Romans 8:2

A statement of the great antithesis, of which the rest of the section is a development, between the law of the Spirit of life and the law of sin and of death.

The law of the Spirit of life. — A phrase defining more fully the mode in which the union with Christ becomes operative in the believer. It begins by imparting to him the Spirit of Christ; this Spirit creates within him a law; and the result of that law is life — that perfect spiritual vitality which includes within itself the pledge of immortality.

The Spirit. — That is, the Spirit of Christ, as in Romans 8:9, which is hardly as yet conceived of as a distinct personality, but representing the continued action and influence which the ascended Saviour exercises upon the believer.

In Christ Jesus. — These words are best taken with “hath made” (rather, made, when it was imparted to me) “me free.” The law of the Spirit of life, in Christ (i.e., operating through my union with Christ), made me free from the law of sin and of death.

From the law of sin and death. — The direct contrast to the foregoing. Not here the law of Moses, but the power of sin, the corrupt element in our nature, acting upon the soul, and itself erecting a kind of law, saying, “Thou shalt,” where the law of God says “Thou shalt not;” and “Thou shalt not,” where the law of God says “Thou shalt.” The effect of this reign of sin is death — spiritual death — bearing in itself the pledge of eternal death.