Bible Study Romans 8.1-17
Life Through the Spirit
In chapter eight these new relationships continue. And in this chapter we are shown our new relationship to the Spirit of God and to the providential love of God in our daily lives. Justification by faith is much more than a cold, legal transaction. When we put faith in Christ we are found innocent before God; and at the same time, God’s Holy Spirit is put in our hearts. His presence there makes a tremendous difference in our practical lives.
i) Judaism
The worldview elements of Judaism were, as we saw, tightly woven together. Temple, Torah, land, family, ‘zeal’, prayer, scripture—all fitted together in a multi-dimensional interlocking model, reinforcing one another at point after point. Think of a family going up to Jerusalem at Passover: singing psalms which told the story of God’s goodness to Israel, travelling through the land to the great City, careful to keep Torah so that they could celebrate the feast in purity, praying that somehow, even this time, God would act to liberate his people from their long oppression.
Paul’s assertion that there is no condemnation for believers summarizes the primary message of this chapter: Christ has brought life to those who deserved death and freedom to those who were guilty under the law.
the law of the Spirit of life is the Gospel—that is, the law of which the life-giving Spirit is the author. Of course, the other part of the verse, instead of describing the corrupt principle in men, means the law of God, which, as Paul has taught in chapter 7, is incidentally the cause of sin and death. The sense of the passage then is: “The Gospel has delivered me from the law.”
The domination of sin
For Paul, the Spirit’s present ministry represented a distinctive difference between the era of the old covenant (palaios diathēkē, 2 Cor. 3:14) and the new (kainē, 2 Cor. 3:6)
we can see the claim that Paul is making. Something has happened, an event of great magnitude, which has transformed the situation from that of the frustration of Israel according to the flesh into what, in his own words, is now a ‘new covenant’, involving ‘the circumcision of the heart’.
He therefore concluded that the old covenant and the stipulations associated with the Mosaic Law had been superseded by the ministry of Christ and the Spirit (Rom. 10:4; Gal. 3:25).
This did not mean, however, that commandments or stipulations were no longer associated with the new covenant. On the contrary, Paul’s letters are full of commands and exhortations for the churches. The significant difference is that in the new covenant era the ability to live in light of this revelation of God’s will is made possible by the Spirit’s ministry. Paul associated the Holy Spirit with the whole experience of salvation, making it possible not only for a person to have a relationship with God but also to live in accord with God’s will as it is set forth in the New Testament.
The immediate purpose of this and the following verse is to justify the necessity of limiting the blessings of Christ’s death to those who live according to the Spirit.
And later (chap. 8) Paul described the person characterized by the flesh as not possessing the Spirit, and therefore a non-Christian (8:5–9)
Spiritual death is a condition of separation from God: “The mind of sinful man is death” (8:6).
To be able, have power, whether by virtue of one’s own ability and resources (Rom. 15:14), through a state of mind or favorable circumstances (1 Thess. 2:6), by permission of law or custom (Acts 24:8, 11), or simply to be able, powerful (Matt. 3:9; 2 Tim. 3:15).
This is probably also the case when later he reminded the Corinthians of an important lesson he had learned about his own weakness and God’s provision for it. Paul explained how he had prayed that a “thorn in my flesh” might be removed (2 Cor. 12:7–8), but was told instead by the Lord, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” As a result Paul concluded, “I will boast all the more gladly about my weakness, so that Christ’s power may rest on me” (v. 9). The phrase “rest on me” could be translated “live in me” since the phrase is used to describe the place where someone lives.7 The “power”resting on Paul was the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit, providing divine enablement to carry out the life and work God had called him to do (cf. Rom. 8:9–11).
This is probably also the case when later he reminded the Corinthians of an important lesson he had learned about his own weakness and God’s provision for it. Paul explained how he had prayed that a “thorn in my flesh” might be removed (2 Cor. 12:7–8), but was told instead by the Lord, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” As a result Paul concluded, “I will boast all the more gladly about my weakness, so that Christ’s power may rest on me” (v. 9). The phrase “rest on me” could be translated “live in me” since the phrase is used to describe the place where someone lives.7 The “power”resting on Paul was the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit, providing divine enablement to carry out the life and work God had called him to do (cf. Rom. 8:9–11).
This is one of the more common titles for Jesus in Matthew’s gospel and, some would say, the most important.14 In the Old Testament, Israel as a whole (Hos. 11:1) and different groups or individuals within Israel, such as individual kings (2 Sam. 7:14) or priests (Mal. 1:6), were sometimes called sons of God. In the New Testament, Christians are also called sons of God (e.g., Rom. 8:14).
Beginning at verse 15 and continuing through verse 25, however, the focus seems to shift to the period immediately preceding the end, just before Jesus’ return. These words concern events in and around Jerusalem. In view of the disciples’ question, this might be taken as a prediction of the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. But several factors suggest that an event of greater magnitude is being described here.
The Spirit marks out those who belong to Christ. Later in this passage he referred to the Spirit’s ministry of assurance regarding the status of Christians as members of God’s family. “For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’ The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children” (vv. 15–16).
An instructive passage in this regard is in Galatians where he wrote, “If you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law” (5:18). Since Paul viewed all Christians as led by the Spirit (Rom. 8:14–15), it follows that he did not believe the stipulations of the law applied to them. This conclusion might be denied on the grounds that a qualification of some sort needs to be attached to Paul’s statement about not being under law, such as “you are not under the Law’s condemnation” or “you are not under a legalistic misinterpretation of the Law.” While qualifications such as these are not unreasonable interpretations of Paul’s view, they suffer from the fact that they are not qualifications Paul himself made.