Romans 8 (part 1)

You heard me say last week that Romans 8 is the most beautiful chapter in the Bible. Here are the seven reasons why I believe that this chapter is different that any other: 

1. There is no other chapter that more deeply or fully deals with the brokenness of the physical universe, and how it got that way, and what will become of it.
2. There is no other chapter that expresses with more clarity or power the infallible and unbreakable certainty of our salvation.
3. There is no other chapter that combines the intercession of the Holy Spirit in us with the intercession of the Son for us in the service of the never failing love of God over us. 
4. There is no chapter that more directly juxtaposes the necessary horrors of our suffering with the completely assured grandeur of the glory to come - an assurance that moves with such force through suffering that we are left with nothing but an unshakeable hope in the love of God.
5. There is no other chapter that deals more directly and tenderly with our struggle to know that we are the children of God, and in the midst of this struggle introduces us to the witness of the Holy Spirit.
6. There is no other chapter with a more abundant litany of privileges, securities and assurances to hold us firmly in the keeping of the love of God.
7. There is no other chapter in which so many glorious truths are proclaimed to help us obey only one implied command: live by the Spirit not the flesh, and by doing so, fulfill the whole law - that is, love.

These are the reasons I believe Romans 8 is the most beautiful chapter in the entire Bible. It is in this chapter that I find peace in fear, joy in sadness, and freedom in Christ from sin. Please have your Bible with you as we study together. Read along with me. If you don't have it with you go to bible.com and load your favorite translation.

So today we are studying Romans 8 together, but to do that, let's go back a few verses into chapter 7. Romans 7:22-8:

So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.  

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 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, 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. 

This verse has some speculation about it because as we have been reading through Romans Paul has been telling us that sin will have no dominion over us, yet here we see that Paul is still struggling with sin, so the question is how these two truths fit together. How can a person who is saved, freed from the dominion of sin, still be under the law of sin? 

The first stance that some scholars take is that verses 22-25 are talking about the pre-regenerate Paul. They say that the Paul in the first few verses is the Paul who was not a child of God and the Paul in the next verses is the regenerate Paul. "There is therefore no condemnation in Christ Jesus" is the revelation of grace to the unsaved Paul, and that grace works to free him from his bondange to sin in verses 2-4 of Chapter 8. Read through these verses again and I think you can probably see how this stance sort of fits the verse. However, I don't think that it is a correct way of reading this scripture. Here's why: Paul talks about himself in the present the entire time, Paul says that he delights in the law of God (unsaved people do not delight in anything about the Lord, especially not in their inner being), and finally Paul thanks God for His victory over sin and Paul's deliverance from his body of death. 

Instead, I believe that Paul shows us his humanity throughout chapter 7, the truth that he has not attained a life without sin. Then in chapter 8 Paul tells that even though we can find ourselves struggling between the things of this world and the things of God, there is no condemnation for those who are in Jesus. Then he goes on to tell us that there is freedom through the law of the Spirit of life. So the question still stands: How can someone be free in the Spirit and still have battles with sin? 

Here is what I believe Paul is saying when he tells us that we have been set free: 

• The battle against sin has been decisively won - we have 100% confidence in Christ's victory over sin. We do not have to fear that we will fall from grace (Romans 8:31-39). 
• The battle over sin has been ultimately won - at the end of time we will stand with Jesus as heirs to the Kingdom of Heaven and we can have expectant hope of the glory to come (Romans 8:18-25). 
• The battle over sin is progressively being won - this is the process of sanctification, a continual working to become more like Christ, driven by the power of the Holy Spirit continually setting us free from sin. 

Read through those verses above again, and notice the contrast between the two laws. One is of life and of the Spirit and is in his mind and inner being, while the other law is one of death and sin and is in his members. These members are anything with which you sin - your eyes, ears, tongue, stomach, hands, sexual organs, feet, lungs... The reason Paul says the law of God is in his mind and his inner being while the law of sin and death is in his members is because the person of Paul, his soul, the thing that makes Paul Paul, is the thing that is saved by Jesus. It is his body, a "body of death" that keeps him sinning. We are saved people who, hopefully, desire the things of God in our heart of hearts. Yet we still sin because we are in a sinful world, a sinful body, and have not yet reached the glory that is to come. Though, we are called through the transformative power of the gospel to act as though we are a member of God's family. This is the transforming nature of the law of the Spirit. When the truth of the gospel invades our souls, it changes our desires to those that are in agreement with God's desires. This is a gradual, transforming work of the Spirit so that we have nothing to boast about. If we changed desires by our own power, then we would not need the gospel. All of the freeing from sin - the progressive winning of the battle - is found for those who are "in Christ Jesus." 

How do we get to be "in Christ Jesus"? 1 Corinthians 1:30 says, "And because of him [God] you are in Christ Jesus..."And Galatians 2:20 "I live by faith in the Son of God..." So, if it is because of God that we are in Christ, then how does that fit with Galatians where we are told that we are live in Christ by faith? Is it our faith that unites us with Christ, or is it because of God's work? The answer is both. Look in Ephesians 2:8: 

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God. 

God unites us in Christ by giving us faith, which results in both freedom from condemnation and in power from the spirit transforming and freeing us from sin.  

There is one verse that caught my attention as I was reading. That is Romans 8:3, and particularly this part: "By sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh." My brain came to a halt and asked "Why in the likeness of sinful flesh?" I have always believed that Jesus was really and completely in human flesh, and after the ascension he remained remained in that real flesh. Why, then, does Paul seem to minimize that by saying Jesus was only in the likeness of sinful flesh? 

First of all, please remember that we were not "sent" into human flesh. That is just the way we are. Jesus was sent from heaven into flesh. This gets us to the second point, that Jesus was indeed in real flesh, but his flesh was sinless. That is how God took our sin and "condemned sin in the flesh [Jesus' flesh]" (Romans 8:3). So in verse three we see that God sent his Son in the likeness of human flesh to condemn sin in Jesus' flesh, which was something that the law could not do. Why can't the law condemn sin? I immediately started thinking, "Wait, but doesn't the law condemn?" I really thought that was the whole reason Jesus came - the law was condemning us and Jesus came to set us free from condemnation. But here's what I realized: 

The law condemns us in sin, but Jesus condemns the sin in us. 

The law can never give a "not-guilty" verdict. But God can. But why can't the law give a not-guilty verdict? Because it is weakened by the flesh. How do we, humans, weaken a law that God made? The law was meant to show God's standards. If anyone were to meet those standards they would be found not-guilty. The problem is no one can (Romans 3:23). So the law was weakened by the flesh because we are all sinful, therefore rendering the law useless for declaring righteousness. When people meet the law, it is not law-keeping that happens, it is law-breaking. 

Here's the question some of us must certainly ask: Why did God create a system that didn't work? I believe that God fully intended for the Law to fail. The Law cannot save us and God knew it. He did this so that we would have nothing to boast about and it would show God's righteousness (Romans 3:25). 

Jesus took our sin into his sinless flesh, and let the law fully condemn His flesh through His death, then Jesus defeated the power of death so that not only were we rescued from our sins, but we were made right with God. If Jesus had only died, He was only a mere man. Instead, Jesus upheld the whole law, paid for our sins, and defeated the power of sin forever. 

Why then, did God choose to do things this way? Was there any other reason than for Him to receive glory? Paul says there was one other reason - that "the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit." (Romans 8:4) 

Notice first that Paul did not say that Jesus came to fulfill the requirement of the law for us. This would have been true, but there is more to grace than that. The grace of God fulfills the righteous requirement of the law in us, and it does so through the Spirit. What, then, is the righteous requirement of the law? To answer this, we will do what we always do if Paul doesn't explain something very well: interpret Scripture with Scripture. I am deathly afraid of reading something into Scripture that is not really there. So instead of me speculating about what it could mean, lets do some looking through the Bible, and then check what we find with some more Scripture. Let's start in Romans 13:8-10: 

Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, "You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet," and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is fulfilling the law. 

This seems like a pretty clear answer - the righteous requirement of the law must be to love one another. But is this something that is the work of the Spirit? I believe it is, and the evidence (our next check) is found in Galatians 5:22, "But the fruit of the Spirit is love..." God provided His Son so that we would have no condemnation, we are declared righteous (this is justification), then in verse 4 we see that this is all so that we could be sanctified by living out a life of love which sums up all the commandments.  

Because of time we didn't get to go any further into Romans 8, but we will next week. In preparation, please prayerfully read Romans 8 & 9 before we study together again.