Great Chapters of the Bible
Romans 8 - Who Condemns?

A Sermon by Dr. Neil Chadwick


Let's liken the entire Bible to a mountain range. Within this range would be a number of outstanding mountains: the Law of Moses, the Psalms of David, the Prophets of Israel and Judah, the Gospels, and the Epistles. From the perspective of an intentional, devoted Christian, the highest peak in this range of mountains would be the Epistle of Paul to the Romans. A climber arriving at the top of this peak would see a promontory rising up at the very center - that is what we call Romans Chapter 8.

The greatness of this chapter may be seen in its opening line, "Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." Its greatness is seen in the explanation of the Spirit's powerful role in the life of the believer: giving freedom over the sinful nature (v.4), providing life, peace (v.6), and righteousness (v.10), quickening our "mortal bodies" (v.11), assuring us of our identity as sons and daughters of God (v.14-17), and enabling intercessory prayer (v.23-27). The greatness of Romans 8 can also be seen in the wonderful encouraging words of one of our all-time favorite Bible verses, "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." (v.28), and in its climactic, "If God is for us, who can be against us?" (v.31) and nothing ". . . neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord, through him who loved us." (vs.38,39). So:

    When feeling attacked by the accuser of the brethren - read Romans 8.

    When lacking the strength to do that good thing required by God - read Romans 8.

    When feeling unworthy of being included in God's family - read Romans 8.

    When burdened with the problems of life to the point of not even knowing how to pray - read Romans 8.

    When tempted to give in and give up - read Romans 8.

    When doubting God's love and forgiveness - read Romans 8.

However, instead of focusing on any of these very familiar texts, we have chosen rather to highlight another, but lesser known verse in this Great Chapter.

"Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died -- more than that, who was raised to life -- is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us." (Romans 8:34)

Just in passing, opening this verse with a question is typical of Paul's teaching style throughout the book of Romans - this is the Rabbi at his best. This pattern starts all the way back in chapter 2; by the time we get to our chosen verse, there have already been 47 questions, and 36 more will follow.

In this case, the question, "Who is he that condemns?" reminds us of the way this chapter began, "There is no condemnation." The clear answer given by Paul is, if there is any condemnation, it certainly can't be from Christ Jesus. No, never. Jesus Himself said to Nicodemous, "I have not come to condemn. . . ." (John 3:17); and to the adulterous woman He said, "I do not condemn you." (John 8:11)

Just the opposite is true of Jesus, instead of condemning, He provides salvation.

While looking more closely at this verse, we can see that it may be divided into three parts which in fact contain the core of the Gospel message. Jesus died, was resurrected, and is even now interceding to the Father on our behalf.

All of these parts could be the subject for a separate message. The first part is at the very heart of the Gospel - Jesus died on the cross. Churches around the world display the symbol; in India, even houses may have a cross displayed over the front door to identify it as a Christian home; in our country individuals wear the cross, hopefully not merely as a nice piece of jewelry or a "good luck" charm, but as a confession of faith in Jesus who died there. In relation to the question Paul has raised, rather than being the one who condemns, Jesus is the one who was condemned, for as the Scripture says, "cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree." (Galatians 3:13)

The last part of the verse conveys a different kind of assuring message, and directly answers the question. Jesus doesn't condemn, He intercedes. He is Heaven's defense attorney who convincingly argues before His Father, the Judge; He makes the case that we can no longer be considered guilty because the penalty for sin has already been paid.

It's the middle part of this verse which will provide a focus for today's sermon. "Christ Jesus . . . was raised to life." I like the "more than that" phrase (it means "more, in a greater degree"), because it points out that the proof of Jesus not being the one who condemns isn't merely that He died, but that He was resurrected. This it the hot topic and essential core truth of Christianity. Without the resurrection, there would be no Christianity.

Most of us here today have come to take for granted the truthfulness of the story of the resurrection. However, it's important for us to be reminded, if not for ourselves then for those we witness to, that the story of the resurrection is reliable history.

Consider some of the arguments to be made:

    1) There was an empty grave and a missing body which has never been recovered. The only explanation provided by the enemies, that his disciples stole the body, is not credible. The Roman guards posted in front of Jesus’ tomb were well-trained soldiers who faced the death sentence if they failed to do their job. Also, can you imagine the timid, scared disciples concocting such a plot, risking their lives to steal Jesus’ body, hide it, and then proclaim a lie to the world?

    2) Even people who don’t believe that Jesus rose from the dead often assent that He was a good man and a prophet sent from God. If this is valid, then He must be considered a truthful man even when He spoke about his own resurrection. Therefore, we have to either believe He was a liar and a fraud, or believe that He did rise from the dead.

    3) Some argue that Jesus’ disciples were hallucinating when they “saw” Jesus after His crucifixion. Think about it; perhaps two people can hallucinate together, but how can more than five hundred people hallucinate about the same thing?

    4) The apostles' faith came in direct opposition to their previous beliefs and worldly interests. They had no expectation and no hope of such resurrection, and yet after it occurred, they induced thousands of the enemies of Christ to believe in it, and this took place close to the time and near the place where it occurred so that skeptics would have had ample opportunity to prove their claims false.

But what we want to focus on is a 150-year-old discussion of the evidence that supports the veracity of the resurrection.

It was in 1842, when a professor of law at Harvard University, who was considered to be one of the greatest legal minds in America, and highly esteemed in Europe as well, wrote what has become a classic three-volume text, A Treatise on the Law of Evidence. His name was Simon Greenleaf, and he originally set out to disprove the Biblical testimony concerning the resurrection of Jesus Christ, certain that a careful examination of the internal witness of the Gospels would dispel what he considered to be the myths of Christianity. However, after his research, he arrived to the opposite conclusion, and declared that the witnesses were indeed reliable.

Specifically, Greenleaf carefully examined the testimony of the Four Evangelists, putting them to the same tests to which other evidence is subjected in human courts of law.

First, the legal scholar laid out a convincing case for the reliability of the written documents. In part, this was built on the legal premise that "Every document, apparently ancient, coming from the proper repository or custody, and bearing on its face no evident marks of forgery, the law presumes to be genuine, and devolves on the opposing party the burden of proving it to be otherwise." In other words, the same rule of law applies to documents as applies to men, they are presumed innocent until proven guilty, or presumed truthful unless proven to be false - the burden of proof lies with the critics.

Then Greenleaf went on to discuss each of the Four Evangelists, convincingly arguing for their credibility as witnesses.

    Matthew, being a tax collector under the employ of the Roman government, would have been "familiar with a great variety of forms of fraud, imposture, cunning, and deception, and must have become habitually distrustful, scrutinizing, and cautious; and, of course, much less likely to have been deceived. . . ."

    What gives Mark credibility is that in spite of having Peter as his main source, Mark is not hesitant to point out Peter's "weaknesses and fall . . . while things which might redound to his honor, are either omitted or but slightly mentioned."

    Although Luke was probably the best educated of the Four Evangelists, he does not claim to have been an eye-witness. However, his testimony is admissible as evidence, in a court of law because, as Greenleaf writes, "the inquiry is gravely undertaken and pursued, by a person of competent intelligence, sagacity and integrity." Furthermore, Luke's account was written "probably at the request of a man of distinction, whom it would not be for the interest nor safety of the writer to deceive or mislead."

    John, the last of the Evangelists to write, demonstrates credibility by the fact that he omits material already covered by the others who had written before him, his care of adding several incidents which were known to him, and where he does mention the same things, he does so "in a brief and cursory manner, [and so] affords incidental but strong testimony that he regarded their accounts as faithful and true."

Greenleaf then goes on to show that "the facts related by the Four Evangelists are proved by competent and satisfactory evidence" which "in the affairs of human life, satisfy the mind and conscience of a common man." He does this by applying five tests to the Evangelists:

First, are the witnesses honest?

    Given the tremendous persecution they endured, they "had every possible motive to review carefully the grounds of their faith, and the evidences of the great facts and truths which they asserted."

    According to tradition, all of the Eleven Apostles, except John, died horrible deaths. Simon Peter was crucified upside down. Andrew, James and the other Simon were crucified. James was beheaded by Herod (Act 12:1,2). Bartholomew was flayed to death, and Philip, Thomas, Matthew and Jude all died in martyrdom. Would they all have been willing to face persecution, hardship, alienation, even death, for a concocted lie?

    Furthermore, if the Evangelists were promoting a falsehood, they would be doing so, not only at the risk of their very lives, but also of inner guilt with "no expectation of honor or esteem among men, no hope of happiness in this life, or in the world to come." Furthermore, it is obvious in their writings that these were men of tender conscience who feared God; by their own teachings they would be dooming themselves to eternal judgment if they promoted a lie; if they were bad men, why would they invent something "which was to destroy all their prospects of worldly honor and happiness, and to insure their misery in this life?"

Second, are the witnesses considered to be capable?

    This has to do with their opportunities for observing what it is they report, and the accuracy of their powers of discerning and remembering. Two of the Evangelists were well educated with occupations which required a high level of exactness; the other two were not schooled, and unlikely to be capable of concocting such an elaborate story.

Third, were there an ample number of witnesses and consistency among them?

    What discrepancies there are, support the idea that it would be unlikely that the Evangelists would have collaborated in the making up of the stories. At the same time, there's enough agreement to support the presumption that they were indeed reporting the same events.

    At this point, it is also important to take notice of the very large number of people who were eye-witnesses of the resurrection of Christ. In fact, there were between 518 and 641 people who saw Jesus after His resurrection! In addition to the Eleven Apostles and the large group who met with Jesus on a Galilean mountain (I Corinthians 15:6), there were: the women returning from the tomb (Matthew 28:9-10), Mary Magdalene (John 20:14; Mark 16:9), two disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-33), Stephen (Acts 7:55), and Paul (Acts 9:3-6, I Corinthians 15:8).

Fourth, was their testimony in conformity with experience?

    In this regard, Greenleaf pointed out that if a person approaches the story with a clear bias against the possibility of miracles, then it could be argued that many of the accounts were fabricated. However, to judge all proposed truth on the basis of our own experience alone is extremely limiting, as if to say, "If I have not experienced a miracle then any other person's claim is certainly false." However, Greenleaf responds, to argue that miracles are impossible "supposes that the creator of all things first made a code of laws, and then put it out of his own power to change them."

Fifth, does their testimony coincide with collateral circumstances?

    Of course in the case of the Evangelists, they are long dead and gone. However, their collective testimony is credible because of the great "variety and minuteness of detail [which] are usually regarded as certain tests of sincerity." While there is no abundance of literature from the time of the Evangelists, nothing of what has been discovered in any way calls into question their credibility. To the contrary, the more that is discovered, the more certain we are of their credibility. Whenever the Evangelists made references to historically known persons and events, we know them to be true. For example, we know from two secular historians, Tacitus and Josephus, that at the time of Jesus' crucifixion, Pilate was governor of Judea, and that it was normal for the governor alone to have the power to pass the death sentence. The derision, the scourging, the stripping, the beating, and the written charges over His head - these are all known to be part of the process of crucifixion by the Romans.

    Although there are some who dispute the authenticity of his writings, Josephus, a devoted Jew and a Roman military commander, but not a Christian, wrote a famous history called the Antiquities of the Jews. This is what he wrote:

    "Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day." (Jewish Antiquities 18,3,3)

    Also of interest is the report that archeologists have found a Christian tomb in the clay limestone hills around Jerusalem which housed ossuaries (stone boxes containing the bones of dead people.) On all four sides of these ossuaries, were found charcoal-drawn crosses, and pottery was found of a type known as "Herodia," as well as a coin minted by Agrippa I in the year 41 A.D. Consequently, we know that this was a Christian tomb, dating less than 10 years after Jesus’ crucifixion. Two of the ossuaries had the name "Jesus" inscribed on them. On one ossuary the name "Jesus" was followed by "iou," which is the Greek version of Yahweh, the name of God. In other words, the inscription read: ”Jesus is God”. The other ossuary that bore the name "Jesus" had the Greek letters "aloth" following it. This is a Hebrew word written in Greek letters, meaning "ascended one." This then, is collateral evidence that ten years after Jesus’ crucifixion, Christians were buried with the belief that Jesus was God, and that Jesus was resurrected! Even more recently an ossuary was found bearing the name, "James, brother of Jesus."

Having passed all these tests, Greenleaf concluded that it was very reasonable to believe the accounts of these writers, the Four Evangelists. One might go so far as to say that it would take a higher level of faith to pronounce their accounts false than if they are simply accepted at face value.

The question then becomes, "So what?" What difference does the resurrection make for us today? Simply put, the truth of the resurrection of Jesus makes His message all the more believable, and to believe it is to have life. "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life." (John 3:16)

"Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus . . . who died -- more than that, who was raised to life -- is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us." (Romans 8:1,34)

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