This week we reach Romans 8. As we have seen in past weeks, Romans 8 serves as the final part of this second section of Paul’s letter to the Romans in which he is laying out some specific results of having been justified by faith. But Romans 8 is not merely the next in a succession of results. Rather, the chapter as a whole seems to serve as the capstone of this section in which Paul brings together a number of themes that he has addressed in Romans 5-8. In doing so, he brings this section to a rousing and glorious conclusion that we will examine over the next three weeks. We will begin looking at this chapter by looking at verses 1-17 this morning. In these verses, Paul fleshes out something that he said in chapter 7. If you remember from last week, Paul made clear that one result of having been justified by faith is that we have died to the law. He made clear that the law, in itself, was not the problem – it was sin using the law to put us to death. Sin used God’s good and holy law to hold us in bondage. And Paul used the last half of chapter 7 to lay out his own personal struggle with trying to be justified through the law. The end result was failure. It is impossible for us to be justified by the law because of sin. But we are not without hope; Paul makes clear that his hope is in Jesus Christ. Paul is free because of Christ and not through keeping the law or overcoming his own sin. In chapter 8, Paul lays out the result of having been set free by Christ. As we saw last week, Paul made clear that it is impossible to overcome sin by keeping the law. And he boldly proclaimed that we were never intended to overcome sin with the law. Rather, we find our hope in Christ. No doubt, most of us here have done that. We have repented of our sins and placed our faith in Christ. But we also know that is not the end of the story. We did not cease to exist when we believed. We still live on this earth in these mortal bodies. And we still struggle with sin and temptation and suffering and pain. Things seem no different than before. And yet, all of us – if we were being honest – would testify that things are different if we truly know Christ. Though we continue to live and walk in these earthly bodies, something has changed. And it is that something that consumes Paul’s thoughts in these first seventeen verses of chapter 8. So let us look at them together.
Paul starts this chapter with a glorious declaration that “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (8:1). This, in and of itself is a glorious reality for those of us who have believed in Christ. After hearing for so many weeks that all human beings are sinful and under the just condemnation of God (1:18-3:20), we are told that that condemnation has been removed – never to return. Rather than condemnation, we know justification. Rather than death, we know life. Rather than slavery, we know freedom.
And, even more glorious, is the reason that Paul gives for why this condemnation is no longer present. He writes, “For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh” (8:2-3). Why is there no condemnation for those who are in Christ? It does not say it is because they have no sin. It does not say it is because they have reached perfection. In fact, it says nothing at all about what we have done. Rather, it says that there is condemnation because the Spirit has set us free. But why and how has that happened? Again, the text says nothing about us doing something. It says that God has done something – something that the law could never do. What has God done? By sending Jesus in the flesh, God has condemned sin in the flesh. That is, God – by sending his Son – has given sin the punishment that it merits. The punishment has been fully delivered. And also, God – by sending his Son – has broken the power of sin. He has “condemned” it: defeated it and overpowered it. God has does this because the law could not do it and we certainly could not do it. There is no condemnation for us because of what God has done in Christ.
The implications of this are many. Jesus, in John 10:27-29, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.” Jesus made clear that none of his sheep would be lost. The certainty of this, just as in Romans 8, lies not with the sheep but with the shepherd. The clear implication – as we will see again at the end of Romans 8 – is that once we are united with Christ, nothing can separate us from him. Not even our struggle with sin and our weakness to obey in the flesh can separate us from him. There is no condemnation for us, and the reason for that is because of what God has done in Christ. We cannot think on this truth enough. The hymn writer Joseph Swain wrote of this reality this way, “Come, ye souls by sin afflicted / Bowed with fruitless sorrow down / By the broken law convicted / Through the cross behold the crown / Look to Jesus; mercy flows through Him alone.” Here is the balm for our horrible guilt. Here is salve for our guilty conscience. It is the cross of Christ. It is the sacrifice of the one who “has perfected for all time whose who are being sanctified” (Heb. 10:14). There is no condemnation for us because Christ has paid for our sins – those of yesterday, those of today and those of tomorrow. Our hope is not that someday I will get it right but that for all time Christ has gotten it right for me.
And notice as well the purpose for which this work has happened: “…in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit” (8:4). The result of God having condemned sin in the flesh by sending Jesus is that the righteous requirements of the law are fulfilled in us! You might say, “But I don’t perfectly keep the law.” The answer is that you do not have to because the righteous requirement of that law is already fulfilled by Christ. We are set free from that righteous requirement. And the result of that, according to Paul, is that we walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. We live a new life. Before faith, we lived according to the flesh and under the power of sin and the condemnation of the law. But now, we walk in newness of life – the life of the Spirit. It is to that life that Paul now turns.
Having laid out that the result of this work in the lives of those who are in Christ is that they “walk not according the flesh but according to the Spirit” (8:4b), Paul now contrasts those two realities. We will look at each one in turn. Paul speaks on the one hand of the life of the flesh. And he writes, “For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh” (8:5a). Paul is saying those who live this “fleshly” life focus on the things that the flesh desires. Paul lays out these “works of the flesh” more clearly in his letter to the Galatians: “Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these” (Gal. 5:19-21a). The one who does these things sets their mind on these things. It is these things that consume them. And Paul makes clear the result of such things: “To set the mind on the flesh is death” (8:6a). The reason these things result in death is because “…the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God” (8:7-8). So here is the picture that Paul gives of the one who walks according to the flesh: they are unable to submit to God’s law and obey that law because they are hostile to God. Rather than setting their minds on God, they set their minds on the things of the flesh and they live out the works of the flesh that we saw from Galatians.
Paul contrasts this reality with the life of the Spirit. He makes clear that “those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit” (8:5b). We can move to the same chapter of Galatians to read that “…the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, [and] self control” (Gal. 5:22-23). The difference between these fruit and “the works of the flesh” that we saw earlier is not hard to understand. We know clearly what works of the flesh look like, and we know clearly what the fruit of the Spirit look like. And Paul makes clear that the one who lives according to the Spirit is the one who sets his mind on those things. This is the reason he lives in them, because they consume his thoughts. And the result of these things is markedly different from the result of living according to the flesh: “…to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace” (8:6b). The difference between these two ways of life could not be farther apart. Likewise, the different results of these two ways of life could not be farther apart.
To connect this section back to 8:1-4, Paul is saying that those of us who have no condemnation because we have been set free by the Spirit walk according to the Spirit and not according to the flesh. But, at this point, this could seem confusing to us. Most of us, if not all of us in this room, would claim that we have placed our faith in Christ. We would rejoice that there is no condemnation on us, and we would rejoice that we have been set free. But no doubt, even as we read the “works of the flesh” in Galatians 5, you thought to yourself, “But I still do those things. Does that mean I am actually ‘in the flesh’ even though I think I have been saved? Does living in the Spirit mean sinless perfection?”
The resounding answer to this is ‘NO!’ In fact Paul’s point is not to cause his readers to question their salvation but to encourage them in their faith. This becomes clear in 8:9-11 as Paul writes, “You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.” So here we see Paul’s goal in this section. Paul’s words are not meant to cause his readers to doubt but they are meant to provide them with hope! He wants them to have hope because the Spirit dwells in them. This is the key difference between the way of the flesh and the way of the Spirit – it is the presence or absence of the Holy Spirit. The focus in this section is not on the works themselves but on what produces those works. Those who live according to the flesh do so because they are hostile to God. They do not serve him and cannot obey him. They lack the Spirit. On the other hand, those who live according to the Spirit do so because the Holy Spirit lives in them. And Paul wants his readers to know, without a doubt, that if they belong to Christ then the Holy Spirit lives within them. And that Spirit is the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead. And that Spirit will also give life to our mortal bodies on that glorious day when Jesus returns and the dead are raised to life. Even these sinful, fleshly bodies will be transformed into something new and glorious. Paul’s goal here is not the heaping up of condemnation but the heaping up of hope because of the presence of the Spirit.
Having made clear to his readers that the Spirit of Christ does indeed live within them, Paul closes our text with even more truths meant to spur his readers on to live according to the Spirit. He begins by saying, “So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live” (8:12-13). So Paul makes clear to them once again that there is no place in the Christian life for slavery and bondage to the flesh. We have died to sin (Rom. 6) and so we are no longer “debtors” to it – we are no longer enslaved to it. Rather, we live by Spirit. And that living by the Spirit means we will put to death the deeds of the flesh and we will live. Again, there is no direct command in these verses – only statements of fact. But these statements of fact are meant to move Paul’s readers to obedience.
That said, it would be a misunderstanding of the text to use Paul’s exhortations in our own lives to somehow add extra pressure on ourselves to obey. By doing this, we treat God as a taskmaster who smiles upon obedience and frowns upon disobedience. Faithful obedience becomes something that God requires and demands. Paul closes our section this morning by portraying our relationship with God in a totally different light: rather than being a slave under the demands of a taskmaster, Paul says we are sons of a Father. He writes, “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, buy you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ the Spirit himself bears witness with out spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs – heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him” (8:14-17). This is a totally different picture: suddenly God is not our taskmaster but our Father (a Father who loves us and desires our good and gives us everything we need to do it). The Spirit is not some condemning babysitter that stabs our conscience every time we do something wrong; he is actually a gift from God that bears witness with us that we are children of God and enables us to live lives that honor God. As a result of these things, we are heirs of God. We will look next week at what that inheritance entails, but it is enough to know at this point that this inheritance is not something we earn but something that comes to those who have the Spirit. Again the deciding issue is not obedience versus disobedience but the presence of the Spirit versus the absence of the Spirit.
The importance of this reality cannot be overstated for us. Too often, we as Christians live our Christian lives as if nothing has changed in us. We set our minds and our wills to obey the law because we know that God desires obedience. Without exception, we fail in this striving and we are gripped by guilt and condemnation at our weakness and failure. More often than not, we spend our Christian lives feeling – in the words of Jerry Bridges – “guilty and helpless – guilty because of recurring sin patters in my life and helpless to do anything about them.”1
Our text this morning shatters that paradigm. Rather than guilt and condemnation, we know freedom and redemption. That is what Romans 8:1-4 makes clear: lives lived according to the flesh are fruits of grace, not the source of it. As Bridges goes on to say, “…where the law condemns, grace forgives through the Lord Jesus Christ.”2 We do not interact with God as we do with the law because the two do not relate to us in the same way. The law puts us to death, but God saves.
And as it regards our helplessness to overcome these sin patterns, our text makes clear that we have been given the Spirit as a means of grace to bring about in us the very things that God requires of us. Notice that in our text Paul says, “Those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on things of the Spirit.” The order is that we are given the Spirit who gives us life and then as a result we set our minds on things of the Spirit. It is a natural fruit of having the Spirit of God in us. As Bridges again writes, “Where the law commands but gives no power, grace commands but does give power through the Holy Spirit who lives and works within us.” We neglect the Spirit at our own peril. I am not referring merely to miraculous manifestations of the Spirit, but to everyday fruits. Do you lack the love that you are commanded to have for the human beings that you interact with everyday? Where will that love come from? It comes not from our own will or work or labor but from the Spirit. Let us live by that Spirit! Do you lack joy in the everyday “hum-drum” and monotony of life? Where will that joy come from? It cannot be worked up or manufactured; it must come from the Spirit that bears witness with us that we are children of God and awaiting the glorious inheritance of Christ. Do you lack self-control in your daily struggles with sin? Where will that self-control come from? It will not come from our willing ourselves to it; it comes from the Holy Spirit that sets us free from enslavement to sin and sets us free to obey the Lord. We must remember that our obedience is the fruit of God’s work in us and not the necessary prerequisite of that work. It is not a burden to the apple tree to bear fruit. It is what the apple tree does. It is what it was made to do. And so obedience is not meant to be a burden on us. It is what we do as believers because there is no condemnation for us and we have the Spirit within us to bring about such obedience.