CLT on Romans 8

Last week at CLT we looked at Romans 8:1-13. I didn't really have notes, so I'm posting an exposition of Romans 8:1-17 here. I pray it proves beneficial to you. Have a Bible open as you read it.

Exposition
We’re at the point in Romans where something extremely significant is going to be brought up. In chapters 1-5, Paul defended the doctrine of justification by faith alone on the basis of Jesus’ work alone.

That gave rise to an objection: if justification is by faith alone, can we go on sinning? Paul says no in several ways. First, in Romans 6, he says that we have had a change of nature, therefore we can no longer live in sin. Second, in Romans 7, he says as Christians, Jesus has already met the demands of the Law for us so we no longer have something to rebel against or try to be justified by.

And that brings us to the third answer – and that is in Romans 8. The answer – in short – is the Holy Spirit’s work in the lives of God’s people.

Now, Romans 8 begins where Romans 7 leaves off. The point of the end of Romans 7 is hat trying to obey God’s Law will just result in realizing that you can’t. Hence the cry at the end ‘who will save me from this body of death?’ The answer: God, in Jesus.

But if you can’t obey the Law by trying to obey it – where does that leave us? Paul gives us the answer in Romans 8: the Holy Spirit causes us who have received Jesus to obey him. Let’s take a look.

vv. 1-4
In verse 1 we have a statement. Note that there is a ground for it, given that it starts with ‘therefore.’ The ground comes in the verses after it (and whole chapters before). Note that there’s no condemnation now for everyone in Christ. That is, already, even before the future judgment, there is at this point in history, no condemnation, which by the way is the opposite of justification. Justification is being declared righteous; condemnation is being declared guilty and being punished for it.

Who’s ‘in Christ Jesus?’ It’s helpful here to consider Romans 6’s language of inclusion into Jesus – unification with him. Everyone unified to Jesus, and thus spiritually alive and believing, is in Jesus. So those people – right now, have already had the end time judgment of condemnation pass by them and have been judged righteous in Jesus.

What’s the reason for this, though? V. 2 says that the reason is that there are two governing principles – or worlds, realms, or Kingdoms at work. He’ll flesh this out more in vv. 5-8, but here, note that there’s no condemnation because the principles of the Spirit’s Kingdom have freed us through Jesus’ actions from the principles of the old realm, which is going to be condemned.

Verse three tells us how this happened. The law couldn’t save sinners, because sinners rebel against the law. What God did in Jesus is to kill, or condemn, sin by killing Jesus. And notice that it’s not ‘sins’ – it’s ‘sin.’ The old nature. The part of us, that is, according to ch. 6, now dead because Jesus died.

Verse four tells us that God had a purpose in destroying the old nature in the death of Jesus. That purpose is that our behavior would be transformed – that we’d walk according to God’s Holy Spirit and do what the law requires.

vv. 5-11
In this section, Paul’s going to contrast the two types of possible people then – people that live in the old world – old Kingdom – the ‘flesh.’ – vs. people that live in the new Kingdom in the Spirit.

Note that vv. 5-7 begin with the word ‘for’ – and so they’re providing a basis for what precede them. So in v. 5, the introduction of this idea – there’s two kinds of people – in the Kingdom and out – is the basis for what comes before, that God did stuff to cause us to walk in obedience to him.

But note what the differences are. If you’re in the flesh – in the old world, your thoughts are governed by it, will cause you to die, is hostile to God because it doesn’t submit to God’s law and actually is incapable of doing so.

If you’re in the Spirit, your thoughts are governed by the Spirit, he gives you life and peace,he wells in you, causes us to belong to Jesus, and has given us and will give us new life.

vv. 12-17
In this section, Paul begins to exhort believers to obey God and trust him through suffering.
Note that 12 is the conclusion of what precedes it. The Holy Spirit has given us new life and will raise us from the dead, so we don’t owe anything to the old world – the flesh – living according to its ways.

What’s the basis for that? 13 – because if we do live like that, we’ll die. However, if in the Spirit we kill the deeds of the body, we’ll live. Of course here it’s talking about eternally live and die. So in other words – we’re not debtors to the flesh because if we acted like that, we’d die. The other option – is trusting in the Spirit and relying on Him and doing the things he’s commanded in Scripture, actively fighting sin in our lives. If we do that – we belong to the Spirit and we will rise from the dead – live.

His basis for that statement is that if we’re doing that – being led by the Spirit to put to death evil deeds, we’re God’s children. Or in other words, we belong to God, not the flesh.
How do we know we’re sons of God? We got the Spirit that causes us to cry out to God, who bears witness that we’re his children, assuming that we suffer trusting ourselves to Jesus, looking forward to our future glory with him – our future being with him in the completely remade new creation.