Supernatural Living for Natural People

The Life-giving message of Romans 8

Ray Ortlund

• Publisher: Christian Focus Publication
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781781911815

One

No Condemnation!

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

Two great armies clash on the battlefield of life – the people of God and the sins that would defeat them. God’s people do not fight as well as they should. Sometimes they even yield to their enemy. But even as the battle rages, well before the promised victory, the Commander of God’s army orders a banner to be raised right in the middle of his troops for all to see. The banner reads, ‘No condemnation now for those in Christ Jesus!’ And that declaration has a remarkable effect upon the people of God. They do not use that assurance as an excuse to defect to the other side. They rejoice in the certainty of their final triumph and are energized to fight on.

Romans 8:1 raises that banner. We look up at it with joy, and it stiffens our resolve not to quit. This verse is like a banner because, in Paul’s Greek text, it has no verb. Our English Bible says, ‘There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.’ But Paul’s text is simpler: ‘Therefore now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus!’ It is a plain and forceful cry. No condemnation for sinning, struggling Christians who yearn to be rescued from their Romans 7 frustration and failure! The only thing that will strengthen you to keep fighting is God’s strong assurance of grace.

Romans 8 is one of the richest chapters of the Bible. But what is Paul aiming to accomplish here? What question is he answering? The question driving Romans 8 is this: What can God do for sinners like us, fighting but too often failing? We want to live for the Lord, but every day we betray him. Our hearts cry out with Paul, ‘Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?’ (Rom. 7:24). So what does God provide for Christians with real problems? Does God have something that can outperform the severe, but ineffective, threats of his law?

Paul has already whispered God’s answer to our heartcry earlier in his letter to the Romans: Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more (5:20). We are not under law but under grace (6:14). We now serve God not in the oldness of the letter but in the newness of the Spirit (7:6). And Paul has just shouted for joy, ‘Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!’ (7:25). But how does that actually work out in our lives? What does the gospel have to say to us in the midst of the battle, before the final victory is won, as we struggle and fail – and then fail again?

The key word in Romans 8 is Spirit. In chapters 1-7, the word Spirit appears only five times. In chapters 9-16 Spirit occurs eight times. But here in chapter 8 the word Spirit suddenly bursts onto the scene 21 times – usually referring to the Holy Spirit of God – more often than in any other chapter of the entire New Testament.¹

So God’s provision for weak Christians is the Holy Spirit. We do need to get tough on our sinful impulses. But our own self-monitoring cannot actually change us. God’s transforming provision for sinning Christians is the sin-expelling Holy Spirit. The reason grace succeeds where law fails is that, while law is empowered by our own good intentions, grace is empowered by the Holy Spirit.

We need a fresh rediscovery of the Holy Spirit in our lives and in our churches today. I am thankful for the honesty of John Stott:

The best way to begin is to stress the importance of our subject by confessing our great need of the power of the Holy Spirit today. We are ashamed of the general worldliness of the church and disturbed by its weakness, its steadily diminishing influence on the country as a whole. Moreover, many of us are oppressed by our own personal failures in Christian life and Christian ministry. We are conscious that we fall short both of the experience of the early church and of the plain promises of God in his Word. We are thankful indeed for what God has done and is doing, and we do not want to denigrate his grace by minimizing it. But we hunger and thirst for more. We long for ‘revival,’ an altogether supernatural visitation of the Holy Spirit in the church, and meanwhile for a deeper, richer, fuller experience of the Holy Spirit in our own lives.²

We do not need more frightening punishments and more withering scoldings. We need the all-sufficiency of Jesus applied in rich measure to our deepest points of personal need. And that is what the Holy Spirit does. He internalizes the triumphs of Christ crucified within the depths of the human being, so that our inclinations start changing from evil to good. The law cannot do that. The law tells us to pump harder, but the Holy Spirit makes springs of living water flow from within. The law tells us to pedal faster, but the Holy Spirit fills our sails. And that is the power of real holiness.

But Paul does not begin Romans chapter 8 with the ministries of the Spirit. After the anguish of chapter 7, Paul first reassures us of our bedrock confidence before God: our union with Christ. Verse 1 declares, ‘There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.’ If God has drawn you to himself, then he has put you ‘in Christ Jesus’. We have been ‘united with him in a death like his,’ and ‘we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his’ (Rom. 6:5). Jesus used a metaphor to convey the vital intimacy of our union with him: ‘I am the vine, you are the branches’ (John 15:5). We can see how striking this reality is from Philippians 1:1, where Paul addresses his letter ‘to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi’ (nasb). Right now I am in Augusta, Georgia. You may be in Los Angeles or in Edinburgh or in Johannesburg. But far more, you and I are also in Christ Jesus.

Think of it: ‘in Christ Jesus.’ Could there be a simpler way to articulate our relationship with the Lord than the word in? But the meaning is profound. Among other things, our union with Christ means that his righteousness has been credited to us, in God’s sight (Rom. 3:22; 4:3, 23-24). And that is why there is ‘no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.’

God has done this, we did not. And it changes everything. It means that we are not holding on to Christ as much as he is holding on to us. It means that God has done something for us larger than our own change of allegiance to him. He has included us in all that the death and resurrection of Jesus are worth. So when we prove again that we are sinners, as we too often do, we may also announce to ourselves that we are also in Christ Jesus, as liable to condemnation as he is.³

God wants us to revel in our union with his Son. Martyn Lloyd-Jones counsels us in how to take advantage of this triumph of grace:

If you have got hold of this idea you will have discovered the most glorious truth you will ever know in your life. Most Christian people are miserable, most Christian people fail, and fall into sin, because they are depressed, because they allow the devil to depress them. ‘Ah,’ they say, ‘I have sinned, so how can I make these great statements?’ Have you never heard of the word ‘faith’? This verse is the answer of faith to all our troubles; this is what God tells us about ourselves; and He puts it in this absolute, complete, certain manner.⁴

Should we not declare to ourselves what God so clearly declares to us here in Romans 8:1? Thirty years ago, as a college student, when I was wrestling with my own mediocrity, I wrote out the following on a piece of note-paper, which I have before me right now:

I’m so full of myself.

I’m so frustrated.

I’m so defeated.

I’m so discouraged.

I’m so sad.

BUT

Christ is SUFFICIENT.

Christ is VICTORIOUS.

Christ is SOVEREIGN.

Christ is CAPABLE.

Christ is LOVING.

AND

I’m FORGIVEN.

So PRESS ON! AND DON’T LOOK BACK!!!

Simply put, but isn’t that the foundation we all stand on? Isn’t that consistent with the plain absoluteness of Paul’s declaration here? What a contrast with the tortuous self-analysis of Romans 7! Only an unambiguous proclamation like this has the power to release the human conscience into freedom to live joyfully for God.

Interestingly, some manuscripts of the Greek New Testament add something to the end of the verse, to qualify it. The Authorized (or King James) Version translates these manuscripts: ‘There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.’ As the Greek New Testament was hand-copied in the course of the early Christian centuries, some scribe could not allow verse 1 to stand in its unqualified simplicity. So he took the last phrase of verse 4 and repeated it here at the end of verse 1, to soften the force of the verse: ‘Sure, there’s no condemnation for those in Christ – as long as they’re walking in the Spirit!’ But this change is more than a corruption of the text. It is a corruption of the gospel. After all, when are we walking deeply enough and consistently enough in the Spirit, to escape condemnation? Paul’s whole point in this verse is to speak peace into the storm of our souls, calming our inner turmoil so painfully described in chapter 7. So who may allow himself to breathe in the gospel’s atmosphere of gracious acceptance? ‘Those who are in Christ Jesus’ – period. You may or may not be walking in the Spirit at any given moment. But there is no condemnation for you, none at all⁵ – not because your behavior is so Christian but because your Savior is Christ. And this is true for you right now (‘There is therefore now ...’). Not five years from now, when you hope to be a better Christian, but right now, as you are, Jesus Christ is your absolute Savior.

Whatever the world may say, the Bible reveals that you and I are not isolated, autonomous, completely self-determining individuals. We are involved in vast and ancient solidarities – either with Adam or with Christ (Rom. 5:12-21). Our guilt is more than personal. We inherited guilt from our forefather Adam!⁶ But in God’s great love for us, he has removed us from our natural identification with Adam, cancelled our Adamic guilt, and joined us supernaturally to Christ Jesus so that we inherit his righteousness.

If you are in Christ, then all that he can do for a defeated failure is now yours. You are not going to hell any more! This brief life is all the hell you will ever know. You will never again hear God’s holy law thundering its curses against you. The atoning work of Christ on your behalf is complete, and you cannot add anything to enhance his triumph (John 19:30). So never qualify the gospel with well-meaning but unscriptural add-on phrases, the way that ancient scribe did with verse 1. Have some respect for what Jesus accomplished at his cross. Let your heart find rest in the wonder of Jesus Christ: ‘God made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in him’ (2 Cor. 5:21 nasb). Let it sink in: at his cross, Jesus took all our sins on himself as if they were his own, so that now God gives us the righteousness of Jesus as our own. Our holy Lord exchanged places with us sinners. He put us in his place of approval, he put himself in our place of condemnation, and God accepts that exchange. Your only part is to open your heart and receive the finished cross-work of Christ. When you do, you are justified before God. You are not just brought up from minus to zero, to a position of neutrality. You are declared positively righteous in God’s assessment of you, as righteous as Jesus himself. And that is why you are released from condemnation and enter into peace with God (Rom. 5:1).

This miracle of God’s love, which the Bible calls justification, not only secures us in his favor forever. It also puts into the hand of every Christian warrior a strong weapon against moral despair in the warfare of everyday temptation. The gospel is like this. God approaches you and says, ‘I have here a credit card. It is the credit card of justification. It accesses the infinite resources of the merit of Christ. If you take it, you can charge all your moral debts to this card. There is no limit on this card. It will give you a new credit rating in my data base. And you can carry this card with you at all times. Whenever you sin, you can charge it to Jesus. So I will never declare you bankrupt. How about it? Will you accept the card?’ And you and I have believed God’s offer and stretched out our empty hands to receive his gift. So now, when we sin, we know what to do. We take out the card and, by faith, let Jesus pay for it and put us back into ‘the black’ with God.

Obviously, we could abuse the credit card. We could hear God’s offer and respond, ‘Think of the possibilities! I can go on a spending spree of sin, with no consequences!’ That, of course, is hypocrisy. The credit card is only for people of faith. And faith hungers and thirsts for righteousness (Matt. 5:6). That is the only true incentive for accepting the credit card of justification. Justification is for sinners whose hearts are longing to be rid of their sin. And for them, it really is as free and as wonderful as that credit card.

Verse one does not say, ‘There are no sins, there are no accusations, there are no valid complaints, there are no disciplines.’ A Christian is not above correction. A Christian is not always right. But a Christian is never condemned under the judgment of God. The gospel does not deny the enslaving grip of sin (‘the law of sin and death,’ verse 2), but the gospel does deny the damning authority of sin. When you affirm your new identity in Christ, you are not playing a pretend game. You are not covering over your problems. But you are seeing yourself and your problems in a new connection – in relation to all that Jesus is worth to you, with his blood cleansing you and his promises securing your future. In fact, your union with Christ says more about you in the sight of God than your own habits and mood swings and weaknesses (and strengths!) say about you. The way God sees it, your real moral guilt died at the cross. So if you are in Christ, then the guilt of all your sins – past, present and future – is already in your past. It is a settled matter in the sight of God even now. You may need to make some apologies to people you have offended. You may need to confess sins and repair damage. But even as you go about doing those things, you go with the smile of God to encourage you along. You can even put your own name right here in the Bible: ‘There is therefore now no condemnation for ____________________, who is in Christ Jesus.’

Now, if you have God’s approval in Christ, can it be wrong to relish a sense of his approval? Do not think, ‘If I want to be an earnest Christian, I can’t allow myself to enjoy the smile of God.’ Do not take yourself that seriously. Do not trust in yourself at all. Self-reproach does not bind you to godliness; confidence in Christ does. Trust him as your all-sufficient Savior. Romans 8:1 is announcing to you with unqualified clarity the absoluteness of your acceptance in Christ. God not only accepts you, he wants you to know that he accepts you, because you will never see liberating breakthroughs to new levels of personal holiness except in the reassuring atmosphere of grace.

Living under condemnation actually strengthens sin. How? Given that the demands of God’s holy law are unendurable for weak sinners like us, sinning then becomes an outlet, an attractive escape, a way of easing the pressure. But here is our only remedy: ‘Spiritual health never comes from belittling sin, but from a willingness to bathe its filthy entirety in the compassion of God.’⁷ Will you bathe your filthy entirety in the compassion of God? He longs for you to. At what point will you allow yourself to let go of your self-hatred and rejoice in the all-sufficiency of Christ? Two things are certain about you today. One, your sins will run up a debt with God, more than you know. Two, God will cover for you. Why? Because the value of the crucified One has been applied to your account. And if God has actually done this, doesn’t it stand to reason that he wants you to feel loved and provided for? If you cannot ‘glorify and enjoy God’ through Christ, how can you fulfill your ‘chief end’?⁸

But union with our Lord not only saves us from God’s wrath and restores us to his favor. It also opens up to us a new, hopeful arrangement for living: ‘For the law of the Spirit of life has set me free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death’ (v. 2). God has structured for us a new relationship with him, in which every provision for a weak sinner is already built in and it will take nothing less than eternity in heaven to prove how vast its potentialities really are.

We cannot overrate the importance of Romans 8:2 for understanding authentic Christianity. What is Paul saying here? He is only restating what the Bible says many times elsewhere. Jeremiah and Ezekiel, for example, prophe...

Table of contents

• Testimonials
• Title
• Indicia
• Contents
• Dedication
• Preface
• Romans 8
• 1. No Condemnation!
• 2. Righteousness Fulfilled in Us
• 3. The Spiritual Mentality
• 4. Indwelt by the Spirit
• 5. Cut It Away!
• 6. Assurance
• 7. Suffering and Glory
• 8. The Creation Set Free
• 9. Groaning
• 10. Too Weak to Pray
• 11. All Things for Good?
• 12. The Unbroken Chain
• 13. Love Unending
• Christian Focus