DELIVERANCE BY CHRIST

"There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of the sin and death" (Rom. 8:1, 2).

Paul is still relating his experience. He has described in graphic language his bitter bondage to the sin dwelling in him, and the failure of the law to help him, and the despair it brought. Now he tells the astonished Jews and the world what Jesus did for him. He unfolds the power and virtue of the gospel scheme. It pardons and sanctifies. The law could do neither.

Here, for the first time, he relates his present, up-to-date experience. This picture is so totally different from that described in the preceding chapter that it is absolutely impossible that they should both be the description of the same man at one and the same time. There he was a wretched captive, tugging at his chains; here he is free. There he was trying to save himself; here he is already saved by another. There he was groaning; here he is shouting happy. There it was agonizing prayer; here it is rapturous praise. There he was defeated; here he is victorious. There it was dark despair; here it is cloudless hope.

Now it is reasonable to conclude that no person could possibly be carnal, sold under the sin, brought into captivity to the law of the sin and death, and at the same time be made free from that law of the sin and death by the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. They are absolute, irreconcilable contradictions, mutually exclusive.

In the sixth chapter Paul exhibited sanctification and a life of holiness as provided for in the atonement, and as a blessed privilege and a solemn duty. In this chapter he reveals or exhibits it as a personal experience in his own life. He sets forth the work of the Holy Spirit as a divine principle in his life, working out in him the will of God. This admirable chapter has been called, "The chapter beginning with no condemnation and ending with no separation!" Godet reports Spener as saying: "If the Holy Scripture was a ring, and the Epistle to the Romans its precious stone, chapter 8 would be the sparkling point of the jewel." The Holy Spirit brings Christ potentially into his life, who not only justifies him, but abides in him as a new principle of death to the sin and life to God. The new force in his life, as the apostle bears witness, is "the Holy Spirit, by whom Christ crucified and risen reproduces Himself in the believer." Thus

Verse 1: "There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus."

Fully justified, pardoned, restored to the favor of God. No condemnation as the penal consequence of original and actual sin. "In Christ Jesus means a vital union between Christ and His people by faith. Jesus compared it to the union between the vine and its branches. It is not legal, federal union but a living relation.

Verse 2: "For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of the sin and death."

Godet affirms that verses 1-4 describe the restoration of holiness by the Holy Spirit. Sin entails death on the justified, in whom it regains the upper hand, as well as on the unjustified (8:12,13). There is, therefore, only one way of preventing sin from causing us to perish, that is, that it perish itself.

The word "law" occurs in this second verse twice. No one can rightly interpret the seventh and eighth chapters of Romans without critically noting the sense in which the word "law" is used each time it occurs. In this verse it does not mean any statute, or decree, or legislative authoritative enactment. Dr. Maclaren points out that here it means "continuous action," "constancy of operation, uniform and fixed." Godet calls it "the controlling power imposing itself on the will." Dr. Daniel Steele, says it means "uniform tendency." Dr. Barnes says it means, "the influence." Now if we substitute any one of these phrases we shall get the meaning of the verse: "The influence of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the influence of the sin and the death," that is, the moral death that accompanies the sin.

This is the apostle's wonderful testimony of deliverance which he gladly proclaims to others. He believes that the controlling power of the Holy Spirit, which broke the power of the sin over him, can deliver others too. He knows that no mere outward means will be sufficient to emancipate their souls, for he has tried them. No mere intellectual methods will set free the passions and desires that have been captured by the sin PRINCIPLE. It is vain to seek deliverance from a perverted will by any revelation of moral law however emphatic. He has tried them all, and they have miserably failed. Nothing can touch the necessities of the case but the incoming Holy Spirit, as a potential indwelling Christ, whose abiding, controlling influence in us can subvert and expel the tendencies to sin. "That communicated power must impart life. Nothing short of a Spirit of life, quick and powerful, with an immortal sense of intense energy, will avail to meet the need."

Verse 3: "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 as an offering for sin, condemned the sin in the flesh."

"Law" in this verse means the law of God. The moral law. This law could not justify or sanctify, as Paul knew by experience. The flesh hindered it. The flesh (sarx) here means "the seat of passion and frailty," and then figuratively, "the carnal and rebellious principle itself" (Clarke).

"God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh." God's own Son was like Himself, holy and spiritual. He took upon Himself our nature, "the likeness of the flesh of sin," but without our sinful propensities or desires. Human nature as God made it and as Christ exhibited it is perfect. There was no "he hamartia" "the sin" in it. "That life of Jesus, lived in human nature," said Maclaren, "gives a new hope of the possibilities of that nature lived in us. The dream of perfect beauty 'in the flesh' has been realized. What the man Christ Jesus was, He was that we may become. In the very flesh (nature) in which the tyrant rules, Jesus shows the possibility and the loveliness of a holy life." Christ came in a real, living human nature, in a humanity subject to those same conditions of bodily existence under which we all are, and He remained, as He had ever been, ''holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners."

He thus "condemned the sin in the flesh," as wholly unnecessary, and no essential part of it. As Godet quotes Theophylact approvingly: "He sanctified the flesh and crowned it by condemning sin in the flesh which He had appropriated, and by showing that the flesh is not sinful in its nature." No human being has any scriptural warrant for saying that we must have sin in us so long as we remain in the body. Such a conclusion throws away the very meaning and purpose of Christ's life. Sin's hold on man is two-fold-one that it has perverted his relation to God, and the other that it has corrupted his nature. Christ, by His incarnation, provided for the pardon of the sin and the cleansing of the nature. He was "declared to be the Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness." He baptizes with the Holy Spirit, and by the entrance of the Spirit of holiness into our nature the usurper -- "the sin" -- is driven out.

Verse 4: 'Condemned the sin in the flesh." God as a Judge condemned it to destruction. "That the ordinance of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit." "After" means "according to" the Spirit. Clarke observes: "The design and object of the incarnation and sacrifice of Christ was to condemn sin, to have it executed and destroyed; not as some think to tolerate it or to render it subservient to the purposes of His grace; but to annihilate its power, guilt, and being in the soul of a believer." In the same spirit Godet says: "The condemnation of sin in Christ's life is the means appointed by God to effect its destruction in ours."

Alford nobly writes: "Sin is throughout the passage an absolute principle. It does not mean that God condemned sin by the death of Christ, for several reasons:

(1) The apostle is not speaking of the removal of guilt, but of the practice of sin. He is grounding the "no condemnation" on the new and sanctifying power of the Spirit of Christ.

(2) The context shows that the weakness of the law was its having no sanctifying power. It could arouse sin but could not condemn it and cast it out.

(3) The next verse makes the fulfilling the righteous demand of the law no matter of mere imputation, but of walking after the Spirit."

We must look for the meaning of the word "condemned" in the effects -- victory over and casting out of sin (John 12:31). This is very important to the right apprehension of the whole chapter, in this part of which not the justification but the sanctification of Christians is the leading subject. Christ's victory over sin is mine, by my union with Him and participation in His Spirit."

Whedon says: "The righteousness of the law 'does not mean imputed righteousness,' nor simple innocence, but an actual and active personal righteousness energized by the Spirit."

Dr. Maclaren wrote: "Remember the alternative. There must be condemnation for us, or for the sin that dwelleth in us. There is no condemnation for them who are in Christ Jesus, because there is no condemnation for the sin that dwells in them. It must be slain or it will slay us. It must be cast out or it will cast us out from God. It must be separated from us, or it will separate us from Him. We need not be condemned, but if it be not condemned, then we shall be."