to exclaim, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (7:25a). What Paul celebrates with the words “There is therefore now no condemnation” has many precursors in Romans, from 1:1–17 through 3:21–6:23. But in the preceding flow of discourse 8:1 seems to pick up where 7:6 left off: “Now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.” If that is true, there is certainly cause