Q. -Would Not the Realization of Both These Facts" Ungodly and Without Strength "-Come in at Once If the Gospel Were Presented Aright?

A. Of course it is not a mere question of time, but in the stony-ground hearer of Matt. 13 it is a bad sign that he receives the word with immediate joy. There has to be a breaking up of the man in order to receive the seed aright. In the soul's efforts to get out of the first part of its condition-ungodliness-it learns that it is without strength. In the end of Heb. 9:26, " the end of the world" should be " the completion of the ages "-the end of God's dealings with the world as to the trial of it.
Verse 11. " We joy in. God." Peace with God means that all question is settled as to sin. " Joy in God." The heart is changed so as to delight in Him. God's acts display Himself. We have received the reconciliation, and that brings us to know God. The principle of all holiness is this " joy in God."
We have reached here the morning after the Passover. Setting out with God, judgment is gone, and God is really with us, but we have yet to learn ourselves, and in order to have the abiding reality of His presence have to learn deliverance from the power of the enemy, that is the Red Sea.
Verse v. 12. We now come to the second part of Romans, and begin to find out not what we have done, but what we are, and are still, in spite of sins forgiven; a trouble far deeper than any known before. How can God forgive or go on with a wrong state now? This raises the whole question as to what we are.
Now we begin with Adam, and in him find the figure of the " One to come." We have the principle of the " one" for " the many." We get " the one" as head in evil, the first Adam, and " the many under him; and again, "the One" as head in blessing, the last Adam and "the many" under him.
Death came in by sin, and is the stamp upon the condition of the world. Why should God put an end to His creatures? He does not repent that He has made them unless they give him occasion to do so. The death of which the law speaks-" he shall die for his iniquities;!' " the soul that sinneth it shall die "-is death in the ordinary sense, only of course under the judgment of God. Deut. 32:46,47 shows what life is connected with the law, "Ye shall prolong your days in the land." If the law had found the perfect righteousness it sought the man who had it could not have died. Every gray hair in a man's head was thus a witness against him that he was under the curse, that he was a dying sinner. God could not attach the thought of going to heaven to keeping the law, for that would suppose that a creature were able by obedience to get into a higher sphere, and it would falsify the work of Christ, by supposing that His work only put man into the place he ought to have got by his own obedience. God giving the law to produce conviction, gave it not for men to keep, but for men to break. Not of course to produce sin in His creatures, but to change the sin that was there into transgression, to make it manifest rebellion against His own authority. (Gal. 3:19): "Wherefore then serveth the law? It was added for the sake of transgressions," as it should be. Sinning is the lawless doing of our own will; transgression the breaking of God's commands.
Verse 14. "From Adam to Moses" was thus the time in which there being no law there was no transgression. The presence of death showed that there was sin, but not "after the similitude of Adam's transgression." Hos. 6:7 explains this: " They, like Adam, have transgressed my covenant." That is, Israel broke the law which was given them, as Adam had His commandment not to eat of the tree Covenant may be conditional or unconditional. The one is law where there are two parties; the other promise where there is only one, as Gal. 3
Christ is the second man, but the last Adam. Every man until Christ came was only the repetition of the first. The second Adam, as the head of a race., is the last, because there is none to succeed. Original sin is the sin of our origin, that which we have transmitted to us. Now we have the transmission of a new nature in Christ.
Verse 15. We are not to measure the free gift by the offense. God is not merely making, up what sin has taken away. God does not give making Son, as it were, to put a patch upon a hole. God never mends; He always brings in what is new to replace the old. Christ's work does not put us back where we would have been if Adam had not sinned.
Now we get the one Adam and the many with him, and the one Christ and the many with Him. Many in Heb. 9:28 is in contrast to all appointed to die. Christ bore the sins of many, taking the death and judgment that were their due.
"Much more" is not a question of breadth, but of depth and height, for the work of -Christ could not reach to more than sin had reached. Grace over-abounded above all man's sin. Christ's work more than meets the sin of Adam. It raises us up much higher than to whence we fell.
Verse 16. One offense brought condemnation; grace gives justification from many offenses.
Verse 17. On the one side death reigns; on the other they who receive abundance of grace reign in life, not life reigns. In 1 Cor. 15 we have the contrast between the two Adams themselves; here between the work of each.
Through Adam men lost innocence; in Christ they get righteousness and holiness. They lost mere human life; in Christ they got divine life. They lost paradise on earth; they get the paradise of God in heaven. Confusion as to this is the error in many systems; so with the unscriptural thought that Adam had the law to keep, and by law-keeping we get into heaven. With Adam it was not " do and live," but do and die." Scripture never says that Adam would have gone to heaven if he had obeyed; it never supposes creature merit. " When ye have done all say ye are unprofitable servants." So, again, the law never proposed a man going to heaven by it. When the Lord Jesus came, being God, He could stoop to the condition of man and merit for him, and God brings in His own original thought when Satan had ruined the world.
In the trespass offering (Lev. 5) we have God's thought of restitution as Christ has accomplished it; a fifth part is added to what would be compensation for the injury done, whether to man or God.
In Luke 19 Zacchaeus restores fourfold; that was his own voluntary act. It was what he did habitually, not what he promises to do.
The Lord puts it all aside in the most wonderful way, taking him up as a son of Abraham (faith made him so really), and lost. That was his need, and his sins brought him there. That is faith and repentance.
Verse 18. The outcome of the "one offense "was "condemnation" for everybody (not that we are condemned for Adam's sins, but for our own). The outcome of the " one righteousness " is " justification of life" for every one. This is the tendency of the work of either Adam.
Verse 19. We get the actual result. It is not, therefore, all men, but " the many " connected either with Adam or Christ. If we speak about our sins it is Christ's death only that meets us; if of our position before God, then all that He is, in life or death, gives us our place there.
In ver. 18 we get the aspect in each case; in ver. 19 we get the actual result.
Verse 20. " The law entered," i, e. came in by-the-bye. It had nothing to, do with the first Adam who sinned and died before it came. The second Adam comes simply to deliver man from its curse. It exposed man's true condition, and gave God His opportunity to show His grace.
Verse 21. " Sin reigned unto death " on the one side; on the other "grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord."