Chapter 8

This contrast in verse  2:

2 For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. [Rom 8:2 ESV]

The gospel is the "law of the Spirit of life", Mosaic Law is "the law of sin and death".  This verse is the only place in the ESV with the exact phrase "Spirit of life".  I have rarely used this translation but:

2 And because you belong to him, the power of the life-giving Spirit has freed you from the power of sin that leads to death. [Rom 8:2 NLT]

This seems to be a "clearer to me" way of saying this. 

Sin - as defined by the law - is not in charge once we are in Christ.  His death, his payment of the ultimate penalty, served the demands of justice, and made the law null as far as we are concerned.  The confirmation of that is the Spirit within us, as we are in Christ.  You can't pay more after you're dead. 

2022 - I think that beyond that, based on the Covenants chapter in Grudem, that the difference in the church age and the Abrahamic age is the indwelling Holy Spirit.  Without the Spirit, there was a lot of sin that just flat wasn't recognized as sin.  I think murder was always murder, rape was always rape...but drunkenness, adultery, most lies, and so on, if generally acceptable in a culture were just not seen as sins.  But with the Holy Spirit inside us, we have the discernment to ferret out sin no matter the circumstances.  It may take time and prayer, but the Holy Spirit will reveal it to us when we sin - or even better, when we are about to sin.  This seems more likely to be what Paul is talking about.  The Law revealed sin in very specific instances.  Like 613 of them, and if you broke even one, you broke them all and the penalty was assured.  But if something happened that was not covered by the 613, well..what then?

2025 - The parable of the dishonest manager? Maybe the whole point of that was precisely that since the 613 laws did not cover "the sin of cooking the books", it was considered a very smart play.  A way to get around any sin but still take care of yourself.  Dubious, but not against "The Law".  Yet today as we read it, it just sits wrong with us, it is deceptive, it is disloyal, and it cost the boss money.  We see in this parable the difference between behavior under The Law and the higher standard of the New Covenant.

2025 - The dishonest manager was admired not because he followed the Law so closely and cleanly but because he was able to make money for himself - to get rich - without really breaking the Mosaic in any specific.  The Old Law was about the letter, and absolutely ignored the intent sometimes, as here, when money was involved.  I think this is the best interpretation yet.

And even more, the Holy Spirit gives us the power to turn away from sin.  Our corrupt bodies cannot help but sin, do not care if they sin, tend to do whatever we see as best for us.  The Holy Spirit shows the right direction, and grants us access to the road that goes that way.

These verses make an important point also:

3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. [Rom 8:3-4 ESV]

I guess I always thought this was something we "inferred" from scripture.  But it is not. It is clearly and concisely stated.  God sent Jesus to live a perfect life, and be offered as sacrifice, as the Law required.  The aim and point of the Law is now satisfied.  The Law is over.  This is not so for believers only.  It is also true for Orthodox Jews, for Hassidic Jews, and for Muslims and Buddhists.  The Law, no matter how closely one follows it, no longer has any power at all.  By substitution, Jesus has satisfied the purpose of the Law and indeed the requirements of the Law, on our behalf, and made it powerless to either convict us or to save us.  It can no longer do either one!

2024 - The above is probably not worded quite right.  The "legal" portion of the Law is still correct, and still applies.  That is, you still don't murder, you still don't move landmarks, you are still responsible if your livestock injures a person, you still don't sleep with your Father's wife who is not your mother.  These things in the Law that are about how we behave, about what is moral, are STILL AS TRUE as they were then.  The penalty has been paid, so we don't get stoned for messing them up.  The Law concerning peace offerings and burnt offerings and all those no longer apply because there is no priest to carry them out for us...because we are now our own priests with direct access to God.  And there is no longer any need for the dietary portion of the Law, because that was made clear to Peter in the NT.  The dietary Law was just to make Israel so "weird" that no one wanted to marry into it.  It was a setting apart.  But we should never forget that if it was sin under the Law, it is still sin, and with the understanding granted us by the Holy Spirit within, a whole lot of things not mentioned in the Law are also sins. 

2025 - No...I think the Law is absolutely gone.  We don't sleep with someone else's wife because the Law of the Spirit, under the New Covenant, bears witness with our spirit that we ought not to do that.  It is a higher standard. It no longer has to be written down as a law for us to know we ought not do it.  Same with the rest of the those.  The whole Mosaic is out the door, and that also explains why things that required stoning under the Law no longer have that penalty - because that Law is dead, like a spouse that passed, and we no longer have obligations toward the Law AT ALL!  Think of the attacks on the Bible that go away when we see this!  The moral, the dietary, and the sacrificial, all gone.  Roll up the scroll and put it away.  We are like the world from Adam to Moses...No written law to condemn us.  BUT, unlike those generations, we have been gifted the Holy Spirit inside us, so that it is no longer doing whatever seems right TO US, but doing right as we are informed by the Holy Spirit.  In any case, the Law is perhaps a reference as to some specific instances, to help us understand how to behave, but it is no longer obligatory.  So yes, if your bull kills somebody, you have a responsibility.  But modern penalties can be righteously applied. 

I read somewhere...maybe in my own notes...that before there was any Law, if one's behavior complied with the culture and standards of the place where you lived, no matter how sinful we might view that behavior today, there was NO LAW AGAINST IT, and so it was not illegal...it was not therefore a sin to be imputed or a transgression of the kind that Adam committed.

Thus we get all those New Testament heresies in Paul's writings as some people experimented with  "freedom" in Christ.  They were free from the Law - adultery was defined in the Law.  So if the Law was gone, adultery was no longer illegal!  And Paul is pointing out that of course that is still wrong, because the New Covenant doesn't do away with any morality at all, in fact it raises the bar, but through the indwelling Holy Spirit and the Word, which leaves no doubt at all about moral behavior!

In the Sermon on the Mount...Were all the examples Jesus gave linked to the moral law?  I don't think he said anything about bringing a more perfect lamb if you had one.  He did not raise the bar on sacrificial law.  He didn't say that under the New Covenant, it wasn't just pigs that  you couldn't eat, but anything that had been near a pig.  He did not raise the bar on the dietary law.  That just went out entirely and completely.  But the moral law was kept, and indeed that bar was raised.

2021 - These verses are the how and the why of Christ.  God did it by sending him in the flesh.  He sent him "for sin".  Jesus was here to deal with the sin of the world, the totality of sin.  He showed that flesh can win against sin, inferring that Adam could have said no.  But he did not.  Then it says that the Law was fair.  The Law was the contract between God and Israel.  This says the contract was "honorable" by Israel. They could have kept its statutes, its commandments, and its judgements.  The contrast was not so difficult as to be impossible for them - which would have made it unfair.  They could have done it.  But they had to want to do it.  Jesus showed that Adam could have said no, and showed that Israel could have said yes.  Our position in Christ (8:1) imputes his success in the flesh to those of us who are in the flesh.

2023 - This is positional.  We must be IN CHRIST, just as we were in him when "we" died, and in him when "we" rose again.  There is position in him, yet we are still in these corrupt bodies.  God sees us in Christ. 

2022 - Jesus kept the whole Law, accurately, and as intended rather than as perverted by the Pharisees.  The covenant between God and Israel said that if you kept all these Laws, God would accept you. All the sacrifices though, were "corrections" for when you inadvertently broke one of the Laws.  But you'd still broken it.  Further, there was no provision in the Law for intentional breakage.  And in the flesh, there was ALWAYS intentional breakage, which completely condemned and disqualified you under the Law.  You were no longer perfect, even by the Law - which was recognized as incomplete and incapable of saving.  Jesus kept it all.  He was therefore perfect and acceptable.  Only perfect, like kind sacrifices could be substituted.  So a ram is, in reality, an insufficient substitute for a man.  It is not the same "death".  Jesus could only pay for others because he had no sin of his own.  He was not only like kind, he was perfect in being sinless. 

2023 - Animal sacrifices had to be physically perfect.  Jesus had to be spiritually perfect.  Animal sacrifices were sufficient only for "accidental sin" because an animal cannot choose between right and wrong.  Jesus was sufficient for all sin because he always chose to reject sin.  We might extend this to say that physical death is insufficient payment for rejecting Christ.  Spiritual death - separation from God in hell to suffer for eternity - is the price for rejection of God's own son. 

His death was not required of God for Himself because he had no sin.  Therefore, his death could count for someone else.  God allowed "replacement" on the gallows.  He didn't have to do that.  He could require payment for our sins individually.  Each for his own.  But he allowed a substitution. 

A test for determining our spiritual condition:

5 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. [Rom 8:5 ESV]

Your life shows your condition.  This test makes me unsaved for most of my adult life.  By this test I was saved as a child, then unsaved for a while, then back to saved, then unsaved again, and repeated this at least twice more.  By this test, I'd say saved now.  How can we explain this?  Remember these verses, that appear to be addressed to saved people:

12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. 13 Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. 14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. [Rom 6:12-14 ESV]  But is this about how to escape sin and be saved, or about how even living like a full blown sinner cannot condemn you under the law anymore, but you still shouldn't embrace the flesh and the world?  MSB note here seems to agree that this is addressed to the saved in that it says this: "mortal body.  The only remaining repository where sin finds the believer vulnerable.  The brain and its thinking processes are part of the body and thus tempt our souls with its sinful lusts (see note on vs 6;"  Looked at 6 also.  I think I am on the right track.  Saved people can allow themselves to be tempted and drawn and influenced by the corrupt body - the part of us that does not regenerate until the rapture, when it too is made new - to do the "old things" that we previously enjoyed.  With me, the difference in before salvation and after salvation was sometimes "visible" only to me.  I woke up every Sunday regretting that I had not gone to church.  I woke up hungover and regretted my drinking. I always, during the "unsaved" times, believed in God and despised my sins.  But even so, for long periods I "let sin reign in my mortal body". 

2024 - It is like that preacher on Wednesday night said that time.  I think it was Dr. Kersh.  If you sin one night, say you drink a new alcoholic drink, and you wake up next morning and think "Wow, I liked that, I can't wait to get drunk on that again!", that is a strong indicator that you are NOT saved at all.  But if you wake up thinking, "That was tasty, but was still wrong, still sin, and I wish I hadn't done it." that is an indication that you "let sin reign in your mortal body", in which your saved spirit is confined.  Only we ourselves can begin to "judge ourselves" as to our spiritual condition.

And still more:

7 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. 8 Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. [Rom 8:7-8 ESV]

It is not even possible to be "good" in God's eyes without full submission to Him.  This is clearly about unsaved people.  The word "cannot" is the key word.   And the next verse confirms that thought, because it starts with "You, however, are not in the flesh..."

2024 - Verse 8 is even bigger than indicated above.  8 is in fact a reiteration of 7.  The unsaved mind is slave to the flesh, is fundamentally and forever hostile to God, and can never - on its own - seek salvation.  The unsaved mind will always actively aggressively avoid salvation.  What it is saying is that if we are lost, and both our flesh and our spirit are dead, we can never ever discover the way to salvation.  We won't even try. What is dead has no ambition to become alive.  We can never be saved without the prior intervention of God.  He must first quicken us before we have any capacity to respond to him.  He only quickens those whom he foreknew.  Once quickened, those he foreknew CAN decide to be saved.  Indeed they MUST do so or remain lost.  In this way, in this sequence, God chooses those who can be saved, he gives them the ability to see that a choice must be made - the ability to know they CAN make a choice - and then they choose to be saved.  This is the vital "both and" scenario put into words.  This is why both are true - God chooses you FIRST, and without that no one can be saved, BUT STILL we are responsible for making the choice.  If God never quickens the dead spirit, that spirit cannot please God.  That is what this verse says.  And we should also recognize here that God does not foreknow everyone.  Some are never give a choice at all.  Harsh, but true.

2021 - So the discussion about chapter 6 is ok, but what about 8:5-11?  Whom are they addressing?  Look at vs 9:

9 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. [Rom 8:9 ESV]

Clearly, the description in vss 5-8 is about unsaved, unregenerate people.  It is not about carnal Christians, backslid Christians, none of that.  Vs 9 clearly contrasts the unsaved with the saved.

The wording here:

10 But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. [Rom 8:10 ESV]  Continues the whole dualism of body and spirit.  Again, remember that Paul is in Corinth as he writes this where I believe the false teachers were elevating the idea that the body - and what the body does - makes no difference at all to the spirit.  They are treated as separate, compartmentalized.  Their point was that what the body did cannot affect the spirit at all...so let your body party.  Paul seems to be agreeing that what the body does cannot affect the spirit, but says further that the body isn't about a party, because it is dead, corrupt, decaying, and a ball on a chain for the saved - who look forward to ridding themselves of that old corrupt body and putting on the new body.  You don't mix life and death.  You don't have dead bodies at your celebrations of life.  So Paul is saying that "indulging" what is dead is irrational.  To even suggest it is obviously an error.  Then this last line:

11 If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. [Rom 8:11 ESV]  This would just about have to be about the resurrection, wouldn't it?  MSB notes are no help here.

I am sick to death of ESV footnotes that read "...or brothers and sisters..."  If you are mature enough to be trying to understand this stuff, you know that the gospel is not, was never, and won't be exclusive to men.  The context of the NT proves that, the context of the OT proves that. There is no chance that anyone with a tenth of a brain would ever think the Bible exclusive to men.   One footnote, at the very beginning, would make the point.  But no.  Every single time it comes up, we get another "clarification" that Paul is talking to women also.  It is sad that this whole translation is obsessed with maintaining equality of the sexes - as though if they did not, everyone would believe the Bible was just about men.  At no time in the history of the Bible did anyone ever think it meant that!!!  That's the Quran you're thinking about!!!  I daresay that there has been a whole lot more written about how when the Bible says "women can't" or "women shouldn't" it is not talking about women at all, much less about women AND men, than has been written about how when the Bible says "men" it means men AND women.  These footnotes are a solution in search of a problem.

This verse:

12 So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. [Rom 8:12 ESV]  Seems to be put together oddly.  Why is that last phrase stuck on there?  What does that phrase go with?  Should it read "We are debtors to live according to the flesh...but not TO the flesh"?  That makes very little sense.  Or would it be better to say "We are NOT debtors to the flesh nor should we let the flesh dictate our actions."  Almost all the translations I looked at are similar to the ESV in this odd translation.  Here's one that was a little different:

12 Therefore, dear brothers and sisters, you have no obligation to do what your sinful nature urges you to do. [Rom 8:12 NLT]  To me, this is more the point of the verse.

It also begins with therefore, so is the conclusion of what went before.  But ESV makes it verse 1 in a new paragraph.  If we move it up into the previous paragraph, the point there was that our bodies are dead.  We have no obligation to what is dead.  The previous point was that we are alive in the spirit because of THE Spirit.  Any debt we owe is to that which makes us alive, not to that which is already dead.  So I would say Paul is telling us we are in debt, but not to anything about the flesh, only to the spirit that quickens our spirit now, and will quicken our bodies into something new at a later time.

13 For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. [Rom 8:13 ESV] 

I read this as "If you are unsaved, you're destined to die in both body and spirit.  If you are saved, indulging your body is pampering what is already dead - what possible good can that do you?"  What a complete waste.  I suspect that this idea, taken to its extreme, is where asceticism comes from.  Not only do we not pamper our dead bodies, not only are we not just indifferent to our dead bodies, but we in fact inflict harm on them to show how wonderfully detached from them we are in spirit.

New paragraph talks about the saved receiving the "Spirit of adoption" as sons.  This verse states the reason why:

14 For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. [Rom 8:14 ESV]  Because we are in Christ?

This verse also:

17 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. [Rom 8:17 ESV]

That last part - "provided we suffer with him".  Are we not heirs if we have it too easy?  MSB has this note:  "Proof of the believer's ultimate glory is that he suffers - whether it comes as mockery, ridicule, or physical persecution - because of his Lord."

2023 - This seems to clearly say that suffering is a prerequisite for glorification.  But that "sounds wrong".  Wonder if Grudem addresses this verse?  He does in several places.  This is about persecution and ridicule and such, but it also includes physical death.  To die physically is also to suffer with Christ.  This verse:  10 For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. [Heb 2:10 ESV].  The suffering here referenced is Christ's death on the cross.  It is physical death.  There is much more also about it in the second chapter of Hebrews, but it is Sunday morning, and I cannot go there...

2021 - Picking up the pace here.  Too long on the first 17 verses.  Next year, pick it up at 18.  It would seem to me that this 8th chapter is very pivotal to Paul's case.   It is like every verse must be pondered and dissected and reconnected to all the other things that one believes in order to make the whole "machine" function in harmony.  Verse after verse - Is he jumping all over the place, or am I just too blind to see the connections?

Then beginning in vs 18, Paul talks at length about suffering, and it's irrelevance in view of eternity in glory. 

2024 - Why have I not put in this vital verse?:

18 For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time [are] not worthy [to be compared] with the glory which shall be revealed in us. [Rom 8:18 KJV].  I like it much better in the KJV.  This is key to the suffering we must endure in this life.  It isn't a drop in the bucket compared to the glory that is to come.

19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. 20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. [Rom 8:19-21 ESV]

Creation itself is suffering under the curse of sin.  Futility - that is, effect without cause, no defense against it.  Effect without cause is the curse of sin on the universe.

2023 - Oh my...Is this why James Webb seems to be tearing cosmology apart?  Because science is looking for a reason things are as they are, but like trying to understand what makes man do unjustifiable, evil things when morally correct things could be done, the universe is sometimes "random" because of the effects of sin?  That seems way way out there past what this would be saying...but it does work.  Cosmology can't figure out "the beginning" because cosmology rejects creation by God.  And they cannot scientifically go back past the point where sin entered the world and began corrupting the data.  It is rare to get a valid conclusion from unsound data.  That is a sentence I can get behind.  Can I get a

FB post out of it, possibly?

Verse 26, often quoted, comes right after this statement that both the creation of all that is, and we ourselves, are groaning in hopes of being translated into the perfection that God has intended for His own:

26 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. [Rom 8:26 ESV]

MSB says this is about communication directly from the Spirit to the Father, longing for the perfecting of all that is.

Have to put in vs 30, possibly the best proof text there is for "predestination":

30 And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified. [Rom 8:30 ESV]  MSB note indicates that John believes predestination is for real.  He says this  is not just a reference to God's omniscience in knowing who will come, but is in fact a predetermined choice of God as to who He will set His love upon, and have an intimate relationship with.  There are multiple other references, both to verses and to other notes.

Then five questions:

1. If God is for us, who can be against us?  So is God or us?  He gave us his SON! So...

2.  How will he not give us all things?

3. Who will bring any charge against God's elect?  God is the judge, and if he is the judge can anyone else...

4. Who is to condemn us, if Jesus died for us?  It is Jesus who defends us from all accusers.  If Jesus is defending us because he loves us, when then can...

5. Who can separate us from the love of Christ.

All unanswerable.  Here is where confidence lies for the believer.  This is how Paul returned to Corinth even after messing up badly.  Who can bring a charge against him for it?

2023 - Added the explanations at the end of each of the questions.  When put together this way, we have a very strong proof text for perseverance of the saints.

(2021 - My head is getting worse I think...will try to just get the reading done.)

2022 - These verses:

35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? 36 As it is written, "For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered." 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. [Rom 8:35-37 ESV].  Paul quotes Psa 44:22.  See the detailed discussion there of a very common misunderstanding of why these verses are used.  We ought not to take them at face value only, but look to the Psalm for the context of the verses and what they mean there.  We are NOT sheep for the slaughter and that is why vs 37 starts with NO!