There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.
In this surpassing chapter the several streams of the preceding arguments 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.
There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus. It is a question among interpreters whether this is an inference from the immediately preceding context (as most commentators hold), or (as Fraser, Tholuck, and Hodge) from the whole preceding argument. The truth expressed-that there is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus-is certainly no inference from the latter part, at least, of the preceding chapter, nor is it natural to suppose it drawn even from the first part of it. Beyond all doubt it is taken from the first branch of the argument (Romans 3:5), and is here regarded as an established truth which may now be assumed. At the same time, what is said in Romans 8:2 of "the law of sin and death" - the subject which had been so fully treated in the latter part of Romans 7:1-25 - shows that that same subject is still in the apostle's thoughts, and is what gave occasion to the inferential words, "Now therefore," or, 'In these circumstances, then.' And we regard the whole statement as amounting to this: 'Dire and deadly as is the struggle we have depicted between the law of the renewed mind and the law in the members, it is the struggle, after all, of those who cannot fail in it-of those who are in Christ Jesus, and as such have the very standing before God of Christ Himself. 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 against the genuineness of this bracketed clause is so strong, that on all the laws of textual evidence it must be held to be no part of the original text-in which case the probability is that it crept in from Romans 8:4, where it occurs precisely as here, and that it was introduced in order to make the transition from the statement of Romans 8:1 to that of the 2d and following verses more easy.
[The external evidence stands thus: The whole clause - mee (G3361) kata (G2596) sarka (G4561) peripatousin (G4043), alla (G235) kata (G2596) pneuma (G4151) - is missing in 'Aleph (') (though supplied by C, a corrector of about the seventh century) B C D*F G, some cursives, d* (the Latin of C), g (about the ninth century), the Egyptian and the Ethiopic versions, several Greek fathers, and Augustine of the Latin (in whose writings, however, the absence of such a clause is no sufficient proof of its nonrecognition). On the other hand, the whole clause is found only in D*** (a corrector of about the ninth or tenth century) E K L, most cursives, d*** (a corrector of the Latin of D, about the same date the Arabic and Slavonic versions (both late), Theodoret, Theophylact, CEcumenius. The first member of the clause - mee (G3361) kata (G2596) sarka (G4561) peripatousin (G4043) - A D**b (a corrector of D, about the 7th century), one cursive d** (corrector of Latin of D, also about the 7th century), f (Latin of Cod. Augiens., about the 9th century), the Vulgate ('qui non secundum carnem ambulant'), the Peshito Syriac, Gothic, and later versions, Chrysostom (more than once) and many Latin fathers. Such is the external evidence. Is there any internal evidence to outweigh this testimony against the clause? Since there is fair evidence for the first half of it, is that part of it by itself likely to be genuine? Surely not. We think it will be generally admitted either that the whole clause, or that no part of it, stood originally in the text. Which, then, is mostly likely? If genuine, how came it to pass that the whole clause fell out of so many of the most trustworthy authorities for the text, and that only one-half of it should be found in even a fair number of them? For this no good reason, we think, can be assigned. On the other hand, there seems a natural tendency to insert some such clause, to make the transition from the subject of the first verse to that of the second more easy than it is without it. Even internal evidence, then, so far as there is any, seems rather against than for the clause.]