Romans 8:1

THEREFORE there is now no condemnation...
Therefore, there is NOW no condemnation...
Therefore, there is now NO condemnation...
Therefore, there is now no CONDEMNATION...

Therefore.  Therefore means because, and indicates a link.  So in order to begin to understand chapter 8, we need to look at the end of chapter 7.  And so we find that BECAUSE we in our minds are slaves not to sin but to God, and BECAUSE God rescues us from the body of death, there is now no condemnation.

Now.  Now indicates the present time.  In chapter 3, Paul maintained that God had left sins committed in the past unpunished.  But now "he condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us" (v. 3-4).  And because God had condemned sin in the person of Jesus, now there is no condemnation for us.  I think that there is a very penetrating aspect about this, because at this very moment, God looks down from heaven and sees that each one of us who are in Christ Jesus as His child.

Pastor Paul has a story he's quite fond of using.  He told his daughter Beatrice, "I'm proud of you."  And little Beatrice, confused, asks "why?", and Paul simply says "because you're my daughter."  And this exactly is the kind of love God has for us -- NOW.

No.  I don't think we truly grasp the utter finality of this word.  For us, if there are scraps of ice cream left in the bucket, we say that there's no ice cream.  If there are still a few bread crumbs we say that there's no bread.  But God is not like that.  His "no" condemnation means that there is not one speck of condemnation reserved for us, because He condemned Jesus, forsook His only Son, and crushed Him (for a taste of God's wrath, read Rev. 16).  The hardest thing for a human to do, I think, is to fully accept that, because we are so used to have to work for things, even our salvation.  But I am convinced that if we were to fully accept that because of Jesus, there is no condemnation, we would be able to serve "in the new way of the Spirit." (Rom. 7:6)

Condemnation.  I mentioned in my post about Rom. 3:21-31 that salvation is something we will spend all of eternity trying to comprehend.  Condemnation is part of it, and it doesn't help that God is somewhat secretive about it.  True condemnation, I believe, is meted out in only two places in the Bible: on the person of Jesus Christ at the cruxifiction, and in the last pages of Revelation when the dead are judged.  I may be glossing over passages, but the more I understand the Bible, the more I find that even the "rough" passages such as slaughtering the Canaanites in Joshua and the fiery prophets are a call for the people to repent.  And again, as Paul mentioned in chapter 3, God left the sins in the past unpunished.  But when Jesus returns, He will judge the world and condemn those who have not put their faith in Him to hell.  And if heaven is better than all we could imagine, hell must be worse than all we could imagine.

... for those who are IN Christ Jesus.

The most obvious passage that comes to mind is John 15, when Jesus tells his disciples to "remain" in His love (some translations use "abide").  I think the application is clear here, but I want to expand upon this little word.  The Triune God can be thought of as an eternally co-existing Unity of three Persons.  This means that there were not three Persons of God existing in separate corners of space; there were three Persons of God existing together in an eternal dance, if you will, in enjoyment of each other's company.  And when we are called to be "in" Christ Jesus, we are called to join in this eternal dance.  The second image that this little word brings to my mind is being surrounded by the grace of the Father, the love of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, 360 degrees, for ever and ever.  Notice both the spatial and temporal eternity here.  And so Paul's exhortation in Ephesians 6:13-16 is not so much separate pieces of armor, but a fully-enclosed battle-suit of holiness.  Something like this.

And so once more I end with the command from God that Paul so faithfully wrote down: "[let us] serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code." (Rom. 7:6b)

Matthew