04.12. LESSON 12

LESSON 12 The book of Romans is our deepest and fullest exposition of the philosophy (working principles) of Christianity. Romans 1:1-32, Romans 2:1-29, Romans 3:1-31, Romans 4:1-25 show man’s need of redemption and give God’s provision for this need—human redemption and divine justification. These chapters leave us looking backward to the cross of Christ with humble thanksgiving and praise, and forward to his throne above, where he is our priest, advocate, and very life, with assurance and hope.

Adam

"Therefore, as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin; so that death passed unto all men, for that all sinned" (Romans 5:12). Since this verse states that sin and its offspring, death, entered the human race, without going into detail about how they entered, speculations concerning the how, which add nothing to Paul’s history of religion, have always been rife.

However, taking this categorical statement "that all sinned" in its context, plus relevant Scripture, it seems to me an inescapable conclusion that Adam, as federal head and representative of mankind, which is an organic whole, when he revolted against God’s authority in Eden, passed the deadly virus of sin on to his posterity, and took it down with him in ruin. "All sinned," therefore, representatively in Adam, and along with him lost the source of life. "It is appointed unto men once to die" (Hebrews 9:27); "In Adam all die" (1 Corinthians 15:22). An example of the working of the solidarity of humanity is seen in Levi’s paying tithes to Melchizedek through Abraham, his great-grandfather, even though Levi "was in the loins of his father" (Hebrews 7:9-10) at the time. Does not David bear witness to this truth when he writes: "Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me" (Psalms 51:5)? And Paul when he says that Jews and Gentiles alike "were by nature children of wrath" (Ephesians 2:3)? Whatever change Adam’s nature sustained in his fall was transmitted to Seth, whom he "Begat in his own likeness, after his image" (Genesis 5:3). Men are shackled with a chain, too strong for them to break in their own strength, reaching back to Adam.

Paul knowing that it is hard for men to accept their state of entailed, racial sin pauses to explain before going on with his main argument. He first explains that the universal cause of the universal death between Adam and Moses, since there was during that time no law that imposed the death penalty, was Adam’s sin. If Adam had never committed another sin after his first transgression, his posterity, on the organic principle that a diseased tree can bear only impaired fruit, would have shared his mortality with its attendant ills and subsequent death. What other solution of the deep, sad problem of suffering child-hood and of imbeciles? What thoughtful, pious man can wish, until men, especially infants, cease dying, to do away with race sin? Its elimination could but make more and greater problems. This entailment applies to Adam’s race with its corrupted nature, not to men’s individual sins. There is no intimation in the Bible that men die a second death, a spiritual death, for Adam’s sin. It is appointed that men die only once for his sin. It is not for Adam’s sin, but for their own personal sins that men are lost eternally in hell. "Every man is the Adam to his own soul." If only Adam’s sin is to be judged, universal, eternal salvation is true.

If we shrink from this doctrine, probably it is because we do not understand the real nature of sin, and its power to pollute. The facts of life proclaim the same solemn, stern truth. I have read of a physician who gave up his Christian profession because he could not see how a just God could allow so much suffering in the world. He went on in his unbelief for a time, but in his practice he came to know so certainly that the iniquities of fathers are visited upon their children that he gave up skepticism. What he had rejected in the Bible pursued him so relentlessly in life that he for the sake of consistency went back to his early faith. What sort of a world would it be without suffering any way? For one thing, it would have no Christ or mothers. Perhaps suffering is not as bad as we may sometimes think. "There is a cross at the heart of the universe." Can we not trust "our Father" beyond our own creatural faculties?

"Jesus Christ Our Lord"

"For ’if, by the trespass of the one, death reigned through the one; much more shall they that receive the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one, even Jesus Christ our Lord" (Romans 5:17). A comparison of Adam, "a figure" of Christ, and of Christ, "the last Adam" (1 Corinthians 15:45), in their resemblances and disparities, is found in Romans 5:12-21. Both are representative men whose acts—Adam’s disobedience and Christ’s "obedience even unto death"—are imputed, respectively, unto those whom they represent. Adam is a fountain of evil; Christ of good. Sin, condemnation, ruin and death follow in Adam’s train; justification, righteousness, redemption, and life in Christ’s.

Respecting disparity, Christ does not merely take Adam’s defaulted place in order to restore the status quo. As a statue always surpasses its model, five times over the chapter declares that benefits in Christ "much more" than compensate for losses in Adam. The poison of Adam has a "much more" potent antidote in Christ; the stream of grace runs stronger and deeper than the stream of sin. Indeed, the supreme doctrine of the passage is that good in Christ "much more" than counterworks evil in Adam; that God is "much more" ready to impute eternal life in Christ than temporary death in Adam. (The principle of imputation as it applies in both Adam and Christ, however, is repudiated by self-sufficient and impenitent men). Without choice, all men die in Adam; without choice, all men are restored to life at the resurrection. This balances the scales. The "much more," that is, to "Reign through righteousness unto eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord" is a matter of free will and personal choice. Do men, even Christian men, appreciate this amazing superabundance of grace that grants them this unutterable favor of choosing this incomparable gift?

Romans 5:12-21 lays bare human history at its root. This sketch of the religious history of the race is the key to some of the mysteries of divine government. Should we not thankfully and faithfully use it lest we fail to know our-selves and consequently miss some of the essential secrets of life? Without this key the next three chapters do not give up their sweetness and strength.

Questions