Romans 7:24 says, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from the body of this death?” Here Paul terms our fallen body the body of this death. The body of sin is strong in sinning against God, but the body of this death is weak in acting to please God. Sin energizes the fallen body to sin, whereas death utterly weakens and disables the corrupted body so that it cannot keep God’s commandments. The death in the phrase the body of this death is the death caused by sin through the weapon of the law, the death of being defeated, the death of trying to keep the law to please God but instead being made a captive by the law of sin in our members. This is the death that is working in our flesh.
In verse 25 Paul goes on to say, “Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord!” This verse gives the answer to the question raised in the preceding verse: Who will deliver us from the body of this death? According to verse 25, deliverance from the body of this death is through Jesus Christ our Lord. He is the Emancipator.
We should praise the Lord that we have One who can deliver us from the law of sin. We have God Himself who is life to us in Christ and as the Spirit, and with this life comes the most powerful law. This most powerful law, which is the law of the Spirit of life, is now operating in us.
In Romans 8:1 , after his cry of wretchedness at the end of chapter 7, Paul declares in a victorious way, “There is now then no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.” This means that what he experienced in Romans 7 was not an experience in Christ. Without Christ, or outside of Christ, he struggled according to the law in his mind to keep the law of God in order that he might please God, but he was totally defeated by the law of sin. This occurred when he was without Christ. Thus, Paul condemned himself. He had a deep conviction of this inward, subjective condemnation, but now “in Christ Jesus” there is no longer this kind of condemnation. Paul had “no condemnation” because in Christ he did not need to keep the law of God by himself, an effort which produced self-condemnation; “no condemnation,” because in Christ he had the law of the Spirit of life, which is more powerful than the law of sin and which set him free from the law of sin; “no condemnation” now, not because of the redeeming blood of Christ which removed the objective condemnation of God but because of the law of the Spirit of life which brought in the freedom of the Spirit in his spirit and which broke through all his subjective condemnation; and “no condemnation,” because he was freed from both the law of God and the law of sin.
The condemnation implied in 1:18 through 3:20 and mentioned in 5:16 and 18 is objective, under God’s righteous law, and is the result of our outward sins. The condemnation mentioned in 8:1 is subjective, in our conscience, and is the result of our being inwardly defeated by the evil law of the indwelling sin, as described in 7:17-18 and 20-24. The blood of the crucified Christ is the remedy for objective condemnation (3:25). The Spirit of life mentioned in 8:2, who is Christ processed to be the life-giving Spirit and who is in our spirit, is the remedy for subjective condemnation.
In chapter 8 the phrase in Christ refers not only to our standing, our position, in Christ, as mentioned in chapter 6, but also to the reality of our daily walk in our regenerated spirit. In Christ, not in Adam or in ourselves, we have the Spirit of life—who is Christ Himself as the life-giving Spirit—in our spirit. In Christ our spirit has been made alive with Christ as life. Because we are in Christ, the Spirit of life who is Christ Himself dwells in our spirit and mingles Himself with our spirit as one spirit. In Christ we have our quickened spirit, the divine life, and the Spirit of life. In Christ these three—our spirit, the divine life, and the Spirit of life—are all mingled as one unit. In Christ, with this unit, there is the spontaneous power, which is the law of the Spirit of life, that continually sets us free from the law of sin and of death as we walk according to the mingled spirit.