From No Condemnation to No Separation (Rom. 8:1)
Not Guilty , by Abraham Solomon, 1854. Image from WikiMedia Commons We come now to the justly famous and loved eighth chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans. It begins, “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus” (8:1). The word “therefore” indicates that the apostle is drawing a conclusion from what has gone before. The question is, from what is Paul drawing this conclusion? We cannot say that he is doing so from chapter 7 alone. The answer really is that this conclusion follows from all of chapters 1-7. How do we know this? Well, one reason why we should see the “therefore” as pointing back to chapters 1-7, and especially back to the end of chapter 5 (which summarizes the argument of chapters 1-5), is that the word “condemnation” is only used three times in the entire NT, and those three times are here in 8:1 and then at the end of the fifth chapter, in 5:16, 18. When Paul uses that very word again here at...
