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In the seventh chapter of Romans, which was the subject of last week’s lesson, Paul describes a problem. The problem is that neither knowledge nor effort enables one to keep the law. As a consequence, self-reliance, however well-informed or well-intentioned, is condemned under the law.
In the eighth chapter of Romans, which is the subject of this week’s lesson, Paul presents the solution to the problem. In the first verse, Paul correlates the absence of condemnation to being “in Christ.” Please note that the phrase “who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit,” which appears in the King James Version and implies that the absence of condemnation is attributable to what we call sanctification, the imparted obedience of Christ, is not in the original. Thus, a correct translation of the first verse of the chapter is: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (New American Standard Bible).
Thereafter, Paul elaborates on the concept of being “in Christ.” In the fourth verse, he introduces the concept of the imparted obedience of Christ as the evidence of faith. In subsequent verses, he identifies the alternative to “the law of sin and death”; “the flesh,” the carnal mind, fear, death, and bondage, as the law of the Spirit of life in Christ, the spiritual mind, peace, life, and adoption.
What is the law of “the Spirit of life in Christ” (vs. 2)? When Adam and Eve hearkened to Satan, they lost their freedom and acquired the carnal mind, a mind at enmity with God that separates us from God and one another. In Christ, however, freedom is restored and enmity and isolation are abolished (Gen. 3:15; Eph. 2:14).
A. T. Jones describes this accomplishment: “It is true, the Jews in their separation from God had built up extra separations between themselves and the Gentiles. It is true that Christ wanted to put all those separations out of the way, and he did do that. But the only way that he did it, and the only way that he could do it, was to destroy the thing that separated them from God. All the separations between them and the Gentiles would be gone, when the separation, the enmity, between them and God was gone.
“Oh, the blessed news that the enmity is abolished! It is abolished; thank the Lord. ... It is gone, in Christit is gone. Not outside of Christ; in Christit is gone, abolished, annihilated. Thank the Lord. This is freedom” (The Third Angel’s Message, No. 11, 1895 General Conference Bulletin, p. 194 [original]).
E. J. Waggoner explains verses two through four: “So the law as it is in the person of Christ is the law of the Spirit of Life. So he [the believer] takes the life of Christ, and gets the perfection of the law as it is in Christ, and serves Him in spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter. Thus he is delivered from bond-service to the law to freedom in it. There is a wonderful amount of rich truth in that,—‘The law of the Spirit of Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.’