Sermon Tone Analysis

There are a lot of emotional courtroom scenes playing out in the news these days.

I once served on the jury in a federal court case.

It was a clear-cut case; we who served on the jury took only about 45 minutes to deliberate.

It was obvious that the defendant was guilty.

Nevertheless, as we went back into the courtroom, and as the verdict was being read, it was still quite unsettling and emotional.

We knew that finding this person guilty meant he was going to jail, and that’s a big deal.

I’ll never forget how I felt in that moment.

I am reminded of those emotions as we come to the eighth chapter of Romans.

Something monumental and consequential is happening here.

A verdict of condemnation has been declared, but it is sin, not you and me, that is being condemned.

In union with Jesus, the Son of God, anyone may now be declared free of sin and free also to live in harmony with God’s own Holy Spirit.

So let us feel the emotions of the moment as we consider this morning how it is God condemned sin.

This passage takes us to the day of God’s judgment, God’s decisive act of judgment, and the resulting life that comes from God’s judgment.

The Day of God’s Judgment

Verse 1 tells us, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

Following what was said at the end of chapter 7, this is a clear line of transition.

The therefore in this verse looks forward to what Paul has written in the present chapter, which is meant to bring us relief from the tension, from the discombobulation we felt in chapter 7. The relief comes because God’s day of judgment has come, and it comes with good news for the world.

Plaintiff and Defendant

The word condemnation is a judicial word.

While there is no doubt that God is the implied judge, it is not individual sinners who are on trial here.

We are not on defense.

We are on the side of the prosecution.

The condemnation Paul is referring to is the one he first brought up in Romans 5.

In fact, the word used in Romans 8:1 occurs elsewhere in the New Testament only in Romans 5:16 and 18, so we must imagine the scene the way Paul first set it up.

In chapter 5, Paul takes us back to Eden, to the story of the world and not just the story of individual sinners.

He reminded us there that “sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin.”

The result of one man’s sin was “condemnation” (Rom 5:16), indeed, “condemnation for all men” (Rom 5:18).

In other words, since we all share in Adam, we have already come under condemnation, the condemnation of sin.

What we need is to be vindicated from it.

We need a way out of the condemnation, a way out of the death sentence which is the result of sin.

This is the story, the picture we ought to have in mind as we read Romans 8:1.

The hope, the promise, the expectation is that something will be done to overthrow sin as a power over the universe, not just that something will be done to relieve the individual conscience of guilt.

So, in this courtroom scene, we are more like the plaintiff than the defendant.

We are not on trial; sin is on trial.

But if sin gets off the hook, then we remain under its power.

This is the condemnation Paul is talking about.

And it is the reason he is not ashamed of the gospel.

Here is a message of hope for the world, for all the world.

This is not a message of religion, so long as by that word we are referring to that which deals with immaterial things like where you might be after you die.

This is a message of good news about the world you live in now and indeed the hope that you might be able to live in it forever.

The Verdict Has Arrived

So, we read verse 3 in light of its clear connection to verse 1. Verse 1 says that there is hope of “no condemnation.”

There is a reality in which there is life free of sin and its death sentence.

How could that be?

Because of what God did.

Verse 3 is straightforward: God condemned sin.

Now note two things.

The verb condemned means not just that God declared sin guilty but that he also brought about its punishment.

So “no condemnation” means no guilt, but it also means no penalty.[1]

It means that whatever sin has done to us, there is a way out of its clutches.

Verse 3 argues not that God will condemn sin but that he has done so already.

It is done, over, finished.

Paul is saying something quite extraordinary here.

Just think of it.

What would it mean for God to have already condemned sin?

Here we must hurry to the second thing to note in this main sentence.

What God has declared guilty and upon which he has already carried out its sentence is sin.

And by sin Paul means “sin as a ruling and regulating power.”[2]As

we saw last week, here in Romans sin is being personified.

Sin is an actor, an aggressor.

It seizes opportunities (Roman 7:8, 11), it produces death (Rom 7:13), it takes control and ownership over fallen human beings (Rom 7:14-17).

In verse 2 it is contrasted with the Holy Spirit.

This sin or evil is not an impersonal force or power.

This is Sin with a capital-s.

It is not just evil from which we are to pray for deliverance, but the evil one.

And what Paul tells us here in verse 3 is that God has done it.

He has condemned and punished the evil one.

He has already condemned Sin.

The great victory has already been won.

The Act of God’s Judgment

Now let’s ponder this good news together this morning.

Let’s see how it has come about.

How has God acted to bring about this great judgment, this great victory, to pass?

Let’s examine the details from what we are given here in verse 3.

When God Sent His Son

God’s victory over Sin—over Satan, over evil—came when God sent “his own Son.”

God’s victory was won when God sent his Son, Jesus.

To be the Son of God means to be God’s anointed one, chosen to rule as God’s representative on earth.

In the Old Testament the phrase could be used to refer to the nation of Israel or her king, but especially it refers to the promised great king, the Messiah, the Christ.

This is, of course, who the Bible says Jesus was.

But Jesus was not like previous “sons of God” who ruled over Israel.

His was a strange messiahship indeed.

For as striking and consequential as his life was, far more striking and consequential was his death.

Second Temple Judaism new no shortage of would-be Messiahs, but what put such claims to death was, well, the death of the would-be Messiah.

At that point, the movement around such a figure would either die out or be picked up and advanced by a successor, usually a close relative, a new Messiah.

The death of Jesus, notably, did not reflect this known pattern.

After his death, no one took up his cause as the new Messiah.

But neither did the Jesus movement die out—far from it!

The movement has continued to this day, and Christianity is alive and well, still centered around the belief, not that Jesus was Lord, but that he isLord.

Not that he was the son of God but that he is the Son of God and remains so.

What explains this?

Paul has already told us in the fourth verse of this letter to the Romans.

Jesus “was declared to be the Son of God in power . . .

by his resurrection from the dead.”

It is the bodily resurrection of the crucified, dead, and buried Jesus of Nazareth that gives new meaning to his death.

Far from being a defeat for him and his movement, it was the moment of his greatest victory.

In the Flesh of the Messiah

Admittedly then the entire scope of the Christian argument depends on the veracity of the bodily resurrection from the dead of Jesus of Nazareth.

But what is the argument if indeed the resurrection is true?

The argument is that we now know not only when God condemned sin (when he sent his Son) but also where it is that God did it.