Into the Heart of Romans: A Deep Dive into Paul's Greatest Letter

by Tom Wright

Every time Paul writes about the cross, he says something different, because in each passage he is expounding a particular line of thought, not constructing an abstract system. But what he says here sends a signal to all those who do want to construct such systems of theology. ‘There is now no condemnation for those in the Messiah, Jesus’ (verse 1), because on the Messiah’s cross God ‘condemned sin’. In the terms of much later debate, that is obviously ‘penal’. The punishment deserved by ‘Sin’ has been meted out – on ‘Sin’ itself. It is likewise obviously ‘substitutionary’. The death of the Messiah, as the means of sin’s condemnation, results in there being ‘no condemnation’ for those ‘in the Messiah’. He dies under the weight of sin; his people do not. Here, at the heart of Paul’s vital argument, driving the larger analysis he will offer in the rest of the chapter, we have a clear and definite statement of what many later theologians will describe (in language which is actually vaguer than many of them realize) as ‘atonement’. But Paul is not constructing such an abstract scheme. What he says here is in the service of his actual argument, which is about the law’s intention being fulfilled – the intention which had been thwarted by ‘Sin’ dwelling in the ‘flesh’ of the humans to whom the law had been given. So it is vital to observe, against the run of a great deal of popular preaching, that Paul does not say that God ‘condemned Jesus’, or even ‘condemned the Messiah’. God ...