All of our suffering ceases to be meaningless. All of our suffering has divine purpose wrapped up into it so that we know, we can be assured, that what we are going through is meant to bring about our future glory. It must be so! In Christ we have become inheritors of God, redeemed sinners who will know God and be with God forevermore as his children, enjoying him as our Father. Therefore, every little bit of suffering we go through is just another step closer to glory. 

The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. – Romans 8:16-17
Paul has been moving us from one degree of glory to another as his argument in Romans 8 progresses. Beginning in verse 1 with some of the most comforting words in all of Scripture, that “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”, he has brought us to what is some of the most encouraging words in Scripture, that “all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God… [For] the Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God” (Romans 8:14, 16).
His whole purpose here is to encourage Christians that they are indeed recipients of grace. Consider how Paul, inspired by the Spirit Himself, is actually writing into our hearts an assurance of faith. These verses are real promises given to us, which means, these words should be read and reread by us continually; we ought to be meditating on these verses precisely because through them we’re strengthened in our faith. Paul will later tell us that “faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17) and Romans 8 contains some of the most beautiful, faith-producing words of Christ! Read and hear and be filled, friends – what we’re reading here is some of our Lord’s richest food and finest wine all meant to nourish our souls.
Now, in verse 17, Paul elaborates upon the truth that we are children of God by reminding us that we are also heirs of God and, indeed, fellow heirs with Christ! The early church father and preacher John Chrysostom wonderfully points out how Paul is “enhancing the Gifts of God little by little, for since it is possible to be children, and yet not become heirs (for not all children are heirs), he adds this – that we are heirs!”[1] Paul is adding grace to grace as he shows us not just our adoption by God in Christ but that we’re also heirs of God in Christ. To be an heir is to be a recipient of all that a father has. It’s a curious statement though since an heir receives his inheritance only upon the death of the parent. But here it is absurd to conceive of the death of God the Father. Instead, we’ve become heirs of God the Father through the death of the Son! And so now, insofar as God is eternal and we, by the Spirit, are bound up in the resurrection of Christ, we become eternal heirs of God, inheritors of life eternal in God.
I think John Stott is right to ask the question, “is it possible… that the inheritance Paul has in mind is not something God intends to bestow on us but God himself?”[2]  This certainly is in keeping with Paul’s major emphasis in Romans 8 on our union in and with Christ. Receiving the blessings of salvation (our justification, our sanctification, our adoption, and glorification) means becoming one with the Son of God in whom all those blessings are found. And insofar as we become one with the Son, we also become one with God the Father. This was Jesus’ prayer in John 17, when he asked the Father that all “those who will believe in me… that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us… I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one” (John 17:20-23).
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What better news could you ponder than to know that the God of all creation, the God who controls every detail and atom in existence, is your Father. Consider that personal pronoun, your. You are his child, and he your Father. Stand tall, dear Christian, and remember who your beloved and loving Father is.

For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.—Romans 8:14
Is there anything more comforting in all of God’s revealed word than the thought that in Christ we are sons of God? We are finding ourselves climbing higher and higher up the mountain peak of Romans 8 and now in verse 14 we have stepped out on to one of those rare ledges where we can look out and take in one of the most beautiful views in all the landscape of God’s Scripture: the glorious doctrine of our adoption in Christ. The air up here is fresh and breathing it in brings an exhilarating assurance to any Christian who takes the time look and take in the wonder of its truth.
The first thing we need to notice is the immediate logic which leads Paul to declare this stunning truth. He’s just been arguing that since Christians are people who have the Spirit of Christ indwelling them, and therefore the Spirit works within them to put to death the deeds of the body, to mortify sin within our lives. But notice the move he makes here in verse 14. It’s as if he’s saying, how could our lives look any different! Of course, Christians put sin to death because “all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.” In other words, if you have the Spirit of God within you, you will necessarily act and live your life in such a way that shows you are a part of God’s family. “All who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.”
I remember in High School my father pulling me aside anytime I was ready to go to some get together with friends, and he’s always say the same thing: “Remember who you are. Remember your last name, that you are an Unthank.” His point was clear. How I acted at this High School party represented my whole family and therefore he was reminding me to not act in such a way that was contrary to how he and my mom raised me. To my shame I didn’t always heed his advice well, but looking back I know those brief reminders kept me out of far more trouble then had he never said anything at all.
In one sense, Paul is doing the same thing here. He’s reminding us of who we are. Do you see the objective reality of his statement. It’s a statement of indicative truth. If you are led by the Spirit of God, then, says Paul, that means you are a son of God. He doesn’t say “All who live a life of righteousness will one day, maybe, gain the status of being God’s son. No, if you have his Spirit then, de facto, you are God’s son. On one level, this is nothing more than Paul reminding us, you’re a Christian; God is now no longer your judge but your Heavenly Father, and because of that you yourself are a changed person! Live like it! “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.”
But there’s more to what Paul is saying here. He’s also reminding us that we are in Christ. Remember, that’s been the major thrust of Paul’s argument so far in Romans 8. He began by declaring the wonderful good news that “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” And we’ve seen how all the benefits of our salvation and redemption aren’t gifts given to us out of thin air; no, everything we have in terms of salvation we have by being found in Christ. He is our Righteousness (1 Cor. 1:30) and so by faith in him and becoming one with him, his righteousness becomes our righteousness. He is Wisdom (Proverbs 8) and so by becoming one with him through faith, his wisdom becomes our wisdom. And now Paul is telling us, “Look, Jesus is the Son of God. And so, by believing in him and thus becoming one with him, his sonship now becomes our sonship.” It’s a staggering reality! Because of Jesus Christ we are now adopted as sons in the Son. Incidentally, I think this is why Scripture always uses the language of “son” rather than “sons and daughters.” The emphasis is on our union in Christ. We are all sons, whether we’re male or female, simply because we’re united in the Son. Ladies, don’t fret, all believing men are caught up in the image of the church as the Bride of Christ, so it all evens out.
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Though our outer-self is wasting away, our bodies decaying and dying, nonetheless in Christ we have true life, life everlasting, and unending spiritual life. God has not left us for dead but has sent his Son to enter into death on our behalf, and in his resurrection, pull each of those for whom he has died out of the grave with him! His life is now our life and since Christ will never die again, neither shall we. Even our own physical death will only be but a momentary intermission in the now unending eternal drama of living life in the Spirit.

“You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.”– Romans 8:9-10
We have seen that to be a Christian is to be a person who is spiritually found in Christ, which also means that the Holy Spirit (also referred to by Paul as the Spirit of God or the Spirit of Christ) now dwells in, or indwells, the believer. And that word, dwell, is an important verb to consider. As Leon Morris points out, “the Spirit is not an occasional visitor; he takes up residence in God’s people.”[1] Which is an incredibly comforting truth to consider – God will literally never leave us.
We cannot lose our salvation and we cannot lose the presence of the Holy Spirit. Paul says here in verse 9 that “anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him,” meaning, without the Spirit of Christ you do not belong to Christ. But if you do have the Spirit then you do belong to Christ. And Christ himself promised, “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out… this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day” (John 6:37, 39). Do you see? To have the Spirit dwell within you means to have Christ forever!
It also means Christ is in you! Do you see that in verse 10? “But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.” Again, I’m stunned at the depth of Paul’s Trinitarian theology. In verse 9 he’s speaking about the Spirit within us and now, in verse 10, he says that’s the same thing as having Christ within us. Next time Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mormons approach your front door, ask them to read Romans 8:9-10 with you and show them the truth of the Trinity. John Chrysostom, the “Golden-tongued” preacher of the early church remarked that “Paul is not saying here that the Spirit is Christ but is showing rather that anyone who has the Spirit has Christ as well. For where the Spirit is, there Christ is also. Wherever one person of the Trinity is present, the whole Trinity is present too. For the Trinity is undivided and has a perfect unity in itself.”[2]
Consider too the insight from Saint Augustine that “The Holy Spirit is in a certain sense the ineffable communion of the Father and the Son…
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Theologians have long referred to this perfection as God’s aseity, from the Latin a se, or “from himself.” The idea is that God’s existence is his essence. All other creatures exist by way of a Creator – they came into being by way of another Being, and therefore their existence is dependent and thus not a part of their essence. They do not have ens per essentiam, that is, being that exists by virtue of its own essence. This can only be said of God for God alone is a se – of Himself.

Paul, in Romans 1:20, tells us that there is something which he refers to as God’s divine nature. That is, there is something unique to God and about God that cannot be said of any other being. There is a Godness to God, what philosophers and theologians would call God’s essence (or an even more fun word to use, His quiddity – the whatness of God). Consider how Paul in Galatians 4:8 says that when we were unbelievers, we “were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods.” You can call yourself a god all you want, but there’s something about your essence and nature that belies the truth.
So what is God’s Godness? Humility pushes us to listen to God to find this answer since God in his transcendent incomprehensibility is infinitely beyond our limited capacity (much less, our fallen capacity) to grasp at knowing God ourselves. Again, quoting Paul, “For what can be known about God is plain to [all humanity]… who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth” (Romans 1 verse 19 and 18, respectively). We need God to speak and speak in such a way that His word not only penetrates our unbelief but also creates within us true belief. And praise God, He is not silent.
As Luke records for us the words of Paul, “The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; neither is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all life and breath and all things” (Acts 17:24, 25). In other words, what sets God apart from all other beings is his independence. Properly, he is not dependent upon anything else (or anyone else) for his being. That’s the Godness of God. Notice how Paul emphasizes God’s creative power: He made the world and all things and He gives to all life and breath and all things. But God himself, says Paul, does not need anything. His essential independence requires that he is not even in need of his being. He simply is.
Perhaps the clearest expression of this is when God reveals to Moses his own name – a name, by the way, which God has not received from anyone else. This is the name God has Himself chosen and which he’s been pleased to reveal. Thus, it tells us a lot about who and what God is as God knows Himself. In Exodus 3 God reveals himself to Moses as “I Am who I Am.” First, the way in which God discloses this name, out of a burning bush and yet the bush was not being consumed, testifies to the nature of the name. Fire, in order to be, is dependent upon fuel to burn. Not so here. Here is a fire which is burning but is in no need of a bush to burn. The fire, as such, has being independent of the bush. The name then which God reveals from out of the burning bush is tied to this image of independence. “I Am who I Am.” His being is His being andHe does not need anything outside of Himself in order to be.
Theologians have long referred to this perfection as God’s aseity, from the Latin a se, or “from himself.” The idea is that God’s existence is his essence. All other creatures exist by way of a Creator – they came into being by way of another Being, and therefore their existence is dependent and thus not a part of their essence. They do not have ens per essentiam, that is, being that exists by virtue of its own essence. This can only be said of God for God alone is a se – of Himself.
This does not mean, of course, that God caused his own being. There was no moment where God came to be. No, as Francis Turretin writes, “True eternity has been defined by the Scholastics to be ‘the interminable possession of life – complete, perfect, and at once.’”[1] God’s aseity is indistinguishable from his eternality and immutability. He is unchangingly and infinitely and eternally alive! Pure Being and Pure Actuality.
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Our salvation is one which is secured for us by the Triune God. It is the Trinity of Father, Son, and Spirit which brings about our redemption and thus it is the Trinity which we magnify in worship because of our redemption. To worship any other god that is not the Triune God of the Bible is to worship a false god.

“You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.” – Romans 8:9
The Early Church Father, Basil of Caesarea, in a profound bit of theological reflection, says, “Whoever perceives the Father and perceives the Father by Himself has at the same time a mental perception of the Son. And whoever receives the Son does not mentally dismember him from the Spirit but, in due course…. forms within himself a faith that is a commingling of the three together. Whoever mentions the Spirit alone also embraces in this confession him of whom he is the Spirit. And since the Spirit is Christ’s and of God (Rom. 8:9; 1 Cor. 2:12), as Paul says, the one who ‘draws the Spirit’ draws both the Son and the Father too at the same time, just as someone who grabs a hold of a chain on one end pulls on the other end as well. And if anyone truly receives the Son, he draws in the Father on one hand and the Spirit on the other. For he who eternally exists in the Father can never be cut off from the Father, nor can he who works all things by the Spirit ever be disconnected from his own Spirit. In the same way, anyone who receives the Father virtually receives at the same time both the Son and the Spirit.”[1]
I love the way in which Basil’s heart and mind are incapable of mentioning one Person within the Triunity of God without at the same time having his mind conceive and think of the other two Persons. And this kind of Trinitarian thought is something fully emerging out of the Bible. Basil was a Biblically-steeped theologian. Indeed, this kind of thinking is what Paul himself does in Romans 8, verse 9. Considering as he has that those people who are in Christ Jesus are also those who have the Holy Spirit within them (Romans 8:1-8), here Paul explicitly states that the Holy Spirit is both the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ. This verse is brimming with Trinitarian glory!
Think about how Romans 8 began in verse 1. “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” And now notice how Paul talks about being in the Spirit, that is, if the Spirit is indeed in you! Paul assumes, doesn’t he, that to be in Christ and to be in the Spirit is one and the same thing. And of course it is, since there is only one God. But still, we must maintain that the Son of God is different from the Spirit of God who is different from God the Father. In other words, to use the classical language of Christian orthodoxy: there is one God who consists of three distinct Persons.
What does this mean for us as we continue to meditate upon Romans chapter 8? One application is this: that our salvation is one which is secured for us by the Triune God. It is the Trinity of Father, Son, and Spirit which brings about our redemption and thus it is the Trinity which we magnify in worship because of our redemption. To worship any other god that is not the Triune God of the Bible is to worship a false god.
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Our unbelief was crucified in and with Jesus! And so when the Spirit works within a man to bring him out of death and into spiritual life, He works to give him a new heart, a new will, and new desires all because Jesus died to procure those things for that man. This is why we’re able to believe; Jesus secured it for us in his death. “By grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.  For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:8-10).

“For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” – Romans 8:7-8
We continue now in our meditation upon Romans 8, and we’ve been exploring Paul’s understanding of how there are essentially two different kinds of people in the world. According to Paul someone is either in Christ or not in Christ. If you are in Christ then you are someone who is not condemned by God (vs. 1), set free from the power of sin and death (vs. 2), forgiven of sin (vs. 3), empowered by the Holy Spirit for obedience (vs. 4), able to set your mind on the things of the Spirit (vs. 5), and in possession of life and peace (vs. 6).
Whereas if you’re not in Christ, but rather, as Paul argues in Romans chapter 5, still “in Adam”, then you are someone who is still walking according to the flesh (vs. 4), and setting your mind on the things of the flesh (vs. 5), which leads ultimately to death and death eternal (vs. 6).
And what Paul concludes in verses 7 and 8 is that the person who is set on the things of the flesh is fundamentally a person who is hostile to God. Why? Because he does not, indeed he cannot, submit to the goodness and holiness of God’s law. This kind of person, says Paul, cannot please God. Consider here, for just a moment, the absolute absurdity into which sin brings all fallen men and women, the absurdity of hating God. Octavius Winslow captures the thought well and it is necessary to quote him here in full:
“The spectacle is an awful one in the extreme, of the finite armed in dead hostility to the Infinite – of a creature measuring his power with God – opposing his will to God’s will – his way to God’s way – his end to God’s end. And yet how disproportionate are our profoundest feelings of horror and commiseration to the atrocious nature and the tremendous consequence of the crime! Enmity against God! The greatest and holiest, the best and most powerful, of beings and of friends! And why this enmity? Upon what, in the character of God, or in the nature of his government, is this sworn hostility grounded? Is it because he is essential love? Perfectly holy? Strictly Righteous? Infinitely wise and powerful? For which of these perfections does the sinner hate him? Is it because he gave his Son to die for man, laying him in a bleeding sacrifice on the altar of justice for human transgression? Is it because the sun of his goodness shines upon every being, and that he opens his hand and supplies the need of every living thing? Is it because he exercises forbearance and long-suffering, and slow to anger, and of great kindness? For which of these good works does the sinner hate him? And to what extent is this enmity displayed? It rests short of the destruction of the Divine existence. Man is at war with the very being of God.”[1]
The idea of being hostile to God is one which communicates a violent opposition toward God and all things connected with God. Which is why sin distorts and deforms all good things. Think about it: because we cannot get at God directly, we instead oppose God indirectly, sinfully taking good things and mutilating them for our own selfish (fleshly) purposes. We turn the good gift of marriage, and intimacy within marriage, into something unrecognizably new.
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No matter the situation or context, no matter the “craziness” going on around us, the Christian is that person who sets themselves to still thinking about and focusing on the things of the Spirit. Are there distractions? Yes! There will always be distractions…perhaps it is our focus on God in the midst of distraction which is so necessary for our growth and faith and life. 

For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.  For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.Romans 8:5-6
I first wrote these meditations in the early months of the COVID pandemic when everyone was isolated at home, and it struck me how much I and other brothers and sisters needed to meditate deeply upon God’s word. Essentially, I was attempting to help my church and anyone else who would read these do precisely what Paul says Christians do in Romans 8:5 – setting our minds on the things of the Spirit. Even now, this reminds me of a famous sermon C.S. Lewis preached in Oxford in 1939, right at the outset of WW2 and during the German blitzkrieg where German bombs were continually dropping on England day and night. Lewis, asking what should students do in the midst of such turmoil, when the world was seemingly coming to an end, answered thus:
“The peculiar difficulty imposed on you by the war is another matter, and of it I would again repeat what I have been saying in one form or another ever since I started—do not let your nerves and emotions lead you into thinking your predicament more abnormal than it really is. Perhaps it may be useful to mention the three mental exercises which may serve as defenses against the three enemies which war raises up against the scholar.
The first enemy is excitement—the tendency to think and feel about the war when we had intended to think about our work. The best defense is a recognition that in this, as in everything else, the war has not really raised up a new enemy but only aggravated an old one. There are always plenty of rivals to our work. We are always falling in love or quarrelling, looking for jobs or fearing to lose them, getting ill and recovering, following public affairs. If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable.
Favorable conditions never come. There are, of course, moments when the pressure of the excitement is so great that only superhuman self-control could resist it. They come both in war and peace. We must do the best we can.”
In essence, Lewis maintains that we should give our minds and effort to business as usual, as best we can. I think this is right in line with what Paul is getting at in Romans 8, verses 5-6. No matter the situation or context, no matter the “craziness” going on around us, the Christian is that person who sets themselves to still thinking about and focusing on the things of the Spirit. Are there distractions? Yes! There will always be distractions – some certainly greater than others. But perhaps it is our focus on God in the midst of distraction which is so necessary for our growth and faith and life. Isn’t this what Paul says in verse 6?
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The mere desire of wanting that which is not yours, and entertaining that desire with any delight and approval and yearning, is itself rebellion against God, even if you have not outwardly acted on that desire. You may not have made the choice to take any action at all in taking away your neighbor’s wife from him, but the thought, the desire, still condemns you before God’s holy law.

The Law, though written on tablets of stone, is still able to condemningly penetrate into the depths of our hearts, and the last Commandment leaves us all with our “mouths stopped”, as Paul argues (Romans 3:19), that in our own strength we are unable to love the Lord our God with all our heart. Which is the tenth commandment? The tenth commandment is, “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor’s” (Exodus 20:17).
To covet (in the Hebrew khamad) is to desire and in and of itself the word does not alone denote anything evil or wrong. The word is used for legitimate desires as it’s used in Psalm 19:10, “More to be desired are [God’s word] than gold, even much fine gold.”[1] What makes coveteous desire wrong is the object of that desire, namely, if it what you’re desiring does not belong to you because it already belongs to someone else. Hence the repeated emphasis of thy neighbor’s house, neighbor’s wife, neighbor’s ox, etc. This is the sin of envy. Seeing something or someone that belongs relationally or legally to someone else and wanting – desiring – that person or thing. And therein lies the penetrating depth of this commandment.
It’s not merely acting on the desire that’s sinful. It is the desire itself that is sinful. That is, the mere desire of wanting that which is not yours, and entertaining that desire with any delight and approval and yearning, is itself rebellion against God, even if you have not outwardly acted on that desire. You may not have made the choice to take any action at all in taking away your neighbor’s wife from him, but the thought, the desire, still condemns you before God’s holy law. Does not Jesus himself strike this same note when he says, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:27-28)?
Joel Beeke and Paul Smalley are absolutely right when they say that “the desire for evil is evil and arises from a sinful heart.”[2] There’s much to ponder here, especially in our current climate where many folks, even from within the church, argue that desire – any desire at all – is not evil or wrong, but only acting on those desires. Not so, according to the tenth commandment.
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In heaven we will be finally free from sin and death. But now, even though sin and death surround us and are still a part of our who we are, now in Christ and by His Spirit, we can actually begin living life more and more in step with what heaven will be like! Praise God for such freedom and power.

“For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.” – Romans 8:2
As we move from the great declaration of verse 1, that “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” we now begin to see in verse 2 the reason, or the grounds, for why Paul can say this. We know Paul is giving us the reason because he begins verse 2 with that little, but very important word, for. It’s a word connecting verse 1 to verse 2 and it indicates to us why verse 1 is true. So, when Paul tells us that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, we can ask the question why and see the answer in verse 2: Because the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus.
Reading verse 1 and verse 2 together like this we see immediately an important emphasis in the way Paul repeats (in both verses) the phrase “in Christ Jesus”. Do you see that? Here again is that crucial doctrine so important in Paul’s thinking and so essential to our understanding of the Gospel, namely, that our spiritual union in Christ is alone the grounds for our justification, sanctification, and unending peace with God. As D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones put it, “There is nothing more foolish than the notion that you can be ‘in Christ’ at one moment; then when you sin you are ‘out of’ Christ, then when you repent you are ‘in Christ’ again! … The very idea is ludicrous! No, if you are in Him, you are in Him for ever, you are in Him for all eternity. It is God who has put you ‘in Him’, and no one and nothing can take you out – neither hell, nor Satan, nor any other power. If you are in, you are in. It is absolute.”[1]
That is not only very encouraging, friends, but it is ultimately freeing. And that’s exactly the point Paul makes in verse 2. “The law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.” Now, when we read Paul’s use of the word law in this passage it is probably best to understand that word as meaning “power,” or “binding authority” or “motivating principle.”  So, a good reading of this text is how New Testament scholar, Douglas Moo, renders it as “the binding authority (or power) of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the binding power of sin and death.”[2]  In other words, when we are in Christ, and Christ is in us (by His Spirit), there is a new power at work, a power and authority which frees us from that old power of sin, sin which led to death and condemnation.
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In Christ we have absolute certainty that our salvation is secure, no matter what condemnation thunders forth from God’s law. And as we move verse by verse through this chapter we will climb higher and higher into the heavenly air of our union with Christ, seeing all the ways in which that union will blossom forth in our daily walk here and now. 

“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” – Romans 8:1
Few lines of Holy Scripture have been used more by God to encourage assurance and comfort in my own heart. In my own Bible, the page on which Romans 8 appears is a page well worn, smudged from the constant wear of my hands turning to it and my finger running along verse 1 as I have read it over and over and over again. This verse stands out as one of the Apostle Paul’s great indicatives, those statements of fact on which a believer is supposed to rest. It isn’t calling us to do anything, there’s no command to follow, it just is. It’s a declaration of good news given to believers. But what is it saying?
It comes right at the end of Paul’s description, in Romans 7, of what is characteristic of the Christian life, namely, our constant struggle against sin. The Christian believer, born again by God and given a new heart with new desires, now delights in the law of God, even in his inner being, says Paul. And yet Paul can also say, “I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” His answer? Jesus Christ!
And so, he declares with exultant, doxological joy that even though his own thoughts at times condemns him because of the still virulent sin which rages within, he can rest assured, that God does not condemn him. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. As D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones puts it, “a Christian is a person who has been taken entirely outside the realm of any possible or conceivable condemnation. The Christian has finished with the realm of condemnation; he has been taken right out of it; he has nothing more to do with it… Had you realized that?”[1]
The word condemnation is itself a legal term. It’s what a judge declares when the court finds a defendant guilty of some crime. And so, the act of condemning is the final verdict, it is the law’s fiat giving official status to the guilty party: “Condemned!” Any criminal brought before a judge fears this verdict; infinitely so before the Infinite Judge of all creation! As Octavius Winslow writes, “To that court every individual is cited. Before that bar each one must be arraigned. Conceived in sin, and shapen in iniquity (Ps. 51:5 KJV), man enters the world under arrest – an indicted criminal, a rebel manacled, and doomed to die.”[2]
What our world today does not realize, and many in the church have seem to have forgotten, is that all unbelievers right now stand condemned under God’s righteous wrath. Twice in John chapter 3 do we see this stirring truth where John tells us that “Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God” (vs. 18) and “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him” (vs. 36).
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