Five Things God Did
Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life has set me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit. Romans 8:1-4
The liberating work of the Spirit takes place through Christ. As was argued through chapter 7, the Mosaic law was powerless to rescue human beings from the authority of sin and death. It was ‘weakened by the sinful nature’. Its demands could not be met because those to whom the law was given were in the realm of “flesh.” But God has intervened to do what the law could not. He made provision for both our justification and our sanctification. He first sent His Son, whose incarnation and atonement are mentioned in 8:3, and then gave us His Spirit through whose indwelling power we are enabled to fulfil the law’s requirement (8:4). God justifies us through His Son and sanctifies us through His Spirit.
What God did unfolds in five expressions:
(1) first came the ‘sending’ of ‘his own Son.’ The term ‘his own Son’ hints at Christ enjoying a prior life of intimacy with the Father and expresses clearly the Father’s sacrificial love in sending Him (5:8,10; 8:32).
(2) the sending of God’s Son involved Him becoming incarnate, a human being, expressed by ‘in the likeness of sinful man’ (8:3). The word ‘likeness’ was certainly used by Paul to combat false views about the incarnation. Christ became fully human by taking on flesh (‘sinful man’ in NIV). But calling that flesh ‘sinful’ could suggest Christ took on fallen human nature. If so He would not have been qualified to be our sinless redeemer so Paul clarifies by adding the word ‘likeness.’ His humanity was both real and sinless.
(3) God sent His Son ‘to be a sin offering’ (8:3). The term ‘sin offering’ has a rich background in Leviticus and Numbers where it was the atoning sacrifice for ‘unwilling sins.’ This is what Romans 7 sins are (‘I do not do what I want to do’ [7:20])
(4) God ‘condemned sin in sinful man’ (8:3). Because ‘sinful man’ in the NIV translates the Greek ‘sarx’, the most common term for ‘flesh,’ our verse can and probably does mean God condemned sin in the flesh or humanity of Jesus. God judged our sins in the sinless humanity of His Son, who carried them in our place.
(5) The ultimate reason God sent His Son and condemned our sin in Him was ‘in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit’ (8:4). One might have expected Paul to write that ‘God condemned sin in Jesus in order that we might escape condemnation (that is, in order that we might be justified). After all this was the immediate purpose of the sin-bearing death of God’s Son. This would mean Paul was thinking of justification and not sanctification. God condemned sin, in order that the demands of the law might be satisfied, the law’s main demand being the sentence of death for sin. But as we will see in the next devotional, Paul seems to have had more in mind than our justification.