Romans 8:2 and the Two Laws

The last chapter ended at the door of Romans 8. For many believers this is the brightest room in the whole house. It opens with “no katakrima κατάκριμα kat-ak'-ree-mah(condemnation),” it is full of the Spirit from beginning to end, and it closes with nothing able to separate us from the love of God. If any chapter could settle the question of the law, it would seem to be this one.

Near its beginning stands a verse that appears to settle it in a single line, and a claim has been built on it: “The Spirit is the law of life. God no longer deals with His children by the law of death and curse.”

It is easy to hear why people love that sentence, for it sounds like a door swinging open. There used to be a law that brought death and curse, and now there is the Spirit, who brings life. The old has been replaced by the new, and the believer lives in the new.

But a sentence about a verse is not the verse itself, and so we turn to the verse.

Free From What?

Romans 8:1-2 There is therefore now no katakrima(condemnation) to those who are in Messiah Yeshua, who do not walk according to the sarx σάρξ sarx(flesh) but according to the pneuma πνεῦμα pnyoo'-mah(spirit). For the nomos νόμος nom'-os(law) of the pneuma(spirit) of zoe ζωή dzo-ay'(life) in Messiah Yeshua has set me free from the nomos(law) of sin and of death.

Read verse 2 slowly, looking for one thing: what was Paul set free from?

He does not say that he was set free from the law of God or from the Torah. He says “from the nomos(law) of sin and of death.” The word nomos (νόμος) appears twice in this one sentence, and Paul ties each to a different owner. On one side stands “the nomos(law) of the pneuma(spirit) of zoe(life),” and on the other “the nomos(law) of sin and of death.”

The core question of this chapter is whether, by “the nomos(law) of sin and of death,” Paul means the law of God.

We do not have to guess, because Paul tells us only a few sentences earlier.

Two Laws Paul Had Already Named

At the end of chapter 7, Paul describes a war going on inside a man, and he names the two sides:

Romans 7:22-23 For I delight in the nomos(law) of God according to the inner person, but I see a different nomos(law) in my members, warring against the nomos(law) of my nous νοῦς nooce(intellect, spiritual domain) and taking me captive to the nomos(law) of sin that is in my members.

The first law is “the nomos(law) of God,” and Paul says that he delights in it. The Greek word is synedomai συνήδομαι soon-ay'-dom-ahee, to rejoice along with, to take pleasure in together. Paul is not describing a law he is trying to escape. He is describing a law he loves, “according to the inner person.”

The second is “a different nomos(law) in my members.” Paul names it plainly at the end of the verse: “the nomos(law) of sin that is in my members.” This law is “warring,” and it is “taking me captive.” That last word is aichmalotizo αἰχμαλωτίζω aheekh-mal-o-tid'-zo, to take a prisoner of war, to lead a captive away at spear point.

When we turn the page, then, and Paul says that he has been set free “from the nomos(law) of sin,” we already know which law he means. It is not the law he delights in, but the law that had taken him prisoner.

The Prisoner Comes Home

Picture a soldier captured far from home. For years he lives in an enemy camp under the camp’s rules. He eats when they say and sleeps where they say, and the rules of that camp lead to only one end. All that time he carries in his heart the country he came from. He loves its laws and longs to live under them again, but he cannot, because he is a prisoner.

Then one morning the gates are thrown open, and he is free.

He is free from the camp, not from his own country. No one would say to him, “Congratulations, you are liberated, so now you will never have to live by the laws of your homeland again.” Going home to those laws is the whole point of his release.

That is the shape of Romans 7 and 8. The law of God is the homeland Paul delighted in, the law of sin is the camp that took him captive, and the Spirit of life is the One who threw open the gate. The claim aims the freedom of Romans 8:2 at the wrong place, reading “set free from the camp” as “set free from home.”

Two Verses Later

There is a second and even simpler test. When someone is set free, it is fair to ask what the freedom is for, and Paul answers that question himself two verses later:

Romans 8:4 so that the dikaioma δικαίωμα dik-ah'-yo-mah(ordinance) of the nomos(law) might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the sarx(flesh) but according to the pneuma(spirit).

We have read this verse closely already, so here we need only see where it stands. Verse 2 says that the Spirit has set us free, and verse 4 says why: “so that the dikaioma(ordinance) of the nomos(law) might be fulfilled in us,” with the law’s righteous requirement actually carried out.

Set the two verses side by side and the claim cannot stand. If the Spirit had freed us from God’s law, verse 4 would make no sense, for no one frees a person from a law so that the law’s requirement may be fulfilled in him. If the Spirit freed us from the law of sin, however, verse 4 makes perfect sense. The camp that kept us from doing what God commands has been broken open, so that what God commands is now done “in us who do not walk according to the sarx(flesh) but according to the pneuma(spirit).”

The law of the Spirit of life does not take the place of the law of God. It is what finally enables us to walk in the law of God.

The Curse, Not the Law

The other half of the claim says that God no longer deals with His children by a law of curse. There is something true in this, and we should say so gladly: believers are not under a curse. Paul says so himself:

Galatians 3:13 Messiah redeemed us from the curse of the nomos(law), having become a curse for us — for it is written, "Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree" —

We read this verse in Chapter 6, and the point made there carries straight over. Messiah redeemed us from “the curse of the nomos(law),” from the curse and not from the nomos. The word is exagorazo ἐξαγοράζω ex-ag-or-ad'-zo, to buy someone out, to pay for his release.

Paul had just quoted the curse he meant, from Deuteronomy 27:26: “Cursed is he who does not establish the words of this Torah to do them.” God’s law was never a curse. The curse was a sentence pronounced on the one who does not stand in the law, and it is from that sentence that Messiah set us free.

The claim is right, then, that the believer is no longer under a sentence of curse and death. It goes wrong when it pins that sentence on the law itself. In Romans 8:2 the law that leads to death is the law of sin, and in Galatians 3:10-13 the curse belongs to those who do not do what the Torah says. Neither verse makes God’s law the thing we were rescued from.

What the Verse Actually Says

Read Romans 8:2 one more time, and hear it the way Paul wrote it. The Spirit who gives life has set me free from the power of sin that was dragging me to death. The war of chapter 7 is over, and the prisoner is out of the camp. The law of God that he delighted in, in his inner person, is the law he can now walk in, because the Spirit is in him.

That is not the end of the law but the end of the captivity.

Many readers, however, hold up another verse as the real high point, the place where Paul himself seems to say that love has taken the law’s place.