We should be quite clear, once again, that to say ‘no condemnation’ doesn’t mean ‘escaping this world, and hell, and going to heaven’. We hear the word ‘condemnation’ and we think ‘hell’, and because we are used to thinking of ‘heaven and hell’ as equal and opposite, as in much mediaeval and later theology, we assume that ‘no condemnation’ means ‘going to heaven’. But it doesn’t. Heaven is not mentioned in Romans 8. (Actually, the word only occurs twice in the whole letter, and on neither occasion is Paul referring to the destiny of God’s people after their death.) Paul’s focus, as we begin to
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