Romans 5

Division 2. (Romans 5:12-21; Romans 6:1-23; Romans 7:1-25; Romans 8:1-39.)Deliverance by our new relationship to Christ, in whom we are dead to sin and law. We enter now upon the most difficult part of the epistle; the kilt apprehension of which, moreover, is of fundamental importance in regard to the whole character and power of the Christian life. We must seek therefore to give it the most earnest attention, while assured that here as elsewhere the Spirit alone can enable us to know the value and blessedness of what is unfolded to us. The basic truth all through is that of our new relationship to Christ as the new creation-Head, in whom it abides before God in unchanging acceptance and favor with Him. As the old creation fell in Adam, so the new creation stands in Christ; and as our part in the old creation was through the life transmitted to us from Adam, so the life received from the Last Adam brings us into the new, and gives us a place in Him. “In Christ” means identification with Christ as our Representative in glory. By this also we are identified with Him in His death, and are thus judicially freed from all that attached to us as men of a fallen race. We have died out of it in our death with Christ; our old man is crucified with Him; we are dead to sin, as He died to it once for all, and are alive to God in Him. For practical deliverance however we need the settlement of a further question, and the realization of a new power. We are dead with Christ to law also, that we may be united to another husband, and so bring forth fruit to God. Here, as soon as we speak of union, we must have more than life in Christ, and there comes in the new power, that of the Spirit. We are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, as indwelt by the Spirit, and the law of the Spirit, which is at the same time that of life in Christ Jesus, delivers us from the law of sin and death. In this connection all the working of law while we are under it as a principle is shown us in the experience of an undelivered man; which works on to entire self-despair, and thus to the end of self-occupation: he learns in this way his freedom to turn from himself and be occupied with Christ, and so ability to bring forth fruit. The walk in the Spirit is shown us in what follows, though still through a groaning world, and in suffering therefore, while in expectation of the glory of the children of God, for which the whole creation groans together. For our need meanwhile the Spirit becomes our effectual intercessor, and all things work together for good to those who love God. This part ends with a glowing utterance of triumph in the omnipotent supremacy of the goodness of God in behalf of the objects of His eternal purposes.

Romans 5:1-11

Section 4. (Romans 5:1-11.)Experience on the way. As the result of all this, the experience of the justified believer is now set before us; which is, let us note, the experience of faith, and may vary in energy of apprehension, as the faith itself is clear-sighted and intelligent. Yet all the features should be found, and the faith itself as seen here go on to the full day of open vision: it is a brief but blessed “pilgrim’s progress,” until the pilgrim “stands within the gate.” First, we have a look backward, round, and forward. Justified by faith contemplates the past; though it abides as something that ever characterizes our condition. The precious blood of Jesus necessarily abides in its value for God, and in its unchanging efficacy for every believer. “By one offering,” says the epistle to the Hebrews, “He has perfected for ever” (or “in perpetuity,” as the phrase means) “those that are sanctified” (Hebrews 10:14). The result is, “we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” “He has made peace for us through the blood of His cross” (Colossians 1:20). The constancy of our enjoyment is thus provided for; but we must not confound our experience of it with the blessed reality itself of what Christ has secured to us. He has not made the feelings, but has made that which entitles us to have the feelings. Peace with God has been secured to us then in a way which never can be disturbed: faith has given us access into a place in which we stand in grace -the free favor of God, which as such cannot be forfeited. As a consequence, the future also is absolutely clear: “we boast in hope of the glory of God.” It is not a doubtful hope that one can boast in. That out of which, even in its representative on earth, man under law had rigidly to be kept, is now wide open in its own heavenly dwelling-place. Saul of Tarsus saw it, as Stephen had seen it, with the Son of man standing in it; and that which goes out now, as we have seen, is “the gospel of the glory.” We have not indeed, as far as we have yet reached in Romans, what is ours in its fulness in that central Figure standing there; yet we know that He is gone in, and the way thither is henceforth open. 2. Along the road there are tribulations: this is what the Lord has foretold, but with the assurance of the antidote that He has provided for us in the peace we have in Him. The apostle speaks in the light of experience, and as realizing the needs to which God ministers in this very way. “We boast,” he says, “in tribulations also, conscious that tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience hope.” Here is how that which is against us works for us; and notice that the very first thing effected is the breaking down of our own wills, those wills that Jacob-like struggle so much with the will of God. Sovereign He must be; and spite of all that we have known of Him, it is what in practical detail we so little want Him to be. Amid the clouds and darkness that encompass Him in His providential dealings faith that should find its opportunity finds oftentimes bewilderment and perplexity; yet in it we are forced to recognize our nothingness, and creep closer to the side of Him who yet goes with us. Forced to let God be God, it is then that we get experience of a moral government which is that of a Father.

The forcing of outward things comes to be read as drawings of Omnipotent Love that seeks us for its own delight. His ways, if still they may be beyond us, are not strange and still less adverse. They beget, not fear or misgiving, but a brightening hope, that steadies as it brightens. We realize how much rather the darkness from which we suffered was moral and within ourselves than from the mystery of things around. There is a mystery: this Caesar who commands that all the world should be taxed to pay him tribute; that made the noise and seemed to give the portent; underneath and yet above it all, a woman is brought by it -a lowly woman to a poor Judean town -that a little Babe may be born in Bethlehem. Here truly is the mystery that endears all mysteries, and with which the Spirit given to us builds firmly up the hope that maketh not ashamed. This hope is not something less than certainty, as mere human hopes are: the love of God to us is its foundation, is its inspiration and the energy within which lifts and carries us; love that has long waited, kept back by the stubborn haughtiness of heart which had to be beaten down into the dust ere it could have its will. So the “due season” tarried until at last, when we were yet without strength, all self-effort vain, Christ died for the ungodly. The peculiarity of divine love is here emphasized that, while for a merely righteous man scarcely would any one be found to die, and for a good man -one with a heart to attract other hearts -some might even dare to die, God has shown His love in this, that when we were yet sinners (neither good nor righteous) Christ died for us. Such being the love of God, and this the condition in which it met us, and in Christ His marvelous gift for us, the argument is complete that the hope connected with it cannot leave us 3t last ashamed: God will surely carry through. what He has begun in our behalf, and save eternally those who are already justified by the blood of Christ. Love like this will not relax its hold upon us, nor power be lacking where righteousness has been in such a manner put upon the side of love. Thus the sure coming glory brightens all the clouds that hang over the road that leads there. 3. The work within us corresponds to the work done for us in sustaining such an assurance. The work of Christ has done more than put away our sins: it has reconciled us to God. His Son dying for our sins, when brought by the Spirit home to us in its persuasive power, wins effectually the heart to God. If, when we were enemies, He could so reconcile us, how much more will He bring through in spite of every difficulty, those so reconciled? We see here that reconciliation is not an after-effect upon the saint, as some would make it, but that which brings him out of his enmity, in heart to God. The apostle has not the idea of an unreconciled Christian, any more than he would have of an unjustified one. “We have now received the reconciliation” is said of all. Moreover the “death” of His Son does not as yet imply what is presently deduced from it, our death with Him, but is put in contrast with His “life” by which we shall be saved, but obviously also to emphasize the love of God in giving up His Son to this. “His blood,” spoken of in connection with justification, would not have been at all suited to the connection here. The point here is the effect for the heart; and therefore the closing words which bring before us the “joy in God” which is the consequence in the reconciled soul. But the mention of His “life” is, doubtless, a link with what is to follow. To take it, as some do, as referring to the Lord’s life on earth before death is out of harmony with the whole doctrine of these chapters, in which from the beginning to the end, in perfect relation to Paul’s gospel of the glory, it is the risen Christ who is before us. In the gospel of John also, who, as has been often noticed, comes so near to Paul in truths peculiar to him, the Lord distinctly says to His disciples, “Because I live, ye shall live also” (John 14:19). No one will dispute that these words refer to His life in resurrection; and the thought is entirely similar to what we have here. We are “bound in the bundle of life” with the Lord of glory; and this assures us of our eternal salvation. This doctrine we shall have in the second part of the epistle. Here then the first division of the epistle ends. We see that the righteousness of God in the justification of the ungodly by faith in Christ, and through His blood shed for sinners, is the great subject of it. The position of the believer, except so far as his security from the wrath to come is concerned, is scarcely touched upon as yet. There is no question as yet of his nature as born of Adam, but simply of his sins. We have nothing as yet of the flesh nor of the old man; nothing about life in Christ; nothing about the facts or fruits of the indwelling of the Spirit. All this remains to be considered in the second part of the epistle, which treats of our place in Christ, and of the results of this glorious truth in blessing for the Christian.

Romans 5:12-21

Subdivision 1. (Romans 5:12-21.)Christ our new creation Head. We begin then with Christ as Head of new creation, in contrastive parallel with Adam and our heritage of evil from our first father’s fall. There are here many questions that have arisen and will arise: it is a much trodden ground of debate and controversy. Happily for us, we have not the responsibility of clearing up all the difficulties of divine government, but only of seeking the meaning of what is here before us. Faith’s part is not to say there are no mysteries, but to wait in quiet confidence for the due time of their revelation. We know in part, and we prophesy in part; but the veil which is ofttimes over the face of His dispensations is not, thank God, therefore over His own face. The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is not and cannot henceforth be in the darkness, but is Light and in the light.

1. We have first, what is too plain a fact, that sin and death are here. That death is, no one can dispute; that sin is, if any one denies, the common conscience of men will everywhere rebuke him. Sin, too, is something peculiarly man’s own; man has a power for self-debasement which the beast has not, and which can hardly be an acquisition he has made, seeing it is manifestly a degeneracy. It is a principle born with him also, a universal heritage, early and quickly developing. All the evidence we can expect then is in proof of the statement here, that by one man sin entered into the world; while the shadow of it over man, which the beast feels not, confirms the further one that death came in for him as penalty with sin.

If geology can appeal to facts which show that death existed before man upon the earth it in no wise touches the truth of this at all. Scripture never asserts that death came in for the beast through sin or through man. Nor does it assert that there was no death in the beginning, which is a mere mistaken inference from the green herb assigned to the living thing for food. The “world” of which the apostle speaks here is doubtless the world of men alone: it is “to all men” that death came through, as he says. He adds even as to men as the ground of the penalty, “for that all have sinned;” and here the main discussion immediately begins. There are a number of different explanations of these words, but most of them really alter what they would explain. To read “in whom all sinned” is impossible as a translation; nor can one say “all have become sinful,” or “all have been treated as sinners:” it is exactly the statement of Rom 3:23, where “all have sinned” speaks of literal, personal sins committed. In complete opposition to the thought of sinning in Adam, nothing can surely be intended but that men have come under the dominion of death on account of their own sins. The contradiction of fact is, of course, the main, if not the only reason why this is not at once accepted. How could this be true of infants? is naturally asked, and might at first sight seem unanswerable.

But the passage just now referred to has exactly the same thing to be said of it, but where it is no difficulty at all. If it be a question of salvation, infants cannot be saved as sinners, nor can be justified by faith; yet no one would contend on this account that this could not be God’s way of salvation because it did not take in infants.

The apostle speaks there simply of those standing in their own responsibility before God. Infants are therefore understood as excepted, and that applies to both statements. As soon as you can speak of accountability at all this becomes true that all sin; and that shows of course the ruin of the race. Death has come in through the one man Adam, as has been said; and yet not because of any such formal covenant with Adam on behalf of his posterity as many plead, but because through that mysterious oneness of the race which, whatever question may be raised about it, cannot be denied, the fall of Adam did involve the corruption of his posterity. “Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?” asks Job; and answers himself, “Not one.” Thus the “all have sinned” in this place demonstrates the fitness of God’s sentence of death passed upon all. For, if you plead the exception of infants from the penalty on Adam, your exception ought to plead for them as much as to their exemption from the inheritance of corruption, which is a more terrible fact, and from which yet the justice of God does not exempt them. The greater fact of the general corruption proved so sadly as each emerges into the common world of men, implies the parallel fact of death as its accompaniment. But in this very way the consideration of the case of infants may be omitted from the statement before us. It is thought by many that at this point the apostle breaks off his argument, to introduce a long parenthetical explanation as to the relation of law to sin, and as to the parallel between Adam and Christ, returning to complete his thought in the eighteenth verse. This (which is what we find in the common version, and which has been exchanged in the revised for the worse hypothesis of a mere broken statement which never reaches an orderly conclusion) seems, however, only to derange the true relation of parts to one another as expressed in the structure. The parenthesis seems too long and too important in what it contains, as well as too anticipative of the after-conclusion. The twelfth verse, moreover, is not broken off in the manner supposed. The proper view seems rather, as others have suggested, that the introductory “wherefore,” referring clearly to what has gone before, teaches us to look back for the true commencement of that to which the twelfth verse becomes then itself the conclusion; though this is not fully reached without a more explicit disclosure of what was in the apostle’s mind, that Adam was in fact the “figure,” or “type, of the One that was to come.” For in the gospel upon which he had been dwelling was already announced that principle of the One standing for the many, to which he now explicitly calls attention. We may supply “Wherefore this is” -this coming in of peace and reconciliation through Christ -in the same way “as by one man sin and death entered.” This meaning, the words as to Adam, “who is the type of the One that was to come,” bring into full day, without there being formally the conclusion. There is, therefore, no parenthesis here; but the apostle goes on to say that sin existed before law. This the Gentile needed to consider, rather than the Jew, who would easily admit it; but the Gentile might say, “We had not the will of God made known to us, as the Jew had.” In fact Paul had spoken to the Athenians of a time of ignorance at which God winked. The law had put sin into account in the way the Gentile had nothing like. Adam in paradise had a law indeed, though a very simple one, and which after his expulsion from the garden could have no further application. From Adam to Moses there was no law. Yet (with one gracious exception only) from Adam to Moses the universal reign of death proved fully the presence of sin which God reckoned to them.

Yet there was no law, and therefore no transgression: for where no law is there is no transgression, as has been already said (Romans 4:15). Adam transgressed: he had a limit imposed which he overstepped; but those who had not sinned in the likeness of that open transgression of his, yet died, as he had died: sin universal was proved in the fact of universal death. In all this the darkness is unrelieved; but it is but the background upon which the glory of divine grace is to be displayed: even from the centre of the darkness now the light shines: this very principle which seems only to have worked ruin, God can transform into one of complete triumph over the evil that has come in. Another Adam shall replace the failed first man, and a fairer creation arise in unfading beauty out of the ruin of the old. 2. A type, by the very fact that it is a type, must be in contrast with its anti-type: the shadow cannot be the perfect image. Here, however, at first sight, the contrast is more evident than the resemblance; and the apostle at the outset emphasizes the contrast. “Not as the offence,” he says, so is the gracious gift." In the fact of representation of their respective companies, the two Adams are alike. Each is the head of a race, which stands or falls with its respective head. In the first epistle to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 15:45) these heads are themselves put in contrast with one another: “The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening Spirit.” This gives us the key to the respective races with which they are connected: the first is a natural, the last a spiritual race. And so it is said in the epistle to the Hebrews (Hebrews 2:16), “He taketh not hold of angels, but of the seed of Abraham He taketh hold.” These the apostle speaks of indeed in this place as His brethren, rather than His seed; as in the present epistle also He is seen as “the Firstborn among many brethren” (Romans 8:29). And because He that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one, He is not ashamed to call them brethren" (Hebrews 2:11). Here the identity of the Head with the race is affirmed: and in this sense Adam, though the father of all, would also be the firstborn among many brethren. As to the Lord, it is with the seed of Abraham that He is allied; that is, with the family of faith, the spiritually born. And because the children God has given him are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part in the same (ver. 14). But He is truly also the Last Adam of this spiritual race, Himself the Quickening Spirit to them all, Himself their life; “for as the Father raiseth up the dead and quickeneth them, so the Son quickeneth whom He will” (John 5:21). Thus here are two Adams, alike in this, yet how unlike! the Adam of the old, and the Adam of the new creation! In connection with the one, spite of the beauty and uprightness in which he first came forth from under the Creator’s hands, his personal history was little more than that of the “offence,” the fatal effects of which he transmitted to his seed. With the other comes, not penalty or requirement, but “gift.” How great must be the contrast then! If God is inflicting judgment, this must be executed according to the demand of divine righteousness; but here therefore can be no overplus. But if God be giving, what shall limit Him as to the gift He chooses to bestow? Any gift to fallen creatures must be of His grace; but if it be grace upon grace, who shall say Him nay?

Has He in fact come in in Christ simply to undo the effect of the fall, and set man where be was before it? Nay, if the offence was disastrous, and the many died, much more has the grace of God and His gift in grace, which is by the One, Jesus Christ, abounded towards many! Innocence has indeed been lost, with the continuance of life on earth, and the Eden paradise; but righteousness and holiness have been gained, eternal life, and the paradise of God! Here is the divine balance-sheet: it would not suit God to have a poorer exhibit; it would not suit Him to have no gain in glory: and this is what the Second Man has toiled for, as the first wrought the shame. And there is another contrast: one sin committed brought in condemnation; such was the holiness of God, a holiness still unchanged; yet now after many offences having been committed, His gracious gift is of a state of accomplished righteousness. Again, if the men through whom those diverse effects are wrought are thus in contrast, and if the present effects themselves carry on the contrast, how will the future bring this out in full result! If the work of the one man has brought about the present reign of death, much more shall they who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the One Man, Christ. It is not merely that life will reign instead of death, but that the recipients of this grace themselves will reign in an unending life. Thus we see, all through, that the parallel here is one of contrast, and that Christ having come in to undo the work of the fallen first man, in a grace which, though ever righteous, cannot be measured by righteousness simply, as the judgment is, there must be as the result a plenitude of blessing which shall glorify God where sin has come in to dishonor. Him, and thus shall raise up the fallen creature also to a height far above the level of his original condition. These things are necessary concomitants: God is going to “show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us through Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:7). This is indeed directly contrary to some thoughts which have been largely held and thought to be flavored by the well-known phrase used by the apostle Peter in his address to the Jews soon after Pentecost, in which he speaks of a restitution of all things to be brought about at Christ’s reappearing, and “of which” he says, “God hath spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began” (Acts 3:21). This has been thought decisive that eternity will be but a final return to what were God’s first thoughts when He created man, and which He could not permit the entrance of sin to set aside. Or else, it is contended, Satan would really have gained a victory in compelling Him to change His plan about Eden and the earth. And this has been carried so far by some that the “new earth” of which the prophets speak has been supposed to be indeed a “Paradise regained,” in which generations of men would in the ordinary way of nature but without death, replace one another to all eternity. Adam instead of Christ, is thus made to have been God’s first thought, Christ an expedient when the first man failed; the paradisaic state is unscripturally exalted, and the work of Christ and its consequences really, however unintentionally, degraded. For it should be plain that as the Person is far greater, so His work must be, and so the fruits of it.

Where the original creation is taken as the perfection of what was in the mind of Him who created it, Adam is considered to have been a creature made for heaven, to whom it was secured by covenant that he would receive it as the reward of his well-doing; and the ten commandments are carried back some two thousand five hundred years before they were given, to be the measure of what he was required to fulfil. Thus when he failed, Christ is supposed to have taken up the broken contract, and to have gained for us, by his fulfilment of it, what Adam lost. All this is in complete forgetfulness of what Christ is, and of the work which lay before Him; it is to forget that almost throughout what we have been looking at, the parallel between the two Adams is one of contrast. Here let the pregnant figure of the trespass-offering speak -which is the divine thought of restitution given to us. Plainly, had man in that case fulfilled the law as regards God and his fellow, there need have been, and would have been, no offering at all. If Christ even had taken up Adam’s broken contract to fulfil it, death would have had no place in such work, because death was the penalty of the breach of it. If He could thus have fulfilled the work for Adam, and given to God the obedience in which Adam failed, and in Adam’s behalf, the punishment of the breach of it could not have been required of Him. What was wrong would have been set right without the shedding of blood. But “without shedding of blood is no remission;” and “if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain” (Hebrews 9:22; Galatians 2:21). But furthermore, in this matter of the trespass-offering, after the injury inflicted had been duly estimated and made up, still restitution in God’s thought of it, was not complete until there had been added to it a “fifth part more.” Thus the person who offered the offering did more than could have been required if the trespass had not been committed, and the injured person was now a gainer to that extent. In the trespass-offering two aspects of it are distinguished which would not come together in the ordinary use of it; there was a Godward and a manward side, which in Christ’s fulfilment of it did come together. God and man are both considered as suffering through sin, and are both now gainers through the work of Christ; and this is the “much more” of the apostle in the fifth of Romans, and this is the “fifth part more” of the book of Leviticus. To see it in anywise, we must have clearly before our eyes the contrast between these two of whom we have been speaking: what did God gain, to speak humanly, by Christ’s work? what could He have gained, at the best, by Adam’s? What was the first man, Adam? Not, if we are to take Scripture, a being formed for heaven, but in express contrast with heaven, “of the earth, earthy.” If I open Genesis, I find no hope of heaven held out to him there, no idea of being raised above the estate in which he was created. I find no works enjoined, for which be was to be rewarded; one prohibition only of a thing which would have had no moral character attaching to it, had it not been forbidden. Created very good, he was to keep his first estate, not seek a new one. Nor, until sin had made our estate evil, and only with fallen man, do we find a thought of a creature quitting its estate, except as sin. So with “the angels who kept not their first estate,” of whom Jude speaks. Not made to toil at working out a righteousness, but to enjoy the bounteous goodness which had provided richly for him, one test of obedience, and of the easiest, was given: if he ate of the tree, he died. What did God gain by such obedience? Save as one of the countless creatures He had made, whose happiness bore witness of creating goodness and wisdom -nothing. Had he obeyed, what marvel? Had he obtained witness that he was righteous, it would have been creature-righteousness, not divine. With Eliphaz, we might have asked, Is it gain to God that thou makest thy ways perfect?" And had he been obedient, as angels were, would the fitting reward for it have been a place in glory and at the right hand of God? Would he have inherited all things? Would he have been where Christ as Man is, and have shared what the saints will share, as joint-heirs with Him? Simple questions, yet needful. For if they are to have adverse answer, after all the plan as shown in Adam must be so far altered; and how much does this imply? But Adam fell: that wrong was done to God, of which the trespass-offering speaks. Sin had spoiled the old creation, and (again to speak humanly, as we must,) raised the question of God’s character. If He cut off the offenders in righteousness, love would not be shown; if mercy spared them, how could He be holy? Slowly and patiently was the answer given. Christ was that answer. Not simply the taker up of man’s cause.

Not the worker out of mere human righteousness. But the brightness of the Father’s glory; the Wisdom and Power of God: the Fulfiller of divine righteousness, and the Revealer of divine Love. The glory of God is in the face of Jesus Christ. There we see it. If the entrance of sin into the world had in anywise raised a question about God, not only are such questions for ever at rest, but the way in which it has been dealt with in the Cross of His Son becomes the very way in which His attributes shine out. Christ is not merely “the Lord our Righteousness,” He is the very “Righteousness of God.” Could Adam have been that, or wrought it?

We are in another sphere altogether, plainly. Inseparably connected with man’s worst wickedness, is the display of God’s righteousness, and not in wrath, but through which He justifies the ungodly. Thus Christ’s work is different both in its character and results Godward from anything that could be of Adam, asked or had. It was such as the Only-begotten Son in the bosom of the Father alone could accomplish, and must have corresponding results for man also, for here also the “fifth part more” applies. Things are restored, but not to the primitive condition before the fall. They are “made new,” in a “new creation,” not the old, and whose Head is “the beginning of the creation of God.” 3. It is the gain manward of the work of Christ with which the apostle here is occupied; although the Godward side must be disclosed in connection with this; but the point here all the way through is the effect with regard to the many with whom the Head is connected. In the last three verses we had the contrasts between the judgment and the grace; now we have the actual realization, along with the declaration of the sufficiency of Christ’s work for all, which renders all inexcusable who do not receive it. The purpose of the law added at the close shows the earnestness of God’s grace in pressing upon men their need; law being thus a true handmaid to the gospel as is shown elsewhere. The provision for man’s sinful condition is also dwelt upon, which the very idea of an Adam-head implies, a life in Christ, which prepares us for the doctrine of the chapters following, in which this comes to the front in the consideration of practical questions of the deepest interest and importance. It is characteristic of all this second division of Romans that life and nature come up in it, as in the first only actual sins, which are the ground of final judgment, as has already been shown.

The conviction of a soul before God is not to be effected by pressing upon him Adam’s sin, or the evil nature which he has thus derived from Adam. These he will turn into pleas in his own favor, rather than against him; and it is in this way that Job actually pleads that one cannot bring a clean thing out of an unclean: humiliated he is by it, but not condemned. On the other hand, spite of such pleas, conscience will bring him in guilty for every actual sin, and from its decision there is no appeal. Whatever man’s nature may be, be, unlike the beast, is responsible to control it morally, and not be controlled by it. In the power of the will, in which lies man’s true manhood, his accountability to God is found as well. It is when one is converted and the bent of the will is Godward, that the hindrance of a fallen nature is proved in bitter experience. This we shall have to consider in a little while. At present it is only the presence of such a nature that is recognized, along with the parallel communication of a new nature from the new source of life to a believer, the new Adam-Head, the Lord Jesus Christ. Hitherto we have had the fruits of old nature, the actual sins. Now we are to look deeper remembering all the time what we have spoken of as to human accountability being due to something beside nature. We never speak of nature acting indeed, except as implying a certain passivity in the man himself, and not the man in his full manhood energy. The contrast now is only that necessarily involved in the two heads that are before us; although in the statement of the general bearing of accomplished righteousness “all men” have not the same relation to the Second that they had to the first. This is of them, however, and not of Him; the express purpose of what is said here being to show that it is not from any lack of sufficiency for all that the effect of the work of recovery does not reach to the full extent of the fall. God is not willing that any should perish (2 Peter 3:9), and therefore could not leave any without provision made: “as by one offence (the bearing) towards all men was to condemnation, thus also through one accomplished righteousness (the bearing) toward all men is to justification of life.” Besides the universal aspect, there is only the last expression that is new. “Justification of life” is not found anywhere else in Scripture, and in itself it may have more than one significance. What is commonly understood by it is “justification to life,” -a clearing from charge which entitles the justified man to life instead of the death that would have been his due. This is not unfitted to stand over against condemnation also, though justification alone would sufficiently do this. But “justification attaching to life” introduces an important thought that is not found in the former way of reading it, and which connects moreover with what is soon to follow. If Christ be really another Adam, a life communicated to those who are of His race forms a necessary part of this idea. The Last Adam is thus a “quickening Spirit,” a communicator of life in a way transcending all that could be attributed to the first. The life, as the Lord has taught us, is eternal life, and thus we are born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. All this we have had fully in the Gospel of John, and need not repeat here what is indeed simple and familiar truth. But this life, in Him who is the Resurrection and the Life, is resurrection life. “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die,” He says, speaking of it, “it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit” (John 12:24).

And so again He speaks of him that believeth in Him as one with death now behind him, and never to know it (John 11:26). Thus the life being resurrection life, the virtue of His death is in it for us, and His resurrection is our justification: we have justification attaching to the life we have in Him" justification of life." Brought into a new creation by our part in the Last Adam, His death is our severance from all that judicially attached to us in the old; “if any man be in Christ, (it is) new creation: old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Thus the “one accomplished righteousness” has wrought for us.*
This is its bearing towards all men -most important to be stated to vindicate the grace of God from what men’s unbelief might bring against it. In the actual result the apostle cannot speak any more of “all men,” but once more of “the many.” “For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were brought into the state of sinners,” -there is the sinful state, the heritage of uncleanness derived from the uncleanness of our fallen parents, -“so through the obedience of the One, the many shall be brought into the state of righteous.” This last, no doubt, includes both the justification and the life. Notice here that “the obedience of One” brings in the burnt-offering aspect of Christ’s work, the full sweet savor. To stand in Christ is not merely to have our sins put away, nor even (what we have not yet come to) our old man set aside, but it is to be accepted in all the preciousness for God of His obedience. Thus there is a growing fulness in the statements here. They are not mere repetitions of the same, growing blessed, truth. They go on swelling in an increasing triumph of divine goodness overmastering evil. In the closing strain the law takes its place and acts its part, only apparently to make the tale of sin more disheartening, and yet in the end to make victorious grace manifestly supreme and lift it to its throne of glory. “Law came in by the way that the offence might abound:” -did that need? one might ask; was it not to add difficulty to difficulty -to make greater the distress that it could not relieve? So it would indeed seem, and not only seem, but so it really was: law, as we shall see fully in the argument of the seventh chapter, by its very opposition to the innate evil only arouses it to full activity and communicates to it new strength: “the strength of sin is the law” (1 Corinthians 15:56). This was indeed its mission; which if that were all, would be but disaster -a ministration of death and condemnation indeed! (2 Corinthians 3:7; 2 Corinthians 3:9); but it came in by the way, says the apostle, -to fulfil a temporary purpose, in making manifest the hopeless condition of man apart from grace, when every command on God’s part arouses the hostility of man’s heart against it: “the law entered that the offence might abound”!

Yes, but that man learning himself by this, grace may be known as grace, and so received; “that as sin reigned in death, so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord.” How suitably the ascription of Lordship to the glorious Conqueror closes this wondrous recital of what we owe to Him! It is this heart-homage to Him which is of the essence of the blessing bestowed. The reign of grace is that in which Christ reigns, and subjects all enemies; the heart entirely subdued to Him, that subjection is its deliverance and freedom.