Romans 8:3 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

In this verse is a further proof of the main proposition in Romans 8:1. There are two things in sin that may endanger us as to condemnation, the power and the guilt of it. As to the freeing us from the former, viz. the power of sin, of that he had spoken in the foregoing verse; as to taking away the guilt of sin, of that he speaks in this verse. For what the law could not do: by the law here he means the moral law, the righteousness whereof is to be fulfilled in us, Romans 8:4. What is it the law cannot do? There are several answers; but this is principally meant, it cannot justify us before God. It can condemn us, but it cannot exempt us from condemnation: see Acts 13:38,39 Ga 3:21 Hebrews 7:18,19. In that it was weak through the flesh: by flesh, as before, we must understand the corrupt nature; that is, every man since the fall. This is that which puts a weakness and inability upon the law. The impotency of the law is not from itself, but from the condition of the subject with whom it hath to do. The law is weak to us, because we are weak to it: the sun cannot give light to a blind eye, not from any impotency in itself, but merely from the incapacity of the subject it shines upon. God sending his own Son: to justify and save fallen man, was impossible for the law to do; therefore God will find out another way, that shall do it effectually. What his own law cannot do, his own Son can; and therefore him he will send. In the likeness of sinful flesh; i.e. such flesh as sin hath made now to be subject to many infirmities and weaknesses. Flesh in this clause carries quite another sense than it did in the first verse; and in the former part of this verse, than it doth in the following verse; there it is taken morally for the corrupt nature of man, here physically for the human nature of Christ. The word likeness is to be linked, not with flesh, but with sinful flesh; he had true and real flesh, but he had only the appearance and likeness of sinful flesh: see 2 Corinthians 5:21 Hebrews 4:15, Hebrews 7:26 1 Peter 1:19. And for sin; either this clause is to be joined to what goes before, and then the sense is, that God sent his Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, that he might take away sin. Or else it is joined to what follows, and then there is an ellipsis in it; something is cut off, or left out, which must be understood. The margin of our common Bibles insert the word sacrifice: q.d. By a sacrifice for sin, or by a sin-offering, he condemned sin. &c. This ellipsis is usual in Scripture. Isaiah 53:10, When thou shalt make his soul sin; that is, (as our translation renders it), an offering for sin. Ezekiel 45:19, The priest shall take of the blood of the sin; we read it, of the sin-offering. See the like in Hosea 4:8 2 Corinthians 5:21 Hebrews 10:6. Condemned sin in the flesh; the Syriac reads it, in his flesh. The meaning is, that God severely punished sin, and inflicted the curse and penalty of it, that was due to us, in and upon the person of his own Son; God laid on him the iniquities of us all, and he bore them in his body upon a tree: see Galatians 3:13 1 Peter 2:24.