I ask your permission to indulge in a brief digression, the purpose of which will become apparent below. Perhaps my favorite novel is Pêcheur d'Islande (Iceland Fisherman) by Pierre Loti, set in the 1890's. The main character, who lives in Brittany, spends his summers on a fishing boat that circles Iceland. There are poetic descriptions of a large sun which circles the horizon constantly, looking like a large balloon. Meanwhile, his brother is fighting with the French army in Vietnam, where he is hit by a bullet. As he travels back toward France on a hospital boat, he dies at the precise moment the boat crosses the equator as the evening sun dips into the horizon and darkness comes swiftly in that latitude. This happens at the exact middle of the novel. I later discovered that the best written novels usually have a centrally important turning point in the exact middle, give or take one or two pages either direction.
Now Paul, in his book-length essay divided much later into 16 chapters, begins chapter eight, the very middle of his book, with the resounding affirmation that summarizes all he wrote before and announces what comes in the remainder of the essay: "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, for the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death" (NRSV) What can be more clear than that? The remainder of the chapter explores what that means and how it works. Several sections in this chapter are among the most quoted in books and from the pulpits, not always paying sufficient attention to the context.
As you read the remainder of the chapter, keep in mind what Paul has argued in the preceding portions of the letter: God takes the initiative to offer his grace, leaving us free to trust in such confidence that we respond in obedience. or to refuse to accept the offer of grace in order to live as we like. Those who respond in trust have their faith accounted as right relationship with God, as was the case with Abraham. If you read his story, you will see that God forgave him much.
Up through verse 17 Paul contrasts the flesh with the Spirit. The flesh is Paul's metaphor for our desire to disobey God, leading to all sorts of evil results. The Spirit is Christ, God himself, living alongside us and transforming us. He gives us the right to call God Father. Paul uses the Hebrew word, Abba. Preachers often declare that it means "Daddy," but we must be careful. Abba is the only word Hebrew uses for "father." Overinterpretation can be dangerous. The point is that we are God's children, if the Spirit is in us, and if so heirs of God, that is, joint heirs with Christ. God adopts the believers as God's own.
In verses 18 through 30 we see that the presence of the Spirit and the rightness with God that is thereby worked in us gives us faith in the future, a future which makes anything we suffer in the present worthwhile. The Spirit prays on our behalf when we do not know how or what to pray. The Spirit, that is God in us, knows us, loves us, helps us withstand the bad things that happen to us, and in God's time turns them into something good for us, something that makes us mature and experience joy in spite of what happens.
At the very end of that section, Paul affirms that God knew all along who would respond in faith and therefore prepared a purpose for them, calling them to be conformed to the image of Jesus, that is to be made more and more how we were meant to be and to fit us for glory (that is, living in the presence of God). Taken in the full context of the essay, this cannot mean that God decided beforehand who would be saved and who would not. That is overinterpretation taking a verse or two out of context.
Verses 31 to the end of chapter eight tell us what that means: that nothing the world can throw at us can separate us from God. Because God has already triumphed, we will triumph, if we respond to God in a total trust that issues in obedience.
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