Today our text is verses 1 through 4 of this great favorite of many Christians. If Romans is like a gold ring, chapter 8 is the jewel on the ring. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death.
For what the law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. There is a new theology that is being preached by some liberal missionaries and clergymen in various places in our world.
This theology called liberation theology is accepted by masses of people who are religious, aware of biblical terms, but ignorant of what the biblical meaning of them is. Liberation theology is a clever adaptation of biblical terms to Marxist teachings. Thus communist revolution is being promoted in the name of the church and a revolutionary Jesus. That liberation theology is neither liberation nor is it theology.
It is rather a cleverly disguised political philosophy and today it is being used by unfortunately liberal missionaries from North America to lay a foundation for communist revolution in Central and South America particularly. The Bible though does teach a different kind of liberation theology, a spiritual liberation theology. This liberation theology is an eternity changing liberation from the tyranny of sin. Let's review for just a moment where we have been in the book of Romans.
Chapters 1-3 talk about sin and the fact that righteousness is needed. Man is a sinner. Chapters 4-5 talk about salvation, that is, righteousness provided by God's grace through Christ's sacrifice on the cross and made available to us by faith. Then chapters 6, 7, and 8 talk about righteousness experienced or sanctification. That is, not only has God declared us to be righteous in his sight, but he has made it possible for us to know that righteousness on a day-by-day basis.
How do we know that righteousness in our day-by-day experience? Chapters 6 and 7 tell us that it is through our union with Jesus Christ. We now have a union with him. We have died to the law. We have died to sin. We are one with Christ. Because we are one with him, we can now experience the righteousness of God and live righteously. In chapter 8, he gives us a second reason why we can experience this righteousness of God. It is because of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
If you notice in chapter 7, the word spirit was found only once. That was in verse 6 referring to the Holy Spirit. Mostly the spirit was absent from chapter 7. But as we come to chapter 8, the Holy Spirit really is the key theme. In fact, the word spirit is found in chapter 8 21 times. So we come to a new emphasis. It is on the emphasis of the Holy Spirit. Chapter 8 answers the question, how can I live pleasing to God? There are two answers that are in the extreme to that question.
There are some people who say that we live pleasing to God through legalism. That is by keeping rules. Sometimes rules from the law of God and sometimes rules that are manmade and cultural. But they say if you keep these rules, you will please God. That's legalism. The other extreme is license. There are some people who say, well we have no rules. They throw everything out the window. They say now we have no rules at all. We have license to live the way we want to live as Christians.
But actually the secret as to how to please God, or maybe a better word would be the key as to how to please God, is found in a balance between the two. A balance that we might call liberty. Neither legalism nor license but liberty. That's really what chapter 8 teaches us. It teaches us that we have a freedom in Christ. Warren Wiersbe in his book Be Right has outlined this chapter as well as any person I've ever read. He says we are free from condemnation, verses 1-11.
Free from obligation, verses 12-17. That is free from obligation to the flesh. We are free from frustration, verses 18-30. And finally we are free from separation, verses 31-39. This theme of our liberty in Christ, our freedom, can be traced through this whole chapter. He begins with the text that we have this morning. God has provided for you and for me to know true biblical liberation. And it is that liberation theology that we want to examine.
There are five truths that we see regarding our liberation in Christ in the text today. I invite you to follow along with me on your copy of the outline. The first truth is the reality of our liberation. He says there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. He says there is therefore now. Therefore ties us in with what we have said before.
And I think it is especially significant because in verse 25 he concluded that chapter by saying, So that on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other with my flesh the law of sin. And you remember last week we talked about the struggle that we Christians have. And the more spiritual, the more mature we become, the more keen that struggle seems to us because we become more sensitive to sin.
And so as he concludes chapter 7, it is with the honest confession that with his mind he serves the law of God, but in his flesh and the members of his body there is another law at work, and that is the law of sin. Immediately after saying that, he goes on to say there is therefore now no condemnation. Isn't that great?
For just after he has honestly, transparently dealt with the principle of sin that is still active in him, he goes on to confess that though that is true, in God's sight there is no condemnation to those who are in Christ. Perhaps chapter 8 verse 1 is most directly linked back to chapter 7 verse 6. And I think that's probably the best way to understand the flow of thought here. You see chapter 7 verse 7 through 25 is sort of a parenthesis, as an illustration, as a drawing out of what he said.
It's a personal autobiography of Paul. If we link chapter 7 verse 6 with chapter 8 verse 1, it reads like this, but now we have been released from the law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter. There is therefore now no condemnation. What is it that pronounced condemnation? The law. And he says we have been freed from the law. We have been freed from that which bound us and therefore there is now no condemnation.
What does it mean that there is no condemnation? Well, it means that we are free from judgment. This is another way of defining that word justification that we saw earlier in the book. There we said that is God's legal declaration that we are righteous in His sight. It is a legal thing that God does for us when we trust Christ. That's justification. This is another way of saying it, there is no condemnation, no judgment. As it says in John chapter 3, he that believes on Him is not condemned.
But he that believes not is what? Condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. So when we believe on Christ, it is true of us from that point on through eternity, no condemnation. Now please notice he does not say here there is no failure. He does not say there is no weakness. He does not say there are no falling shorts. He does not say that there is no inconsistency. But what he does say is that there is no judgment for those who are in Christ.
And when he writes this, the apostle writes it emphatically, no, no condemnation. That's the first word that he uses in the Greek. When that first word is placed like that, it means that that is the emphasis. Paul is saying there is no sort of condemnation. In other words, our justification in Christ is total. It's perfect. W.H. Griffith Thomas said, therefore, rather, he said, grace is intended to keep us holy and to prevent us from lapsing into sin and ever needing justification again.
And so God's declaration that there is no condemnation is one that is good for our lifetime as well as for our eternity to come. There is therefore now no condemnation. That's the reality, folks, of our liberation. We are freed from condemnation. We are freed from judgment. But I want you to notice that the last part of the verse emphasizes the restriction of this liberation. It says that this is true for those who are in Christ Jesus.
This freedom from condemnation is only for those who are in Christ, who have this new identity. You may recall back in chapter 4 and in chapter 5, we learned that we had an identity in Adam and in sin by our birth into the world. We were in God's sight in Adam and therefore in sin. That was our identification. But when we trusted the Lord Jesus Christ, we were taken out of sin and Adam was placed into whom? Into Christ. Right. So that we have this new identity. A new union has been established.
Now he says that this freedom from condemnation is only for those who have done that. In other words, those who have never trusted Christ are still under condemnation. Again, I go back to John 3. He that believes not is condemned already. It's not that someday he's going to be condemned, but already he is under the wrath of God. Now this seems rather exclusive, doesn't it? And it's narrow. And in some circles it's very unpopular to say these kinds of things.
For there are people who say, well, I know sincere people in other religions. Surely God isn't going to send them to hell because they're sincere about what they believe. I'm reminded when I hear things like that of a cartoon strip called Peanuts that some of you are familiar with. Charlie Brown on one occasion was lamenting the fact that his ball team had lost 27 straight games.
And in the last of the frames he turns around and looks back at the empty field and he says, how can we lose when we're so sincere? But sincerity, you see, doesn't alter truth. It doesn't change facts. Sincerity is not the measure of truth. What is true is true. People can be sincerely wrong. There are those who say, well, all religions are working toward the same goal. People are just going in different paths.
Muhammad and Buddha and Krishna all claim to be sent from God and to show the way to him. And it's true they may have claimed that. That Jesus Christ stands out from them as being different because he not only claimed to be from God, but he claimed to be God himself. And he himself said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but by me. That's very narrow and exclusive. He says, I am the way, period.
Not I am one of the ways, not I am a better way, but he says I am the way. And essentially that's what the apostle is saying here. That this condemnation is for those who are in Christ Jesus. In whom is your faith? Is your faith in yourself? Do you think that somehow you will be able to pull it together? So that by the time you must stand before God and give account, surely God will find you acceptable? You say I'm very sincere in believing that.
I commend you then for your sincerity, but I must warn you of your error. I must warn you that that is a way which may seem right, but in fact will lead to death. We dare not even trust our own sincerity. We must trust in God's only revealed provision for salvation, His Son, Jesus Christ. When we trust Him, we become in Him, or united to Him, or identified with Him, so that there is therefore now no condemnation.
We can no more experience now the judgment, the wrath of God, than could Jesus Christ Himself. It is just as likely that Jesus Christ will go to hell for eternity than it is for a believer to go to hell. Because we have been identified with Him so that when God sees you, He sees you in His Son. And He says regarding you, no condemnation. That's the reality and the restriction. In verse 2 we have the rule. And here is the rule that makes verse 1 possible.
He says the law of the Spirit of Life has set you free from the law of sin and death. The word law here is not like a set of rules, but it's referring to a principle. It's a principle like there are laws of mathematics, or laws of chemistry, or physics. Those are principles. Those are governing principles that are dependable. Now He says here are a couple of laws or principles. On the one hand there is the principle of sin and of death.
This principle is the source and the result of condemnation. The source is sin and the result is death. It's where condemnation comes from. It is this controlling principle that is in all who are unsaved and regenerated. Every person outside of Jesus Christ is controlled by the principle of law, rather the principle of sin and of death. And even those of us who have trusted Christ still have that principle active in the members of our bodies, don't we? It doesn't control us.
It's not the sovereign anymore, but it's the survivor. Back in chapter 7 verse 23 He says, but I see a different law in the members of my body waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members. That's a Christian talking. Now whereas an unsaved person is completely dominated by and controlled by that law, that principle, those of us who are saved are still infected by it. It's still in the members of our bodies. That's the difference with us.
That's one principle, but the other one He says is the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus. I believe the word spirit here should be capitalized because it refers to the Holy Spirit. This is one of the names given to Him in the Bible. He is the spirit of life. He says here that this law is the principle of the spirit of life. In other words, it's made operational by Him. He's the one who works this law, this principle.
He says that it comes to us through Christ, for it's the spirit, it's the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus. So the Holy Spirit does it, but as an outworking of what Christ has done for us. He's not independent of Christ. Now this is called the spirit of life. That's what this principle is. It's life as opposed to death and sin. It is life in its fullness. And I think we can say that this life is Jesus Christ Himself. In Colossians 3 and 4 it says, and He is our life.
In other words, what the apostle is saying here is that whereas once we were controlled by, dominated by the principle of sin and of death, God has done a marvelous thing. He has caused that principle to be broken, to be overridden, so that there is a new principle that is at work in the life of the believer. And that is the principle of the spirit of life in Christ. God has given to us the very life of Jesus Himself. He says that this one law has set us free from the other law. Set free.
That word is in a particular tense in the Greek that means it happened once and for all. It's a point action. It's not something that progressively happens. He's talking about the one law overriding the other at one given moment of time. And that time of our freedom was the moment that we trusted Christ. This freedom that we have is found in chapter 6 verse 18 as being a freedom from sin. He says, there having been freed from sin.
We see it here in chapter 8 verse 2 as freedom from the law of sin and death. In chapter 8 verse 21, he says, the creation itself will also be set free from its slavery to corruption. And then it's used again in chapter 5 of Galatians in verse 13 where he says, for you were called to freedom, brethren. And so here is that freedom and how we got it. We have been freed from the law of sin and death by a higher law, the law of the spirit of life.
By the way, here in Galatians 5, the apostle says this in an interesting way. He says, for freedom you were called, brethren. And Paul there is basing that phrase upon something that took place in their society in that day. It was called manumission. What it refers to is that a slave's release in that day was sometimes effected through a legal fiction. In other words, the owner of the slave would bring him to that pagan temple and would there pay a price into the temple treasury.
A document was drawn up at that moment which contained the words, for freedom. What it meant was that a god now in that temple owned as of that moment the slave. And no one could ever buy him again because he was owned by a god. He was called a manumitted slave. It was the law of manumission. The document that was drawn up always contained those words, for freedom. Now Paul is drawing upon that picture here when he says that you and I have been called for freedom.
And he says that we have been purchased by God himself so that no one can ever lay claim to us again, to be slaves to sin or to death or anything else. We are now owned by God himself. We have been called for freedom. Can the law of gravity be broken? Is it possible to break the law of gravity and get away with it? Well, I would guess that most of us here today have done that. We have done that by riding on an airplane.
Now when I go to the airport, I never cease to be amazed that those machines get off the ground. Do you feel the same way as I do? Especially the large ones, the DC-10s, the 747s. And they almost seem to hang there in the air. Have you noticed that? They almost hover as they come in for landing. And their takeoffs are with such power and grace as they lift into the air. Every time they take off, they break the law of gravity. How is it that the law of gravity can be broken?
It's overridden by a higher law. And that is the law of aerodynamics. By using one law, another law is broken. And that is what the apostle is saying here. We were controlled and held down by the law of sin and death. When we trusted Christ, a new law came into effect. The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus. And that law has set us free from the other law so that we're not bound by it anymore. That's the rule that makes us free in Christ.
And now in verse 3, he gives us the reason why this law works. And again, you'll notice he uses the word law. And this time he refers to the Mosaic law. That is the law of God. For he says, what the law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did. The first thing he does is to remind us again of what the law could not do. He says the law could not produce righteousness in us. Now why was that? The law was righteous. Well, the answer is that man's nature is sinful.
His flesh is sinful and therefore that was the weakness. The law could show us the standard. The law could tell us what we ought to be, but the law could not give us a new heart, a new spirit, a new nature. And that was the only way deliverance could come. So he says what the law could not do, because of the weakness in man's flesh, God did. What does he mean? God did, in other words, provide righteousness. How did he do that? He tells us what God's work was.
He says first of all he sent his own Son. There we have the deity of Christ. He sent his only Son. In other places, some of the Gospel writers use the word begotten Son. That doesn't mean that God created him. It is a word that describes the uniqueness of Jesus Christ. This is a strong affirmation of the deity of Christ. When it mentions the Son, it does not mean that somehow he is less than the Father, for he is equal with the Father in essence.
But for the purpose of redemption, the second person of the Godhead identifies himself as the Son, so that we could see that there is Father and Son, and that God himself within the mystery of his triunity is coming into the world. And that's what he says. He says he sent his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh. There we have the incarnation. And notice how delicately he phrases it.
He does not say in the likeness of flesh, because that would mean that he was not in a real body, and that would be heresy. Notice he says that he came in sinful flesh, because that would mean he was a sinner, and that too would be a heresy. And both of those heresies have been fought in church history. But he carefully phrases it just as he does in Philippians 2, in the likeness of sinful flesh. In other words, he came in a literal, corporal, real body, but it was without sin.
That was the incarnation. So we have his deity, we have the incarnation. And then he says, as an offering for sin. And there we have propitiation. That was the word we saw back in chapter 3 that means satisfaction. God's holiness was offended by man's sin. God provided himself satisfaction for that offense. That's propitiation. He came as an offering for sin, and it says by that he condemned sin in the flesh. And there we have our liberation. It says he punished sin.
And when it says sin in the flesh, it's talking about the flesh of Jesus Christ. In other words, he was in the flesh, and in him sin was condemned. As Peter says in 1 Peter chapter 2, who his own self bore our sins, in his own body, on the tree. In other words, it was he who was in the flesh, and that price for sin, that punishment for sin was placed upon him. So we have a lot of truth there in verse 3. It's the reason that this law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus can make us free.
It's because he as God came down as a man sinless, and offered himself for sin, and dealt thoroughly with sin. He crushed it. He bore the punishment for it in his own body, and thus the law of God is satisfied. And in verse 4 we see the result of all of this. Why have we been set free? So that we can be free from hell as part of it, but there's much more than that. In verse 4 he says this has happened in order that the requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us.
In other words, so that the righteousness that God required in the law could be fulfilled in our lives. There are some people who see salvation only as a fire escape from hell. But my friend, God's real purpose in salvation is that we might be like his son. It's so that we might be sanctified. A legitimate word, right? A Bible word. That we might be made holy. That is God's will. First Thessalonians 4, 4. For this is the will of God, even your what? Does anybody know? Sanctification.
That you be made like Jesus Christ. And so God has not tossed out the righteousness of the law and discarded it. Rather he has now made it possible for it to be realized in the life of the Christian. He says that that requirement might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. That same phrase is found in the King James Version, back in verse 1. The best scholarship that we have today shows that that phrase does not belong in verse 1.
The best manuscripts do not have it there. It belongs in verse 4, where it is. What does it mean there? Those who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. Well there are those that say that that's referring to a class of Christians. In other words, it's those Christians who walk according to the Spirit and not according to their flesh. But I don't believe that's the way Paul means it in this verse.
In Galatians, he does use the word walk in the Spirit, but there in chapter 5 it's a different word walk than it is here in verse 4 of chapter 8 of Romans. What is he talking about here? Well he's trying to define for us what a Christian, a real Christian, is. He says a real Christian is one who does not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. Now he's going to follow up more on that in the next few verses that we'll look at next week.
But he's saying that all who are truly saved do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. That is the general tenor of their life. The direction of their life is one of following the Spirit and not the dictates of the sinful nature. I've asked some people on occasion, are you a Christian? Why sure I'm a Christian. Well how do you know you're a Christian?
Well back in 1961 I went forward in the service and I prayed and I haven't lived much like a Christian in the last 22 years, but back then I went forward in church and made a decision. When a person answers me that way, I always wonder in my heart, did that person really trust Christ? You know why? Because when a person is genuinely saved there's a new direction in his life.
Now he doesn't say here that a Christian can't sin because Christians can sin, we've talked about that last week, chapter 7 makes it so clear there's a struggle with sin. But what he's saying is that a genuine Christian does not follow the flesh as the direction of his life, rather he follows the Spirit. You take David for an example. David committed some grievous sins, sins that he paid for dearly in his own family, in his own life.
But David was a man after God's own heart because the general direction, the flavor of his life was one that was seeking after God, following him, though there were times of sad and tragic stumbling. That's a Christian. That's a Christian.
As you look at the direction of your life this week, this year, the last five years, can you honestly say that since that time that you prayed the prayer or went forward or whatever you did, that there's been a new direction, that you walk now after the Spirit and not after the flesh, although there are times that you do sin and the flesh dominates you and you're brought into bondage to sin for that moment as we talked last week, you
are guilty and you confess it to the Lord and you go on walking after the Lord? You know, it concerns me that in our day we have a lot of people who come to church and who have followed what is called easy believism, who have been challenged to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ but who have never repented of sin and therefore their faith is only superficial and not genuine. And who although they do good things in the name of Christ will someday hear Jesus say, why do you call me Lord, Lord?
You've not done the things that I said. What a tragedy that would be for a person to be a member of an evangelical church, to have known right theology and had good head knowledge of it all and yet go to hell because he's not repented in his heart of sin and turned genuinely and deeply and truly to Jesus Christ. The evidence that one has done that, has trusted Christ is that his direction of life is walking after the Spirit of God.
I remember hearing a story about a bomber in World War II that took off from North Africa, went across the Mediterranean Sea, dropped its load on Italy and made its return flight. However, somehow on the return flight because perhaps of shrapnel the plane's instruments were in error. The crew trusted the instruments. They were taught to do that and they sincerely believed that those instruments were guiding them back to their base in Libya.
But in fact the instruments were wrong on that cloudy, dark night and they crashed and all perished out in the desert. What was the problem? It was the direction of their life. Oh, they were sincere. They believed what they knew in their instruments but they were sincerely wrong. What is the direction of your life, my friend? I'm not asking you how sincere you are but what's the direction of your life?
As you're able to get God's accurate instrument out and test the direction you've been heading in, are you heading in the right direction? Are you walking after the Spirit? If so, then you have experienced true liberation. There's been a new law come into your life and you've been set free from the law of sin and of death because of what Jesus Christ has done. I hope that's been your experience and you're walking after the Spirit.
Heavenly Father, thank you for this truth today, this true liberation theology. We thank you that in Jesus Christ there is no condemnation. Now I would pray that that would be true of every one of us today, but lest there be some friend here who is deceived, however sincere, I pray that if there be one of us who is not in Christ, who may be in religion and into good works but not into Christ, today you would show that one the direction of his life.
May there be repentance, a turning, and a trusting in Christ. Father, for those of us who live in this freedom, this liberation, may we be exhibiting the righteousness of the law. May the likeness of the Lord Jesus Christ be seen in our thoughts, in our words, in our motives, in our deeds. We pray this in his name. Amen.