Romans 8: No Condemnation, No Separation

There Is Therefore Now No Condemnation (8:1-4)

Romans 7 ended with a cry and a thanksgiving. Romans 8 explains the thanksgiving. The wretched man looked for a Deliverer (Romans 7:24–25), and now Paul shows what the Deliverer has done and what His Spirit does. The chapter opens with no condemnation and closes with nothing able to separate us from the love of God (Romans 8:39). In chapters 1 to 7 Paul mentions the Spirit only a handful of times. In chapter 8 the Spirit fills the argument.

“There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.”ROMANS 8:1–2 · KJV

Therefore reaches back over everything Paul has said: Christ set forth as a propitiation through faith in his blood (Romans 3:25), justification by faith (Romans 5:1), union with Christ in His death and life (Romans 6:3–11), and the thanks of 7:25. Now means now, not after a long probation. Condemnation is a courtroom word: the sentence of judgment. Paul used it when he traced the ruin that came into the world through Adam, a ruin every one of us has joined by his own sin: judgment came upon all men to condemnation (Romans 5:18; Romans 5:12). For those in Christ Jesus, that sentence is not reduced. It is gone.

Notice where Paul grounds it. Not in how well you walked this week, but in where God has placed you: in Christ Jesus. A believer may be disciplined by his Father (Hebrews 12:6), but he will never again stand condemned before his Judge. He shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life (John 5:24).

The law of the Spirit of life is not a new list of commands. Here law means a ruling power, as it did in 7:21-23. One power, the law of sin and death, held the wretched man captive. A stronger power, the Spirit who gives life in Christ, hath made me free.

What the Law Could Not Do

“For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.”ROMANS 8:3–4 · KJV

The law could command, but it could not change anyone, because it had to work through flesh, and the flesh was weak. So God did what the law could not. He sent his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh. Likeness guards two truths at once: His flesh was real, and it was not sinful. He was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15). See The Humanity of Christ.

And for sin: as an offering for sin. On the cross God condemned sin in the flesh. The condemnation we deserved fell on sin in the body of His Son. For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him (2 Corinthians 5:21). There is no condemnation left for us because it was all spent on Him. See The Substitutionary Atonement.

The purpose follows: That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us. The word means the law's righteous requirement. Christ met it for us in His life and death, and now the Spirit works it out in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. What the law demanded from the outside, the Spirit produces from the inside: love, and love is the fulfilling of the law (Romans 13:10).