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Romans 8 Commentary

Please choose a passage:

Romans 8:1-4

God sent His son, Jesus, as a sacrifice to free us from sin and the condemnation of the law. Christ died and resurrected to restore our relationship with God and to save us from eternal condemnation.

Romans 8:5-8

Every believer has the power to choose to follow the Spirit, rather than the flesh. If we dedicate our thoughts to the desires of our flesh/sin nature, we’ll live that way.

Romans 8:9-11

If you don’t have the Spirit, then you’re not a Christian, which means all Christians have the Holy Spirit, the Helper, living inside them.

Romans 8:12-14

Paul wants the Roman Christians to realize, since we have the Holy Spirit, we are free from our sin nature and can continue to follow Him rather than our selfish desires.

Romans 8:15-16

Christians have been spiritually adopted by God. We are not slaves who are afraid of their old evil master, but sons taken in by a new master, whom we endearingly call “Father.”

Christians are children of God, and from Him every believer unconditionally inherits being justified in His sight and the promise of one day being with Him in His glory. For Christians who suffer as Christ did, there is a specific inheritance reward...

Romans 8:19-22

All of God’s creation desires for God to finally restore it to a perfect, harmonious state. One day God will do this, and all of creation will be freed from its corrupted state and will once again be as God originally designed it.

Romans 8:23

Even though believers have been gifted with the presence of the indwelling Holy Spirit, we continue to struggle in this fallen world.

Romans 8:24-25

We have hope that one day God will restore everything to the way He first designed it, a time when the world is redeemed as well, and no longer resists the will of God.

Romans 8:26-27

In the same way that we are not fully redeemed, our ability to communicate with God is not fully restored. In our weakness, the Holy Spirit helps us talk to God, in ways we could never express with mere words.

Romans 8:28-30

God promises that He causes every circumstance to conform believers to the image of Christ, with the intent that many would rule with Christ as joint heirs.

Romans 8:31-35

Because of Jesus’s sacrifice and our faith as believers in that sacrifice, absolutely nothing can separate us from the love of God.

Romans 8:36-39

Paul is nailing this point down, that because of the love of God, a love that is shown to us through Jesus’s death on the cross, we as believers cannot be separated from that love.

Additional Resources

Book Theme

The Apostle Paul writes to the world-renowned believers in Rome, the center of the world at that time, in order to answer a slanderous charge made to them against Paul and his message. Paul’s detractors claim his emphasis on faith overturns the law. Paul says that ” just living by the law” does not achieve personal justice before God, while “just living by faith” does. Paul then demonstrates what a just life looks like: harmonious living with Jesus as the leader. Paul also makes clear the choice a believer has: to walk in faith and the power of the resurrection and experience resurrection life, or walk in sin and unnecessarily experience the negative consequences.

Chapter Context

Following the law, or rules, can never make us spiritual, but walking in the Spirit fulfills the law. Institutions, and people in general, are inclined to use rules to attempt to control others, using the threat of condemnation to control them. But there is no condemnation for those who are in Jesus, so there is no reason for believers to submit to such control. Paul is arming the Roman believers receiving this letter, who are already world-famous for their faith, with the knowledge that no person or circumstance can separate us from the perfect and all-encompassing love of Jesus, so they will reject the competing Jewish “authorities” attempt to condemn them in order to gain control.
Further, Paul offers up the reality that serving Jesus (rather than men) will bring the suffering Jesus suffered (including rejection by men) but that suffering leads to an unfathomable reward – to be a joint-heir with Jesus, to co-inherit what Jesus inherited for His faithfulness to His Father. For all these reasons, Paul exhorts the believers in Rome, and by extension us, to reject the control of rule-making legalism and serve Jesus with a true heart.