Romans 8:1,2

“ There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and of death. ”

The word now has here its temporal, and not its logical sense, as Philippi would have it (to be in keeping with the application which he makes of Romans 7:7-25 to the regenerate). By this word Paul contrasts the new state with the old, which had passed away.

The therefore is not merely connected, as Meyer thinks, with the preceding verse: “As I am no more in myself, but in Christ, there is no”...; for then but would have been required rather than therefore. This therefore takes up the thread, which had been for the moment broken, of the exposition of Christian sanctification; for the passage Romans 7:7-25 was, as we have seen, a retrospective glance at the moral effects of the law in fallen man, and consequently a sort of parenthesis. Now Paul resumes at the point where he had interrupted himself, that is, at Romans 7:6, and raises the superstructure, the foundation of which he had laid in the section Romans 6:1 to Romans 7:6. Hence the therefore: “Since ye are dead to sin and alive to God, and so subject to grace, and made free from the law, all condemnation has disappeared.” The expression: no condemnation, does not apply to any one form of condemnation, and, indeed, Paul takes into view first that which has been lifted off by the grace of justification, chaps. 1-5: the abolition of guilt; and next, that which is made to disappear by the destruction of sin itself (chaps. Romans 6:1 to Romans 7:6). After therefore the believer has found reconciliation with God, and thereby death to sin, he can really exclaim: “There is now no condemnation.” Only sin must not recover its dominion; otherwise condemnation would infallibly revive. For we have seen at the close of chap. 6 that sin entails death on the justified, in whom it regains the upper hand, as well as on the unjustified (Romans 8:12-13). There is therefore only one way of preventing sin from causing us to perish, that is, that it perish itself. Grace does not save by patronizing sin, but by destroying it. And hence the apostle can draw from what has been proved in chap. 6 the conclusion: that there is no condemnation. It ought to be so after sin is pardoned as guilt and destroyed as a power, if always this power remains broken. The view of Paul extends even it would seem to a third condemnation, of which he has not yet spoken, that which has overtaken the body, death, the abolition of which he proceeds also to explain, Romans 8:11.

The words: them which are in Christ Jesus, form a contrast to the expression αὐτὸς ἐγώ, I, as I am in myself, Romans 7:25.

Our translations, following the received text, give us at the end of the verse this addition: who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. These words are, according to numerous authorities, and according to the context itself, an interpolation borrowed by anticipation from Romans 8:4: “A precautionary gloss against the freeness of salvation,” says M. Bonnet very happily. It was needful to proclaim deliverance before explaining it.

How has it been effected? This is what is expounded Romans 8:2-4.