“For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh:…”
(Romans 8:3)

To say the preaching of the law could set a sinner free from sin is the equivalent of preaching “Thou shalt not kill” to a convicted murderer on death row. He is already gu8lty of the crime and has been tried, convicted, and sentenced under the law. The law cannot acquit and set a convicted sinner free. It is not because of any weakness in the law but in the sinner who is guilty.

How then can we who are sinners be set free?

God sent His own Son, the Lord Jesus Christ to become incarnate, “the likeness of sinful flesh,” yet He was and is without sin. “And FOR OUR SIN,” as a substitute in our place having our sins imputed (accounted, charged) to Him, He “condemned sin in the flesh.”

Christ, as GODMAN, suffered all the condemnation due unto all the sins of all of God’s elect, and set us free by His obedience unto death, even the death of the cross. Now, we who Christ has set free by His death on the cross (Romans 6:3-7) must be set free in our own experience in the new birth. (Romans 6:17-18)

This liberty comes through the preaching of the Gospel of God’s grace in and by the Lord Jesus Christ and based on His blood and righteousness alone. The Gospel is the preaching of liberty to the captives. (Isaiah 61:1-3 And when we are born again by the Holy Spirit, we are set free from the bondage of legalism and dead, self-righteous works. (Galatians 5:1)

We are also set free to approach, commune with, worship, and serve the true and living God, not by obligation of law, but by compulsion of love, grace and gratitude. (Romans 7:4-6; 2 Corinthians 5:14; Galatians 5:6; Hebrews 10:19-22)

All this glorious freedom is because condemned sin in the flesh.