Pre-Launch Bible Study: Romans 8:1-4

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Over the next 6 weeks, we’re going to be walking verse-by-verse through what I consider to be the most encouraging chapter in the entire Bible. Now, why do I say that?

Well, on the surface, a chapter that starts off saying “there’s no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus” and ends saying “nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus are Lord” is setting itself up to be pretty encouraging. Every one of these 39 verses magnify the love of God toward his people and display the great lengths God goes, not just to redeem us, but to grow and sustain us.

At the very core of this chapter is the ultimate truth of the entire Bible: God has accomplished for us what we could not achieve ourselves. The Son of God has sacrificed himself in our place so that we might now be children of God receiving all the inheritance that comes with being a co-heir with Christ. This is what we call the gospel, and for the entirety of Romans 8, Paul is going to examine it like a diamond, spinning it around to see it’s brilliance from every angle.

You see, when Paul wrote the book of Romans, he hadn’t actually visited the Christians in Rome yet (though he wanted to and would eventually visit twice before being killed for his faith). Paul longed to go to Rome, but he didn’t know if or when he would get there, so he sent this letter ahead of him to help give the new Christians in Rome some direction for what to believe and how to live as they followed Jesus.

That’s why, when you look at the book of Romans, it’s essentially divided up into two halves: the first 11 chapters deal with theology (what to believe) while the last 5 chapters deal with practice (how to live). Romans 12:1-2 serves as the hinge and transition point for the book, telling Christians that, based on what we believe about who Jesus is and what he has done for us in his death and resurrection, we now live every aspect of our lives as a form of worship and gratitude to him. To put the overall structure of the book another way: what you do flows out of who you are.

Romans 8 sits toward the latter half of the theological section of the book, and it’s largely a response to Paul’s teaching on human sinfulness. So, before we dive into the text, we should probably take a minute to define that word: sin.

Your definition of this word could be what makes or breaks your interest in Christianity. It’s been used to shame people, to manipulate people, and to convert people. But sin in the Bible isn’t primarily a horizontal term, just affecting our relationships with other people; it’s first a vertical term, focused on our behavior toward God.

And, if that’s the case, then what makes something sinful or not sinful—isn’t a random list of morality; it’s the character and design of the God we’re relating to. Murder is a sin because God is not a murderer. Lying is a sin because God is truth. So, when we talk about sin in the Bible, the focus is never just on what someone did or didn’t do. The problem is that their sinful behavior (or our sinful behavior) as people created in God’s image wrongly communicates the nature of God to the rest of his creation.

If we keep this more God-focused definition of sin in view, we’ll find that Christianity’s claims about our sinfulness isn’t meant to compare, judge, or belittle one person against another person for their behavior or lifestyle. No, the Bible’s teaching on sin points to how we fall short of the wonderful character of God and need him to be for us what we cannot be in our own power (and that’s the invitation of the gospel).

One more thing before we look at our text for the evening: Why are we going to study this chapter verse-by-verse? My preferred method both for teaching and preaching the Bible is called “expositional,” which just means to “draw out” the meaning of the text.

While the application of a passage of Scripture will be somewhat unique for each person in their time and place, the interpretation of the passage will always be the same. The Bible can never mean what it never meant because the God of the Bible never changes.

So, in order to examine the whole counsel of the Bible and avoid picking and choosing verses that just support my preferences, my goal when I teach or preach is to walk through a passage of Scripture the same way it was written, first helping us all understand the original meaning of the text, and then offering application as to how it points us to Jesus and applies to the various areas of our lives.

And so, with that, let’s look at our passage for this evening: Romans 8:1-4.

Romans 8:1–4 ESV

¹ There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. ² For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. ³ 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, ⁴ 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.

Right out the gate, Paul gives us a direction for understanding these verses with that linking word near the start of verse 1: “therefore.” My mom always told me growing up: “When you see a ‘therefore’ in the Bible, you should ask what it’s there for.” Paul is making a big claim—“There is… no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”—What is he pointing back to as the reason for this statement? Why might there have been condemnation for us but now there isn’t for those in Christ Jesus? Romans 7:15 starts to give us the answer:

Romans 7:15 ESV

¹⁵ For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.

In Paul’s own life, he found that he often didn’t do the good things that are in line with God’s law (and God’s character) but instead does the very thing he hates. And what is the thing he does that he hates? In verse 19, he calls it “evil.” Sin.

But why would he do that? Why would Paul continue to do the thing he hates?

ILLUSTRATION: Eating too much ice cream. I know how I’m going to feel afterward each time. And yet, it’s like the ice cream calls to me: “just one more bite.”

Pauls starts to elaborate on why he continues to do what he hates in verses 22-25:

Romans 7:22–25 ESV

²² For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, ²³ 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. ²⁴ Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? ²⁵ 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.

Here, Paul points to two kinds of “law”, which he refers to in a couple different ways:

• 22, “law of God”

• 23, “another law”

• 23, “law of my mind” (same as “law of God”)

• 23, “law of sin” (same as “another law”)

Once we get to verse 25, Paul summarizes these two laws: the “law of God” and the “law of sin”. Considering that he talks about the law of sin as “evil” in verse 19, we can say that the “law of God” refers to holiness while the law of sin just refers to sin. Paul calls them a law because both impulses are trying to order and direct his life.

Both the desire to follow God and the desire to sin against God are waging war inside Paul, and they’re doing so while he is a Christian. Look at verse 22. Paul says “[he] delights in the law of God, in [his] inner being.” At the core of his identity, Paul wants to follow God.

But where does the law of sin dwell? Look at verse 23—“in his members.” So, there’s this dissonance within Paul as a Christian: his heart longs to follow God, but his body continues to desire sin.

ILLUSTRATION: For those of you that claim to be Christian, I’m sure this is something you can identify with. I love Jesus. But I really love myself too.

If that’s you tonight, and you’ve struggled feeling like you’re torn between different desires, be encouraged by Paul’s words here as he ends chapter 7 and begins chapter 8. Because, he doesn’t resolve this dissonance. In verse 24, he concludes, as a Christian, “wretched man that I am!” And by verse 25, he seems to just state it as a matter of fact:

Romans 7:25 ESV

²⁵ 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.

That seems like a sad conclusion. So, how could he say in verse 25, “Thanks be to God,” in the middle of this inner war that’s waging between his desire to follow God and his desire to pursue sin? Because, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who has delivered us, there is no condemnation from God over us even though we still fail and desire sin within us.

That brings us to Romans 8:1-4 and gives us to crucial questions we have to answer from the text with the remainder of our time this evening:

1. Why is there a battle within us between serving God and serving sin?

2. (Our original question) How can Paul have no condemnation from God even though he continues to sin against God?

Really, these questions are connected and just coming from two different angles. Because, if we deserve God’s condemnation from disobeying his law (and following the “law of sin”), then if we no longer have condemnation, that means something else has happened to us.

People in our culture today generally default to one of two answers for why God, if he exists, wouldn’t condemn them for their sin:

The first option is that we don’t break God’s law that much (even if we used to more in the past), so we’ve essentially tipped the scales in our favor. This is what we call legalism—the thought that we earn God’s approval.

But that’s not the apostle Paul’s testimony about himself in Romans 7 (and it’s not ours either). If we think we have to live a certain kind of life to not be condemned, our approach to Christianity will be one of secrecy and shame, hiding our failures from others in the church (which prevents us from being known and growing in community). Instead, we end up growing a deep guilt from all the ways we don’t measure up as we try hard and still struggle. But that’s not biblical Christianity, and that’s not what Paul is describing here.

The second common option is that maybe God has just stopped punishing sin. This is what we call antinomianism. But it doesn’t work either because that would leave us with a God that changes his opinion and doesn’t value justice, which is the opposite of what the Bible teaches (and it would be terrifying if it were true.)

No one wants to worship a God like that. We can’t trust a God that changes, because today he might be for us and then inexplicably against us tomorrow. And we wouldn’t respect a God who isn’t just, because we can’t be confident he will right the wrongs in the world or punish those who have wronged us.

So, if God is not condemning Christians for our sin (v. 1) but he is also not excusing sin, then there has to be a third option: God still condemns our sin, but now he has given that condemnation to someone else. Let’s read on to verses 3-4.

Romans 8:3–4 ESV

³ 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, ⁴ 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.

The first part of verse 3 tells us what God did to remove our condemnation, and the end of verse 3 through verse 4 tells us how what he did accomplishes it (which you can tell by that phrase, “in order that”).  In verse 3, Paul says the Father sent his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh. That doesn’t mean that Jesus was sinful. Back in Romans 7:18, Paul uses the same term, “flesh”, which gives us a clue to what he means:

Romans 7:18 ESV

¹⁸ For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh.

Paul talked about our “flesh” in relation to what we could accomplish in our own power, apart from God—and he concluded that e fall short of God’s righteousness.

Romans 3:23 ESV

²³ for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

So, because, in our flesh, we fall short of the glory of God, Jesus, the Son of God, who Hebrews 1:3 calls “the radiance of the glory of God” had to take on flesh to be our substitute (and that’s what Paul is saying in verse 3 that Jesus was sent “in the likeness of sinful flesh”—he was born as a human.

And we see in these verses why it’s important that Jesus is both fully God and fully man—as fully God, he didn’t deserve to be condemned for sin and die on the cross (he was sinless). But as fully man, he was able to pay the price for sinful man in our place.

Which brings us to the end of verse 3 through verse 4. How did the God-man Jesus remove our condemnation? Look at the word “condemned” in verse 3. It’s the same Greek word used for “condemnation” in verse 1. We are not condemned for our sin against God, but God is still unchanging, righteous, and just, because he took on the condemnation for our sin through Jesus. The punishment is still paid.

ILLUSTRATION: And it’s paid forever. Have you ever had someone “pay it forward” for your in the drive thru of a coffee shop? Someone might have given $10 for the person next in line, but you might have a bigger order and it doesn’t cover that. In that case, you’d still have to pay some because the generosity of the person in front of you was limited and didn’t match your appetite? But how much did Jesus pay pay it forward? How much is Jesus worth? He’s Infinite.

Like the start of verse 3 says, God has done what the law, weakened by flesh, could not do. That’s because the law of God is not able to forgive people for breaking it. In our flesh, when we sin against God, his law just shows us as having fallen short; it can’t do something about it to help us. But we use the word “gospel”, which means “good news,” because God has done something to help us by sending Jesus. This is why Paul can say in verse 2 that we’ve been set free “from the law of sin and death”.

› Visibly show how how “the law of the Spirit of life” parallels with “the law of sin and death”... Direction | Source | Result

The Holy Spirit is mentioned here in verse 2 because we know elsewhere in John 15:26 that the Spirit’s primary role is to testify to us about Jesus.

John 15:26 ESV

²⁶ “But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me.

So, to recap: Jesus, as fully God and fully man, does this substitutionary work on the cross, willingly taking on our condemnation and paying the penalty of our sin that he did not deserve. Now, the Holy Spirit helps testify to our hearts that Jesus is who he said he was and did what he said he did. The work of the Spirit now helps free us from the weight of having to follow the law of sin in order to avoid spiritual death and be right before God; instead we can experience life.

But… all that just gets us forgiven by God (which, don’t get me wrong, is no small thing). We’re still in Paul’s predicament from Romans 7: we still struggle with sin and failure, even as Christians. So, how can God be just and continue to treat us favorably while we still struggle to follow him?

Simple answer? Because of verse 4: Jesus paid the penalty for our sin, not just by removing the debt, but by giving us his righteousness to cover it. Martin Luther referred to this as “the great exchange”—the weight of our sin has been transferred to Jesus and the depth of Christ’s righteous has been attributed to us (“in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us”)

This is why just a few verses down in Romans 8:16-17, Paul can refer to us as “children of God” and “co-heirs with Christ”—because we have been given the righteousness of the son of God. The Father sees us with the righteousness of Jesus.

No other religion can make this claim—that there’s nothing you can do to make yourself right with God or experience ultimate peace and joy. You can’t earn it, and you don’t deserve, but God graciously gives it, uniting acceptance and judgment all in one merciful act by God on our behalf. The call of Christianity is not first, “Go and be.” It’s “look and live.”

The theological terms for what Paul has been describing in these verses are “justification” and “sanctification.” Justification is a legal idea that Paul spends time unpacking in Romans 3. It means to be “declared” righteous.

ILLUSTRATION: Courtroom

While justification is a legal ideal, sanctification is a progressive idea that refers to us increasingly being made more righteous. Being made more like Jesus.

ILLUSTRATION: Ted Lasso, in episode 1 he’s named the head coach of a soccer team (but he knows nothing about soccer or how to coach soccer). Over the course of the series, we get to watch him learn more about the game, fall more in love with the game, and improve as an actual soccer coach.

In our passage, verses 1-4a are detailing with our justification. The second half of verse 4 moving into the next several verses we’ll look at next time start to describe our sanctification: learning to “walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”

Application

So, why do these things matter? Outside of understanding that our justification is about being declared righteous and our sanctification is about being made more righteous, how does the meaning of these verses impact our day-to-day lives?

Two ways (and then we’re done):

1. Your sense of condemnation will follow your source of justification.

2. Your sense of pride will follow your source of righteousness.

Your sense of condemnation will follow your source of justification.

We naturally look at ourselves and our performance to feel justified (whether in relationship with God or with other people).

If you’re like me, when I feel like I’m performing well in my side of the relationship, then it’s easy to engage. But when I’m letting the person down, ironically that tempts me to let them down even more by disengaging and not facing them to own the issue.

ILLUSTRATION: similar to client interactions at work

It’s really easy for us to approach belief in God the same way. Maybe you’re unsure what you believe about God and Jesus, but because of your assumptions of how “good” you’d need to be and how much you’d have to change your behavior in life, you put off actually exploring the possibility of whether the God of the Bible is real. Because you believe you have to justify yourself before God, you’d rather try to avoid reading the Bible or having spiritual conversations than acknowledge or even explore if he exists.

But this is something those of us who claim to be Christians struggle with also:

ILLUSTRATION: read our Bible two days in a row and feel close to God; go a week (or multiple weeks) without reading our Bible and feel far from God).

Just like Paul in Romans 7, trying to perform well enough in front of a perfect, all righteous God is going to leave us with the same conclusion he had: “Wretched man that I am.”

But there’s another source for our justification, and we find it in the end of verse 1: “those who are in Christ Jesus.” Being in Christ refers to our union with Christ—our sin was buried with him in death and we’ve been raised with him to new life. Our justification as Christians doesn’t come from what we do or don’t do; it comes from what Jesus has done for us.

How does this help us?… Let’s say you get mad at your kids, and you raise your voice, and you snap at them in a way you didn’t want to. What do you feel right afterward? What do you do? There’s two different paths you can take:

On the first path, you immediately feel guilty: “How could I have yelled like that at my kid.” You don’t want to be that kind of parent. You want to love your children well and set a good example. So, you pull yourself together, sit your child down, and apologize to them.

This seems like a good ending. But, you’ve got 15 more years with them in your home. And the next time they frustrate you, you yell at them again. You feel guilty again. Hopefully, you apologize again. And day by day, week by week, month by month, you continue to have both successes and failures in raising your children, but you do everything you can to feel like you’ve been a good parent.

Then, one day, they get married and have kids of their own. You’re getting to watch your child parent your grandchild, and one day you see you adult son snap at his kid. How do you feel? What goes through your mind? If you’re looking inward for your own justification in life, suddenly you’ll begin questioning everything: Did I fail my children? Have I hurt them? How can I make this right? That’s an incredible burden to bear. An impossible burden. You’ll feel the condemnation of failing as a parent.

But what about the second path. You still have good days and bad days as a parent. You still get frustrated. You still make mistakes. You still have to apologize. But when you look to Christ for your justification and not your own accomplishments, two things happen:

1. You don’t just apologize for your mistakes and try harder; because Jesus has made you right with God even though you couldn’t earn it on your own, you can be honest enough with yourself that you can’t be the kind of parent you want to be on your own and need help (and the Bible is full of promises of God’s guidance and wisdom and strength for parents raising their children).

2. Your kids won’t see you as the ultimate hero (and that’s a good thing). Every small child grows up thinking their parents are so strong and capable, but then they start to see their shortcomings and the ways they fail. If you’re trying to justify yourself, then when your kids discover you’re not the perfect hero to save them, they will assume there isn’t one out there. But when you as their parent regularly point to your need for Jesus and his sufficiency even in your struggles, then your kids grow up believing there is a hero that will never let them down.

And our second point of application flows out of the first. Not only will your sense of condemnation follow your source of justification, but…

Your sense of pride will follow your source of righteousness.

If you’re trying to justify yourself as a good person before God and/or other people, then on the “good days”, you’ll start to lord your successes over others without even realizing it. Nobody like the smug, religious person. But the smug, religious person who turns his nose up at “the sinner” isn’t someone to hate; it’s someone to pity because they have become blind to their own need while creating a world that bows to their version of  moral performance.

Whether you consider yourself a Christian or not, looking at ourselves to feel good about ourselves is a recipe for disappointment and exhaustion: disappointment because no one can keep up their performance 24/7 and exhaustion because the cycle just leads you to try harder every time you fail (only to fail again and think you need to try even harder next time).

How can you be humble even when you’re successful? By seeing the reason for your success as something beyond just yourself. It’s the athlete that points to his coach and his team. It’s the actor that points to the cast and crew. And it’s the Christian that points to the ultimate victory of their Savior.

When we truly see God as both just and our justifier through our faith in the work of Jesus rather than our own work—when we see his performance as sufficient, so that we are free to do everything we can to love others as a neighbor, coworker, spouse, parent, and child without feeling crushed and condemned when we struggle—then we’ll look at the course of our lives with the same conclusion Paul gave in Romans 3:27:

Romans 3:27 ESV

²⁷ Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith.

Let’s pray.