin. 8Now if we have died with Christ, we believe
that we shall also live with Him, 9knowing that Christ, having been
raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over
Him. 10For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but
the life that He lives, He lives to God. 11Even so consider
yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Romans 6:3-11
In Galatians Paul writes:
NASB - 16nevertheless
knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the Law but through faith
in Christ Jesus, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we may be
justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the Law; since by the
works of the Law no flesh will be justified. 17"But if, while
seeking to be justified in Christ, we ourselves have also been found sinners,
is Christ then a minister of sin? May it never be! 18"For if I
rebuild what I have once destroyed, I prove myself to be a transgressor. 19"For
through the Law I died to the Law, so that I might live to God. 20"I
have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ
lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the
Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me. 21"I do
not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the Law, then
Christ died needlessly." Galatians 2:16-21
In Ephesians we learn:
13In Him, you also, after
listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation--having also
believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, 14who
is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God's
own possession, to the praise of His glory.
Ephesians 1:13-14
And:
4But God, being rich in
mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, 5even when
we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace
you have been saved), 6and raised us up with Him, and seated us with
Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7so that in the ages to
come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in
Christ Jesus. Ephesians 2:4-7
The amazing reality of this “In Christ” truth is that the
unity with Christ is every time said to be by God’s doing. All we do is trust (faith, belief) in
Jesus. And there is not one single
instance of a person being said to be “out of Christ”, “thrown out”,
“un-baptized”, “un-united” or “un-identified with Christ. It is a once and for all permanent
association with Jesus Christ in His death, burial, resurrection, ascension and
seating at the right hand of the Father.
And in Christ, the Righteous one, there can be NO condemnation at
all! Praise the Lord.
Romans 8:2
For the law of the Spirit of life in
Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.
The
Explanation
The explanation of this reality and
our freedom is simple. When we were
placed in Christ Jesus, and His Spirit was placed in us we were given a new
“natural law” to follow. This is not
talking about the “Set of rules or standard” type of law, this is regarding the
second kind of law, the “natural law” type of law. The way that this type of law was illustrated
in Romans 7 was: “Every time I try to obey the law I wind up with my sin nature
calling the shots.” Just like
gravity. If you like Christ didn’t give
us new strength to fight the old gravity (the law) He gave us a new
gravitational center and force to be naturally drawn to (Himself).
Freedom!
As you walk in the Spirit, and rest
in Christ Jesus you are also walking in the fact that you have already been set
free from the law of sin and death. We
are no longer under obligation to try to impress God, or try not to offend God,
we simply need to rest with our eyes fixed on our Savior and trusting in His
Spirit within us. We have been set free
from this natural law that every time we try to resist our Sin Nature we are
defeated.
Romans
8:3-4
3For what the Law could
not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the
likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the
flesh, 4so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us,
who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
What
the Law Couldn’t Do
The Law is shown to be unable to
conform the saint to the image of Christ.
The weakness, as was established, is not in the law but in the Sin
Nature. We saw the inability of the Law
to save a person in terms of justification in chapters 2-3 and we saw the law’s
inability to sanctify a person in chapters 6-7.
In both cases, the problem was not the law. The law in each case was righteous, but it
the sin nature was too complete and toxic a force to be tamed by a list of
commands.
God
did
What the Law couldn’t do. What I couldn’t do of my own best efforts:
GOD DID! This is the great message of
the gospel. The reality that we cannot
sanctify ourselves proves the reality that God did it. The truth of the gospel for justification is
just as necessary for our growth in Christ.
And just as we will never be saved apart from trusting wholly in Jesus,
we will never be sanctified until we trust wholly in Jesus for that process as
well.
How
God did it
God did this by sending His son. The Sacrifice of Christ on the cross wasn’t
just a “get out of hell free card” it is what we need to be trusting in and
resting in every single day of our lives as believers. Two things occurred:
1) Christ
was an offering: This is a sin offering.
It speaks of how all sin was paid for at the cross. Our past, present and future sins were all
paid in full at the cross of Jesus Christ.
2) Condemned Sin (nature) in the Flesh – He not only appeased God’s
righteousness at the cross. Jesus also
condemned the sin nature in our flesh. We know that our sin nature will one day
be removed from us when we leave this earth by death or the rapture.
The Cross of Christ dealt with both the sins and the sin
nature. Every need for sinful man was
met at the cross.
Mission Accomplished
The righteousness that we could never
achieve by obeying the Law becomes ours in Christ and in Him alone. The righteousness of the Law here is said to
be fulfilled in us. This is a
righteousness that is much more full than anything the world has known. It is in a passive voice, that is to say, it
is not something that we are doing, it is something that Christ has done and we
trust in. This is the only righteousness
that fallen man can have. This is the
only righteousness that will satisfy God.
This is real righteousness.
Get
ready to walk
The word “walk” was a typical
metaphor for the conduct of daily life. This final phrase gets at the very core
of the Christian experience. How are we
to conduct our lives if it is not by a set of rules? How will we know what to do? The answer here is repeated in Galatians
5:16:
But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will
not carry out the desire of the flesh.
Our eyes are not to be fixed ourselves, nor on any set of
rules, but on the person and character of Christ. As we grow in our ability to walk trusting in
Him, resting in His completed work, by beholding Him through His word (2
Corinthians 3:18). We grow in our daily
condition to be more and more like what we already are in our permanent
heavenly position. In other words:
Law says: What you do makes you what you are.
Grace says: What you are
will dictate what you do.
No comments:
Post a Comment