Romans 8:1

NO CONDEMNATION

‘There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.’

Romans 8:1

No condemnation! What a strange, sweeping statement! And we naturally ask, to whom can it apply? To all Christians, or only to some? The answer is, it applies to all—yes, all. If any one will read this chapter through as a whole, he will see that it is entirely devoted to one great subject, and that we may describe that subject in one word as being ‘the footing on which Christian people stand towards God.’ These words are the standing-point—the foundation—of his whole discussion: ‘No condemnation for those who are in Christ.’ And then when he has gone through his exposition, then, towards the end of the chapter, he comes back to his starting-point, and amplifies it, and works it out, and repeats it over and over again. ‘Who is there to lay anything to the charge of God’s elect?’ He asks, ‘Who is there to condemn?’ And then he breaks out into a kind of Psalm upon this glorious theme: ‘I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.’

I. This doctrine is the basis and standing-ground of our whole position towards God as Christians.—We cannot be too clear upon this. St. Paul is careful to draw his lines very sharply. It is this or nothing. ‘Ye are not in the flesh but in the spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you.’ And again, ‘If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.’ St. Paul does not mean by this that either we or the people he was writing to were perfect, or that they were of exceptional holiness, or that they had unusual knowledge of Divine things. On the contrary, he goes on to speak of their infirmities.

II. No indifference to sin.—Do these words mean that God is indifferent to sin in Christian people? By no means. Especially when you remember that the very end and object of Christianity is to destroy sin. But how is sin to be destroyed? There is one way, and one way only. And that is by our actually living with God, Who is the fountain of holiness and the source of the strength and power to do right and to avoid evil. By our living with Him—for this is what is meant by the Scripture phrases about ‘Communion with God’—by our living in fellowship with Him, by doing all that we have to do, and going through all our daily duties as in His presence, and in reliance on His aid, and so, by this continual communion of our hearts with God, deriving continually increasing communications of Divine power into our hearts and of Divine influence into our characters. This has been the description of all God’s saints.

III. Nothing should keep us back from God.—God says to us, Let the past be past. Only come to Me. Come and take your place before Me as My child. Your sin shall be no barrier. It is your sin that I want to cure. Only come. If you come, if you will dwell constantly in the sense of My presence, ever keeping up the true Christian converse with Me, your Father and your Friend—then every day that you live sin will be growing less and less powerful within you, the cure of evil will be every day progressing in completeness, My spirit shall be more powerful within you day by day. You will be daily growing more meet for My unveiled presence in heaven; and your sins shall never be remembered against you. It is thus, in effect, that God speaks to the Christian soul. Thus is it that there is ‘no condemnation for them that are in Christ’—nothing in our sins that ought to keep us back from God—everything that ought to drive us to God, not that we may be condemned, but that we may be healed. And the basis of the whole is this—that God does forgive and has forgiven us, forgiven us that we may have courage to come boldly to Him for the cure of those very sins which make us afraid to approach Him at all. So that these words, ‘No condemnation’ do in very truth express the footing on which, in the Christian covenant, we do actually stand towards God.