Romans 8:2

For the law, &c. What is this law? We take it to be a phrase by way of paradox, meaning the institute, or procedure, of the Gospel of Grace. Cp. "the law of faith," Romans 3:27. It is the Divine Rule of Justification, (which alone, as the whole previous reasoning shews, removes "all condemnation,") and is thus "a law" in the sense of "fixed process." But also it is here "the law of the Spirit," because its necessary sequel (indeed we may say its final cause as regards man) is the impartation of the Holy Spirit, (see John 7:39,) of whose influences so much is now to be said. And He is here specially "the Spirit of Life," because He is the Agent who first leads the soul to believe in the Propitiation (see 1 Peter 1:2), and so to escape sentence of "death;" and who then animates it with the energies of the new life. Lastly, this whole process is "in Christ Jesus," who is the meritorious Cause of Justification, the Head of the Justified, and the Giver of the Spirit. The sum of the meaning thus is that the deliverance from doom is by faith in the Justifying Merit of Christ, which faith is attended, as well as produced, by the influences of the Holy Spirit, given through and by Christ.

hath made me free An aorist in the Gr.; probably referring to the definite past fact of the delivering Work. The phrase thus refers to Justification rather than Sanctification, which is a present process, not a past event. "Me:" there is another reading "thee;" but "me" is certainly right. The word is an echo from ch. 7, Cp. Galatians 2:17-21, where the Apostle similarly turns from the plural of general truth to the singular of his own appropriation of it. "Free:" i.e. in respect of condemnation not in respect of influence; which indeed (see next note) would be an alien idea here. He is here summing up the whole previous argument of the Epistle.

the law of sin and death i.e. the Law, which, as regards man apart from Christ, is invariably linked with sin, as evoking it, and with death, as thus, in the nature of things, calling it down on the sinner. In other words it is the Divine Law, (instanced in that of Moses,) which, as a Covenant, is by its very holiness the sinner's doom. The word "law" is (though not at first sight) used in the sense of a fixed process in both parts of the verse: the "new covenant" is linked, by the chain of cause and effect, with the Spirit of Life; the "old covenant," with sin and death.