NO CONDEMNATION FOR YOU

ROMANS 7:25-8:1 reads (NET translation):

Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.  

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

What brings this passage of Scripture to my mind this morning? After 8 years of intensifying suffering in my gut, increasing allergies and intolerances, I seem to be experiencing some miraculous release in reaching out and trusting in Jesus. I was so disappointed with God's results, I had begun to see prayer as really God's powerful way of uniting us and working through us without any real agency held back for himself (see fascinating Unbelievable episode, Do we need to rethink petitionary prayer? Mark Karris & Steve Jeffery). Any further trust in the wrong theology, would simply leave me more disillusioned and mistrustful and I had long stopped praying for this. Even now, I still find God's agency and suffering an utter mystery, maybe more so than ever! It's utterly "unfair" if it does exist.

So I'm on a positive faith high, which is pretty wonderful to be honest. This verse came me to as I considered another burden I have shouldered for a shorter time, depression, and pondering its roots as I see the vulnerability from within my side of the family. An old pointing finger got itself ready to point accusingly from within my mind. That's when the verse came.

I've always read this passage in the sense that we don't need to feel guilty about failing to keep the standard. God's standards are even higher, but Jesus met it for us, so there is no condemnation left over us. But today I'm excited to see it and apply it a stage further: we have no part in condemnation, we have been separated from the very principles of condemning people. The freedom I have received I reciprocate. I wonder how many people struggling under feelings of insecurity, fear, guilt or shame also struggle with condemning other people? Perhaps if we see this coin as the double-sided one I think Paul may in fact have discovered it to be (at least I think the text is not being abused too much to say so!), then maybe we can see even greater transformative power contained in it. Unleash it!

Blessings :)