Romans 8:3 New American Standard Bible (NASB)
3 For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of ]sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh,
Romans 8:3 New American Standard Bible (NASB)
3 For what the Law could not do,
Amplified: For God has done what the Law could not do
Phillips: The Law never succeeded in producing righteousness - the failure was always the weakness of human nature.
Meaning: Because following the written laws and commands we find in Scripture on our own cannot be achieved, God provided a Way; Jesus who understood how sin affects us, came to condemn sin in every form and every powerful act upon the believer.
Therefore, all believers are legally and positionally set free from the law of sin and death because of what Jesus Christ did for us on the cross [vs 3].
Being set free is a legal completion by what Jesus did for us on the cross. Any sin that troubles us, Christ understands and has created a way to refuse temptation no matter how powerful it is.
Christ not only set us free from any sin, He set us free from the work of death. Sin kills. Jesus brings back to life what died. What death worked in our body and soul, will grow back again. We become regenerated in what we lost.
If sin killed...
- ...our love, our self-control, our kindness, our patience, our hope, our faith, our endurance, our confidence, our joy, our self-esteem, our positive outlook on live, our peace, our ability to experience and enjoy Him, etc., etc., etc....
- THEN Jesus Christ will grow that crop we lost. He will replant, water, and care for the ground of our soul to produce a crop we choose for abundance. He will grow. But we determine the harvest. Study John 15.
- Our work is
- to learn to abide,
- to work the soil of our heart;
- its intents, motives, what it wrongfully harbors, what it sensually desires, what it unlawfully loves, what it incorrectly feels.
- We must plow these things up, expose them to the Lord, by faith forsake them and believe Him to remove them. [1 John 1:9}
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The law is good. It is God's standard but not something we achieve by our own power. It is Christ's power.
by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight; for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin" (see note Romans 3:20)
It is one thing to pursue righteousness; good works expected by God. But we do not attempt the work in our own energy. We must first look to Jesus.
2 fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
Therefore, obeying the law, solely, apart from the a relationship with Christ, through the Holy Spirit, does not appeal to God and is unacceptable to God. Though, in itself, the law is good, it is incapable of changing us.
Even a Rembrandt cannot produce a masterpiece on tissue paper." (S Lewis Johnson)
The law can convict, guide, and condemn, but it cannot supply power to change our nature, overcome the very thing it condemns. There is no amount of knowledge of the Bible and its laws can change us. In itself, the laws and insights about God and his laws may motivate temporarily but cannot change our character, dismantle an addictive sin, or make us gracious people. Only Christ, His power, will supply the power to do these things the law requires but cannot do for us.
Bruce Hurt, Precept Austin - The mirror can show me my dirt but it cannot cleanse me! What the law could not do, God did! What the Law could not do, the Lamb could!" (Romans 8)
weak as it was through the flesh,
"weak" meaning impotent, without power"
attempting to get saved by works or to achieve becoming a good person doing good works for family, church, work, social lives is impossible without the power to perform it.
God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh
God initiated the solution to achieving the Law we could not keep.
He sent His Son, Jesus, appearing as the likeness of the flesh of sin, but without sin in His nature.
Jesus was real man, but like His Father, without any sin.
Jesus always "hit the mark", whereas Sin is "missing the mark." He knew the way to please God, to live the standards, and to show us the way. But He first needed to experience man's temptations and then righteously pay for man's sins, to provide adoption to all who believed on who He is and what His aim is for us.
Once adopted, the Spirit of God enters the man to begin the long process of changing the us from practicing sin to practicing righteousness by the process of relationship; that surrendered connection with the Godhead, listening to, following His lead, resting on His strength and wisdom. Relationship then provides us with His life, His energy, His wisdom, His strength.
and as an offering for sin,
Before Jesus could deal with sin, he needed to go through the temptations of man and to overcome them Himself. Then this perfect sacrifice, having identified with man, offered Himself the payment and Cure for all our sins. This kind of offering was what satisfied God. God would not have been satisfied with an incomplete offering. He needed Christ to experience what each of us face with sin and temptation. He needed to feel our weaknesses and "feel" for the earth and its pleasures. But without giving in to it, He overcame. Then He paid the price for all we are in this earthly connected world of temptation and sin. By this, He can show us the way to deal with sin, just as He.
He condemned sin in the flesh,
The Law is a moral mirror. It cannot help us. It only shows us what we do wrong.
21 Is the Law then contrary to the promises of God? May it never be! For if a law had been given which was able to impart life, then righteousness would indeed have been based on law.
24 Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith.
26 For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.
"condemned" pronounced it death, destruction. Christ came not to excuse Christians to sin in grace, but to use grace [God's power and His desire to please Him] to defeat each and every sin, small or large, inside or outer behavior. God gave the verdict: Sin must be eradicated, first by paying the sinner's debt for sinning, second by entering into the sinner turned new-creature and exposing his sins and assisting him to eradicate the sin problems in his life.
A hit on sin was issued by God, by sending Christ to defeat sin, die for the debt of sin, and resurrecting so to send His Spirit into the entire family of redeemed ones to show us the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
The Law tells us what is sin. Jesus deals with sin as the hindrance to union with the Father, offering the solution to its sickness, the freedom from its slavery, the purity and peace from its dirtiness.
Jesus provided the ultimate solution for any sin we encounter. We must be careful not to first seek out a law or rule to follow but to seek to offer ourselves as a full surrender for His help to carry out what He accomplished on the cross.
Sin condemned is now under pursuit for arrest and imprisoned. Each sin troubling our life is under the watchful eye of the Spirit of God. Through prayer and the Word of God, the Spirit of God opens our eyes to what sin is in us. Then we proceed to confession and turning to Christ for help. Either suddenly, or over some period of time the Way is revealed how certain sins are to be dealt with and how we can finally enter our freedom from them.
There have been some sins in my life which have had faster victories. But there are others which have taken decades to grow in gradual eventual victories.
Some sins are allowed due to the need of bringing us to a place of brokenness and a spiritual revelation from God's Word how the sin must be dealt with. Some sins are overcome quickly by the Lord. Others need some actions on our part after complete submission, surrender, and obedience to provided Light at the present.
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