Warning: Long Post About A Short Verse!
Romans 8:1
8 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
WARNING: Today we will cover just one verse, but it’s a verse that is crammed with meaning and we are going to take our time to work through it.
In the Romans reading plan we are following, we designated chapters 1-7 as Part 1.
Let’s quickly recap what Paul was arguing in Part 1:
·The Gentiles were idolators, and they were enslaved to sin and death (even though their consciences should have been guiding them away from sin);
· But the Jews were also enslaved to sin and death, even though they had the Law;
· The reason Jews were enslaved is that their hearts were just as sinful as the hearts of the Gentiles, and the Law could do nothing to change hearts;
· So, both Gentiles and Jews are in the same position: enslaved to sin and death, and unable to free themselves.
Paul closes chapter 7 with this question, speaking as if he is Old Testament Israel personified:
24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? [Romans 7:24].
For seven chapters, Paul has been ratcheting up the tension—what hope is there for humanity if even Israel—God’s covenant people—is enslaved to sin? The tension builds until Paul’s hopeless and helpless question bursts out at the end of chapter 7:
24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?
To me, it’s as if Paul is here giving voice to one of those shuffling addicts that we see all too often in our cities these days, enslaved in his body and tormented in his mind, unable to free himself from the prison of his own desires. He is shuffling along, mumbling to himself until he suddenly screams out:
"PLEASE. Can anyone save me from my fate? Can anyone save me from death?"
With that question in mind, chapter 8 begins with a response:
8 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus [Romans 8:1].
In Greek the word translated here as “therefore” is a connecting word, meant to connect this first sentence of chapter 8 with the sentences that came before it at the end of chapter 7. In Greek, word order in a sentence is not as important as in English, so when we move Paul’s words around a bit, the meaning on this sentence becomes clearer.
To put it another way, this is the Andrew Forrest version:
8 But NOW for the people of Jesus Christ there is NO condemnation [Romans 8:1, AFV].
By connecting the end of chapter 7 with the opening of chapter 8 we can see what Paul is saying:
Humanity was enslaved to sin, and—because the consequence of sin is death—humanity was condemned to death. But now, for the Jesus-people, there is no condemnation, because Jesus has taken the consequence of sin onto Himself, once and for all.
What does it mean to be “in Christ Jesus”?
“Messiah” (Hebrew) and “Christ” (Greek) both mean “anointed one.” In the Old Testament, the anointed one represents His people, and what’s true of Him becomes true of the people. God made a covenant—a promise—with Abraham. Later, at Mt. Sinai, God made another covenant with Abraham’s descendants, the Israelites. Moses was the man God chose to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. In his final speech to Israel before his death and their entry into the Promised Land, Moses reminds them of the terms of the covenant:
15 See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. 16 If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you today, by loving the Lord your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. 17 But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, 18 I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish. You shall not live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to enter and possess. 19 I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, 20 loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days, that you may dwell in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them [Deuteronomy 30:15-20].
The Law—the Torah—summed up the responsibilities of the covenant. If the people kept the Law, then blessing and life would inevitably follow. Israel would be blessed, and then through Israel, God would bless and give life to the world.
But, if Israel ignored the Law, then curse and death would follow. This is because the Law is really God’s teaching—God’s Torah, which means “instruction”—and the Law was meant to show the Israelites how to live well. If they ignored those instructions, then life would not go well for them.
What’s worse, if they ignored the Law, then not only would Israel receive the consequences of disobedience—curses and death—but through Israel, curses and death would come for the nations.
Israel was supposed to be God’s covenant partner to rescue the world, but Israel’s disobedience meant that rather than being the vehicle for the world’s rescue, Israel just compounded the world’s misery and sin!
Jesus was an Israelite—a descendant of Abraham, a member of the covenant people. He was the Anointed One of the people—the Messiah or Christ— which meant that He represented the people, and what was true of Him was true of His people.
Unlike the people, Jesus was perfectly obedient and perfectly followed the Law. His obedience was so complete that He even went to die for the people.
8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross [Philippians 2:8].
Remember the promise of the covenant—obedience would mean life and blessing for Israel, and through Israel, life and blessing for the world.
Jesus followed the Law even to death on the cross, and His perfect obedience released life and blessing to the world. It’s like a bomb of blessing was detonated on the cross, and the fallout spread to the nations.
Jesus, as the Messiah, represents His people. What’s true of Him is true of them. So, how do you become part of the Messiah’s people?
This is a central question in Romans!
To the Jews, it was obvious—you become part of the Messiah’s people, Israel, by becoming Jewish and observing all the Jewish ethnic markers, including male circumcision.
But because the Holy Spirit was given to Gentile believers in Jesus, Paul and the other apostles realized that you no longer had to be Jewish to be part of the Messiah’s people, Israel. In fact, because of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, blessing and life have now been released to the entire world and all it takes to be united with Jesus and be adopted into His people is to have faith in Him, to trust in Him.
Those who are “in Christ” are those who, through their trust in Him, now belong to His people. We are getting ahead of ourselves, but in the rest of chapter 8 Paul will explain that the mark of those people in Christ is that they live by the Holy Spirit, not the law of sin and death, and therefore there is no condemnation for them, since Christ Himself has defeated death.
In Romans 7 Paul imagines himself as Israel, under the Law.
· He has already explained in chapter 1 that the nations (the Gentiles) were totally lost and walking in darkness, enslaved to sin.
· And then, he has gone on to explain that Israel (the Jews) were also enslaved to sin despite the fact that they had God’s Law, which was meant to be a light and a guide to them.
· Why?
This is a key insight to understanding Romans: the reason the Law didn’t save Israel was because it couldn’t; Israel—and all of humanity, in fact—was enslaved to sin, so the Law was unable to make a difference in a people with sinful hearts.
So, what do you do?
Well, as Paul will explain in the rest of chapter 8, God sent Jesus to die in the place of sinful humanity and thereby defeat the power that sin and death hold over people. Now, all people who are “in Christ” are freed from the power of sin and death.
Which brings us back to Romans 8:1:
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
or
But NOW for the people of Jesus Christ there is NO condemnation.
Paul will go on to explain why this is the case.