In a previous post, I provided a list of forty quotes for forty years of my life. In the next few posts, I plan to explain why certain ones have been meaningful to me. In this post, I discuss Romans 8:1, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

Julian Barnes is an agnostic and not known as an champion for Christian theology. His autobiographical memoir, Nothing to Be Frightened Of, opens with the words, “I don’t believe in God, but I miss him.”

Yet Barnes is honest about his longings, which intersect marvelously with Christian theology. We all hope, he writes, that in the end we will be “finally, truly seen: judged and approved. . . . That would make for a good ending, wouldn’t it?”

The problem, as Barnes admits, is that this longing seems to be unattainable. If someone truly knows me, how could they approve of me? Conversely, if someone approves of me, do they really know who I am?

I feel the way Barnes does: I long to be fully known and finally approved, but these longings seem mutually exclusive.

In Biblical terms, this longing is for justification—God’s final approval of me. The good news of the Bible is that this approval is available to us, not on the basis of our merits, but of the merits of Jesus Christ. And here is how the tension between being seen and approved is resolved. God sees us in Christ: that is how he knows us, and so that it also how he fully and finally approves of us.

This is why the words of Romans 8:1 are a breakthrough, a song, an eternal sigh of relief: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

I chose to include Romans 8:1 as one of my favorite quotes because it assures me that, in Christ, I will never face final condemnation. Instead, I can expect to hear the words “Well, done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your Lord” (Matthew 25:21).