The prehistory

“Nothing therefore is unto condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.”
Rom 8:1

A verse and chapter division has only existed since 1553, when Robert Estienne, a French publisher in Paris, published the first edition of the Bible with today’s verse division. Unlike many books, a new chapter is not always a clear break from the previous chapter. This is already clear here from the first two words “Nothing therefore …”. From this it is clear that it is a continuation of a thought from the verses before.

In the verses before it said:

“I wretched man! What will recover me from the body of this death? Mercy!”
Rom 7:24 (See “Inner Struggle in Everyday Life”). Concordant New Testament. “Grace” in handwriting S2.

Paul was talking here about the inner struggle he felt in everyday life. He did not do what he wanted to do, but did what he did not want to do. This is in line with our experience. We are not going to be super-Christians who come out singing and winning from every situation in life. This is not the reality. Perfection in faith does not exist, at least not as soon as we ourselves join in.

God’s grace, however, was the answer. Paul is not talking about the perfect way of life, but about the way of life – sustained by God’s grace. This leads to thanksgiving on his part:

“I give thanks to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Rom 7:25a

So grace is the way out, but not so that it should be “perfect” again. Rather, the tension remains, and Paul describes it this way:

“Consequently, placed upon myself, I am a slave to the law of God with the mind, but to the law of sin with the flesh.”
Rom 7:25b

Paul feels and sees the inner struggle. Even if he does not get stuck in the struggle – there is the experienced grace for that – the “can do” and “can’t do” remain part of the daily experience. He found that, speaking for himself, although he wants to follow the law of God with thoughts, he perceives something else in himself. Not everything seems to correspond to his will. He feels placed in a field of tension.

Who does not long for holiness, for purity, for life, liberation and salvation? However, the contrast with the current experience cannot be denied. Perhaps this is precisely the strength of the Letter to the Romans: The current experience is not faded out, but faded in again and again.

Man remains caught in this tension between “wanting” and “not wanting”. There it is not about decisions of will, but about a simple mapping of our experience. It’s not optional, it’s a given. This is almost identical to how Paul writes a few verses later that all of creation was not voluntarily subordinated to vanity. Not everything in this world works the way we would like it to. If we want to live close to God, we continue to stand in our own way. Grace, however, delivers us from this tension.

Awaiting better things

Some Christians feel a constant struggle in this life. It’s real. Paul also spoke of this, as we have just seen. It is not a struggle with the world around us, but a struggle that is felt within oneself. It is the experience in this world that arises against the background of our mortality and limitedness. No assignment of guilt follows from this, but it shows itself as a deficiency (Rom 3:23).

It is therefore helpful to recognize what we have and what we do not have. Because we do not have everything. We are not immortal or perfect yet. We do not have it “in ourselves”, but we have it “in Christ”. It is in Him that we are made perfect.

“For in Him dwelleth all the perfection of the Godhead bodily; and ye are perfected in Him.”
Col 2:9-10

In his last letters (like here in Colossians) Paul is even much clearer in this than in Romans. However, he never writes this differently than in the Epistle to the Romans. The concern always remains the same: what we have “in Christ” is “in Him” and not in ourselves.

Now you can bring in some more and think about the way in which we are currently blessed. We have been blessed in Christ, and blessed with spiritual blessings. This also means that it is not within us and not palpable.

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who blesses us with every spiritual blessing in Christ.“
Eph 1:3

We learn here that today Spiritual Blessing is characteristic of the church. Spiritual blessings are like the wind – we feel them, yet we cannot grasp them (cf. John 3:8). So there remains a difference here. We stand in this world and remain fully human, with all our faults and limitations. We also have a faith that gives our lives confidence, direction and support. The blessing experienced is spiritual in nature. The bridge between the two is God’s grace, made visible and tangible in His Son and experienced by us. We are blessed in Him.

So this spiritual blessing is not “palpable”. It is, Paul writes further, something like a down payment. The redemption itself is yet to come. We are waiting for a future fulfillment.

“In Him also are you who hear the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation – in Him also are you who believe, sealed with the Spirit of promise, the holy one (which is a deposit of our lot until the redemption of the one assigned to us) to the praise of His glory.”
Eph 1:13-14

The believers were sealed with the spirit of promise. This speaks of the future. “Promise” also speaks of the fact that we don’t have everything yet. We first have something like a “deposit of our lot”. But this is not the promised itself. The goal is the “freeing of that which is appropriated to us”. In it and only then do we have the fulfillment of the promise.

All this, of course, is to the praise of God’s glory. What we receive is a gift. This gift reflects back to Him. This is how worship takes place. We did not make that happen. We can only accept the gift of grace, give thanks for it and look forward to the future. Today, we remain firmly anchored in the here and now. Spirit of promise, as Paul writes of it, gives us the outlook, an advance payment, but not salvation itself.

Nothing is for condemnation

Now back to the Letter to the Romans. In chapter 8:1 the apostle writes:

“Nothing therefore is unto condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.”
Rom 8:1

Nothing is for condemnation! That is clear. The statement comes after Paul has laid the groundwork for it during several chapters. Nothing is for condemnation because … and then we look back: we have been “justified freely in His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Rom 3:24). In this justification, the righteousness of God was given to us. “Justified therefore by faith, we may have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom 5:1). Peace is added.

This is quite real and wonderfully encouraging, but already we are also immersed in an expectation as a result, similar to what we saw before:

“Our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have obtained access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, that we may glory in expectation of the glory of God.”
Rom 5:2

Again, we see the expectation that is part of our experience. It is still not all there. We have been “reconciled to God through the death of His Son” and thereby we may be assured that, “now reconciled,we are saved in His life” (Rom 5:10-11).

Then, in Romans 6 and 7, Paul speaks of sin, and of this struggle within us. In the here and now, that is the reality. Perhaps we feel this reality only where we have come to faith. We want to be close to God, we want to become like Christ. Experience, however, speaks a different language. The encouragement lies in the fact that these experiences do not replace the grace of God, but virtually confirm the necessity and reliability of this grace.

We receive the assurance that we have no condemnation – even when our life experience is not so rosy or we keep stumbling over our own failures to reach our goals. “Nothing therefore is now unto condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus“. Nothing. Nothing! That is clear encouragement.

To properly appreciate this statement, we must be aware of what Paul wrote in the chapters before. In Paul, statements do not stand in a vacuum, but he describes a clear context. This is the context of the previous chapters.

“No condemnation” can have a powerful impact on our daily lives. If we are torn inwardly between our inability and a holy God, then here we have the promise that nothing is for condemnation. Or in other words, communion with God is not clouded by our inability to love, to be holy, to live victoriously, to be heroes of faith. We are blessed in Christ. Our wealth is in Him. When God sees us, He sees Christ, and in Christ He sees us. This should give us peace and allow us to share in the peace of God.

Flesh and Spirit

There is no greater temptation for believers than to trust in their own performance. Grace is the end of all self-effort. They stand in each other’s way. Either I allow my own efforts to count or I trust in God’s grace. There is something like a slider between the two. I can only let go as much of one side as I let go of the other.

The new basis

“Nothing therefore is unto condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus: for they walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.”
Rom 8:1-2

As believers, we do not live according to the desire and the “flesh”, but we walk according to the “spirit”. What is meant by this? Flesh refers as an expression to our body, with which we are anchored in this world. It is thus a reference to our mortality and the sin (lack of purpose) that attaches to us as a result. Spirit refers to God and what He has done in Christ. Flesh and spirit form a contrast. Paul uses these terms to describe the tension in which we stand.

Now, one should not take these expressions out of context. They should not cause us fear, as if we should strive to walk “spiritually”. This is a seduction. Paul is not asking anything of us. God does not demand anything from us either. The apostle describes the reality that is given, quite independent of what we “do”. One’s own actions are not up for discussion here. It’s about something else. There is a new foundation.

Perhaps we can imagine it like this: Paul, the architect, shows us a building plan and points to the new building. “You walk through here, there’s the kitchen, there’s the wet room across the street.” Of course, it’s about the gospel. However, we have to be able to imagine it somehow. Paul points to the blueprint, to the concepts. It describes how it is built reliably. He takes us along and explains how it works. What is crucial here is the realization that we are not building the house. Nor does he explain how the house will later be lived in and what daily challenges will then have to be overcome. This is only the blueprint.

Paul tells it like it is, describing the concept: “those who are in Christ Jesus, after all, do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.” It can be a challenge not to immediately address your own inadequacy when hearing these words. That is why the preceding words are so significant: “Nothing therefore is unto condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.” The non-conviction is first. This is the light in which the second part of the sentence must also be understood. The second part does not cancel the first part. It is not about our everyday life, but about a concept.

The reason I give so much space to these reflections here is that I regularly talk to people who are self-judging. Just then it is essential that we understand that God does not condemn us.

The construction plan, of course, provides that the house is well built. It also serves a purpose. If we use the house for other than the intended purpose, the construction will not really come into its own. It should be clear with a residential building that it is intended for living. In my opinion, the statement “those who are in Christ Jesus do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the spirit” is to be understood in the same way. Spiritual means: according to the intended purpose, in accordance with God’s intention. That’s not a measuring stick, it’s the direction we’re aiming for.

Paul here takes us into the actuality of our own lives, sustained by the reality of God. The passage “they walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit” is not in all translations. But the reference to the Spirit is also clear in the next verses, for we find the same wording at the end of verse 4.

“For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus sets you free from the law of sin and death.”
Rom 8:3-4

The word “law” here has the meaning of lawfulness. A deliverance from the law of “sin and death,” namely the compulsive bondage through sin (Rom 7:15, Rom 7:23) is in the foreground. We are under a different set of laws with which we should “reckon” (Rom 6:11).

This is the new foundation on which we can build. There are two sides to this: God’s side and our side. God’s side is that now there is nothing to condemn, that He has sealed us with His Spirit. Our site points out that we may grow a fruit of the Spirit against which there is no law (Gal 5:22-23). This is precisely what “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” accomplishes.

“If our past is ordered by grace, and our final salvation secured in Christ, then the same grace must make provision for the present. And it does so without ceasing by virtue of the Spirit of life in Christ, whom He has given us.”
Erich Leutbecher, Thoughts on the Epistle to the Romans, page 229.