Who are the Justified? (Rom. 8:2-4)

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In this country, we have a Supreme Court.  This court is the final court of appeal in our land.  Once the Supreme Court rules on a matter of the law, that is supposed to be it.  And as a result, it has a tremendous influence upon the state of our republic.  But the fact of the matter is that even the Supreme Court is not final in the ultimate sense of the word.  For the Court can reverse itself, which we have seen in recent times in the Dobbs decision.  

However, there is a court above all other courts, God’s court.  There is no court of appeal beyond his.  And he does not change; he does not reverse his own decisions.  This is the ultimate Judgment Seat, before which all the nations of the earth, and all peoples, of all times and places, will appear.  As the author of Hebrews puts it, “it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment” (Heb. 9:27).  Our Lord himself describes the end of the world in terms of an ultimate reckoning when all the nations will appear before him to give an account: “When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: and before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats” (Mt. 25:31-32).

It is wisdom therefore to live in light of this judgment and the height of folly to ignore it.  The apostle Paul is an example for us all when he says, “we labour, that, whether present or absent, we may be accepted of him [or, please him]. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad” (2 Cor. 5:9-10).  There is no going back on the determination of God.  There is only eternal life for the saint and darkness and gnashing of teeth for the sinner.

It is also the height of folly to be okay with being unsure about our state before God.  How in the world can you be in your right mind and proceed in this life with a carelessness about the state of your soul?  How can you sleep at night if you’re unsure that you are right with God?  For there is nothing more terrifying than the thought of everlasting separation from God’s blessing and eternally the object of his just wrath.

Thank God that he does not leave us in the dark about this.  The Bible tells us how men can get right with God.  We get right with God through Jesus Christ.  Through his redemptive work on our behalf, all our sins can be forgiven.  It is this reality that is expressed in verse 1 of Romans 8, when Paul says, “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.”  If you are in Christ Jesus, united to him by faith, then you are a justified person.  You are now and will not come under God’s condemnation.  

But that leads to the question, “How do you know that you are actually justified?”  For justification is not us declaring ourselves to be righteous.  Neither is it our consciences telling us that we are righteous.  Justification is the Divine act of acquittal and acceptance.  It is an act of God.  “It is God that justifieth” (33).  God is the one who declares, in the court of heaven, that a sinner is righteous.  So how do we know that has happened?  We don’t hear the actual announcement.  We don’t hear a voice whisper in our ears telling us that we are justified.  So on what basis can we have that assurance?

The basis of the assurance is, first of all, the promise of God.  It is taking the statement of verse 1 at face value.  God promises that all who put their faith in Jesus as Lord and Savior will be saved.  He promises that all who call on him will not come into judgment and will not be put to shame in the end.  That is the first ground of our assurance.  It is the word and promise of God.  This is what we looked at last time.

What we will see in the next few verses are another ground of that assurance.  In verses 2-4 the apostle gives us the evidence of our union with Christ in terms of the work of the Spirit freeing us from bondage to sin.  Of course if we are united to Christ, we are united to his saving righteousness, and if we are united to his saving righteousness, we are justified before God.  But again, how do we know that we are united to Christ?  One way of knowing that is by the test of faith.  Do you believe the gospel?  Is your trust in Christ?  But another way of knowing is by the test of the Spirit working in you.  That is the point of verses 2-4.

By the way, I am leaving off the consideration of the phrase which appears at the end of verse 1 in the KJV, “who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit” for when we come to verse 4, because that phrase does not in fact appear in the best Greek manuscripts of Romans at this point, at the end of verse 1.  John Gill acknowledges that even in his time it was known that the phrase “but after the Spirit” was lacking in several important manuscripts.  But the fact is that even the phrase “who walk not after the flesh” does not appear in verse 1 in any of the oldest manuscripts as well as being absent in the writings of the older church fathers.  However, everyone is agreed that the phrase appears in verse 4, and so we will wait until then to consider its meaning.

This is what we want to look at today.  Now an important question, as we consider this is, Why does Paul not just stop at the promise?  Why not stop at faith?  Why does he go on to consider the work of the Spirit in us as an evidence of salvation?  Some people would actually say that the doctrine of justification by faith alone is jeopardized by the claim that there must be some evidence in a changed life for one to have true assurance of salvation.  You find this, for example, in the whole “free grace” movement, though they don’t teach free grace in terms of God’s sovereignty in salvation, but in terms of grace apart from any need for a changed life.  This movement claims that if a person decides for Christ, then they are saved regardless of whether or not their life is changed.  They can go on living like a pagan, but if they “believed in Jesus,” said a canned prayer, or walked an aisle, got baptized, then they are saved, and no one has the right to question that.  There are of course echoes of this in the doctrine of time salvation as it is sometimes taught among the Primitive Baptists.

How necessary it is then for us to hear this!  For what Paul says here scuttles such claims.  But at the same time he is also balanced and keeps us from the other extreme, which is to rest our hope of salvation upon our works and our goodness.  He keeps us from libertinism on the one hand, and legalism on the other.  

I want to walk you through these verses in terms of four words: Spirit, flesh, Christ, and walk.  The work of the Spirit is at the heart of the claim in verse 2.  The need for this work is the weakness of our flesh, which is the point of the first part of verse 3.  The way the Spirit overcomes the flesh is by uniting us to Christ and his work for us, which is the point of the second part of verse 3.  And then the way this union with Christ is made manifest in our life is in our walk – not walking in the flesh but in the Spirit, which is the point of verse 4.

Spirit: the evidence for justification is the work of the Holy Spirit in freeing us from the power of sin.

Paul writes, “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death” (2).  The function of the word “for” at the beginning of verse 2 shows us that Paul views it as giving us the evidence of the reality of no condemnation in verse 1.  Not the basis of it, but the evidence for it.  No condemnation is a gift to those who are in Christ.  But who is in Christ?  And the answer is in verse 2.  We are in Christ by the work of the Holy Spirit who unites us to him in the new birth.  

And in the new birth, the Spirit of God does something.  The way Paul describes it here is in terms of “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.”  Now in the previous chapter, we noted that the language of “the law of sin” does not refer God’s law, because it is “another law” (7:23), but rather to indwelling sin which operates like a principle directing our actions and thoughts and motives.  The law of sin is meant to tell us something about the power of sin.  And so here, when Paul talks about the “law of the Spirit of life” he is not talking about the Ten Commandments or even the gospel, but he is talking about the indwelling Spirit who also operates in God’s children like a principle directing their actions and thoughts and motives.  And the Spirit is the Spirit of life because he gives new life to those he regenerates.  He brings us from a death in sin to newness of life in Christ.

How does this manifest itself?  One way this manifests itself in our lives is that he gives us eyes to see the ugliness and seriousness of our sins so that we turn from them.  I was recently reading through Genesis 18 in Hebrew, and I noticed that when God says to Abraham, “the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and … their sin is very grievous” (20), that the Hebrew word for “grievous” or “grave” (ESV), is the word for being heavy, a term also used in Scripture for God’s glory.  And I think one of the lessons we can take away from that is that we tend to make light of that which God considers weighty – like sin and God.  And the two go together.  It is not until you take God seriously that you will take sin seriously – not until you find God gloriously weighty that you will find sin against him terribly weighty.  And one of the things the Holy Spirit does is to help us to see the gravity of sin, the vileness of it, the danger of it, so that we flee from it and hate it and repent.

But he also gives us eyes to see the glory of God.  This is Paul’s point in 2 Cor. 3-4.  In chapter 3, the apostle describes his ministry as a ministry in the power of the Spirit: “[God] also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life” (3:6).  Then he says, “For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake. For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (4:5-6).  In the gospel the light of the glory of Christ is manifest, and the Holy Spirit gives us life and eyes to see it.

Think of Fall here in Ohio.  I love Fall here, partly because I came from Texas.  I love Texas too, but frankly there isn’t a lot of color there unless you like brown.  Every October here I thank God for eyes to see the beautiful yellows and oranges and reds as the trees change the color of their leaves.  But what if I was blind, or what if I was so color-blind that everything looked grey?  That is how an unregenerate person sees the gospel.  It’s all grey, nothing in it that really catches their eye, nothing in it that looks beautiful.  But the Holy Spirit opens our eyes to see that glory that is there in Jesus Christ.  The law of the Spriit of life in Christ Jesus opens our hearts first to see our sin, and then to see that in Christ there is a full and complete provision for the needs created by our sins.

And this is how the power of sin is broken in the life.  The Spirit gives us new affections that regulate our thoughts and purposes and actions – the law of the Spirit of life!  He gives us a new heart so that we want to obey God.  He takes away the taste we once had for sin.  He gives us the ability to respond to the Biblical invitation to “taste and see that the Lord is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him” (Ps. 34:8).  He doesn’t drive us against our wills, but he changes our will, from hostility to God and his law to a love for God and his law.

It is in this way, Paul says, that “the law of the Spriit of life in Christ hath made me from the law of sin and death.”  The power of Christ through the Holy Spirit uniting us to him is more powerful than the power that sin exercises in us.  The law of sin is no match against the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.  It’d be like me playing basketball with Michael Jordan.  And that’s good news, isn’t it?  Is there someone in here who feels defeated and ashamed because of a sin in the life?  My friend, it is no question but that however powerful that sin might appear to be, it is nothing before God.  God is more powerful than the most powerful wicked lust and more enduring than the most entrenched sinful habit.  Fight against the sin, yes, you must do that, but don’t forget that the power to kill sin is not in us but in the work of God in us.  And that means that we can have the victory over that sin, whether it is pornography or pride.  As the apostle John put it, “Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world” (1 Jn. 4:4).  Or, as the apostle has already put it, “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof” (Rom. 6:12).

That is the evidence of justification.  Not the ground of our justification, but the evidence for it.  We are not justified because of the new birth, but because the Holy Spirit unites us to Christ whose righteousness alone is the ground for our acceptance with God.  But the Holy Spirit who unites us to Christ is the Holy Spirit who operates in us as a law that overcomes and frees us from the law of sin and death.

Flesh: we need the work of the Holy Spirit in us because of the inability of the flesh.

“For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh” (3).  “The law” in verse 3 is now the Law of Moses, commanding us to obey, but utterly incapable of empowering us to obey.  The law is “weak through the flesh,” meaning that the ultimate problem is not the law of God but flesh, the power of indwelling sin.  

Oh, how we need to hear this.  Religion can so easily become a way to psychologically manipulate people to do certain things if you think that religion is, at the end of the day, something that is ultimately and decisively dependent upon the human heart and will.  If you think that God has done everything he can, made provision for our salvation, but now it’s up to us to make that final decisive choice, then religion does become centered on man and on what man can do.  And so being religious ends up being a matter of finding man-centered strategies to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps.  And it leads thus to the psychologizing of religion.

But when Paul refers to “what the law could not do,” the what there is a reference to being made free from the power of sin.  What Paul means by this is that we cannot through sheer human effort and will-power obey God’s law in a way that pleases God.  If that were possible, then the law would not in fact be ineffectual.  We could free ourselves from the power of sin by choosing to obey.  But this is what Paul says is impossible – the law cannot do it.  He will say something similar in verses 7-8, when he says that “the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God.”

Now please don’t misunderstand me.  I’m not saying that we don’t exercise our wills in repentance and faith.  Of course we do.  Nor am I saying that it doesn’t matter whether or not we receive Christ.  It does matter, and eternally so!  But what I am saying is that at the end of the day, what makes religion to be true religion is the fact that it is supernatural.  If your religion is not supernatural, then it is not the real thing.  If you can completely explain your faith in Christ in terms apart from the work of the Holy Spirit as the decisive agent in your faith and repentance, then it is not the real thing.  True religion is the result of the work of God in the soul.

A caveat needs to be said here though.  When I say that only supernatural religion is true religion, I am not saying that you have had to have a Damascus road experience to have it.  I’m not even saying that anything dramatic has had to have happened.  You may not have been changed by God coming to you in fire or earthquake or in a mighty rushing wind.  It may have been a still, small voice.  It may have been God working with you in small ways over a period of time.  The change may have even been unremarkable and on some level undiscernible.  But what I am saying is that what makes the difference, what puts someone in the category of the children of God, what makes us a disciple of Christ with unfeigned and sincere faith, is the decisive work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts.  This is what Paul is saying here.

This may seem like a very pessimistic way of looking at human nature, but the fact of the matter is that this is the only realistic way of looking at human nature.  But it is also the only way of looking at human nature that will make us appreciate the work of the Spirit and send us desperately to God for grace and salvation.   We need to see our inability, because if we don’t, we’ll end up trying this or that technique to change ourselves when what we really need is the power of God in Christ inside us.

And that brings us to our next point.

Christ: the Spirit overcomes the flesh by uniting us to Christ and his work for us.

Paul writes: “For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh” (3).  The apostle is saying that what the law could not do, God did.  The law could not change us, but God does.  How does God do it?  And the answer here in verse 3 is that he did it by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin to condemn sin in the flesh.  There is a lot to unpack here!

First of all, note that God the Father sent his own Son.  God did not send him to be the Son.  He sent the Son.  He sent him who already was the Son from eternity.  The point I want to make here is that it was not the incarnation that made the second person of the Trinity into the Son.  Jesus is the Incarnate Son.  But he was the Son before he was incarnate.  The categories of Father, Son, and Spirit do not depend upon the incarnation.  They existed before the incarnation.  This is one of the things that makes the coming of the Son of God into the world so amazing.  God sent his own Son. He sent him who dwelt at the Father’s side in love from eternity into the cold, dark, and sinful world to be made under the law, and, as Paul puts it here, “in the likeness of sinful flesh.”

What does that mean?  Well, it certainly does not mean that Jesus was sinful.  Jesus never sinned: “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Cor. 5:21).  Jesus knew no sin.  He was and is “holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens” (Heb. 7:26).  Jesus could say even to his opponents, “Which of you convinceth [or, convicts] me of sin?” (Jn. 8:46).  They couldn’t because there was no sin in him: “Who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth” (1 Pet. 2:22).  He was the “just for the unjust” (3:18). 

You will notice the word “likeness of sinful flesh.”  What the apostle means by that is that though Jesus was not himself sinful, yet he had a real physical body that suffered from the real consequences of living in a fallen and sinful world.  He was mortal, for he died.  He suffered from exhaustion, had to eat, and when he was confronted with the cross, sweat as it were great drops of blood.  Of course we should not read into the word “likeness” the idea that Jesus’ body was only imaginary or spiritual.  The word “likeness” is necessary, not because he didn’t have a true, physical body (he did) but because though he suffered from the ravages of a body in a fallen world, yet he was not himself sinful.  In his body, he suffered from the problems caused by Adam’s sin, but he himself was not sinful.  That’s the point.

Then the reason for the incarnation is given in these words: God sent his Son in order to condemn sin in the flesh.  In fact, you will notice that the tense is past tense, he “condemned sin in the flesh.”  He didn’t just make it possible; he actually accomplished it. 

What does it mean though, that he condemned sin in the flesh?  It means that our Lord “in the flesh,” by which is meant his death on the cross, did something that would break the back of sin in terms of both its guilt and its power in the elect, in those who believe in him.  As John Murray so eloquently put it, “In the same nature which in all others was sinful, in that very nature which in all others was dominated and directed by sin, in that nature assumed by the Son of God but free from sin, God condemned sin and overthrew its power.  Jesus not only blotted out sin’s guilt and brought us nigh to God.  He also vanquished sin as power and set us free from its enslaving dominion.”  

You see, we don’t just need a “spiritual experience.”  You can have lots of spiritual experiences and be left dead in trespasses and in sins.  Joseph Smith had a spiritual experience.  Muhammed had a spiritual experience.  And both of them brought in religions that lead people away from the only true and saving hope.  The fact of the matter is that any authentic work of the Holy Spirit is going to lead people to Jesus, not away from him.  He will not lead people to or leave people in false religions.  Our Lord put it this way: “But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me” (Jn. 15:26).  The Holy Spirit does this because the Spirit is only applying to us the redemption accomplished by Christ.  The Spirit mediates the presence of the crucified and risen and reigning Christ.  That is why he is the “Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:2).

The Holy Spirit unites us to Christ.  Through Christ, not through the weakness of our own flesh, is sin condemned and conquered.  And that is the best news.  Redemption and release from sin’s bondage is not just possible.  It has been accomplished and everyone, everyone, who is united to him, who is regenerated and called to faith in Christ, has been freed from sin’s dominion.  Let not sin therefore reign.  

And it is so important to see this.  When we say that the work of the Spirit within is an evidence of salvation and justification, we are not saying that the basis of your hope is going to be found by a permanent posture of introspection.  The fact that all of these depends upon what Jesus did for us on the cross means that at the end of the day we don’t look to ourselves or in ourselves either for the merit to assuage God’s justice or for the power to overcome sin.  Both of those things depend upon Jesus’ work for us.  We look to him.

By the way, let’s not miss that word, “for” as in “and for sin” in verse 3.  This is the language of substitution.  Do you know what that means?  It means that Jesus acted for us.  It means he took our place before the bar of God’s justice.  It means that he satisfied all the demands of God’s law on our behalf and in our stead.  And that is what is at the heart of the gospel.  It’s the reason why we can be justified by the righteousness of God.  We receive the righteousness of God because the Son of God brings it to us and gives it to us when we trust in him.

Walk: our union with Christ is made evident in our walking not in the flesh but in the Spirit.

And that brings us to verse 4: “That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.”  Sin is condemned by Christ’s work on the cross “that” – this indicates both purpose and result – “the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us.”  

Now some take the “fulfillment of the righteousness of the law” to mean justification by Christ.  But I think the context here instead points us to obedience to the law by believers.  Paul is saying that not only is there no condemnation from the law (verse 1), but also that through the work of the Spirit in the lives of believers, they are now able – in ways they were not before – to live lives of obedience.  

After all, how is this fulfillment expressed?  It is expressed in walking “not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.”  The fulfillment is in our walk.  It is expressed in lives of concrete obedience.  It is made evident when we do not bear the fruit of the flesh: “the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God” (Gal. 5:19-21).  Rather, it is made evident when we bear the fruit of the Spirit:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law. And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. Let us not be desirous of vain glory, provoking one another, envying one another.  (Gal. 5:22-26)

Listen, the fact of remaining indwelling sin is real.  Romans 7 is real.  But we must not twist Paul’s meaning in Romans 7.  His point was not that the believer has to live in perpetual failure and defeat.  His point was that remaining corruption, which is real, means that we must always depend upon Christ and his grace to overcome.  We never get in the place where we can sanctify ourselves by ourselves.  But through Christ, in union with him by the Spirit, we are genuinely able to mortify the sins of the flesh.  We are genuinely able to obey the commandments of God.  Not in the strength of our flesh but in the strength that God provides, through the grace of our Lord Jesus.  “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which hath before ordained, that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:10).

Good works are not the basis of our justification.  We walk in the Spirit not to be made righteous but because we are in Christ already righteous.  Good works don’t save us, but they are the evidence that we have been saved.  And since this is the Sunday after Reformation Day, allow me to insert here a quote from Martin Luther, who put it this way: “Good works,” he said, “do not make a man good, but a good man does good works. . . . Unless a man is already a believer and a Christian, his works have no value at all.  They are foolish, idle, damnable sins, because when good works are brought forward as ground for justification, they are no longer good.  Understand that we do not reject good works, but praise them highly. . . . When God in his sheer mercy and without any merit of mine has given me such unspeakable riches, shall I not then freely, joyously, wholeheartedly, unprompted do everything that I know will please him?”   And the answer is that, yes, of course we will!

The wonderful thing about verses like these is the encouragement they offer us in the battle against sin.  The apostle is telling you, believer, that victory is possible, and that there is no sin that more powerful that the grace of Christ.  Sin has been condemned.  That is a fact.  Its guilt has been taken away, and its power has been gutted.  Believer, live in light of that reality.  

Where are you?  Have you trusted in Christ?  Then, believer, live in light of that reality.  Sin has been condemned in the flesh of Christ on your behalf.  On the other hand, what if you have not put your faith in Christ as Lord and Savior?  Then believe on him and repent of your sins, and the promise of this text is a promise that you too can lay hold upon.  May the Lord draw all of us to him.