This is the conclusion of the first part of the epistle, in which the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ is seen meeting our sins. As yet there is no question of nature; it is the sin we have committed, and which is what exposes us to the judgment of God. " All have sinned;" that is what we are responsible for, for whatever our nature, there is not a sin we have committed of which we can truly say we could not help committing it.
The great point here is not that God is love, but how His righteousness can be for me too, for He is righteous. He cannot give that up. Now the blood of Christ, while it fully reveals His love, puts His righteousness also on the side of sinners, and this is Why the apostle is not ashamed of the gospel (1:17), because in it-in good new to sinful man-His righteousness is declared; hence the gospel is the power of God for salvation, positive present deliverance for the soul, a thing unknown before.
Justification is a distinct thought from forgiveness. In ordinary human affairs a man justified could not be forgiven. Forgiveness is love acting; justification righteousness acting. Rom. 4:7,87Saying, Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. 8Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin. (Romans 4:7‑8), gives both: "Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered; blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin." What covers is the blood of Christ, the token of the penalty of our sins having been met.
We are justified by His blood actually, by His resurrection declaratively (4:25); for in it we see the work accepted. Death is the Lord's part in this; the resurrection God's part, He coming out thus openly for us as soon as His love had title to show itself.
Faith is counted for righteousness, not as being actually such, but as what God takes now instead. By the law He had been looking for righteousness, and had found it nowhere-" none righteous, no, not one." Now he looks for faith in place Of a righteousness impossible for man to produce. Chapter 3:25,26. " Sins that are past" are not the sins of one's past life, but sins past before the cross. "This time" is in contrast with it it, and " I say" should be omitted. In the "past time" there was a passing over in the forbearance of God, and God's righteousness in doing this is now seen by the cross. For the "present time there is a positive pronounced justification of all who believe in Jesus.
Verse 1. We do not speak of being justified from future sins, but we are assured as to all that may come, because we " stand in the grace of God "-His unconditional favor. We have grace as to the past, grace in the present, "hope of the glory of God" for the future. The things from which, under the law, men were shut out, come short of (3:23). So in the mount of transfiguration the disciples feared as those (Moses and Elias) entered into the cloud; it was a bright cloud; Peter calls it the " excellent glory;" the Father's voice conies out of it they see two men go right into that which they had always been taught was absolute death to see.
At the first giving of the law there was no glory even in Moses' face. At the second, God connected His goodness with it, proclaiming the name of Jehovah (not the Father) showing mercy, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin, while yet, as still dealing by law, not able to clear the guilty; just what is spoken of in Ezek. 18:2727Again, when the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness that he hath committed, and doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall save his soul alive. (Ezekiel 18:27). The wicked man has to turn from his wickedness and do that which is lawful and right, and then his sins will be forgiven, and he shall save his soul alive. This is what people often take up now and call Christianity. They are taking God's mercy to clear off the past, get a fresh start, and go on to meet the day of judgment. But this is all the "ministration of death and condemnation," as 2 Cor. 3 terms it. Moses sees God with His back to him, and not his face (Ex. 33:2323And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen. (Exodus 33:23)). That is still law-God unknown and with his back to you. As John 1:1818No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him. (John 1:18): " No man hath seen God at any time." But now, in contrast: " The only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He bath declared Him." " The Word was made flesh and tabernacle (dwelt) amongst us, and we beheld His glory" (John 1:1414And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)). We see God face to face, and without a veil. He who could not clear the guilty, now justifies the ungodly. Israel could not behold even the reflected glory in the face of the lawgiver, nor can people still who see the glory in Moses' face; nor could Israel understand even the Scripture while under the law; the veil remains. They could not look to the end of that which is abolished. There is no veil now, except for unbelief.
Verse 3. Now we have the effect upon the difficulties of the way. Knowing that tribulation worketh patience," an internal conscious knowledge, not as I might read about it in a book. Patience, in a certain sense, is everything. (James 1:44But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing. (James 1:4).) If patience have her perfect work we are perfect and entire, wanting nothing, because patience is a broken will which lets God have His way, and then that works experience, we find how good His way is. Experience thus works hope (v. 5). " Hope maketh not ashamed."' Compare Isa. 1:2929For they shall be ashamed of the oaks which ye have desired, and ye shall be confounded for the gardens that ye have chosen. (Isaiah 1:29): " Ashamed of the oaks which ye have chosen." A false hope leaves the soul in disappointment and shame. " Because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts; " i. e. God's love to us, ministered by the Holy Ghost, divine influence, like rain upon a garden. It is such a love as we can carry with us through all circumstances, God's own love, commended to us in Christ's death for us while we were yet sinners. He is explaining how this love is shed abroad, for "when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly." Human love always needs something to draw it out; divine love finds its motive in itself, and misery gives only the occasion for its display. If it could take us up with the perfect knowledge of what we were, and that there was nothing in us to love, then it can never give us up again; so if we are now justified by Christ's blood all is sure forever. Much more, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. " If when we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son; " if He was at such pains to win our hearts when we were His enemies, "much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by His life." Our salvation thus depends upon His life, that is, upon His life in glory. " Because I live ye shall live also." The fact of wrath to come is recognized, but the believer is now delivered from it through Christ. The point where God meets us is shown by these " yets: " " yet without strength; " "yet sinners " " when enemies." The " yet " stands here in relation to God's dispensational dealings with men. There was a " due time" for Christ to die. "Yet without strength," after law, prophets, and even the corning of the Son of God in grace had been in vain; when God had done all He could do short of this, then was the due time in which Christ died for the ungodly. These are the two parts of the condition to which Christ's death applies: " ungodly and without strength." The dispensational fact is true in the individual history of every soul. We have to be brought down to receive Christ as ungodly still, not godly. The two ways in which the law was given prove these two things. Given the first time without any display of mercy shows man ungodly; he makes a golden calf. The second time man says, " Give me time and help," and God does so. It is now " Break off your sins by righteousness," and " save your soul alive. Here God has long patience, and man is tried again and again. The truth of his condition more and more comes out. "Make you a new heart," etc., that is man's need,, but it is still put upon him to do it. In the end of this trial Israel are given up as Lo-ammi-not God's people (Hos. 1:99Then said God, Call his name Lo-ammi: for ye are not my people, and I will not be your God. (Hosea 1:9)).
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. 9:2626For then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world: but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. (Hebrews 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. 32:46,4746And he said unto them, Set your hearts unto all the words which I testify among you this day, which ye shall command your children to observe to do, all the words of this law. 47For it is not a vain thing for you; because it is your life: and through this thing ye shall prolong your days in the land, whither ye go over Jordan to possess it. (Deuteronomy 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. 3:1919Wherefore then serveth the law? It was added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made; and it was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator. (Galatians 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. 6:77But they like men have transgressed the covenant: there have they dealt treacherously against me. (Hosea 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. 9:2828So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation. (Hebrews 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."
Q. Why Is the Change From " Offense" to " Sin " in 5:20?
Ans. Because the law did not produce the sin; that was there already. It only brought it out as offense; and if in is in our hearts it is no less offensive to God there in the dark than when He brings it out into the light. " Transgression " gives the thought of overstepping a boundary line; " offense " is more its aspect as against the one who has established the boundary. We have grace reigning righteously here, and sin is a barrier for God to bless. Righteousness is; where people take the ground of righteousness He cannot bless. He must have "truth in the inward parts " as to our condition; in other words, repentance,.
Chap. 6. It is important to see that it is a practical question all through here. The objections are, " Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? " and " Shall we sin because we are not under the law? "
People tell tales on themselves when they say, " If we are saved once for all, we can do as we like," for they tell us what they do like. But God has no pleasure in our doing what we do not like, and He has His own way of changing our liking.
Looking at the Passover (Ex. 12) we find the judgment of God, and what meets that. At the Red Sea it was a question of the enemy, and God coming in to deliver them from his power. We find the key to that Red Sea deliverance here in ver. 14, etc.
Salvation in Scripture is not only from guilt and wrath-that is what we have had hitherto (the Passover truth)-but from the power of sin as well (the Red Sea truth). Israel, in Ex. 15, sing the song of salvation for the first time. " The horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea "-all the power that held them in bondage (ver. 2). Mark, it is not, we ought to be dead, but are. It is plain that if we are dead to sin, we cannot live in it. This is not what we find but what we "reckon," which is the same word as "count" or " impute." I do not reckon what I find but what I do not find. If I look at myself, I could not say " I am dead to sin; " if I look at Christ's work for me, I can.
We must not think that experience is a great deal surer than faith, but the contrary. God does not say that we are dead. in ourselves, but that we are " dead to sin" because Christ is. "Be reckoning" is the force of the word here.
Verse 4. Now he falls back upon their baptism. " Baptism unto Christ was baptism unto His death." If we turn to Matt. 3 we shall find the meaning of this. The Baptist addresses himself to a people whom God has declared "not His" (Hos. 1),they have lost their place as His by their iniquity. John in his testimony stands apart from them; he is found outside, in the wilderness, his very raiment and food attesting that he would not be debtor to them in anything. They all come out to him to be baptized of him in Jordan. Jordan is the river of death, they are baptized unto death, confessing the sins which brought them there. That was the baptism of repentance.
Their repentance was owning that all was over with them because of their sins. Then Jesus comes and puts Himself along with them; takes His place in death with those who are taking their place there. It is not for Him the baptism of repentance, but to fulfill all righteousness. Righteousness for us is fulfilled in what that figures. " I have a baptism to be baptized with" refers to His death.