Or, Sin Be Damned in Christ
Scripture: Romans 8:1-4
Date: October 9, 2022
Speaker: Sean Higgins
Do you exalt more in any other verse in Romans than 8:1? Maybe 5:1 comes close. But even there, as good as it is, it doesn’t lift up from as low down as the last half of chapter 7. Wretched man! Nothing good in me dwells! There is a law of isn that keeps pulling me back to sin when I know it’s no good. Now, though, no condemnation!
This is what our justification means. The peace in it is what 5:1 brings to bear. We were sinners, no righteousness of our own, even self-righteousness dragging us down. But the Father accounts believers righteous with the righteousness of Christ, He receives Christ as a perfect and complete substitute for us.
We didn’t need deliverance from a guilty verdict in chapter 7 as much as we need deliverance from the strangle sin still has on us when we look at the law. Even as believers we are tempted to look at the law as our judge, but the law itself cannot release us from sin’s hold. Sin will take the good law and ruin us. You were just trying to do good, and let the law show the way, and the law got all judgy about how imperfect you are and unworthy you are and even gave you some ideas about how to break it.
Even as a Christian it feels condemning. Especially as a Christian, you care. Something happened and your eyes were opened to the evil of sin and how much sin is in you. The law makes the standard clear. But it is as hard as a rebar ruler, and you have been measured and found wanting.
Chapter 8 opens as an explanation, not just as a new subject. (In the original manuscript without such divisions we might assume that the reader didn’t even take a breath.) Without saying that anyone is wrong to be in 7:13-25, we can say that 7:13-25 is not the end. Thank God. It’s normal, but it’s not all there is. We do keep getting punched in the mouth by our own sin, but we are in the process, as those under grace, of making progress toward Christlikeness. It’s gospel, it’s supernatural, it’s all in Christ from the Father through the Holy Spirit. We can expect righteous fruit because of Trinitarian deliverance.
Important: there are no commands in chapter 8, not in the beginning middle or end. God’s saves sinners. God sanctifies the saved, and God loves us and won’t be done until He’s glorified all His people.
Would you rather have verse 1 or verse 39? The chapter division after verse 39 makes sense; a particular argument develops in chapters 9-11. But 7:25 has believers begging for more. Maybe you didn’t appreciate the week’s break between sermons. Well let’s wait no more. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
Condemnation is the antonym of justification. It could also be understood as damnation, the way Tyndale translated it, a derivative from the Latin translation: damnationis. It’s the judicial doom pronounced on the guilty: sinner, be damned.
Even with the inconsistent wants and outcomes, wrong doing and not-righteous doing, even with the bright light of the law showing all the sin, even with all that there is PEACE between us and God because we are un-married to the law.
When we lived with the law, so to speak, it kept following us around and knit-picking at everything we did wrong. We were the dripping faucet, but the law kept commenting after every drop, counted every drop, and told us the cost of the whole collection. But we died to the law’s surveillance and were united to Christ. We are in Christ Jesus . He not only doesn’t condemn us, though He is perfect, He took on our condemnation. He both fulfilled the law and destroyed its damning power.
Those who are not in Christ are outside His protection. Whether they care or not, all the standards of the law will be upheld and they will face the Judge and judgment. Get to Christ!
But, believer, even now, in your embattled condition, wanting to do good and fighting sin, you stand before God uncondemned. The declaration for Christians colors the conflict. Sin is not more powerful than Christ, and the law is not your master. Your sin has been damned, you are not.
How do we know that there is no condemnation? Here’s the reason.
We see in Paul’s follow up that our no-condemnation status belongs with freedom from the CONTROL of sin, not just its consequences. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.
The law of sin is what we’ve been confronting (7:21, 25). That principle is frustrating and messes with us, but it is no longer dominant.
The dominant rule for the Christian is not the Mosaic Law (or Ten Commandments); it is not letters but personal, not two-dimensional but supernatural: The law of the Spirit of life . The Holy Spirit is referred to twenty times in chapter 8 (only four times before now in the epistle). The Holy Spirit makes all the difference between flesh and faith, between works and fruit, between death and life. The “Spirit is life” (verses 6 and 10). The “Spirit gives life” (2 Corinthians 3:6). The Spirit unites us to Christ; note in Christ again in verse 2. The Spirit is the operating principle.
He sets us free, not to license but to an obedience that is fruit. The law legislates, the Spirit liberates.
Another For , another reason. How do we know that we’re free? Here’s how.
This is as good a place to rehearse the standard three uses of the law as recognized in Scripture: 1) a mirror to show sin in our hearts, 2) a restraint on sin in society, and 3) a guide to what is good for those in Christ. The third use only works for the regenerate, for the Spirit-filled.
The law doesn’t save, forgive, justify, or sanctify (almost the entire epistle to the Galatians is written to knock down this wrong-hold. “Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh”? 3:3). The law has no more power than a map, it makes no one take a step, it offers no hand to those stuck in a ditch, it will push you into the slough of despond if you’re not careful. As Paul’s been saying, the law is fine in its place (if one uses it lawfully). But fallen man’s flesh weakens the law’s work.
God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. Don’t let caricatures fill your mind of a harsh Father, demanding sacrifices and making threats in the OT as often portrayed. God, and Father as distinguished in person from the Son, sends. The Father initiates the saving.
The Son came in the likeness of sinful flesh , a careful distinction. Jesus came in flesh, not “likeness of flesh,” but His was only “like sinful flesh.” Full and real flesh, empty of sin. The Son came to deal with sin, He condemned sin in the flesh . In His death He damned sin.
In Christ we are not damned, sin is damned in Christ, and there is a result in verse 4 that puts legs on our justification.
This is the effect of the sentence and the aim of sanctification. When we start in Christ then we see the good that He will work in us. 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.
By the Spirit we are walking toward the life the law describes. The form of the sentence shows what’s happening to us; the subject is the requirement , it is fulfilled in us, not we accomplishing the fulfilling.
This cannot happen on our own, in our own power. The next paragraph leaves no doubt that the flesh is incapable, the flesh is hostile. We walk in the Spirit’s energy, step by ordinary step.
Here is the right order: 1) in Christ 2) according to the Spirit 3) toward what the law wants. But we as Christians are continually tempted to look to the law first. Look to Christ first.
For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. (John 1:16–17 ESV)
This Not Damned status for those in Christ is promoted every week in our Lord’s Day liturgy; believers are united to Christ for blessing and fruit. It’s not a perpetual questioning of your non-condemned status, but urging you to live according to it. Such good news reforms generations.
”From this buoyant humility, this farewell to the self with all its good resolutions, anxiety, scruples, and motive-scratchings, all the Protestant doctrines originally sprang.” C. S. Lewis on the 16th Century Reformation
Hate your damned sin. When you sin you are letting the damned sin loose, you are unleashing hell. “If you are led by the Spirit you are not under law” (Galatians 5:18) and you are ready to walk in righteousness.
There is no damnation for those in Christ Jesus.
I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, to keep the commandments without spot or blame until the manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Timothy 6:13-14), and to keep the commandments by walking in the Spirit because your sin has been damned in Christ.
Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen. (Jude 24–25, ESV)