A Beautiful Double Negative
My parents were sticklers about using proper grammar.
Whenever we kids would say something like, “Me and John went fishing today,” my dad would echo back, “It’s John and I.”
And then there was that whole “double negative” thing—I think I was the only seventh grader who actually knew what that meant.
For example, it’s against the rules to say, “I can’t get no satisfaction.” (See the double negatives back to back?)
It should be: “I can’t get any satisfaction,” but (in this case) Mick Jagger and The Rolling Stones opted for the more colloquial, albeit incorrect, double negative and produced one of the most popular songs in the world.
Go figure.
Although the double negative may be out of bounds by American English standards, it’s not a problem in ancient Biblical Greek; in fact, it comes in quite handy when the writer wanted to strengthen the force of his statement.
Like the Apostle is doing here in one of the most exquisite one-liners in the entire Bible—Romans 8:1:
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
In the Greek, the double negative makes the statement a whole lot stronger.
No, therefore, not any condemnation, no, not ever, for those joined to Christ.
It sounds like the One who said, Let your yes be yes and your no be no, is giving us an emphatic NO.
And He’s doing that for a good reason.
God wants to set our hearts at ease.
The thought of being judged for well-deserved sinning is terrifying (but reasonable). It would be, as the Bible says, a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God (Hebrews 10:31).
But we who have fled to Christ for safety have nothing to fear. And that’s Paul’s point here.
Since He became our sin, and suffered and died for our sins, it is impossible for those who trust in Him to be condemned for any reason at all. As it is written: For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more” (Hebrews 8:12).
With our sins removed and forgotten, condemnation is without cause, and therefore, irrelevant for those pardoned.
God’s heart is for us to enjoy His peace rather than dread His wrath, so He stretches human language to its limits to bring sweet assurance to our souls.
No, not any condemnation, no, not ever for those joined to Christ.
And the Therefore Explains Why.
The logic found in the Bible isn’t like the logic found in the world.
Well-intentioned unbelievers try to cheer people up with happy, hopeful sayings that (sadly) have no basis in reality. Maybe they’ll knock on wood and say, “Everything’s going to be just fine.”
Well, thank you for that nice thought, but how do you know everything’s going to be fine? On what evidence do you base that hope?
But before the Apostle Paul promises full amnesty for guilty sinners who trust Christ, he provides seven full chapters explaining what God has done to make pardon possible.
And a good portion of all that comes before this verse can be summed up by the theological term: justification.
Justification is the action of God declaring an ungodly person to be perfect while they are still ungodly (Romans 4:5).
God pardons the guilty based on what His Son has done, not based on the sinner’s behavior. All He requires of us is to trust in the Savior who has died the death we deserved.
If our sins have been judged, there’s no reason for judgment.
No, not any; no, not none. 😉
But He was pierced for our transgressions,
He was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on Him,
and by His wounds we are healed (Isaiah 53:5).
And THIS is why Paul can assure us: Because of chapters 1-7 and all Christ has done on our behalf, there is therefore now no condemnation for those in Him.
If through faith in Jesus you’ve been raised to new life, condemnation is simply out of the question.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean we never feel condemned.
The sin nature (though disarmed and reckoned dead) survives conversion and once in a while it can get the upper-hand, which can leave us feeling condemned.
But there’s a difference between conviction and condemnation:
Conviction is the Holy Spirit-generated troubling of our conscience prompting us to repent, confess, and make things right.
Feelings of condemnation, on the other hand, are those of hopeless despair; they must be resisted by Believers and replaced with the truth.
“Whenever our heart condemns us,” John tells us, “God is greater than our heart, and He knows everything” (1 John 3:20).
I love that verse.
We can be walking in God’s love and yet our heart still condemns us before God. John assures us that God is greater than our heart, and so reminds us that we cannot base our relationship with Him purely on how we feel in His presence.
Feelings of doom and gloom can rise up within us because of our own spiritual immaturity, insecurities or brokenness. It might even be the work of the enemy of our souls who, according to Revelation 12:10, accuses Christians night and day.
As Charles Spurgeon put it: “Sometimes our heart condemns us, but in doing so, it gives a wrong verdict, and then we have the satisfaction of being able to take the case into a higher court, for ‘God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things.’ ”
And what does God know?
He knows full well that His Only Begotten Son paid in full for those sins, so those struggling with an overactive conscience can rest in facts over feelings.
After all, look at our safe position: we are “in Christ.”
When the Bible refers to us as “being in Christ,” it speaks of our new identity—our new status.
If we’re in Christ, you’d have to destroy Christ in order to destroy us; if we are to be condemned, Christ must stand condemned first.
And that’s just never gonna happen—and so out comes the double negative:
Never, ever—not now or any time in the future.
And don’t overlook that little beautiful word: “There is therefore NOW no condemnation for those in Christ.”
That “now” is a real wow.
I mean, think about it. We are a work in progress. We keep falling short and we keep making the same dumb mistakes over and over again.
Our sinful desires wage war against our souls, our thoughts run wild, our motivations less than noble.
But if you are in Christ and you and your imperfect self are trusting in Jesus, you enjoy complete freedom from any and all condemnation.
Even now.
