We’re still working on the Roman Road to Salvation and finding that the road is in pretty poor shape. Let’s keep patching things up!
Romans 8:1 famously declares, “There is no condemnation for those who are in Jesus the Messiah.” However, most evangelicals don’t seem to have any grasp of what Paul writes next. Perhaps they ignore this part of scripture. Or just assume that Paul must be saying what they think he should be saying. They’re certain that there’s no condemnation because Jesus died on the cross, your sins are forgiven & your future in heaven is assured. All you need to do is put your faith in Jesus and make sure you don’t rely on your own conduct.
Let’s instead listen to Paul himself. There’s no condemnation because “the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.” What in the world does Paul mean by that?
Well, we’ve already noted that when Paul talks about “the law,” he always means the Torah, the covenant law given to Israel.
One of the key insights to understanding Paul is to recognize that “works of the law,” Israel and “the flesh” all go together as a package deal. If you try to pull these things apart, you’ll get yourself into an exegetical and theological mess. When Paul writes about the law, he’s always referring to the Torah. the covenant law given to “Israel according to the flesh.” “Israel according to the flesh” denotes ethnic Israel, the descendants of Jacob. But it also means that Israel was “fleshly” – hard-hearted, rebellious, sinful and therefore doomed to die.
Paul spends all of Romans 7 explaining the plight of fleshly Israel living under the Torah. Remember, there’s nothing wrong with the Torah. Paul cheerfully declares that the law is “holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous, and good.” (Romans 7:12) He earlier described the Torah as “the embodiment of knowledge and truth.” (Romans 2:20)
Many Christians find it hard to believe that Paul spoke of the law in such exalted terms. But it makes perfect sense. Like all Jews, Paul knew that the Torah commanded Israel to love God with all her heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to love their neighbor as themselves. It required proper worship of the one true God alone and obedience to his commands.
The Torah held out the promise of life. In Leviticus 18:5, God says, “Keep my decrees and laws, for the man who obeys them will live by them.” In Deuteronomy 30:19 God proclaims, “This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the LORD your God, listen to his voice, hold fast to him. For the LORD is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”
But what happens when Israel in the flesh is bound to God’s holy law? The people of Israel were just like the rest of humanity: stiff-necked, obstinate, rebellious, sinful. Giving them the Torah (in one sense) just made matters worse. As is often observed, the law is like a magnifying glass or a searchlight. The Torah shone the bright light of God’s truth upon the dark thoughts and deeds of Israel. The Torah fully exposed the sin of Israel, and therefore made Israel’s condemnation all the more certain. The more Israel embraced the covenant law, the more certain her death sentence became. This dynamic is precisely what Paul means when he talks about “the law of sin and death.”
So what’s God’s solution to this problem? “Through Jesus the Messiah, the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.” Over the next few verses, Paul will go on to explain exactly what he has in mind when he pens the mysterious little phrase “the law of the Spirit of life.” Let’s listen to what he has to say.
“For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, to be a sin-offering. And so God condemned sin in the flesh, so that the righteous verdict of the law might be fulfilled in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”
Romans 8:3-4 is one of the most important passages for understanding Paul’s mind. He begins by talking about “what the law was powerless to do.” From our discussion above, we know that the ultimate goal of the law was to give life. God deeply desires to bless humans with joyful, abundant, prosperous life. Such life only comes about when humans worship and serve the creator God. But even though the law held out the promise of life, it didn’t have the power to produce the obedience necessary to achieve the life it promised. Israel in the flesh could recognize what was right, but they didn’t have power to do what was right. (This is the whole point of Romans 7:14-20)
What then was the remedy? First, sin must be condemned. The God of justice must condemn wickedness and vindicate righteousness. This was accomplished by Jesus’ sacrificial death upon the cross. Sin was drawn into the flesh of King Jesus, so that it might be condemned there, and not in his people. This first element fits quite comfortably within the typical evangelical understanding of this passage. Jesus took upon himself the condemnation that was warranted by our wickedness. Instead of facing condemnation, we receive forgiveness and right standing before God.
All that is true, although the way Paul describes this “righteous verdict” is often misunderstood. The NIV translates this phrase as “the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us.” But the Greek word translated “righteous requirements” is dikaioma. Dikaioma is singular, not plural! It’s the opposite of “condemnation.” (Greek katakrima) Paul is not suggesting that we’ve been credited with keeping all the decrees of the Torah. His point is that the ultimate goal of the law – to give life! – is accomplished who are loyal to Jesus the Messiah.
This is a crucial point. Many Christians have an understanding of salvation which hinges on the Torah. In this scheme, Jesus lived in perfect obedience to the law. His law-keeping is then credited, or imputed, to his followers through faith.
But there are fatal problems with this viewpoint. Especially problematic is that Paul never says anything like this. Equally as important, such an understanding gives the Torah a supreme importance that it does not deserve. It makes the law the ultimate and eternal standard – the standard to which even Jesus was subject. Such a thought is completely foreign to Paul. (and Jesus for that matter)
Paul isn’t claiming that Jesus obeyed the law and then gives us credit for his law-keeping. Rather, Paul focuses on the fact that the goal of the law (to give life) is fulfilled in Jesus’ people. Instead of condemnation (katakrima) and death, we receive vindication (dikaioma) and life.
But how does this “righteous verdict,” this vindication leading to life come about? What Paul says next flies in the face of much evangelical thought. Paul is carefully laying out why we’ve been freed from “the law of sin and death.” We’ve already noted the first step: sin must be condemned, thereby fulfilling the requirements of God’s justice. We can infer that this results in our forgiveness, even though Paul doesn’t explicitly say that at this point.
For most evangelicals, this is the end of the matter. Jesus’ sacrificial death accomplishes our forgiveness through faith apart from any behavior on our part. But Paul has something quite different in mind: “…the righteous verdict of the law might be fulfilled in us, who live, not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.”
Here’s the second element in Paul’s remedy. Forgiveness isn’t enough to make human beings into the creatures God made them to be. What they need is a power source, so that they can live in the way that honors God. The law pointed in the right direction, but it didn’t have the power to achieve this goal. God has now provided the way forward, through the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit enables Christians to live in a way that is pleasing to God. It transforms our thoughts, our words and our behavior. The Spirit brings about the complete rehabilitation of the human race. And the ultimate destination of the Spirit-filled person is eternal life, salvation itself.
So why then does Paul refer to this as “the law of the Spirit of life”? Why didn’t he just say, “the power of the Holy Spirit gives me new life”?
Prior to his encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus, Saul of Tarsus regarded the Torah as the greatest of all God’s gifts. He zealously studied the Torah and sought to live in obedience to its commands. By faithfully keeping the law, Paul hoped to attain righteousness in God’s sight, and thereby receive God’s blessing.
Many Christians assume that at this point, Paul adopted a very negative view of the Torah. They think that when he met Jesus, Paul recognized that all his efforts were completely worthless. He needed only to put his faith in Jesus in order to be declared righteous. His own efforts to please God were not just hopeless, but harmful. Even attempting to live a godly life might become a temptation to trust in your own efforts, your own “works.”
This is a deeply distorted understanding of Paul which I hope we can now dispense. Paul never stopped believing that “the Torah is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous, and good.” When Paul met Jesus, he realized was that the Torah was never meant to be the permanent standard for God’s people. It was only a signpost, pointing forward to the time when God’s people would be completely renewed & restored. They would finally have the power to live in the way God intended. And a signpost isn’t a bad thing! If you’re traveling, you’re grateful for the signposts which help you reach your destination. But when you arrive at your final goal, you can happily leave the signposts behind.
“The law of the Spirit of life” means that the Spirit-led life of those who follow the Messiah Jesus is the fulfillment of the Torah. Those who give their undivided loyalty to Jesus the Messiah receive forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit allows them to become the genuine, image-bearing human beings God created them to be. Their whole person is renewed through and through so that they are able to live in obedience to God’s commands.
Such people have left the Torah behind, not because it was a bad thing, but because they have reached their ultimate destination, “the hope of glory, which is Christ in you.” And when the Torah looks on and sees God’s people, filled with his Spirit, joyfully living in obedience to Him, it says, “that’s what I was talking about!”
