NOTES for Rom 8:2

Death dominates the world, and no power is capable of surmounting it. More wonderful are these words of the apostle Paul, sent has each of us: the expression "made me free" appears in the recent versions, but the ancient manuscripts of this text contain the words "made you free". Then the apostle in an appropriate for him way explains this idea, fathoming into theological reflections, which are not so easy for understanding.

But in practice, not the explanation is more important for us - Apostle Paul knows what he speaks about, and we can trust him. Important is the fact that the Spirit of God, the Spirit of life offers me liberty from condemnation, from death. Yes, death has gone nowhere, and as they say, all of us shall be there. But deathcan be for me (for you) not a sad and absurd end of life, of which there is nothing more, for which it would be necessary to live and die. We are free of this law, and death can become for us the purpose of a difficult way, behind which life continues, reaching its plenitude. Isn’t it hope?

The Lord commands us to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. In ordinary life, wisdom and innocence are rarely found together. How, then, are we to live in this world full of violence and betrayal? We cannot invent a formula. There is therefore no point in wondering in advance how to behave in a critical situation. It is better to trust in the Spirit, who will give us an answer at the necessary moment. According to the Apostle, this Spirit lives in those who belong to Christ and live according to the spirit, those for whom He is Wonderful, Counselor, and Mighty God.

Developing the theme of deliverance from the "body of death," the apostle turns to the theme of the Kingdom, without which such liberation is impossible, and to the mission of the Savior, who brought the Kingdom into the world. He speaks of the Torah, which now, after Christ's coming into the world, can be transformed from an instrument for knowing sin, an instrument of death capable of killing, into the source of the life of the Kingdom by which the Risen One lives. That is why Paul distinguishes between the Torah of sin and death, on the one hand, and the Torah of the "breath of life," on the other (vv. 1-2).

The inner Torah, of which learned rabbis and theologians spoke in Paul's time, was generally expected to cleanse and sanctify the believer, but the ideal was still a person who had become, according to the commonly accepted definition of that era, a "living Torah." For Paul, however, the inner Torah, as we can see, is connected with that "body of death" from which one must be delivered, while the living Torah is the Savior Himself. Therefore anyone else can become it only by entrusting himself to the Risen One and receiving from Him that fullness of the life of the Kingdom without which no "living Torah" is possible. For Paul, the "living Torah" is the Torah of Christ and the Kingdom (vv. 14-17). And the earthly ministry of the Savior becomes for him the manifestation of the Kingdom as the living Torah (vv. 3-4). After all, in order to become a "living Torah" and reveal the fullness of righteousness of which the apostle speaks here, a person had to be completely freed from the power of sin; otherwise, instead of the fullness of the Torah's righteousness, he would show the world only the fullness of his own sinfulness.

Bodily existence permeated by sin weakened the action of the Torah on the human heart, and therefore the fullness of the Kingdom remained inaccessible even to those who, by human standards, showed the world examples of righteousness. Because of this sinfulness that weighed upon the human being, God had to make a special effort to show the world what fallen humanity was not capable of: the example of perfect, sinless humanity that contained within itself the fullness of God, and therefore the fullness of the Kingdom. And now everyone who has resolved to say a firm "no" to his own "body of death" has both the possibility of carrying out his intention and the place where he can find the life that he has nowhere to seek in our world, which has not yet been transfigured (vv. 5-10).

Thus the example shown to the world by the Savior becomes not merely an example, but a real power that changes the world and opens the Kingdom to everyone who seeks it and is ready to go to the end in that search.

The apostle continues his reflections on life according to the Spirit and life according to the flesh, which he had already begun in the previous chapter. If earlier he only identified the problem of this monstrous rupture between what the divine nature in a person wants and what his bodily nature does, here he is already speaking about how it can be overcome.

Paul believes that the flesh is sinful in its very essence; such is the law of the created order. Therefore only a true miracle can break the opposition within a person between his sinful nature and his divine nature. And the life of God in those who open their hearts to Him becomes such a miracle. If this happens, everything changes. "But if Christ is in us, the body is dead because of sin, but the spirit is alive because of righteousness."

Paul distinguishes, on the one hand, the "Torah of sin and death," and on the other, the "Torah of the breath of life in Christ Jesus." The apostle understands perfectly that the Torah in an ordinary person does not act as it does in Christ. This is understandable: in an ordinary person, whose nature is damaged by the fall, the Torah, of course primarily the inner Torah, only reveals this damage even more. In human nature damaged by sin, the inner Torah cannot function fully; in this case it cannot solve the task for which it is intended, to make a person a living Torah.

And then what was impossible for an ordinary person was accomplished by Christ Himself, who revealed to the world the living Torah and thereby "condemned sin in the flesh," as the apostle says. And now the breath of Christ's life, the breath of the Kingdom, which has become accessible to everyone ready to trust Christ, also opens to a person the possibility of becoming a living Torah, like the Savior Himself.

The righteousness of the Torah, the "justification of the law" of the Synodal translation, is now accessible to everyone who lives not by the flesh, not by his own nature, which is powerless to realize the ideal of the living Torah, but by the breath of the Kingdom opened through Christ, the "spirit" of the Synodal translation. As long as we live ordinary human life, untransformed life, the living Torah remains an unattainable ideal. But if from this life we pass to the life of Christ, to the life of the Kingdom, the ideal proves entirely attainable, but only in union with Christ Himself as King.

The breath of the Kingdom leads a person along the path of the inner Torah in union with Christ, helping him become a living Torah, of which Christ Himself is the example. This, of course, does not happen in a single moment. In order to become a living Torah, one must pass through one's own path of spiritual formation, and if one refuses the path and continues to live as before, then one will have to forget about Christ, the Kingdom, and the new life. But if one is consistent in one's spiritual efforts, every seeker can become like Christ, becoming, as He is, a living Torah and receiving the fullness of the life of His Kingdom.