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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comJamieson Fausset Brown Commentary - Romans 8:1 - 8:1
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Rom 8:1-39. Conclusion of the whole argument - The glorious completeness of them that are in Christ Jesus.
In this surpassing chapter the several streams of the preceding argument meet and flow in one “river of the water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb,” until it seems to lose itself in the ocean of a blissful eternity.
First: The sanctification of believers (Rom 8:1-13).
There is therefore now, etc. - referring to the immediately preceding context [Olshausen, Philippi, Meyer, Alford, etc.]. The subject with which the seventh chapter concludes is still under consideration. The scope of Rom 8:1-4 is to show how “the law of sin and death” is deprived of its power to bring believers again into bondage, and how the holy law of God receives in them the homage of a living obedience [Calvin, Fraser, Philippi, Meyer, Alford, etc.].
no condemnation: to them which are in Christ Jesus - As Christ, who “knew no sin,” was, to all legal effects, “made sin for us,” so are we, who believe in Him, to all legal effects, “made the righteousness of God in Him” (2Co 5:21); and thus, one with Him in the divine reckoning. there is to such “NO CONDEMNATION.” (Compare Joh 3:18; Joh 5:24; Rom 5:18, Rom 5:19). But this is no mere legal arrangement: it is a union in life; believers, through the indwelling of Christ’s Spirit in them, having one life with Him, as truly as the head and the members of the same body have one life.
who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit - The evidence of manuscripts seems to show that this clause formed no part of the original text of this verse, but that the first part of it was early introduced, and the second later, from Rom 8:4, probably as an explanatory comment, and to make the transition to Rom 8:2 easier.