"Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus..." Romans 8 verse 1 Followed by my usual mental argument as to whether I should add the bit I learned as a young Christian using the KJV - i.e. "...in Christ Jesus, who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit." 

The second bit has been taken out of many modern bibles, without including a footnote, as it is now considered that it shouldn't be there at all. 

In this case, if it was an error, then it is one of two possibilities (and apologies for using long complicated words). What textual experts call 

1. a homeoteleuton - where the scribe paused (distracted?), then resumed writing but skipped ahead because of the similarity of the endings of two lines, thus leaving out the bit in the middle.   

2.  contamination - where an extraneous element from elsewhere appears on the page

or a combination of the two. 

Very rarely a scribe will, possibly based on thier theology, make a deliberate alteration

To make my point here's the whole passage:

8:1 There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.  

8:2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.   

8:3 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:  

8:4 That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.

So, in this case, the scribe copying verse 1 became distracted and then, when continuing, skipped to the end of verse 8. Then presumably recognising the error went back and continued from the beginning of verse 2.  What he should have done was to erase the mistake, either by washing or scraping but possibly was in a hurry or just lazy. (There are more complex possibilities involving a change of scribe but I think it wasn't deliberate).

Note, it's even more complex in NT Greek where often there were no punctuation or even spaces between words. 

 But enough about grammar and mistakes - why is this important

1. if I, a Christian, am walking after the flesh, then I am not 'in Christ', and condemnation is appropriate

2. it's only when I am walking after the Spirit that I don't get condemnation

 i.e. I need to repent, be a spiritual Christian, and get back to being 'in Christ' - my heart affirming the KJV

If the clause is taken out of verse 1 then simply

1. if I am a Christian then I am always 'In Christ'

2. If I am always 'I Christ' then there is never any condemnation, and if I am feeling it then I need to reject it as inappropriate

But today the whisper came that I was splitting the sentence into the wrong set of clauses.

This is the way that I have read this up to date - square brackets show the clauses:

8:1 [ There is therefore now no condemnation ] [ to them which are in Christ Jesus ], [ who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit ]

i.e. the final clause is a qualification of the second, that there are people 'in Christ' who are flesh walkers and those who are in Christ who are 'spirit walkers'.

The whisper said

 8:1 [ There is therefore now no condemnation ] [ to them which are in Christ Jesus who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit ]

i.e. people 'in Christ' are not 'flesh walkers' but are 'Spirit walkers'

So if I am a person who is 'in Christ and therefore not a 'flesh walker' but a 'Spirit walker' then there is no condemnation - full stop 

Then I felt at peace when starting to read the book I had picked up - which turned out to be very different from what I expected.

(Later thought - Just to throw a spanner in the works how does this relate to Gal 5.25 "If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit." which seems to support the other view. Newer versions replace the 'if' with 'since') so there are 'Spirit livers' who have crucified the flesh but still may not be 'Spirit walkers'

I didn't get to write about the other things so I will try to do so later.  Note to memory - write about being a brain surgeon! ha lol

By extension I think this verse applies to us all. God can change our hearts if we allow Him to. We ask for His river to flow (flow more as we all have rivers inside us) and then often start building dams of culverts to direct His Spirit, love, grace, mercy the way we want it to flow.  etc. 

Whilst meditating on this I was reminded of Mr. Beaver in the Chronicles of Narnia. Mr. Beaver is known for his wisdom and for being industrious, practical and resourceful.  - a great example for project managers. 

When a beaver builds a dam it creates a pond. First, the stream is diverted to reduce the pressure in one area and then branches, mud, bark, rocks and even whole trees are used to build a home. Note that the whole stream of water isn't stopped or the pressure will build up and destroy the beavers work. 

Are we blocking/reducing the flow of the Holy Spirit, or trying to divert things to our own advantage - let the Lord speak to yu and allow His flow to flow!

I'm reminded of the song about God's reckless love for us - "... there's no wall that He won't kick down, lie He won't tear down, coming after me..."

Outside my house today we are beginning to see the end of 6 weeks of the Water Authority digging up our road to give us new pipes (and meters :( Ohh!) There's a giant lorry pouring out tons of liquid concrete into the holes and ditches that they dug. They won't resurface the whole road but will tarmac over the cement-filled ditches.  At the end of the day, God can fill in the ditches if we allow Him to. The enemy (or us)  will not be able to easily dig those ditches - they will be filled and the water will flow the right way (through pipes and rain through the drains). There will be scars - signs of what has happened maybe to remind us what we did and then what He did.... praise the Lord