God's Action in Messiah and Spirit

God’s Action in Messiah and Spirit
ROMANS 8.1-4
PAUL FOR EVERYONE ROMANS PART 1

When we lived in the English Midlands, I was once visited by two men researching a potential television programme. There had been a lot of talk about ‘Middle England’, they said. Since I lived more or less right in the middle of England, what did I think about it?

It was a faintly ridiculous idea, and though we had an interesting chat I never heard what came of it. There is, in fact, a roundabout a few miles south of where we lived, which pretentiously called itself ‘Midpoint’ or something like that, claiming to be the centre of the country. But of course with a country the odd shape of England there are many different places that could say the same.

When I was teaching undergraduates, I sometimes used to ask them to find a passage which seemed to be right at the centre of Paul’s thinking. Like the geographical question, it is impossible to answer, because of the many-sidedness of his writing; but the verses now before us have as strong a claim as any other passage I know. They have a big, thoroughly Pauline picture of God, father, son and spirit; they contain one of Paul’s clearest ever statements about what was accomplished on the cross; they draw together both his critique of the Jewish law and the seeds of his view of how that law is strangely fulfilled in and through the gospel; and they hold out the glorious, and typically Pauline, hope that there is indeed ‘no condemnation’ for those in the Messiah. A feast of good Pauline themes, in fact...

Taken from Paul for Everyone Romans part 1 by Tom Wright