Romans 8:2

It is strange that Paul should speak of the law of the Spirit. Are these two expressions not contradictory? We shall not understand the phrase unless we bear in mind what has been said (Romans 3:27; Romans 7:21, etc.) of the general sense which the word law often takes in Paul's writings: a controlling power imposing itself on the will, or, as in the case before us, appropriating the very will. The complement τῆς ζωῆς, of life, may be understood as the genitive of cause: “The Spirit which proceeds from the life (that of Jesus Himself);” or as the gen. of effect: “The Spirit which produces life (in the believer).” But is it possible wholly to sever these two relations? If the Spirit produces spiritual life in the believer's heart, is it not because he is the breath of the living and glorified Christ? He takes of that which belongs to Jesus, John 16:15, and communicates it to us.

The clause: in Jesus Christ, is connected by several commentators with the verb hath made free: “The Spirit of life made us free as soon as we entered into communion with Jesus Christ.” But in this sense would not Paul rather have said in him, ἐν αὐτῷ, simply referring to the in Christ Jesus of the previous verse? It is therefore more natural to make the clause dependent on the immediately preceding phrase: the law of the Spirit of life. The only question is what article is to be understood, to serve as the link of this clause. Should it be ὁ, relating to νόμος, the law, or τοῦ, referring to πνεύματος, the Spirit, or finally τῆς, referring to ζωῆς, life? The first connection, that adopted by Calvin, seems to us the preferable one. The apostle has no special reason for recalling here that life or the Spirit are given in Jesus Christ, which is understood otherwise of itself. But it is important for him to remind us that, in opposition to the reign of the letter, which made us slaves, the reign of the Spirit of life, which sets us free, was inaugurated in Jesus Christ. The absence of the article ὁ before the clause ἐν Χ. ᾿Ι. arises from the fact that the latter is regarded as forming only one and the same idea with the phrase on which it depends.

Instead of the pronoun μέ, me, read by the T. R. with the majority of the Mss., there is found in the Sinaït. and the Vatic., as well as in two Greco-Latins, σέ, thee: “hath made thee free.” This reading must be very ancient, for it is found so early as in the Peshitto and Tertullian. It has been admitted by Tischendorf in his eighth edition. But it is nevertheless very improbable. Why the sudden appearance of the second person at the very close of this argument? This σέ has evidently arisen, as Meyer thinks, from the repetition of the last syllable of ἠλευθέρωσε. The μέ, me, is the continuation of the form of expression which the apostle had used throughout the whole of the second part of chap. 7. Indeed, the figure used by him in Romans 8:23-24, that of a prisoner calling for help, with the cry: “Who shall deliver me?” still continues and reaches its close in our verse, as is seen by the choice of the term ἠλευθέρωσε, hath made free. Our Romans 8:2 is the true answer to this cry of distress, Romans 8:23. It is the breath of life communicated in Jesus to the justified Christian which causes the chains of sin and death to fall from him.

We must beware of following several commentators in applying the phrase: the law of sin and of death, to the law of Moses. Paul has just called the latter the law of God, and has declared that he took pleasure in it after the inward man; this would not be the time to abuse it in this fashion. The true explanation follows from Romans 8:23, where he has spoken of the law which is in his members, and which renders him the captive of sin. The word law is therefore still used here in that general sense in which we have just seen it taken in the beginning of the verse. The apostle deliberately contrasts law with law, that is to say here: power with power.

The two combined terms, sin and death, form the antithesis to life; for the latter includes the notions of holiness and resurrection. Death is the state of separation from God in which sin involves us, but with the understanding that physical death is the transition to eternal death. The two words: sin and death, control the following development down to Romans 8:11. And first: deliverance from sin, Romans 8:3-4.