Christ Life In You Romans 8:1-2 No Condemnation

So we're going to talk about today no condemnation. But it might be good first to decide what is condemnation. And for that we're going to have to backtrack just a little bit. So no condemnation, that's Paul's declaration in 8.1. So let's just back up for a second.

What is condemnation? So the word condemnation in scripture here is catechrema, something like that. It's a punishment following a sentence. So condemnation in scripture, and this is right out, that's a word that Paul uses, is a punishment following a sentence. So let's think about this. It means there has been a trial and charges have been made. It means that charges have been proved. It means a judge has ruled and here is your sentence. So that's basically three statements about this word, catechrema.

So Paul uses it a couple times, actually more than a couple times. If we go back to chapter 5, we see that he talks about this is a condition of every man, woman, and child in this world that's coming into this world. And it goes back to our old buddy Adam. He says in Romans 5.16b, judgment arose from one transgression, that's Adam's transgression. Adam is blamed, even though Eve was part of that too, he's blamed as being the head, resulting in condemnation, this punishment following a sentence. Then in 5.18a he says, so as through one transgression, Adam's transgression again, condemnation, resulted in condemnation to all men. So no man, no woman, no child escapes God's condemnation.

And we actually said even clearer, if we go back a couple of verses to 5.12, Romans 5.12, we see this very interesting verse, and it's gonna kinda give us the benchmark for what God's gonna do, tell us about what Paul's gonna tell us about in chapter eight. Therefore, just as through one man, Adam again, sin entered the world, that's the sin nature, and death entered through sin. So two things came into the world when Adam fell. Sin, the sin nature came into the world, and death came into the world. And they just didn't stay dormant, it spread to all men, because all men sinned in Adam.

So you can't, it's not like you start out, and I had this foolish idea before I was a believer. I thought that, well, Children just, they can decide when they come into this world, children just decide what they want to be. They can, children can be good, they can be bad. And my job as a parent is just to direct them this way and that way, no problem. I hadn't read this verse. I hadn't understood this verse.

It says, they come into this world, they've already sinned in Adam. So that's the just condemnation of God. So that's what, therefore, all men and women are under the just condemnation of God. These two, so Paul's gonna address these two, these two strikes against every man, woman, and child. They have a sin nature, and they're under the sentence of death.

So we're gonna see in the next verse this wonderful news about all those who have placed their trust and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. We're gonna see that they're not under condemnation anymore. Okay, so today's verses are, I'm just gonna do the first two today. Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, for the law of the spirit and life, the law of the spirit and life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death. Okay, so, how many in the auditorium either have the King James or New King James? Raise your hand. Okay, a few. Okay, well if that's the case, then this is especially for you.

And you guys already know this, I mean this is not, this isn't the first time you've ever been through this before. If you read the King James, or New King James, there's an additional little part to this verse. And it's interesting, I don't know the, I'm not a person, there's something called textual criticism, Greek texts. So people have, you know, there's over 5,800 manuscripts of Greek texts, the New Testament. But so there might be some issues, and there are some. So this is one case where there are.

That last phrase, who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit, is in question. So according to Wiest, Those ‐‐ that last statement is rejected. It says it should not be in the text by Nestle, which is Nestle and Westcott Hoyt are what I call the critical text.

But it does occur in this thing called the Texas Receptus. And there aren't ‐‐ Apparently there were only a few Texas receptus manuscripts and there were some questions. So it seems like that what happened was, Jim read verse four as well, it seems like somebody, some copier, some scribe, decided that verse one, you know, they're like us, they say, that's just too amazing.

There's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, period. That can't be. I gotta add a little bit, I gotta help God out here. So I'm gonna tack on this part that says, as a condition to that, it says, who do not walk after the flesh but after the spirit. So, fortunately for our, most people, most scholars agree that that should not be in the text. So the verse stands as I, mentioned before, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, period. There's no condition on that. That's God's grace and action.

So we have an overzealous scribe here, it seems like. If you have more questions, talk to me later. I think most of you, and actually, I noticed the New King James has a little footnote. It says, not in the critical text. So okay, so let's go on. Let's get to the, okay, let's start off with.

So the first part of this verse is interesting. It's going to point back to what happened before in chapter 7, like Mike pointed out last week. Chapter divisions, and we learn in Galatians as well, they're not inspired. So this verse should probably be part of chapter seven as well through verse four. So it seems like, and this is from Merriman I think, he says, this is a logical inference statement.

He says, therefore there is now, looking back to what's happened before. So let's go back. Let's go back and I'm gonna kinda go over what Mike covered last week again. So we have Paul starting off with. In 724 he says, wretched man that I am. He had come to the end of himself, wretched man that I am, and he cries out, who, notice it's a who, not a what, it's who will set me free from this body of death.

So, what's interesting is, the response right after that, verse 25, the A part of that verse, he says, thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord. So you know, actually I had not realized this, and I realized when I taught before, and Mike's taught it, I really think he answers his question right here, because the who here is identified as God the Father. So he says, God the Father is the who, and he says, and here's how it's gonna happen. It's gonna happen through Jesus Christ our Lord. So I think he has the answer right here, thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord, but if you read the rest of 25 is, he still has this struggle, as we have today. He says, so then, he says, so then, I know it's thanks be to God through Jesus Christ my Lord.

That's the answer to my question, but I still have a conflicted state. On the one hand, this is this Greek, picture. It's on the one hand versus the other hand, and that's actually these two Greek words. On the one hand, I myself with my mind serve the law of God, and it doesn't have a definite article, so it's the principle of God. I serve with my mind the principle of God. But on the other hand, I serve with my flesh the principle of sin. So we have this this principle of God versus the principle of sin. And boy, doesn't that remind you of what he says in Galatians? It's the flesh versus the spirit.

Remember he says in 5.17, Galatians 5.17, for the flesh sets its desires against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh.

So Paul saw this same thing here as he's struggling in seven. He saw that same picture. I know who the answer is, but I still have this struggle. So now, he needs to go the next step beyond this struggle. Is there an answer for this struggle between the flesh versus the spirit, or the law of God or the principle of God versus the law of the sin nature? So now he's gonna realize that he, if you notice in the verse, he is in Christ Jesus.

That's the whole last part of verse one. Therefore there is now no condemnation. He doesn't stop there. It's for those who are in Christ Jesus. So we need to understand what the rest of the verse is saying. But that's critical. That's kind of the steps that he went through. So to me, that really connects the last part of seven with going into eight here. Okay. So let's look at no condemnation.

The word no, every word's important sometimes. Every single word's important. It's this word uden in the Greek. It's not at all, not even a little bit. So what he's saying here, and another cool thing here, and this is what Greek scholars say, it's not, I'm a Greek observer. I wouldn't call myself a scholar. I'm a Greek observer. I can observe what people say and I can understand some of it.

No is the first word in the text, so if you look, if you were to look in the Interlinear Bible, you would see that No, Uden, is the first word in the Bible for verse 1, for 8-1. So that means it's an emphatic. So it could be rendered, Macaulay says it could be rendered, not even one bit of condemnation. So it makes it even stronger when you see the original. There is not even one bit of condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Just an incredible statement. So how can this be? It's an unbelievable statement. There is absolutely not even one bit of condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

And it's based on that one righteous act, Jesus Christ, dying on the cross, and we died with him. He was nailed to the cross and we were with him on that cross. That's a beautiful understanding that we come to in Romans, Romans chapter six especially.

So, here's another, kind of a parallel verse to this, John 5, 24, "'Truly, truly, I say to you, "'he who hears my word and believes him who sent me "'has eternal life.'" That's present tense. So you could render it, he continually has eternal life and does not come into judgment, but is passed out of death into life. So that's what Paul's proclaiming here in verse one.

So, just kind of backing up for a second, so we talk a lot here at Holly Hills about this idea of a truth in scripture being of our position, and sometimes we talk about being our condition. So just to make sure that we're all on the same page here, this is a pictorial that I think Donald Gray Barnhouse actually first produced and then Hal reproduced it again. And so this is my version of it, too. So here we go, this is our position. These are truths about the believer, as we read through our Bible, these are truths about the believer that are because we are in Christ. They're eternal, unchangeable, and that's our verse today.

Romans 5.1, actually 5.2, 1 and 2. Therefore, again, same verse we just read, that's a positional truth. In contrast, to our condition. A conditional truth is something that's true about us as we walk by faith in the Lord day by day. That's the truth that God has given us about how our walk is to look, what it's to look like. And typically, it's about trusting in who we, in our position, to be reflected in our condition. So here's one that we're studying in Galatians, Galatians 5, 16.

But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. So hopefully you can see the difference. One is talking about a truth that is true of us, actually whether we've ever even read it, it was true of us the moment we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. The second one, the conditional, is something that we come to understand as we grow in grace and we learn that as we walk by the Spirit And we may not walk by the spirit, we may walk by the flesh. But it says, as you walk by the spirit, you will not carry out the desires of the flesh. So hopefully you'll see that difference here. So we're gonna talk about positional truth today. So let's carry on here. Okay, the last part of the verse.

For those who are in Christ Jesus. So it's literally the ones who are in Christ Jesus. So the key question here, and this is a wonderful question, what does it mean to be in Christ Jesus? Just such a key aspect to understand when you read your Bible, what does it mean to be in Christ?

Or actually it could be in him, And actually, I think when I talked with Bob this morning a little bit, it occurs maybe 200 times or more. I haven't done the counting recently, but it's a lot of times. So, scripture talks about our position as being in Christ. And the little word in, in the Greek is ian. It denotes a fixed position and place and time or state. And this is a little picture I like right here where it shows the bubble here, the yellow bubble is that's Christ. And we are immersed into Christ. We're in him totally. We can never be taken out. So you say, well, Roger, I know that I sin sometimes. Does that change that? Do I pop out of that bubble and go someplace else? No, because this is what we just talked about.

This is a truth true of you that suppositional truth is true of you no matter how you feel, what you do, what you ever will do. It's because you put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ. You're in that place, you're in Christ. And I like to say, not my words, but many have said, it's a living union, because Christ is living, right? And we're living. It's a living union between our Savior and ourselves. It's a wonderful declaration of who we are. And Macaulay says this phrase, in Christ, is the most fundamental expression in the New Testament of what it is to be a Christian.

So if somebody were to stop you in the street and you say, brother, sister, I'm in Christ, they might scratch their heads and say, well, I don't see a halo on you. How can you be in Christ? You say, well, you have to believe what Scripture says. It says I'm in Christ, so I'm in Christ.

So we believe it. We don't believe it because we feel it. Think it's cool words? It's because God has declared it. We are in Christ. So that's why it's so important that this condemnation is nothing to do with you. There's no condemnation. It's all about Him. All about His work on the cross. So another cool way to kind of get your arms around the truth about being in Christ is to look at another concept. And hopefully I'm going to explain another word to explain in Christ. So we're gonna talk about baptism, or being baptized. And don't think water. Get water out of your mind. Don't think water. Cross it out of your mind. No water, no water, no water, no, okay.

The verse says, Romans 6, three, or do you not know that all of us who've been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death? So in order to explain in Christ, I wanna explain about being baptized into Christ. So let's look at this. And actually, what's cool is, this baptism is never taken out. I've been baptized into Christ, the tense is, and never taken out.

I've had the opportunity to do a baptismal service several times, and I've always kind of cracked. I said, well, if you really wanna do an accurate, if you wanna, water baptism is to represent your spiritual baptism. If you wanna do a really good one, you can't come out of the water. And they look at me like, Roger, if I don't come out of the water, I won't be alive. Well, it's never taken out. Spiritual baptism, I've been immersed into Christ, or placed into Christ, and never taken out.

Just a wonderful, it shows the completeness of our salvation. So let's go on. Let's spend a little more time on baptized. The translators didn't translate this word. It's baptizo. It's almost the exact spelling with the little O and the mark over the top. So it's basically an event. Eris is an event. God did it. It's truthful.

It's derived from the word bapto. And bapto is the idea to dip and take out. So you get to take it out there. I want to tell you a story about our brother Halle here in just a second. Baptizo describes an event that happened to every believer by the power of the Holy Spirit when he believed. We've been baptized into Christ and never taken out. Every single believer was immersed into Christ Jesus. This is a permanent relationship that God has established.

Our brother Hal, I asked him if I could do it again. He said, don't do it again, Roger. Well, you remember he had the little cup of dye. This is a long story. Many years, our brother Hal Malloy, he wanted to demonstrate Babto to dip and take out. He had a white handkerchief. He dipped it into the blue dye, dripping on his self, and took it out, and now it's a blue handkerchief. So that's, you know, that handkerchief was changed, right? It was dipped in and taken out. But our cases were dipped in and never taken out.

Wonderful news. We were immersed into Christ and became identified with Him. We are in Him and He is in us. We can never be separated from him. Think about it. We base our Christian faith not on how we feel about it. If we base our Christian faith on how we feel about, do I feel like I'm saved? Do I feel like I'm holy? Do I feel like I'm a good person? You have all kinds of feelings.

We base our faith and trust totally on what God has declared about us. We believe what he says. That's what gives us stability in our Christian life. We believe what he has said and declared about us. And baptism and being in him is perfect for that.

So, okay, I want to give just, this might be a repeat. I almost didn't have this chart in, but I decided to do it again. So he usually renders things a slight bit differently. He took the same verse I had before. He says, do you not know that all who were, he uses placed rather than baptized, all who were placed into Christ Jesus in his death were placed. So using the idea of placed as for baptizo, Baptism can be thought of as placing of a person into a union with someone else, Christ Jesus, so as to alter the believer's relationship to his previous union.

This is really key, that we did have a union. Before we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, we were in union with Adam. We were connected to his nature, the sin nature. We had no choice. So this new relationship has changed. We were placed into Christ. This new union, at the moment of belief in Jesus Christ, the saved person was placed into a vital living union with Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit. The previous union, the believer was dead, separated by his sin nature, and so basically we've been separated from that Adamic nature, we're no longer our slaves to our sin nature.

Okay, so that's verse one. Alrighty, now verse two. So verse two, I'd like to, with verse two, I'd like to take an approach here, kind of what I do now and then for some verses. So we're gonna look at this verse kind of in pieces, kind of the subject, verb, direct object kind of idea. Four, so we're gonna see, if you look in the verse, verse one makes a statement, right?

So now he's gonna give us a reason. How can he, How can there be no condemnation? God had to change something, right? If we came from Adam, we came into this world, and we had a sin nature, we were directly connected to sin nature, and we were on the sentence of death, God had to do something. And this is what, it's gonna describe what God did.

Now, for this reason, So here's another little thing to think about, the law of, you can think of it as, because the law is not like the Mosaic law, this is just law as a principle. So I kind of have this idea, the new principle, the new principle, the law, the new principle of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus, so that makes a statement about what God has done, the spirit of life in Christ Jesus, what is that? That's the indwelling Holy Spirit. Spirit of Life is another name, if you will, for the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus. We'll see that shortly, some more. But that's who's doing the action, performing the action.

And the verb here is, has set you free. So the Spirit of Life, the Holy Spirit, who is in Christ has set you free, the idea it's an event because it's that particular tense in the event when you're being born again and God did it, from two things, as the verse says, from two things.

From the principle or law of the sin, the sin nature, and from the principle of death. So what happened was, the spirit of life in Christ Jesus set you free from the principle of the sin nature and the principle of death. You've been liberated from the sin nature's power and the spiritual separation from God's. So remember, we came into this world from Adam with those two aspects against us. God has dealt with both of those, with the issue of the sin nature, Adam's nature, and dealt with the death issue that we were spiritually separated from God. and now we have eternal life.

He dealt with both those issues. So we see three principles involved, the law or principle of the spirit of life, and we have these two laws of sin and death. So now, this is the first of two reasons. So next week we're gonna see in verses three and four, we'll see what happened, another reason for that we are not under condemnation, but this is the first of two reasons.

So I could stop here, But I have some more charts. Sorry. If you want to go home early. Okay. So I'm just going to basically kind of go back over this and look back over each of these parts maybe separately. But you had to remember one thing. Remember this chart. Copies are available if you want. Okay. So let's go back over it again.

So this phrase here, the law of the new principle of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus, that's actually, if you're an English student, or learning English, or wherever you are in the language, that's called the subject, that's the complete subject of this sentence.

So it's talking about the Holy Spirit. And this is in contrast to the old principle, which we'll cover in a bit here. This new principle is because of the spirit of life. That's another name for the Holy Spirit. The ladies are studying on Tuesday about the Holy Spirit, and this is another one of those cases where here's another name for the Holy Spirit that shows up called the spirit of life. And we're told, so it's not something that's just in one or two places, it's kind of over a lot of scripture.

We're told in John 6, 63, the spirit who gives life, Then we're told later on in Romans chapter eight, he says, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies through his spirit who dwells in you. So the Holy Spirit gives life. This life is in Christ Jesus in this living union. So we're next gonna see how did, How could He give you this life if you had these two issues against you? You had sin and death against you when you came into this world.

How did He do that? He's gonna talk about that next, okay? He's gonna talk about how He set you free, to make free, to liberate you. It was an event, and God the Holy Spirit did this when you believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, when you trusted Him as your Savior. He set you free, He liberated you. This is an event that happened when you believed, in the moment you believed, it's reality. The Holy Spirit's the one who performed it, this action in you.

You didn't ask for it, you probably didn't even know about it. And maybe you're like Paul. Paul struggled until he saw this. This is kind of what Paul did. He started out, you know, who will deliver me? He went through that kind of thought process, God will deliver me through Jesus Christ, my Lord. And then he realized, I had this battle. And then he realized, well, wait a minute, I'm in Christ. And that makes all the difference in the world. And there's no condemnation. And he wrote these words about the struggle. He struggled through that. Maybe you didn't have that struggle.

Maybe it's the first time you heard about this today. Like, I heard about this maybe, I'm thinking back. maybe 1985, something like that. That's when I first, I met our brother Hal Malloy at my work. I was fortunate to have, how'd you like to have Hal for a office mate? Pretty amazing. Some people didn't like that. Some people loved it. I was one that loved it.

Anyway, you were set free from the following, free from the principle of the sin nature, free from the principle of death, Spiritual mostly spiritual focus here, but certainly physical you have now have eternal life Okay, let's go on here Okay Okay, so now I want to this is a little bit of a repeat just kind of go back over Paul's struggle again a little bit with the sin nature just to show you the that this principle of sin was forefront in Paul's mind.

He talks about it in verse 21, 721. He says, I find that the law of principle, that evil, the sin nature is present in me. He makes about four or five statements like this. But I see a different law, the law of the sin nature, and the members of my body waging war against my mind I left off, by making me a prisoner of the law of sin, which is in my members. And then the last statement he makes, I myself serving with my flesh the law of sin. So this is why Paul got to the end of himself and said, you know, who will deliver me? I have this sin nature impacting my life. And then, but now the Holy Spirit has changed our relationship to the principle of the sin nature.

The Holy Spirit gives us and sustains us a believer's life. You now have the spirit who gave the law taking up residence in the believer's life. And actually, I was reading this, and this is some comments from Merriman, and he made that statement, and I wrote it down, and I said, the spirit who gave the law taking up residence. The spirit gave the law? Where is that? So I started looking, and lo and behold, it's in the scripture. What a deal. In Zechariah 7, 12a, so here's another, for you ladies, another place to find the Holy Spirit, amazed here.

So it's talking about the giving of the law. They made their hearts, and they weren't too happy about this, they made their hearts like flint so that they could not hear the law and the words which the Lord of hosts had sent them by His Spirit Through their former prophets so God sent his the Holy Spirit's involved in every work of God the Holy Spirit's involved in I mean, that's not something laser where we're all learning about that So now we have the spirit of life in Christ Jesus He's superior and stronger than the sin nature and we can have victory over that This new law frees a believer from having to follow the desires of the sinful nature Okay, and then the last part is we're free from the law of the principle of death. And as we know, all men and women are all born spiritually dead, separated from God. The verse I quoted earlier about how we came from Adam. And then Christ also spoke about this.

I always find this verse very caustic. When Jesus said to the disciples, when Jesus said, follow me, allow the dead to bury their own dead. He proclaimed men that did not know him to be dead. Pretty sad situation. But the Holy Spirit has set us free to be alive to God. And in the verse we had earlier, he gives life to our mortal bodies through his spirit who dwells in us.

Okay. Final thoughts. So this is from, who is this from, Roger? I have it down at the bottom, I didn't, it's from Chafer, Louis Ferry Chafer. And he kind of, this is a little summary of what we said today. Okay, the answer to the cry of distress, who will deliver me, is given in Romans 8, 2, he says.

This is more than a deliverance from the law of Moses. It is the immediate deliverance from sin and death. Those two opponents, right, sin and death. We came into the world with sin and death. Paul directly addresses those two. The helpless and defeated eye is evidence in the one case in chapter seven, and the sufficient and victorious eye by the spirit is evidence in chapter eight.

The Christian is to be delivered by the law, the power of the Spirit. The Christian is delivered by the Spirit, but the deliverance is made righteously possible through Jesus Christ our Lord because of the believer's union with Christ. We're in Christ. That's how that table, he's able to say that, and we're able to have that continue. Similarly, two natures are still evidence in Paul's experience, since with the mind he desired to serve the law of God, but with his flesh he served the law of sin. Flesh versus the spirit.

Finally, he did not remain a defeated Christian, for he found that faith, the faith principle, that he states in Romans 8.4, which we're gonna study next week along with Romans 8.3, 8.4, 8.3 and 8.4 next week. So hopefully that got you interested, got you thinking. Any questions, talk to anybody, talk to Miles or Mike or myself or anybody in the body. Pretty smart people here.

Okay, all right, so let's close in prayer. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you so much, Lord. We thank you for the blessings we have, Father. Thank you for your care for us, Lord. There's no condemnation, not even one bit. We deserve so much, Lord, but you took it all. You took every single bit of condemnation that we deserve, Lord, and you took it to the cross, and you took us with you. We're thankful for your victory on the cross. We ask it in your name, amen.