Romans 8

     8:1-4.  But there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ.  To fulfill the righteous requirement of the Law, Jesus not only kept the Law perfectly, but also died as our atoning sacrifice to satisfy the Law’s condemnation of our sins.  In him, by faith we no longer live in the condemned flesh, but by the law of the Spirit of life.

     8:5-8.  The word mind is not meant here as just the thought process, but more where the attention is.  The same word is translated attitude in Php.2:5.  It is more mind set than merely mind.  (To illustrate, see Luke 17:32-33; John 12:25.)  Vv.7-8 teach the total inability of the carnally minded man.  Apart from the Spirit, we can do nothing to please God.

     8:9-11.  Note that the Spirit of Christ in us saves the whole man.  Just as Jesus was raised from the grave, so the Spirit in us will also raise our mortal bodies (cf.23; 1 Thess. 5:23).  These verses destroy the Greek notion of the life after death as a condition of permanent separation of the spirit from a corrupt imprisoning body.  This is very common today, heard all too frequently at funerals, but it is not Christian salvation.

     8:12-17.  This mortification of sin in the body is the ongoing process of sanctification.   We learn to obey out of love for a loving Father, not by way of fear of the Law’s punishment.  Glorification does not come without suffering.  Dying to sin brings joy, but it comes by way of the cross (17).

     8:18-25.  Though we have the first fruits of the Spirit (23), and by faith walk in newness of life through Jesus Christ, we live in this present creation in hope.  We do not yet see a new heaven and a new earth, nor the redemption of our bodies, except by faith and hope.  We still pray “Thy kingdom come,” and with perseverance we wait eagerly for it (25).

     “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, that wants it down,” said the poet Robert Frost.  This is a law of science.  All order tends to disorder. It is a law which the theory of evolution violates when it says that the remarkable order and complexity seen in living beings resulted and progressed out of disorder by chance.  These verses say that creation was subjected to futility by God’s will (20; cf.Gen.3:17-19; Eccl.1:2), that it is in slavery to corruption, and that its hope of being set free is connected to the glory that is to come when the sons of God are revealed (19, 23).

     What God created, he saw was very good (Gen.1:31).  So how and when did the futility and corruption that creation suffers under begin?  The secret things belong to God, of course, but what he has told us, both in special revelation in the Scriptures, and in what may be clearly seen in what he has made are the facts we are held responsible to honor as his truth.   But both science and theology are prone to futile and foolish speculations (Ro.1:20 f.).

     The older standard view was that there was no corruption in the world until Adam sinned and brought the curse upon the land.  But was there no disorder, no tooth and fang, no death and decay in the world before man?  Our reading of God’s natural revelation has made this hard to accept.  Creation’s slavery to death and corruption seems to be much older than man.  

     But some, who hold an infallible view of Scripture, rightly point out that there can be no real conflict between God’s word by which the world was created, and the world that was created by the same word.  God is true in both what he says and does.

     Those who say there was no evil in the world before Adam sinned have forgotten Satan the ancient serpent.  How old was he?  How long had he been in the world?  We do not know.   Arthur W. Pink says, “Between the first two verses of Genesis 1 some awful catastrophe had occurred — possibly the fall of Satan — and, as a consequence, the earth had been blasted and blighted, and had become a ‘dissolute ruin’, lying beneath a pall of ‘darkness.’ ”  Pink, The Sovereignty of God, 1930, 1995, Baker Books, p.74.

     Under this view, the world must have fallen into ruin when Satan fell.  After all, God made a special garden for man.  He was to go out from Eden under God’s blessing to multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it (Gen.1:28).

     Subdue it from what, if not from Satan and evil?  The curse meant that man would have to toil in a world not subdued.  Certainly there was no evil bias in Adam.  “God made man upright” (Ecc.7:29).  God had made everything good, and he had made man responsible.  The world and its creatures were to be redeemed from the darkness and corruption into which Satan’s fall had brought them, subdued and redeemed by the kingship and priesthood of man.  But Adam’s fall made the work of Christ, the new Adam, most necessary (Heb.2:8ff.).

     One major objection to this view is that if the world outside Eden was already in a state of ruin, how could God behold all that he had made, and on the sixth day pronounce it very good.  The answer is that God saw all that he had made.  From before the foundation of the world, he had made the eternal covenant with himself, that by the Son of Man he would redeem creation from its slavery to corruption.  He would bring good out of evil, while glorifying both his divine justice, and his divine mercy, through the obedience of his own Son on the cross.

     And we, having the first fruits of the Spirit, eagerly watch in hope for what the Great Day shall bring forth.  All is fulfilled in Christ.  

     8:26-39.  Until our hope is no longer hope but sight, and our full salvation as adopted sons of God a present glory, we have the Spirit Himself to intercede for us.   We have two divine intercessors with our heavenly Father:  The Spirit with us in our weakness, and Christ Jesus who has born all our sorrows, and who now sits at the right hand of the Father in heaven (34).  And not only that, but all is according to the everlasting decree of the Father, who works all things together for good to those who love God and are called according to his purpose (28; Eph.1:3-5, 11).

     “Each of the three Persons in the blessed Trinity is concerned with our salvation: with the Father it is predestination; with the Son propitiation; with the Spirit regeneration.  The Father chose us; the Son died for us; the Spirit quickens us.  The Father was concerned about us; the Son shed His blood for us, the Spirit performs His work within us.  What the One did was eternal, what the Other did was external, what the Spirit does is internal”  (Pink, The Sovereignty of God, p.72).

     8:30.  “…these He also glorified.”  The past tense is used because with God our future is as certain as our past.  He foreknew all because he predestined the end from the beginning (29-30; Rev.1:8).  There is no hope as certain as hope in God.  Our assurance rests on the sure rock of Christ’s obedience and God’s choice of us in him from all eternity.  Our hope does not rest on the sand of our fallen nature or Adam’s choice in Eden.

     8:32.  Cf. Luke 12:31-32; 1 Cor.3:21; 1 John 5:14-15.

     8:33.  We have an Advocate with the Father.  Our accuser has been cast out of court (Rev.12:10).

     8:35-39.  Christ has shared all these afflictions with us, and as his people we share them with him.  It is not apart from suffering, but through the cross of Christ that we overwhelmingly conquer.  His victory is our victory.  Nothing can separate those who are in Christ from the love of God.