We've been studying about the human tendency to want to do the things we've been told not to do. Some do it out of a spirit of rebellion toward the Lord, but even those who genuinely love the Lord struggle at times with temptation. Paul admitted he had noticed the same problem in himself, so he concludes chapter 7 by saying, "So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in my sinful nature a slave to sin." (Romans 7:25b) Before he came to know Christ as his Savior, the Apostle Paul loved God. He wanted to honor God by keeping the law, but the more he thought about the law the more he realized he was breaking it. That's when he came to the conclusion that he was a wretched sinner, but that's what the law was intended to do: to make all of us conclude that we are wretched sinners who need the Savior.
Even after Paul met the Savior he wasn't a perfect man, though he must have been a far better man than he was before. He knows he still fails at times to live up to the Lord's standards, so he is thankful for this, "Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death." (Romans 8:1-2) We are condemned under the law because we are lawbreakers. But through Jesus Christ we are justified by grace through faith. Paul has already established the fact for us that when we accept Christ we are dead to our old lives, dead to serving our carnal flesh, and dead to the slavery of sin. But just as Christ rose from the dead, in Him we have risen to new life. We are alive in the Spirit where once we were dead in sins.
"For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering." (Romans 8:3a) The law was good and holy and perfect, but because we are weak we could not keep it. Therefore the law lacked the power to save us. But God sent the Son in our likeness and the Son kept the law perfectly in every way. This made the Son capable of making an offering of atonement for us that is acceptable forever in the eyes of God. If Christ had not come in our image, He would not have been an appropriate stand-in for us once and for all. The sacrificial lambs were not made in our image and were not capable of understanding or keeping the law, so they had to be slaughtered year after year after year because they were not like us and were not able to provide an atonement that would last forever. (Hebrews 10:1-4) But Christ, because He was made in our image, was able to make for us a sacrifice that makes us holy once and for all. (Hebrews 10:10)
God made Adam in His image, but Adam fell from grace and through him the entire human race fell. So God made Christ in man's image and through Him we are raised back up by the grace that comes by faith in Christ. When Christ gave His life for us, Paul tells us He "...condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit." (Romans 8:3b-4)
God would have been within His rights to condemn us, but instead He condemned sin through Christ. Because we had not met His holy requirements, He could have put us to death both physically and spiritually, but instead He sent Christ to give His life in our place. I can't comprehend the vast love that caused God to say, "These people are consumed by sins. No matter what I do and no matter what I say, they persist in doing wrong. They are unholy and deserving of death, but I'm going to send My holy Son to die in their place." No normal, loving parent would give their child's life for someone else's life, much less give a holy child's life for someone's unholy life. But that's what God did. That's how much He loves us. That's how much He was unwilling to let us perish.
How then could He ever condemn those of us who are in Christ? To condemn us would be to reject what His own Son did, and He cannot do that. The price Christ paid for us was too high and too holy for God to ever disregard it. We are not at liberty to live however we please, but when we do make mistakes we have the liberty as children of God to approach Him with a sincere heart of repentance and to obtain forgiveness for the sake of Christ. "Let us then approach God's throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need." (Hebrews 4:16) True repentance doesn't mean I can commit a sin today, tell God I'm sorry, then go right back to the same old sin. Biblical repentance is the Greek word metanoia, which means "to change one's mind, to turn back". For example, when we are driving in an unfamiliar area and realize we are going in the wrong direction, do we keep going in the wrong direction? No, because that would be pointless. We turn around. This is what repentance is: realizing we are going in the wrong direction and turning around. And when we do this, we find mercy and grace to help us in our time of need.
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