Conditions ...

 Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. (Romans 8:1)

 

I love “con” words. Generally speaking, the con- prefix is an intensifier and has a meaning of with. In the case of condemnation, if you look at the next four letters (demn) you can probably guess where it comes from. The interesting thing about the definition given in the Mirriam Webster Dictionary is that it’s not just a declaration that something/someone is evil, wrong, or reprehensible, but that they are so after weighing the evidence and without reservation. It is, in short, a legal term when properly used. It is also a final judgment. All the appeals have been tried. There is no doubt of guilt.

But this is the problem. We tend to think that condemnation is something done by a judge and jury (official or otherwise.) But the reality is that condemnation is the state of someone who is guilty – and there is no doubt of their guilt. They stand condemned – separated from God, society, and others by their actions, not by the action of someone else. If you die, someone isn’t doing something to you in declaring you dead. It is a state of being, not imposed on a person by another person, and maybe not one that is even chosen by the condemned person – but that doesn’t make it any less the case.

But, just as someone who is condemned may not understand or believe that he/she is in that condition, so can the person for whom there is, therefore, now no condemnation struggle with the idea that they are in the condition of “not condemned.” This tends to be my struggle. And part of the challenge is the fact that I don’t even recognize that I’m feeling condemned or I’m condemning myself until it’s been going on for a while. Several times today, I’ve had to stop myself because I was on a familiar road of “My life is falling apart, I can’t cope!” The reality was that my microwave died. How was I not handling things well? I even recall one heroic instance of asking, “Who told you…?”

Old habits die hard, and one of the hardest thinks about growing in the “No condemnation” condition is the challenge of condemning ourselves because we’ve caught ourselves condemning ourselves! I’ve a friend who talks about reframing things. What if, instead of telling ourselves, “Oh, I’m doing it again. What a failure!” we celebrated because, while we may not have captured or killed the thief, we at least realized he was there and chased him away?