Romans 8

Romans 8

There is ... now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. ²For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. ³For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, ⁴so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. ⁵For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. ⁶To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. ⁷For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law—indeed it cannot, ⁸and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

9 But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. ¹⁰But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. ¹¹If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.

For the rest of summer Sundays our Second Reading will be from Paul’s letter to the Romans. And for the next three Sundays we shall be reading from Romans chapter 8, rich in expression, with phrases familiar to most of us. Romans is the longest of Paul’s writings, and some scholars say it’s his final writing, written in anticipation of his visit to Rome where he was martyred. We know Paul didn’t intend it to be his final writing, because he fully planned to go on to Spain. But in that it was final, it turns out to have been ideally so, because the letter is perfectly written for the sophisticated audience at the center of the empire, and it seems to be a complete statement of Paul’s message.

Paul can be daunting both for preacher and for congregation, and so not many of us preach from Paul. This is especially true of Romans, which is the most theological of Paul’s writings and requires competent “hermeneutics” -- study and scholarly interpretation -- before stepping into the pulpit.  

In Sunday’s reading from Romans 8, Paul writes that if you are self-serving, you are corrupt -- if you are preoccupied with worldly advancement, you have no part of Christ and Christ has no part of you, and you condemn yourself. But if you live to do the will of God, Christ is in you; and even though you die you will be saved exactly as Christ was saved.

TW+