No Condemnation

Well today we get to move from chapter 7 to chapter 8, which is pretty cool. So I just took the first little section of verse 1 here. No condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. So we're going to see, I'm going to go back and try to tie in the last few verses of chapter 7 and how we move into chapter 8.

I'm still amazed when you read through this that the Apostle Paul who spent three years with the Lord Jesus would have the struggle that he had in Romans 7. It's just, it's incredible. But also it's comforting in the fact that if our brother Paul had it, that we shouldn't be surprised if we have a similar struggle. Not necessarily over the same issue, but a struggle with basically keeping our focus on the Savior and walking with Him.

So I decided to go ahead and I like Chester McCauley's outlines, so this is his outline for chapter eight. So it starts off with the first 11 verses are the believer's liberation or freedom. And kind of the key thought or key words are you've been set free.

And we're going to see that in 12. But it actually kind of, that's actually not right in 12. Anyway, never mind. It should be verse two. I found an error already. How did I miss that? Anyway, that's verse two. Okay, then the next section, 12 through 17, is the believer's obligation.

And the key thought here is that we're under an obligation. We'll see that when we get to it. It sounds kind of like law, but I think we'll see this. It will be grace. The believer's glorification, the glory to be revealed to us, or actually in us, I think, and then the believer's provision and this is just a beautiful section I remember teaching this back many years ago the spirit helps our weakness in terms of our prayer life and many other things And then the last section is 31 through 39. If God is for us, who can be against us?

So this is gonna take a while. We're not gonna go very fast. Couple verses each Sunday. I'm doing one and two, three and four. It's gonna kinda go through very slowly, but there's so much wonderful things to talk about, about our wonderful position in Christ and what we have and how we're to live that life. Okay, so now, and this is from Macaulay.

So here's what someone has said. I saw this in a section, I said, well this is, they don't name the person who said this, but this is what has been said about Romans chapter eight. Some people have said, we enter the chapter with no condemnation, in verse one, we close it with no separation from the love of God, And in between, God works all things together for the good to those who love God and are called according to His purpose. And that's pretty, a nice little nutshell. And then our brother Hal had a couple thoughts. I shared some of these last week.

In chapter eight, we're shown the dynamics for living the Christian life and performing divine good. And as a result of the indwelling Holy Spirit and the spirit-controlled believer, And then lastly, Paul will now set forth the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit as opposed to the lack of power from any law system or anything that you count upon other than Christ. Okay, so here are the verses. There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus for the law of the life in Christ, I didn't read that right, for the law of the spirit of life in Christ, Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death.

Okay, so we're gonna start out here with verse one. And it turns out verse one is already, If you have a, who has a King James Bible? Raise your hand, I'm kinda curious. Actually it's not, that's pretty amazing. Oh, you, okay. Well then, this'll speak to you. The King James Version has some more information for you. And maybe, you know, this is nothing new. This additional phrase in verse one has caused some, over the years, people have wondered about it.

But I think, in general, what's been decided is that, and this is from Weiss, basically, that the best texts don't really support having that last phrase or clause in there. And the Nestles, which is one of the best Greek texts in the Westcott, they don't support that part of the verse. The only one that does is the Texas Receptus. I listened to Merriman on this and he went on a long time talking about the Texas Receptus, which I know very little about, so I'm not going to say too much, but it seems this is not really the best translation for verse 1.

It seems actually that this particular last part of verse 1 has been copied from verse 4, because verse 4 reads this way. So the requirements of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the spirit. It seems like that part, last part, the B part of verse 4 got copied up into verse 1. And this was one thought I had.

Maybe verse 1 was so gracious they couldn't handle it. They said, you just can't say there's no condemnation. You can't say that. No, I got to protect God. I got to protect His reputation. And so in their zeal to, and actually I heard both Merriman and McCauley had their various stories about, and we don't know, but somehow it seems like that particular part got copied up into the, into verse 1, but then It's not supported by other manuscripts.

There are thousands of manuscripts. It's just amazing. And so anyway, so most translations that you'll see outside of the, it's basically the King James and the New King James, I think, have that extra little phrase in there. So I've heard some people say, just circle it and put an arrow down and say it belongs down here.

Anyway. Okay, so that takes care of that part of verse one. So now let's get into the, using the American Standard, let's get into the first part. So actually the first part is actually informative because it's going to tell us I know I like to listen to different people what they say and some people will try to connect The first phrase there is no combination. They'll go way back into Romans The first part of Romans and they'll try to pull things forward but I saw that it looked like it the connectivity between seven and eight was pretty direct and And it seems like the words here kind of support that. So in the Greek text, there's actually, there is, it's not there in the text, it's only now then or now therefore. And the word then, It's the idea of then or consequentially or it's a transition by logical inference, Marion says, and then Zodiaty's head, I like this, making a transition to what naturally follows from the previous, from words preceding. I kind of think that's what it looks like to me. I'm going to try to show you why I think that.

So we can, I think we can identify this transition by looking at the last verses in seven and kind of gradually going through and looking at eight and seeing what Paul was thinking. And it seems like in that transition between seven and eight, he came, as we talked last week, he was at the peak of his struggles.

And then, at a point in time, he starts thanking God, and then he goes right into saying there's no condemnation. Pretty, you know, a pretty amazing transition in a very few verses. And I don't, you know, we don't know how, did Paul write, you know, all this in one session? Did he write this over days, weeks, months?

We don't know, but it does seem like there's moments where he changed his mind, or realized something that he already knew. Okay, but one thing to think about, and Merriman points this out, and others have pointed out too, you know, Paul is the same saved believer. He's a new creation in Christ. He didn't change, from seven to eight, he didn't come to faith. He already was a believer. What changed in his mind was, who am I trusting? Who am I walking with? Who am I focusing on? Am I focusing on self, or am I focusing on Christ?

So that was the change between seven and eight. So let's start off here. In chapter 7, and this is in Paul's position, and we talk about his position which is eternal and unchangeable, he's a new creation in Christ, well in this condition he says in 7, in 7.14, I'm carnal, permanently sold into bondage to sin, into the sin nature. So he saw himself Because, and it was all wrapped up in the commandments, right?

Thou shalt not covet. I talked about that earlier. Coveting was the thing that he focused on. The more he tried not to covet, he did covet. So he says, I'm carnal. I'm sold into bondage to sin. But then we see, we march on through 14, verse 14, we march on through all those verses, he's struggling. And then eventually he gets to 24 and he says, wretched man that I am, or wretched I am. Not all the words are there in the original, but wretched man that I am. And then he follows that by a cry of help, if you will. Who will set me free from this body of death? As I mentioned last week, it's a who. He's asking who. He realizes it's only the Savior, it's only Christ that can change this. And then it almost seems like something happens here.

He goes to the next verse and we see, thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. He thanks the Lord. As mentioned, we don't know what, it doesn't say what he thanks him for. We'll see that in a bit. But he thanks God. So he changes between those two verses. It appears that he realized something. He realized what he had. And then he kind of, in the last verse in chapter seven, he kind of gives a, if you will, there'll be part of that verse. He says, thanks be to God in the first part. And then he kind of gives, this is where I'm at. So then it's like a conclusion statement. He sees this conflicted state, this state of tension between, the sin nature and following God. He says, on the one hand, I myself with my mind and serving the law or will of God, but then on the other hand, with my flesh I serve the law as sin.

So we're gonna see a lot about this using the word law. We saw it here in chapter seven, the idea of law or principle, not the Mosaic law, but a principle, the principle of the law of God, the principle of sin. And we're gonna talk about the principle of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus. So that idea of law word is used a lot.

But then in 8.1, he now realizes, well, my position in Christ is what 8.1 is gonna tell us, and that's, so he kinda, it seems to me it marches through kinda nicely. It makes sense to me that he struggled, he thanked God, he cried out for help, God answered him, he realized what he had, and he went on. And it seems like that happens to many believers. They struggle with something, and over time, in prayer, something changes, and they realize, oh, wait a minute, I can trust God for this. I think that's where Paul was at. Okay, so starting in verse one, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

So let's just start with the next word, no. And there's several words in the original for no, and this is a pretty strong one. Uden is not even one, not the least bit. So it's a pretty strong no, not even one, not the least bit. And actually, when I showed you the Greek earlier, I showed you the word order. The word order in the Greek, actually no is the first one in the sentence. And I'm not super good on this, but in the Greek text, having the first word that occurs in the sentence is significant. And many times that shows for emphasis, emphatic. So no starts the sentence. No condemnation, and condemnation is the idea of a judgment, a decision against something.

So we see this in Romans 5.18, so then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men. So Paul in this verse he declares, in our verse he's declaring there's not even one bit of condemnation, but in the verse we just read in 5.18 he says that's based upon one righteous act of Jesus Christ. The benefit of that is accrued by Christ's one righteous act, his death on the cross. So here's kind of a parallel verse.

And John, truly, truly I say to you, he who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and does not come into judgment but is passed out of death into life. So God's blessing when we come to know him as Savior is we are not condemned. He's taken our judgment. He's taken our punishment. There's no condemnation. But it's restricted, right? If you look at the text, It's restricted. It says, for those who are in Christ Jesus. And that's actually a pretty, you know, if you look, I think most of the teachers have done this. You look, you can use your computer these days, but if you count through that, the Greek, through the New Testament, how many times does in Christ appear? And it occurs about 160 or so times. Sometimes it will be in him, but in him or in Christ.

So he's saying there's no condemnation is talking about believers and it's believers who are in Christ. So what is, you know, we talk about in Christ a lot. So, and it's to those, the ones. So what does in Christ Jesus mean? Actually, Bonnie was pointing this out to me. Paul likes to use Christ Jesus rather than Jesus Christ. That's kind of interesting, putting, you know, Messiah, the ideal, being the Christ, Christ Jesus. So what does in Christ or in Christ Jesus mean? So a short summary I'd like to say is that in Christ Jesus describes our living union which we received at the moment we put our faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ. This happens at salvation, like the blessings we have, all the blessings we have are ours and they're available at the moment of salvation, but we don't always realize it, we don't always see it.

So I was kind of thinking, I could go through 164 verses, right? I'll show you that, that might be a little bit time consuming, you might fall asleep. So better to pick, so I decided actually, we've studied in Romans 6 a passage that I think describes being in Christ just so wonderfully. So I decided to go back and use that passage to describe what it means to be in Christ rather than listing all the different occurrences. So let's look at that verse, Romans 6, 3.

Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death? So I would say don't get wrapped up in the word baptized, right? You know, you think baptized, you think, well, if you go back behind the stage here, we can go to the baptismal and we can be baptized. Well, he's not talking about that kind of baptism.

And hopefully I can show you that as we go through this explanation of this verse here. Okay, so more on baptized into Christ Jesus. So baptized is the word baptizo. And in this verse, it's in what's called the Aorist tense. It's in the passive voice. So you're baptized, you've been, another synonym might be you've been placed into, you're baptized, or immersed, or dipped, various words. And it's speaking about a spiritual baptism, if you will. So it's an event that happened in every believer's life. Indicative means it's reality. And God did it to you. It happened to you. The Holy Spirit did it to you.

So it's actually derived from the word bapto. And I love this. This is the part that we like. In fact, I shared this at some baptismal ceremonies, kind of a challenge to the person getting baptized. The bapto, B-A-P-T-O, transliterated is to dip and take out. You dip something like you, for metals, you dip something in there and you cure it or whatever or remember Hal's demonstration of the handkerchief and you dip it into the dye and take it out and it would be the color of the dye? Well that's the idea of bapto.

But baptizo is an event that happened in every believer's life by the power of the Holy Spirit with this caveat. We have been baptized into Christ and never taken out. So what I say sometimes, if you really wanna have a good representation, just go in the water and don't come out. That's all you gotta do. I mean, that would be true spiritual baptism. That's not gonna happen, obviously, but it shows you the permanency, and it shows you this can't-be-water baptism.

We've been baptized into Christ and never taken out. Every single believer has been immersed, another synonym, immersed into Christ, placed into Christ. It's a permanent relationship that God has established. Passive voice, he did it. We were immersed into Christ and became identified with him. We are in him and he is in us.

So you can see this wonderful relationship you have. So when he says there's no condemnation to you, it makes total sense. Well, if I'm in Christ, and Christ is God and he's perfect and eternal, then there's no reason, condemnation, it makes no sense. It makes no sense and it shouldn't make any sense for the believer. And we can never be separated from him. It cures the insecurity problem or the eternal security problem. If I've been placed into Christ, baptized into him and never removed, nothing can change. I didn't do it, he did it to me. Okay, a few more thoughts on baptism into Christ. So here's an alternate, here's the Wiest translation.

You know, I like Wiest a lot, and so did my brother Hal. Actually, I didn't realize, I've been listening to Hal and looking at his notes and stuff, and I found, wow, he looked at Wiest and he transcribed some things from Wiest. Oh, that's really cool. So here's a few things that I kind of came on the roundabout in Mulberry Bush, listened to him. Oh, this is back to Wiest again.

So this is a Wiest translation of, of Romans 3, 6, or 6, 3. Do you not know that all who were placed into Christ Jesus Do you not know that all we who were placed into Christ Jesus in His death were placed? It's kind of rough, but he's trying to preserve the original.

Okay, so baptism can be thought of as a placing of a person into a union with something, someone else. In this case, with our Savior, with Jesus Christ, or Christ Jesus. So as to alter the believer's relationship with his previous union, You know, we know from, we're gonna read it shortly here, we came, you know, Adam, we came from Adam's line, we have Adam's nature, that fallen nature, and so we're moving from that position in him to a new place in Christ. So this new union at the moment of belief in Jesus Christ, a saved person is placed into a vital living union with Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit. The previous union, the believer is now dead or separated from his sin nature, being no longer has to be slaves to that sin nature.

So I'm just trying to go through and be really careful here. There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. So that condition applies to every single believer. There's no condemnation. And that wonderful being placed into the very person of Christ by the Holy Spirit guarantees that for us.

Okay, so now let's go on to verse two. For the law of the spirit of life in Christ has set you free from the law of sin and death. So for is like the idea of indeed. So now we're back to this idea of law, our principle. So he makes this statement. At first you read that and you think, well, who's he talking about here?

The law principle of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus. And if you look back, that's kind of in contrast, so that's in contrast here to what he talked about, a law principle of the sin nature. So he, what comes into view here, we have the law principle of the spirit, the Holy Spirit we're gonna see, versus the law principle of the sinful nature. So I'm gonna go through the occurrences here of the, where it says law principle of the sin nature, and just look at those as contrasted with the law principle of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus. Okay.

So it relates to the Holy Spirit, and we're told in John 6.63, it's the Spirit who gives life. And we see another verse that speaks to that, and we'll see in a while here. He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who indwells you. So the picture is, it's the Spirit who gives life. He gives us the very life of Christ. This life is Christ Jesus.

Now we're gonna see the last part of that verse talks about, well, what does that life in Christ, what is that accomplished? What is that accomplished in the believer's life? And so, before we do that, I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself here. Okay, so what's accomplished?

So this, and this will answer the question, you know, Paul cried out, who will set me free? So this is the answer. This verse right here is the answer to Paul's question. It's gonna be the spirit of life in Christ Jesus will set him free. That's gonna be the answer to his question.

Has set you free? It's the idea to make free, to liberate. Again, it's an event. This is an event that happened to every believer and it's a reality, indicative mood. It happened the moment you believe, you were set free. The Holy Spirit is the one who performed the action.

But, you know, I was thinking about this, but with Paul's example, it seems like he didn't come to the truths of Romans 8 You know he understood the truths of Romans 7, his being baptized, Romans 6, he was baptized into Christ Jesus. Then he goes through 7 and he struggles and then at 8 he finally puts it all together so to speak. He puts it all together in Romans 8. Well this is what I have. There's no condemnation. And he sees all the wonderful, so it seems like that that understanding took time.

It took time. to happen between six, seven, and eight, and that maybe we may have some struggle in our life that prevents us from seeing that, or better, even it drives us to depend upon Christ, to seek that out, to seek relief, to seek the security of knowing Christ.

So, and you were set free in two aspects, right? Free from the principle or the law of the sin nature, and secondly from the principle or law of death. So let's look at both of those. So free from the law of sin. So this you could say, and the definite article is there, so it's the sin, free from the sin or the sin nature. So I got a little bit ahead.

This is where I want to go back and kind of look at, so let's look at the idea of the law principle in terms of what we said of the sin nature. So back in 721 we saw, and so this is what Paul, this is the conclusions that he came to about the sin nature and speaking in terms of the law. He says, I find then the law principle, the evil, the sin nature is present in me. So he found that this principle of the sin nature was in him. And he said, I see a different law back in 23, a little bit later on, but it's still that same, that different law was that sin nature.

It's in my members. So it's present in me. It's in my body waging war. And the next point is, it's making me a prisoner. Making me a prisoner of the law of sin within my members. And then finally, he says in 25, the very last part of the verse, he says, I myself, serving with my flesh the law of sin.

So the sin nature was present within him, it was waging war, it made him a prisoner, and he's serving it. So he's all wrapped up in that cycle, and he went through it in seven. Over and over again, he went through that. It wasn't until we see here in the chapter eight that he saw the freedom that he had. free from the law of sin, but now the Holy Spirit has changed our relationship to that law of the sin nature.

The Holy Spirit both gives and sustains the believer's life. And these are some comments I got from Merriman. So this is the point that I hadn't thought about. Merriman kind of shared this point about the fact that the Spirit who gave the law, I could have capitalized that, taking up residence within the believer. The law was involved in the giving, the Holy Spirit was involved in the giving of the law. And I didn't quite see that in the verse I kind of came across in Zechariah.

They made their hearts like flint so that they could not hear the law and the words which the Lord of hosts had sent by his spirit through the former prophets. So the Holy Spirit was involved in the giving of the Mosaic Law and he's involved in this idea of the law of the spirit of Christ Jesus. We now have the law, the spirit of the life in Christ Jesus that is superior and stronger than the law of the sin nature. But this new law frees a believer from having to follow the desires of the sin nature.

So we have the two combatants, if you will, we say. And we know that if you look in, let me just go over here and read this to you here for a second. You know, if you look at, in Galatians, we see this passage and you're all very familiar with it. It talks about the two, we have the sin nature and then we have the Holy Spirit. And it talks about that in Galatians 5, 16 and 17.

And it says, but I say, walk by the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. For the flesh sets its desires against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please. So here Paul is telling us the same thing he tells us in Galatians, that there's two combatants, there's the Holy Spirit and the sin nature, they're in opposition to one another, but you can be victorious as you walk by faith, trusting in what God has done, and abiding in the Holy Spirit there.

Okay, so a little bit left here. So the final part of that, the final part of the verse is free from the law of death. And this is speaking of spiritual death. So this is kind of a review, we kind of all know this. All men are born spiritually dead. And we see that pretty clearly in Romans 5.12. Therefore, as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned." And I added an atom, just for clarification.

Also, this is kind of a chilling verse. He's talking to, I think, one of his disciples. Maybe not, I'm not sure. Anyway, he says this. But Jesus said to him, follow me, allow the dead to bury their own dead. Pretty harsh words, or pretty emphatic words. So men are dead. Outside of Jesus Christ, men are dead. but the Holy Spirit has set us free to live, once we come to faith, to live, to be alive to God.

So I said this before, Romans 8-11, but he who raised Jesus Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. All right, so to kind of wrap things up here, I have some good thoughts here from Chafer, Lewis Perry Chafer. And he kind of does a summary, kind of this transition, I think.

So the answer to the cry of distress is given in Romans 8.2. This is more than a deliverance from the law of Moses, it is the immediate deliverance from sin and death.

The helpless and defeated eye is evidence in the one case, and the sufficient and victorious eye by the Spirit is evident in the other. The Christian is to be delivered by the law, or power of the Spirit. The Christian is delivered by the Spirit, but deliverance is made righteously possible through Jesus Christ our Lord, because of the believer's union with Him. Similarly, the two natures were still evident in the Apostle Paul's experience, since with a mind he desired to serve the law of God, but with a flesh he desired to serve the law of the sin nature.

And that's why I think, just kind of stepping back, that's why I think the very last part of, the very last half of 25 really is a statement about that's the playing field, that's the playing field the believer is involved in. but he did not remain a defeated Christian. He found the faith principle of life.

That is stated in Romans 8.4.

So next week, we're gonna talk about Romans 8.3 and 4, so you'll learn about this faith principle of life. So let's close. We thank you, dear Heavenly Father. We thank you for the blessings we have. Father, we thank you for your care for us. We just thank you for this day. In Christ's name, amen.