Today’s blog uses the Epicopal daily reading along with a headline from from world news:

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Romans 8:1-11
Life in the Spirit
8There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2For the law of the Spirit* of life in Christ Jesus has set you* free from the law of sin and of death. 3For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin,* he condemned sin in the flesh, 4so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.* 5For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit* set their minds on the things of the Spirit.* 6To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit* is life and peace. 7For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law—indeed it cannot, 8and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
9 But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit,* since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. 10But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit* is life because of righteousness. 11If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ* from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through* his Spirit that dwells in you.

In chapters 5-7 of Romans (see previous blogs) Paul has set out the sad human condition of being under the powers of death and sin, because people have chosen to live in the dimension of “the flesh” (that is of self-interest). Now Paul celebrates the liberation of humanity from this condition through the work of God.
1. God has sent his son, the one with whom he shares eternal love, into the world in human flesh. he is Jesus Messiah.
2. Jesus has dealt with sin in that in the conditions of slavery to sin, he lived a life of goodness, revealing a way of conquering the power of sin.
3. The life of Jesus is a therefore a judgement on sin, showing its wqrongness and its weakness.
4. The power in which Jesus lived and died and, especially, rose friom death is the Spirit, that is, the mysterious presence-in-absence of God which allows human beings here and now to anticipate the presence of God which they will enjoy in God’s kingdom.
5. Although people who trust in God’s liberation are still mortal because of human sin, they already receive the gift of eternal life through the Spirit, who makes them good and just.
6. What the religious law could not do, because it became a tool of sin, God has done through Jesus, by arousing trust in his love.
7 So Paul can say that there is no condemnation for those who belong to Jesus: they live in the power of God’s life.

The story of the Roman collaborator Zacchaeus in Luke’s gospel ( Chapter 19)is a good illustration nof this liberation. A flawed  and sinful man, despised by others, is moved by Jesus’ friendship to trust God rather than his own self-interest.  Immediately he is enabled (by the Spirit) to demonstrate the impotence of sin by admitting  his wrongness and making reparation to those he has cheated. Of course he knew the religious law, but it had no effect on his evil; only Jesus’ saving justice could help him turn his life around.