Chapter Five: justification by Christ's righteous act of death.
justification by Christ's righteous act of death.
Thus, not until we come to Chapter Six is our walk, our sanctification, taken up. It is true that the doctrine of the two men (5:12-21) makes possible of understanding the great fact of Chapter Six,--that we died with Christ. But the subject of the latter section of Chapter Five is condemnation by Adam, justification by Christ. __________________________________________________________________
[103] As to the Greek text having the subjunctive in verse 1, we believe that the Authorized Version and the American Revised Version are correct in reading "we have peace" rather than the English Revised Version, "Let us have peace." See Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, Darby, Meyer, Godet and many others. The whole context proves that "we have peace" is correct, for the passage is not an exhortation, but an assertion of facts and results, true of all those declared righteous or justified.
[104] The Romanist will go to "mass" and "confession"; and the Protestant "attend church"; but neither will find peace with God by these things. Prayers, vows, fastings, church duties, charities--what have these to do with peace?--if Christ "made Peace by His blood"!
[105] The difference may be brought out by asking ourselves two questions: First. Have I peace with God? Yes; because Christ died for me. Second, Have I the peace of God in quietness from the anxieties and worries of life in my heart? We see at once that being at peace with God must depend on what was done for us by Christ on the cross. It is not a matter of experience, but of revelation. On the contrary, the peace of God "sets a garrison around our hearts and thoughts in Christ Jesus," when we refuse to be anxious about circumstances, and "in everything (even the most trifling' affairs) by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let our requests be made known unto God." Every believer is at peace with God, because of Christ's shed blood. Not every believer has this "peace of God" within him; for not all have consented to judge anxious care and worry as unbelief in God's Fatherly kindness and care.
[106] Sanday quotes Ellicott's translation: "Through whom also we have had our access," and adds, "have had' when we first became Christians, and now while we are such." And Darby comments: "We are not called on to believe that we do believe, but to believe that Jesus is the Son of God, by whom we have access, and are brought into perfect present favor, every cloud that could hide God's love removed; and can rejoice in hope of the glory of God."
[107] 1. A letter that lately came out of Northern Siberia, signed "Mary," reads: "The best thing to report is, that I feel so happy here. It would be so easy to grow bitter if one lost the spiritual viewpoint and began to look at circumstances. I am earning to thank God for literally everything that comes. I experienced so many things that looked terrible, but which finally brought me closer to Him. Each time circumstances became lighter, I was tempted to break fellowship with the Lord. How can I do otherwise than thank Him for additional hardships? They only help me to what I always longed for--a continuous, unbroken abiding in Him. Every so-called hard experience is just another step higher and closer to Him." Another recent letter from "Mary" reads, "I am still in the same place of exile. There is a Godless Society here; one of the members became especially attached to me. She said, "I cannot understand what sort of a person you are; so many here insult and abuse you, but you love them all" . . . She caused me much suffering, but I prayed for her earnestly. Another time she asked me whether I could love her. Somehow I stretched out my hands toward her, we embraced each other, and began to cry. Now we pray together. My dear friends, please pray for her. Her name is Barbara" In a letter a month later, "Mary" writes; "I wrote you concerning my sister in Christ, Barbara. She accepted Christ as her personal Savior, and testified before all about it. We both, for the last time, went to the meeting of the Godless. I tried to reason with her not to go there, but nothing could prevail. She went to the front of the hall, and boldly testified before all concerning Christ. When she finished she started to sing in her wonderful voice a well-known hymn,
I am not ashamed to testify of Christ, who died for me,
His commandments to follow, and depend upon His cross!' The very air seemed charged! She was taken hold of and led away." Two months later, another letter came from "Mary": "Yesterday, for the first time, I saw our dear Barbara in prison. She looked very thin, pale, and with marks of beatings. The only bright thing about her were her eyes, bright, and filled with heavenly peace and even joy. How happy are those who have it! It comes through suffering. Hence we must not be afraid of any sufferings or privations. I asked her, through the bars, Barbara, are you not sorry for what you have done?' No,' she firmly responded, If they would free me, I would go again and tell my comrades about the marvelous love of Christ. I am very glad that the Lord loves me so much and counts me worthy to suffer for Him.'" The Link
[108] "Proves, as in 3:5" (Meyer); "establishes" (Godet); "confirms" (Calvin); "manifests" (Haldane); "gives proof of" (Alford); "demonstrates" (Williams); "commendeth" (Sanday). The English word "commendeth" happily covers the double meaning of the Greek: (1) approving or establishing things, and (2) recommending persons (16:1).
[109] "In sovereign grace He rises above the sin, and loves without a motive, save what is in His own nature and part of His glory. Man must have a motive for loving, God has none but in Himself, and commendeth His love to us' (and the His' is emphatic as to this very point), in that, while we are yet sinners, Christ died for us; the best thing in heaven that could be given for the vilest, most defiled, and guilty sinners" (Darby).
[110] To illustrate reconciliation: Suppose I am the master of a school and I make a rule that there is to be no profane swearing. I write that rule on the blackboard, and the whole school sees and hears it. The penalty I announce, too: there is to be a whipping if any one breaks the rule. Now, there is a boy named John Jones in my school, a boy I am fond of. At recess-time he swears. Everybody hears him; I hear him; everybody knows I hear him. When I call the school to order, all the scholars are looking at me to see what I will do. I have a son of my own in that school room, a beloved son, Charles. I call him, and we go outside to counsel, while the school waits. I say, "Son, will you bear John Jones' whipping for him? He doesn't believe that I love him. He thinks I hate him because he has broken my rule. There must be a whipping. I must be true to my word, but you know how I love John." My son says, "Yes, father, I'll do anything for you that you wish. And I love John Jones, too." I bring my boy, Charles, out before the whole school, and I say, "This is John Jones whipping I am giving to my son Charles. The law of the school was broken by John Jones. I am putting the penalty on my boy. He says he will gladly do this for me, and for John." Then I whip my son Charles; and I do not spare him. I whip him just as if he were John Jones, just as if he had broken the rule himself. When the whipping is over, I say to some scholar, "Go and tell John Jones I have nothing against him,--nothing at all. And ask him to come and give me his hand." This breaks John Jones up, and he comes forward, in tears, and says, "I didn't know you loved me that much! I thank you from my heart!" Now he is reconciled from his side, to me. But you see I reconciled him to myself, first. I had to deal with his disobedience, or be myself unrighteous.
[111] 1.Concerning Christ's bearing in our place God's wrath against sin, let us say: To regard God as "angry," or as demanding that Christ suffer "the exact equivalent of all the agonies the elect would have suffered to all eternity," is to miss the whole meaning of propitiation. 1. Remember it is God Himself who "loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins." God held no enmity against us. God loved us. 2. Therefore, strictly speaking, it was not punishment which Christ bore on the cross, but wrath. Punishment is personal,--against the offender; but wrath upon Christ was against the thing--sin. Christ bore that wrath which God's being and nature always and forever sustains toward sin. The sinner cannot come nigh Him, but must die, must perish in His holy presence,--not because God hates him, but because God is the Holy One. Therefore did Christ die,--and that forsaken of God under wrath--because He was bearing our sins in His own body on the tree. So it was, that, sin being placed on Christ, judgment and wrath fell upon Him. So it is, also, that the believer has not been "appointed unto wrath" (I Thess. 5:9): the wrath has fallen on Christ.
3. The conception that Christ on the cross was enduring all the agonies of the elect for all eternity grew directly out of the Romish legalism from which the Reformers did not escape,--to wit: that we still have connection with our responsibilities in Adam the first; that our history was not ended at the cross. But the shed blood brought in before God on the Day of Atonement simply witnessed that a life had been laid down, ended. "The sufferings of all the elect for all eternity" could never take the place of the laid down life of the great Sacrifice. God did not ask for agonies: sin simply could not approach Him! There must be banishment of the sinner from His presence--unless a substitute should come, who, taking the place of the sinner, and bearing his sin, could lay down his life. Such was Christ. He "laid down His life that He might take it again," But remember both parts of this great utterance: (a) "He laid down His life," bearing our sin, putting it away from God's presence forever. But even Christ, when bearing our sin, could not, as it were, come nigh God, but was forsaken, under holy wrath against sin. Not the agonies of Christ could avail, but that, bearing sin, He laid His life down, poured out His soul unto death. Thus He owned God's holiness to be absolute and infinite, and said, "It is finished." (b) Now in taking up His life again, it was not that life which, according to Leviticus 17:11, was "in the blood," because the blood was "all one with the life" (Lev. 17:14), and therefore "given to make atonement for souls,"; "it was not the blood-life" which He took up, but newness of life" in resurrection! God indeed permitted man to inflict the terrible sufferings of crucifixion upon His Son. But those sufferings were not "the cup" that His Father had given Him drink. The cup was the cup of Divine wrath against sin, and it involved His being "cut off out of the land of the living" under the hand of Divine judgment.
[112] The Greek preposition en in verse 9, is not fully or exactly rendered by tht English word "in"; for the Greek en here includes: in the shed blood of Christ (vs. 9), as the ground before God of our justification; in view of that blood's power as seen by God the Justifier; in the eternal availingness of that blood before God; and the consequent eternal redemption it has procured. Likewise, in the same construction in verse 10, we translate, "in His life": meaning that the believer shares that risen life of Christ; that in the power of that endless life the believer will abide both now and forever: as John says, "we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as He is, even so are we in this world,"
[113] Federal: in this book we use this word as indicating the action of one for all in a representative manner; or for the consequences of such action.
[114] Death is a Divine decree: "It is appointed unto men once to die and after this cometh judgment," Death involves four consequences: First, the utter ending of what we call human life. Second, falling consciously into the fearful hands of that power under which men have during their lifetime lightly lived, unprotected from the indescribable terrors and horrors connected therewith. Third, being imprisoned in Sheol or Hades--in "the pit wherein is no water," as was Dives in Luke
16. Compare Zech. 9:11. fourth, exposure to the coming judgment and its eternal consequences. Of course, the believer is rescued from all this--even physical death,--from bodily. "falling asleep," if Christ comes during his lifetime! while it is true of all saints, those who keep Christ's word, that they shall "never see death" (John 8:51). Death and judgment are past for the believer, Christ his Substitute having endured them. Nevertheless, in this day of mad pleasure-seeking, it certainly behooves all of us to reflect on the fearful realities connected with death! (See also Note on Chapter 6:23.)
[115] We say, "reigned-as-king," because the Greek word means that. Not the power of sin to hold in bondage, as in Chapter Six, is here meant; but the royal word, basileuo, is used, denoting sovereignty, not mere lordship.
[116] David Brown (in Jamieson, Fausset and Brown's excellent commentary) disagrees here, saying: "The much more' here does not mean that we get much more of good by Christ than of evil by Adam (for it is not a case of quantity at all); but, that we have much more reason to expect,--or, it is much more agreeable to our ideas of God, that the many should be benefited by the merits of one; and, if the latter has happened, much more' may we assure ourselves of the former." But after all this does not disagree with what we have above said, for it is Adam, the sinning creature, on the one hand; and the infinitely great and good God, and His grace by His Son Christ, on the other. Measure, quantity, must enter in: as, indeed, in saying of God "we have much more reason to expect," Dr. Brown tacitly admits. "Much more," says Paul, "did the grace"--of whom? GOD. This emphasizing God brings out everything!
[117] To the student of Greek (and to others, also), it is most instructive to note Paul's use of the words connected with righteousness: dikaios means righteous; dikaiosune means righteousness; dikaioO is to declare righteous; dikaiOsis means justification, or the act of declaring one righteous; dikaiOma, the "righteous act," that makes justification possible.
[118] When Israel inquired of the Lord about Saul, the eon of Kish, who had been anointed as their King (for they could not find him), the Lord answered, you remember' "Behold, he hath hid himself among the stuff." "And they ran and fetched him thence" (I Sam. 10:22-23). How sad if some of us who have received the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness, and whom God desires to be reigning in life in Christ, have gotten ourselves hidden "among the stuff,"--of earthly goods, and ambitions, "religious" traditions, and the literature of this world!
[119] The expression "justification of life" seems to stand over against that condemnation and death which came by Adam's trespass. It is a characterizing word: What is offered unto all men, through Christ's act of righteousness at the cross is not only a cancellation of guilt, but life in the Risen One. For, since Adam's sin, there was only spiritual death in his race. The words of John 1:4, regarding Christ, "In Him was life," describe the only source of life for man. And justification must be of life: for those justified are most certainly taken, out of their place of death in Adam, and given a place of life in Christ.
[120] The Greek word (hamartOlos) means not merely one possessed of a sinful nature or tendency, but one who is regarded as having committed sin. The same word is used in 3:7 and 5:8. "Substantive, hamartOlos, a sinner; common acceptance, LXX, New Testament, etc."--Liddell and Scott. This word is used in N.T. to designate sinners 41 times' beginning with Matthew 9:10; five times in Luke 15:1-31, and four times in John 9:1-41; and only four times in an adjectival sense (Mark 8:38; Luke 5:8; 24:7; Rom 7:13).
[121] Human reasoning is futile and dangerous here. Men form themselves into "schools of theology" over this subject, each founding a "system" upon his notion of how Adam's trespass affected all. But that a man may act before he is born in person of his responsible forbear is evident, as we have shown, in the case of Levi, in Heb. 7:9.
[122] Vaughan (as so frequently) gives a rendering of startling accuracy concerning disobedience and obedience in verse 19: "The one (parakoees) is properly, mishearing; the other, hupakoees, submissive hearing." Disobedience in its essence is refusal to hearken; and obedience is bowing the ear to submissive listening.
[123] "Both Calvinists and Arminians think that the flesh is not so bad that it cannot be acted on for God by Christ using the Law of God and giving it power through the Spirit"--This is Wm. Kelly's shrewd and correct comment.
[124] It is very striking to note that in verse 13 where we read "through one man sin entered into the world," the word for entered is eiselthen; and now law enters alongside,--the word being the same--eiselthen--with the preposition para, alongside, prefixed. And so, "through law is the knowledge of sin." Sin entered, and law, entering alongside, revealed the sin.
[125] Two entirely different Greek words are translated, in the Authorized Version, "abounded." But the first, used of sin, means to increase, he augmented; while the Second, used of grace, means to abound beyond measure, to overflow. Second (Thayer) These words come from entirely different roots, and should have been so distinguished in translation. But one who undertakes to express in English the depth of the Hebrew, and the extent of the Greek language, will soon discover the frequent poverty of the English tongue. Hebrew seems to be the language in which God first spoke with men; it is the vehicle of praise. But to the Greeks He gave that great intellectual development of their "Golden Age" in which their endeavor to perfect their language extended even to public assemblies where the most exact possible phrasing to express an idea was decided by contest. So when our Lord came as "the Savior of the World," that coming, according to the grand old Hebrew prophecies, was recorded in the Greek, which Alexander the Great had spread throughout the known world. The Romans, to whom had been given the power to govern, themselves admitted that they must borrow from the Greeks not only their philosophy, but also their method and manner of literary expression. Then also when the Roman Empire went into collapse, and the dark "Middle Ages" came in, the so-called Renaissance was the bringing of the Greek classics into crude Europe after the fall of Constantinople in 1453. And above all, the translation directly from the Greek New Testament manuscripts of our English Scriptures; for men had so long depended upon the faulty Latin (or Vulgate) translation. Perhaps the greatest wonder the last century and a quarter has seen is the translation into over 800 tongues and dialects of these same Hebrew and Greek Scriptures--with such transforming power that It is written of one Bible-bearing missionary, a man of God, in the South Sea Islands: "When he came, there were no Christians; when he left, there were no heathen." How wonderful that God should have a language of spiritual praise and worship--the Hebrew; and a language exact, intellectually rich,--the Greek, in which He could express the great doctrines concerning His Son! And both languages capable of being reproduced as to their spirit and meaning, not only in English, German, and French, but in the dialects of the most benighted heathen tribes,-- "every man in his own language." __________________________________________________________________