Let me spare a few thoughts on the above pas­sage. These lit­tle essays are not intended to indoc­tri­nate, but to chal­lenge to crit­i­cal think­ing. Whether I am right or not is not important.

Rom 8:1 There is there­fore now no con­dem­na­tion for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death. 3 For God has done what the law, weak­ened by the flesh, could not do: send­ing his own Son in the like­ness of sin­ful flesh and for sin, he con­demned sin in the flesh…

We saw pre­vi­ously that Chap­ter 7 deals with the Jew­ish peo­ple that strug­gled under the law with sin. From the depth of degra­da­tion there was a cry of desparation:

Rom . 7:24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?

The solu­tion is pre­sented in 8:1. There is no con­dem­na­tion for those who are in Christ Jesus. But what does it mean to be in him? The bringer of the new covenant is sym­bol­i­cally pre­sented here as the sphere of exis­tance, and those who have the Spirit right­fully exist within that sphere. Let us remem­ber, that the ter­mi­nol­ogy Paul uses is not Jew­ish, but Greek — com­mu­ni­cat­ing to them in their own lan­guage, the tech­nique he learned from Hil­lel. Paul talks about being in Adam, the first man, that is, belong­ing to his race, being his descen­dant, inher­it­ing his char­ac­ter­is­tics. Those in Christ belong to the race of the new man, and they are char­ac­terised by hav­ing the Spirit of God act­ing as an inter­nal force dri­ving them to obey.

Hav­ing the Spirit means there is no con­dem­na­tion. Con­dem­na­tion only came because of fail­ure. How­ever, let us not for­get that repen­tance always brought for­give­ness. Only repen­tance, noth­ing else, was required for for­give­ness. The sac­ri­fices — sin is costly, isn’t it? — were only the pub­lic tes­ti­mony about the for­give­ness that took place, and were only required in the pres­ence of the Tem­ple. If you don’t believe it, go, read what Jesus says about the pub­li­can and the Phar­isee pray­ing in the Tem­ple, or the para­ble of the father whose son takes his inher­i­tance and spends it all in far­away lands, but repents in his deprav­ity and returns. Repen­tance comes first, ret­ri­bu­tion and sac­ri­fices come only later. But gen­uine repen­tance already guar­an­tees for­give­ness. With­out such repen­tance for­give­ness is not impossible.

In v.2 two aspect of the law is men­tioned. Are there two laws? Oh, no. But the law put into the heart by God through the Spirit is referred to as the law of the Spirit of life, that is, the law in the heart empow­ered by the Spirit brings life. The law given on tablets of stones brought death, for it was pow­er­less to stop sin, it could only reg­u­late it, con­demn it. The law under the old covenant was exter­nal, it was the duty of the indi­vid­ual to inter­nalise it, but there was no inter­nal force given by God that drove them to obey.

Let us not for­get that the bib­li­cal lan­guage is not all-inclusive. There is a lot of exag­ger­a­tion. So is the ref­er­ence to the law of sin and death. Such lan­guage shall not be under­stood lit­er­ally, oth­er­wise the Tanakh (i.e. OT) is lying every sin­gle time it men­tions the righteous.

We read that the law could not pro­duce right­eous­ness. No law can ever pro­duce it. The pur­pose of the law is not that. It is no more than a mea­sur­ing rod, a stan­dard against which one is mea­sured. Right­eous­ness comes from within. One keeps the law not that he may become right­eous by obey­ing it, but because he is right­eous in his heart.

So how is the law weak­ened? Can the law be weak­ened by the flesh? Oh, not. The law is only a list of do’s and don’ts, it can­not be weak­ened, nor strength­ened. But its influ­ence can be weak­ened or strengthened.

Rom. 3:29 Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gen­tiles also? Yes, of Gen­tiles also, 30 since God is one; and he will jus­tify the cir­cum­cised on the ground of their faith and the uncir­cum­cised through their faith. 31 Do we then over­throw the law by this faith? By no means! On the con­trary, we uphold {or estab­lish, strengthen} the law.

The quest is, do we make the law unnec­es­sary by faith? The answer is no. By faith we strengthen it, that is, strengthen its influ­ence. One more proof that the law was not meant to be abolished.

So what is this faith Paul talks about? Did faith in those days meant the same as today? Remem­ber, Paul is try­ing to con­vey Jew­ish ideas to Greek audience.

Deut. 7:9 Know there­fore that the LORD your God is God, the faith­ful [LXX: pis­tos] God who keeps covenant and stead­fast love with those who love him and keep his com­mand­ments, to a thou­sand generations

1Cor. 4:2 Here, more­over, it is required of stew­ards, that they be found faith­ful [Gk. pistos].

1Cor. 7:25 Now con­cern­ing vir­gins, I have no com­mand­ment from the Lord, but I give my judg­ment as one who has obtained mercy from the Lord to be trust­wor­thy [Gk. pistos].

1Thess. 5:24 Faith­ful [Gk. pis­tos] is he who calls you, who will also do it.

Acts 3:16 And his name, by faith {Gk. te pis­tei} in his name, has made this man strong whom you see and know; and the faith {Gk. he pis­tis} which is through Jesus has given the man this per­fect health in the pres­ence of you all.

In the above we find the adjec­ti­val and noun forms of the same Greek term. The mean­ing is “trust­wor­thy”, “faith­ful”. The Greek term trans­lated as faith is pis­teuo, which is derived from pis­tis. You can see that these terms are related, and they express the very same idea: being trust­wor­thy, being faith­ful. They don’t directly refer to belief.

In the Hebrew the sit­u­a­tion is the same. God is said to be faith­ful — the same term applied to peo­ple. God is faith­ful, trust­wor­thy. Those who are called by His name shall have the same attrib­utes. It is not about head knowl­edge, but about char­ac­ter, the ref­er­ence is to con­duct. Knowl­edge can help to develop char­ac­ter, but it is the char­ac­ter that counts.

There­fore, those who walk by faith, that is, who are trust­wor­thy or faith­ful, uphold or strengthen the influ­ence of the law. The dis­obe­di­ent weaken it.

Son­ship is men­tioned above. It is not about being a bio­log­i­cal son. God doesn’t have one, as He has no sperm count. But it is about rep­re­sen­ta­tion, reflec­tion. The son is one who is right­eous, and thus rep­re­sents God, shines forth His right­eous nature. In the Tanakh (i.e. OT) the Jew­ish peo­ple were called God’s son, just as Solomon also was. The one, who is as devoted to obey­ing God as Jesus was, is rightly called a son. No won­der that the believ­ers are referred to as sons in the NT. Empow­ered by the Spirit they lived faith­fully, and through their lives they revealed God to others.