{"id":1174,"date":"2006-07-21T04:10:21","date_gmt":"2006-07-21T04:10:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/jesuscreed\/2006\/07\/no-condemnation.html"},"modified":"2006-07-21T04:10:21","modified_gmt":"2006-07-21T04:10:21","slug":"no-condemnation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/07\/no-condemnation.html","title":{"rendered":"No Condemnation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Paul is fond of jumping ahead in his argument, and sometimes it makes us feel like we haven&#8217;t figured out the previous section. Though not as prominent as it might have been, lurking (like some of you readers) around chp 7 is that the Law activates sin and sin leads to death. <!--more|inline--><br \/>\nAnd that is why Paul suddenly jumps in a rather glorious announcement: &#8220;There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus&#8221;  (8:1).<br \/>\nUnpacked: Israel struggled with the Torah to do it, and couldn&#8217;t get the job done. (Or, for others: everyone failed to do the Torah.) God sent Christ. Paul is thinking of <em>death<\/em>: those who are in Christ are those who have died with Christ and his death becomes their death. The condemnation that death is has been dealt with when Christ died on the cross. Now let this be said: Paul is a thanatologist. He&#8217;s a mortician. His theology is about death and life.<br \/>\nAn alternative view of 8:1 is that perhaps Paul has in mind the <em>obedience <\/em>of Christ: Christ did the Torah perfectly. Either Paul thinks in terms of imputation of Christ&#8217;s obedience to us, or he is thinking in simpler terms of incorporation into the Christ who did fulfill the Torah.<br \/>\nThe emphasis of this text is that Christ took care of death and the Spirit empowers the Christian to live obediently. The only expression here that gets close to imputation is 8:4, and it is not clear to me that Paul has that in mind. He might, and he might not.<br \/>\nMore unpacking: For those in Christ, the condemnation to death from the Torah is over.<br \/>\nThe &#8220;now&#8221; is the Age of the Spirit. It is the Age of Life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Paul is fond of jumping ahead in his argument, and sometimes it makes us feel like we haven&#8217;t figured out the previous section. Though not as prominent as it might have been, lurking (like some of you readers) around chp 7 is that the Law activates sin and sin leads to death.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":298,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-romans"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>No Condemnation - Jesus Creed<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/07\/no-condemnation.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"No Condemnation - Jesus Creed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Paul is fond of jumping ahead in his argument, and sometimes it makes us feel like we haven&#8217;t figured out the previous section. Though not as prominent as it might have been, lurking (like some of you readers) around chp 7 is that the Law activates sin and sin leads to death.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/07\/no-condemnation.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Jesus Creed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-07-21T04:10:21+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"xscot mcknight\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"No Condemnation - Jesus Creed","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/07\/no-condemnation.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"No Condemnation - Jesus Creed","og_description":"Paul is fond of jumping ahead in his argument, and sometimes it makes us feel like we haven&#8217;t figured out the previous section. Though not as prominent as it might have been, lurking (like some of you readers) around chp 7 is that the Law activates sin and sin leads to death.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/07\/no-condemnation.html","og_site_name":"Jesus Creed","article_published_time":"2006-07-21T04:10:21+00:00","author":"xscot mcknight","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/07\/no-condemnation.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/07\/no-condemnation.html","name":"No Condemnation - Jesus Creed","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#website"},"datePublished":"2006-07-21T04:10:21+00:00","dateModified":"2006-07-21T04:10:21+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/9c0db2eaf4d047d76276f907b62843f0"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/07\/no-condemnation.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/07\/no-condemnation.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/07\/no-condemnation.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"No Condemnation"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/","name":"Jesus Creed","description":"Scot McKnight on Jesus and orthodox faith for today","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/9c0db2eaf4d047d76276f907b62843f0","name":"xscot mcknight","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/1f0\/1f0cb0f88d1f99f6e05597a2de7f1949x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/1f0\/1f0cb0f88d1f99f6e05597a2de7f1949x96.jpg","caption":"xscot mcknight"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/author\/xscot-mcknight"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/298"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1174\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}