No Condemnation

INTRODUCTION

Paul is writing to the people of the Church in Rome. Paul is a citizen of Rome and makes it clear at the beginning of chapter 1 or Romans that he longs to return to Rome so that the brothers and sisters in Rome will not be unaware of what the Gospel is and what it is not. Paul wants to make it clear throughout

Romans 8 what the gospel is, and what the gospel is not. Paul makes it clear at the beginning of Romans that “He is not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ.”

Romans 2 highlights the law that is now written on the hearts of the believers.

Romans 3 upholds the fact that there is “no one righteous not one, all have sinned and fall short of God’s glory. Chapter

Romans 4 Paul recounts the pillars of the Church like Abraham who believed and it was counted to him as righteousness, it all depends on our faith and resting on the guarantee of God’s grace.

Romans 5 Paul leads to the total depravity of humanity that death entered the world through one man Adam, therefore death reigned from Adam to Moses, and that Adam was a type of the one to come, the greater Adam Jesus Christ who was perfect and sinless in every way.

Romans 6 leads to whether we can continue to live in our sin that grace should continue in our lives, Paul’s conclusion is that we who have been born again through the Spirit of God who have died to sin and are alive to God should not return to the sinful man and woman. This leads to the end of Romans 6 “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 7 shows the release of humanity from the law, because we now live under the law of grace. Paul points out that if it had not been fro the law in the OT he would not have known what sin looked like and how desperate his sinful nature truly was, “oh wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?

This brings us now to Romans 8:1-4

Romans 8:1–4 ESV

1 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. 3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 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.

QUESTIONS TO ASK

What does it mean that there is no Condemnation?

What does it look like to be in Christ Jesus?

How do we walk not according to the Flesh, but according to the Spirit?

“There is therefore, now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

Romans 8 is without a doubt one of the best-known, and best loved chapters of the Bible.

If in Romans 7 Paul has been preoccupied with the place of the law; in Romans 8 he is now preoccupied with the work of the Spirit.

In chapter 7 the law is mentioned some 31 times, but the Holy Spirit only once whereas in the first 27 chapters of Romans 8 he is referred to 19 times by name.

PAUL IS POINTING TOWARDS THE FEEBLE EFFORTS OF MANKIND GAIN APPROVAL OF GOD COMPARED TO THE POWER OF HIS SPIRIT

WHAT DOES “NO CONDEMNATION MEAN?”

First Day of School

Teachers and educators most dreaded day. They meet their students for the first time and must lay down the Law. They must give the rules to be followed. This is where if you were like me many students doze off or start hurling spit balls across the room.

However, eventually you will be held accountable for the rules you have been given. What does no condemnation mean? It means the rules that you could never possibly keep have now been fulfilled perfectly.

1. In Christ the guilty is Exonerated.

The Spirit gives the life that the law promised but could never deliver.

*Exoneration comes not through what you do, but who you know.

Note: Exoneration means that the court has overturned your conviction and dismissed all of the charges against you based on new evidence.

“Being in Christ is the New Evidence.”

There is something innately built into the human DNA that causes us to try and gain God's exoneration through another way. We try to figure it out by what we do not who we know.

Even the most ardent followers of Christ can fall into this trap over, and over again.

Look at how Paul is masterfully pitting the law against Salvation through Faith alone in Christ alone and through His grace alone.

Romans 1:16 ESV

16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

“The power of Salvation is for everyone who believes.”

Romans 3:21 ESV

21 But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—

“Being made right with God is now manifested apart from the law.”

Romans 3:24 ESV

24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,

“We are made right as his gift of grace through Jesus Christ and His sacrifice.”

Romans 7:6 ESV

6 But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.

“We serve now in this new way led by the power of the Spirit not a written code we have to keep or try and decipher.”

HISTORY TIME

The law now does not have the power to offer us Salvation, nor does it have the power to condemn believers. Rather, the law is the means for expression of their gratitude.

Paul makes the point in Romans 7:7 that it had not been for the law, he would nave not known what sin was, he would not have known what it was to covet.

The purpose of the law was to point them to the perfect fulfillment of the law in Jesus Christ. It was to show them how imperfect they were and the impossibility of following the law completely and perfectly.

Story of the Rich Young Rulers attempt at another way to be in Christ.

What is the “Therefore,” “There for?”

It is a continuation of the previous chapter. Paul is highlighting in 7:21 that he wants to do the right thing but evil is all around him and that he is in an inner turmoil between the law of the flesh and the law of the Spirit.

Describes the Evasive Action of God “Now” in the present time.....

The Courtroom of God Demands a Verdict

If you were standing in a court of law today what is the job of the judge presiding over your hearing. He is charged with either rendering a verdict of guilty or innocent. You are either judged as a law breaker deserving the full weight of God’s punishment, or a child of the king deserving to be acquitted of all your crimes and wrong doing.

The verdict of condemnation that has fallen on all humanity in the aftermath of Adam’s sin does not reach those who are in Christ.

The state of “condemnation” stands for the general “lostness” that ll of humanity experiences the moment they take a breath of air in this world.

What guarantees our escape from the final judgment is not the law.

It is not how many good things you have done, or how good a person you think you are, but it is the location of being “in Christ Jesus.” There are lots of perceived good people who will face the judgment of God as Condemned.

What is your Position with Christ? You are either in Christ or Not in Christ!

Isaiah 64:6 “We all have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment...”

Assumed Innocent Until Proven Guilty

You may say, that is not fair, that is injustice not justice. We all want fair and equal justice in this world. Have you ever been unfairly or unjustly condemned for something that you did not do?

If you go to Court today it is up to you to prove your innocence beyond a shadow of a doubt. Are there innocent people who are in prison for something they did not do. Absolutely, according to a report as of July 24th, 2023, the innocent Database maintained by the Death Penalty Information Center shows 192 have been exonerated on death row in the United States since 1973. Even in our judicial system intended to keep order in a civil society we do not get it right every time.

Here is the thing about God’s justice, “He gets it right 100% of the time.” God is not a fickle judge, He never has a bad day, He always judges rightly in truth and justice. Sin does not go unchecked, the guilty will always receive punishment.

3 Ways God’s Justice should Bring us Comfort

Owen Strachan - systematic theology professor at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary

1). God’s Judgment is in Christ’s hands

This free’s us to rest and trust in the perfect character of Christ. As human beings, we have an innate sense of right and wrong - a conscience. We have a desire to pursue justice, and we act on this instinct as believers.

Our ability to execute justice is limited. Sin deserves a response - the strongest possible response - but we are not able to provide it. As scripture bears out there is no one who can, the only one is the one that was foretold, the warrior savior who crushes the serpent’s head (Gen. 3:15).

The work of judgment is never in our hands. Romans 12:19

Romans 12:19 ESV

19 Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”

2). God’s Judgement means Standards will be Upheld.

Everywhere we look we find suffering and death. Justice is in short order in the world we live in today. Because of the curse, the world seems to the natural mind as a colossal cosmic failed experiment or a grand lottery where we all eventually lose. But this is a false reality. The reality is a righteous Father, a forgiving Savior, and a life-giving Spirit. The reality is that justice is on the move and drawing near with every day that we draw breath on this earth.

Our theology in this age has lost sight of divine vengeance. We want vengeance when it suits our purpose and our need. This doctrine does not fit well in a soft, therapeutic, “best life now” kind of Christian way of thinking. There is a lot of blessing in such thinking but very little justice.

New Garden Variety Christianity: Christianity promises equity and grace, better social conditions now, and radical acts, but little judgment of evil by an avenging conquering King.

Christ ends up little more than a community organizer with a gift for resistance and activism.

3). God’s Judgment Destroys Evil.

This is an outcome we all say we rightly desire, but, do we really?????

As Christians, we should zealously desire the end of evil. We should pray for the abortion industry to be swallowed in like Pharaoh’s army in a sea of destruction.

We should cry out for the cessation of racism. We should yearn for the end of murder, casual cruelty, genocide, sex trafficking of our children, and 10,000 other evils in the world.

The work has already begun. When Christ died, he washed his bride with the precious blood of the Lamb. 1 Peter 1:19

1 Peter 1:19 ESV

19 but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.

This is why there is now “no condemnation for those who are in Christ.”

Sin will not cease because of a vague trajectory of the cosmos toward goodness. The end of sin will come because the Lord Jesus Christ will spilt the sky and make the whole earth his threshing floor.

A Skeptical culture asks, can you trust a God who punishes sin?

We should not only answer “YES”; we should respond that we cannot trust a God who does not punish sin. How comforting, how kind, of God to save us, protect us, and bring us all the way home.

2. The Holy Spirit Brings us Liberation.

The reason why there is no condemnation is because the Holy Spirit has brought about a liberation of the believer in Christ from the domain of sin and Death.

What part does the spirit play in our Salvation?

“The spirit is drawing you to Christ, God sending His agent of liberation in the person of Jesus Christ.”

Unbiblical perspectives of the Spirit: “O God, please empower us by your Spirit, so that it can work in our hearts!”

It? Scripture protests. The Third Person of the Trinity is no “it!” He is the living God at work among his people unto our salvation.

Scripture profiles his essential and enduring role in our salvation—from beginning to end. He is the Personal Instrument of the gospel.

Here is what Jesus tells us in John 16:7-11

John 16:7–11 ESV

7 Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. 8 And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: 9 concerning sin, because they do not believe in me; 10 concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see me no longer; 11 concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.

Convicts the world of sin and their need for a Savior.

opens the eyes of the world about the judgment to come.

“The Spirit Brings Us Life”

John 6:63 ESV

63 It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.

So, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit work together to draw us to Salvation.

Note: The spirit does not act apart from the Father and the Son. They are in complete solidarity with each other.

John 16:13–15 ESV

13 When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. 14 He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. 15 All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

The Law of the Spirit; The Law of Sin and Death.

Paul continues to conclude that the power of the Spirit, as the outflow of Christ’s redemptive work, has rescued believers from the Torah as the agent of sin and death.

NOTE: we MUST note that this had to have been a very controversial statement to make.

The reason of why the spirit operating in Christ rescues believers from condemnation is that the Torah was unable to do it on account of the weakness of human flesh.

Here the word for Flesh in Greek (SARX) refers to the moral weakness of the human condition.

The problem with the Torah is that when it meets human wickedness it inevitably produces sinning.

The Torah can flay the flesh but cannot fix it!

“The problem with our Church culture today is:”

“We prefer to do pennants instead of experiencing Liberation. Let me say my Hail Marys and be on my way sinning some more. Let me come into the Hindu temple and cleanse myself with enough self-meditation and yoga and all will be right with the world. Let me reincarnate enough times that eventually I will be absorbed into the matrix of the Universe.”

3. Jesus is the Appeasement of God’s Wrath.

EXPIATION AND PROPITIATION

Expiation: Taking something away, “out of” or “from” it is defined as the removal of sin or guilt.

Propitiation: This has as to do with God’s being appeased. The appeasement of God’s anger.

The word comes from the philosophy that if you have a rambunctious world conqueror on the loose and rattling the sword, rather than risk the wrath of his blitzkrieg you give him the territory he wants or something equal that will satisfy him so that he will not come into your country and mow you down.

If you are angry and are violated, which is what our sin has done to the Holy righteousness of God, to satisfy the requirement of appeasement and to restore favor with God causing the conflict to be removed.

Note: Jesus sucks the poison out of us and takes it all on Himself.

“The end goal for which the Spirit sets us free is so that the righteous requirement of the Law might be met . Therefore, those who are truly His are no longer controlled by the flesh but by the Spirit.”

In the first book in his best-selling series, Conversations with God, Neale Donald Walsch describes God in a way that many people in the postmodern world find appealing.

Walsch attempts to take dictation from God Himself, God exposes the alleged myth of divine anger:

“If you choose to believe in a God who somehow needs something—and has such hurt feelings if He doesn’t get it that He punishes those from whom He expected to receive it—then you choose to believe in a God much smaller than I” (p. 65).

According to Walsch’s god there is no such thing as “sin,” only choices; therefore, although missteps by mortals may lead to unpleasant outcomes for them, they do not personally offend God. Walsch would have us believe that God is simply too large and enlightened to be angered at all.

One of Christianity’s unique characteristics is that it acknowledges the reality of evil. If evil is real, then God’s attitude toward it must also be real, or else He is not a caring God. He is a caring God, however, and when we defy Him or perpetrate evil against those who are made in His image, He is not indifferent.

His attitude toward real evil is always real wrath. It is ultimately a comforting wrath, however, because it is born of love. I can’t imagine a God any larger than that.

*Freedom from the Law is not Freedom to Sin.

This is not the get out of Jail Free Card and collect $200

Romans 6:1–4 ESV

1 What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? 2 By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? 3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

GOD DID NOT ONLY COME TO SET US FREE FROM THE PENALTY OF SIN, HE ALSO CAME TO SET US FREE FROM THE POWER OF SIN.

Note: With the Holy Spirit Living in us we fulfill the righteous requirement by the way we live our lives.

So, now we walk by the Spirit not the Flesh.

Galatians 5:16 ESV

16 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.

How do we walk by the Spirit and not the Flesh?

*We must Feed the Desires of the Spirit and not the Flesh.

Galatians 5:17 ESV

17 For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.

When I was in High school and going through football two a day’s my mom used to call me a bottomless pit. She said that I was always hanging in the refrigerator right after dinner asking what else there was to eat.

This must be the kind of hunger we have for the things of God.

“You must have a wartime mentality to the battle that you are currently facing.”

Galatians 5:18 ESV

18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.

(Note: The picture here of being Led, The spirit 1st leads us to Christ, He then Leads us to Holiness Rom. 8:14 “All who are Led by the Spirit are sons and daughters of God” , He then Leads us to Assurance. Galatians 4:6 “And because you are sons and daughters, God sent the spirit of His son to live in you, crying “Abba Father.”)

What are the desires of the Flesh?

Galatians 5:19–21 ESV

19 Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, 20 idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, 21 envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

If the Christian life looks too hard we must remember that we are not called to live it by ourselves.

(“If you are led”) he emphasizes the Spirit’s work, not ours. The Spirit is not a leader like the pace car in the “Daytona 500.”

He is a leader like a locomotive on a train. We do not follow in our strength. We are led by his power. So “walk by the Spirit” means stay hooked up to the divine source of power and go wherever he leads.

What are the Desires of the Spirit?

Galatians 5:22–23 ESV

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.

John 15:4: “Abide in me, and I in you, as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, and neither can you. I am the vine, and you are the branches, whoever abides in me, and I in him bears much fruit, apart from me you can do nothing.”

So, what is walking in the Spirit, It is being led by the Spirit, and bearing the fruit of the spirit.

CLOSING

Roosters make a notable appearance in the Bible. All four Gospels record Peter’s famous three-time betrayal of Jesus punctuated by the crowing of a rooster, just as Jesus had prophesied. All three synoptic Gospels say Peter “wept bitterly” at the sound. Our senses are powerful memory holders. Smells … tastes … sounds, too, attach themselves to memories.

I imagine what kind of memory the rooster’s crow evoked for Peter. Every dawn after that first terrible morning of betrayal, the proclamation of his bitter guilt would have rung afresh in his ears. Carried in the crowing would have been the memory of his colossal failure. Whatever his relationship had been with Jesus, whatever his calling, it appears to be finished.

“I’m going out to fish,” he announces to his companions (John 21:3). They fish all night and catch nothing. But just as day is breaking, a sound ripples across the water. A voice. The announcement of a miracle: Try the other side of the boat. Recognition dawns. As the others haul in fish as fast as they can, Peter hurls himself into the sea and thrashes toward shore. There sits Jesus, serving up a fresh breakfast menu: Restoration. Forgiveness. It is finished.

I wonder, as the two conversed, could Peter hear in the surrounding countryside the sound of roosters? I can’t say. But … I suspect that every morning thereafter, Peter affixed a new memory to that clarion call. The sound of homecoming. Fear not. Glad tidings. Each day, the sound that had announced new-morning guilt now spoke a better word. All hail the rooster, that fine-feathered herald of forgiveness, that megaphone of new-morning mercies.

“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1).

What memory of past guilt announces itself to you at every turn? Friend, hear the annunciation of your emancipation: Morning has broken, and with it, fresh mercy.