Because Jesus paid the price for our sins the righteous requirements of the Law are met in us. Now look at the situation. There were those who claimed that you needed to live by the Law in order to please God. Superficially this seems convincing, as does every exhortation to live a better life by human effort, but such attempts are doomed to end in failure. So how can we be righteous? The death of Jesus has paid for our sins. There are those who deny “penal substitutionary atonement”, such people are simply wrong. Unless Jesus paid the price for our sins then we are still guilty, still under condemnation. I am so glad, so relieved, that Jesus bore the price, the punishment, that should have been mine.
Now understand the role of this statement in Paul’s argument in Romans. He is now talking about living by the Spirit, and the first question is “what about your sins?”, “what about the things you have done in the past”. This is the question the Jew asked, it is also a question many sceptics will ask, though maybe in a slightly different form. The cross is the answer to that part. Jesus has paid for my sins. In the next part of chapter 8 Paul will expound on the futility of trying to live by the flesh, ie trying to please God by relying on our own strength, and the alternative of living by the Spirit.
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