Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1917
“There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” Romans 8:1.
You are well aware, dear Friends, that the division into chapters has only been made for convenience sake and is not a matter of Inspired arrangement. I may add that it has been clumsily made and not with careful thoughtfulness, but as roughly as if a woodman had taken an axe and chopped the book to pieces in a hurry! It was a very unfortunate thing that the axe dropped down just here, so as to divide a passage which ought to have been kept entire. We once heard a friend say, “I have got out of the seventh of Romans into the eighth.” Nonsense! There is no getting out of one into the other, for they are one. The field is not divided by hedge or ditch. I thank God with all my heart that since my conversion I have never known what it is to be out of the seventh of Romans, nor out of the eighth of Romans, either—the whole passage has been solid Truth of God to my experience. I have struggled against inward sin and rejoiced in complete justification at the same time.
Our Apostle, after having said, “So then, with the mind I myself serve the Law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin,” goes on to say, without any break, “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.” The fact is, that Believers are in a state of conflict, but not in a state of condemnation and at the very time when the conflict is hottest, the Believer is still justified! When the Believer has to do his utmost even to hold his ground. When he feels that he cannot advance an inch without fighting for it. When he has to cry out in the agony of his spirit because of the vehemence of temptation, he may still lay his hand upon the Word of God and say, “And yet there is no condemnation to me, for I am in Christ Jesus!”
The man who never strives against the sin which dwells in him, who, indeed, is not conscious of any sin to strive against—that is the man who may begin to question whether he knows anything at all about the spiritual life. He who has no inward pain may well suspect that he is abiding in death—abiding, therefore, under constant condemnation. But that man who feels a daily striving after deliverance from evil, who is panting, pining, longing and agonizing to become holy even as God is holy, he is the justified man! The man to whom every sin is a misery, to whom even the thought of iniquity is intolerable, he is the man who may with confidence declare, “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.” Souls that sigh for holiness are not condemned to eternal death, for their sighing proves that they are in Christ Jesus!
Observe that the text is written in the present tense. You will lose much of its force and beauty if you leave out that word, “now,” or regard it as a mere term of argument. This, “now,” shows how distinctly the statement of non-condemnation is consistent with that mingled experience of the seventh chapter which certain good people do not appear to understand. The passage describes a conflict which the unregenerate cannot feel, for they neither delight in God after the inward man, nor do they agonize to be set free from the presence of sin. Every child of God must know this conflict if he knows himself. If it had not been for the fierce debates of former ages, this passage would have been accepted as an accurate picture of the inner life of the struggling Believer—and it would have been held up to admiration as a sure proof of the Divine Inspiration of the Epistle—that with such amazing accuracy it records the secret experiences of a soul struggling after purity—an experience which often puzzles the very people who are the subjects of it.
Reading my text in that connection, with an emphasis upon the, “now,” my heart sings for joy! With all my watching and warring—yes, with all my fears and trembling—yet will I rejoice in the Lord even now, for, “there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.”
I would have you carefully observe our Apostle’s change of expression. When he is speaking about the inward contention he writes in the first person and speaks of himself—“I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me.” That which might seem humiliating and derogatory, he imputes to himself most distinctly, crying out, “O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” But when he comes to write upon the privileges of the children of God, he does not write in the first person, but he speaks of them in general terms—“There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.” His deep humility thus displayed itself. His very self-remembrance is a self-annihilation—he uses himself as lead sinker with which to sink his nets, but his Brethren he puts into the place of honor and esteem. His is the confession and theirs is the confidence—he extols the glorious company of Believers, but he lowers himself!