Owing to the length of this epistle we have made our remarks briefer and more condensed than usual. It will therefore be more than ever necessary to refer to the Scripture itself as you read this article.
THE Epistle opened by telling us that the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes. We now discover that when we speak of being saved we are using a word of very large meaning. It is not only true that we have been saved by belief of the Gospel, but also that we shall be saved from the spiritual dangers and conflicts of this present age, and from the wrath of the age to come.
In verses 9-11 we get not only salvation but also justification and reconciliation. These are words of greater definiteness and more limited meaning. There is no future aspect in connection with them. They are entirely present realities for the believer. “Now justified by His blood” (verse 9). “We have now received the reconciliation” (verse 11). We shall never be more justified than we are today. We shall never be more reconciled than we are today, though we shall presently have a keener enjoyment of the reconciliation which has been effected. But we shall be more fully saved than we are today, when in the age to come we are in glorified bodies like Christ.
Believing the Gospel, we receive the reconciliation today, and consequently are able to find our joy in God. Once we feared Him and shrank from His presence, as did Adam when he hid behind the trees of the Garden. Now we make our boast in Him and rejoice. And this is all God’s own doing through our Lord Jesus Christ. What a triumph of grace it is!
Thus far the Gospel has been set before us in relation to our sins. Our actual offenses have been in view, and we have discovered the way God has of justifying us from them and bringing us into His favor. There was more than this involved in our fallen condition however. There was what, we may call the racial question.
For our racial head we have to go back to Adam, and to Adam in his fallen condition, for only when fallen did he beget sons and daughters. His fall came about by an act of sin, but that act induced a state or condition of sin which permeated his very being. Thereby his whole spiritual constitution was altered so fundamentally as to affect all his descendants. He could only beget children “in his own likeness, after his image,” (Gen. 5:33And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth: (Genesis 5:3))— the likeness and image of a fallen man. Heredity of this sort is a terrible fact, borne witness to by Scripture. Does God in the Gospel propose any remedy for this awful blight which lies upon the human race? Can He deal with the nature from which the acts of sin spring: with the root which produces the hideous fruits, as well as with the fruits themselves?
He can. Indeed, He has done so, and chapter 5 from verse 12 onwards, unfolds to us the effects of what He has done. Just what He has done is not stated in so many words, though it is plainly inferred. The passage is admittedly a difficult one, and this is one element of its difficulty. Another element in its difficulty is that in several verses the translation is obscure, and even slightly defective. A third difficulty is that this side of matters is one that all too often is overlooked; and, where that has been the case, we plunge into unfamiliar waters and easily get out of our depth.
To begin with, notice that verse 13 to 17 are a parenthesis, and are printed as such, being enclosed in brackets. To get the sense we read on from verse 12 to verse 18, when at once we can see that the main drift of the passage is the contrast between one man who sinned, involving others in the results of his transgression, and Another who accomplished a righteousness, into the blessed effects of which others are brought. The whole passage emphasizes a tremendous contrast, a contrast which centers in Adam on the one hand and Christ on the other. If Adam stands at the head of a fallen race lying under death and condemnation, Christ is the Head of a new race standing in righteousness and life.
We may say then that what God has done is to raise up a new Head for men in the Lord Jesus Christ. Before He formally took the place of Head He accomplished perfect righteousness by obedience unto death. By virtue of His death and resurrection believers stand no longer connected with Adam but with Christ. They have been, so to speak, grafted into Christ. They are no longer in Adam but “in Christ.” This is the underlying fact which the passage infers, whilst it elaborates the glorious consequences flowing therefrom.
Look again at verses 12, 18 and 19. Particularly scrutinize verse 18. If you have Darby’s New Translation read it in that. You will see that the words inserted in italics in the Authorized Version can come out, and that the marginal reading is the better: also that the twice repeated word, “upon” should be rather, “towards.” The contrast is between the one offense of Adam, the bearing of which was condemnation towards all men, and the one righteousness of Christ, completed in His death, the bearing of which is justification of life towards all men.
We ponder this quietly for a few moments, and then probably observe to ourselves that though all men have come under the condemnation not all by any means have come under the justification. Exactly, for this verse only states the general bearing of the respective acts, and it is true that, as far as God’s intention in the death of Christ is concerned, His death is for all. The next verse goes on to ate realized effects of the respective acts, and only many—or more accurately, “the many” — are in view.
By “the many” we understand those, and only those, who are under the respective headships. In Adam’s case “the many” does of course cover all men, for by nature we are all of his race. In the case of Christ not all men are of His race, but only all believers. All men were constituted sinners by Adam’s disobedience. All be-believers are constituted righteous by Christ’s obedience, even unto death.
So in the three verses we are considering we have this sequence. On the one hand, one man Adam, one offense, all men constituted sinners, all sinning, consequently death and condemnation upon all. On the other hand, one Man Christ, one righteousness in obedience unto death, those under His Headship constituted righteous in justification of life.
Now observe the five verses included in the parenthesis. The first two of these meet a difficulty that might arise in the minds of those very familiar with the law. Adam sinned against a definite commandment, hence his sin was a transgression. After that some 2500 years had to roll away before the law of Moses was given, when once more transgression became possible. Between those points there was no transgression, for there was no law to transgress. Yet there was sin universally, as proved by the universal reign of death. The practical difference lay here, that sin is not “imputed” when there is no law: that is it is not put to our account in the same way. Only those who have known the law will be judged by the law, as we saw when reading chapter 2.
This being admitted, it is still true that sin and death have reigned universally. All Adam’s posterity are involved in his fall. This being so, the contrast between Adam and Christ is worked out in verse 15 to 17. Each verse takes up a different detail, but the general point is stated at the beginning of verse 15; viz., the free gift through Christ in no sense falls short of the offense through Adam, indeed it goes beyond it.
In verse 15 the word many occurs twice just as we noticed it does in verse 19. In this verse too it is more accurately, “the many,” that is, those who come under the respective headships. Adam brought in death upon all those under his headship, which as a matter of fact means all men without exception. Jesus Christ has brought in the grace of God and the free gift of grace to the many who are under Him; that is, to all believers.
Verse 16 brings in the contrast between condemnation and justification. In this connection the gift surpasses the sin. The condemnation was brought in by one sin. The justification has been triumphantly wrought out by grace in the teeth of many offenses.
A further contrast confronts us in verse 17. The condemnation and justification of the previous verse are what we may call the immediate effects. Immediately anyone comes under Adam he comes under condemnation. Immediately anyone comes under Christ he comes into justification. But what are the ultimate effects? The ultimate effect of Adam’s sin was to establish a universal reign of death over his posterity. The ultimate effect of Christ’s work of righteousness is to bring in for all who are His abundance of grace, and righteousness as a free gift, so that they may reign in life. Not only is life going to reign but we are going to reign in life. A most astounding thing surely! No wonder that the free gift is stated to go beyond the offense.
Verse 20 and 21 recapitulate and sum up what we have just seen. The law was brought in to make man’s sin fully manifest. Sin was there all the time but when the law was given sin became very visible as positive transgression, and offense, definitely put down to man’s account, abounded. The law was followed, after a due interval, by the grace which reached us in Christ. We can discern therefore three stages. First, the age before the law when there was sin though no transgression. Second, the age of law when sin abounded, rising to Himalayan heights. Third, the incoming of grace through Christ—grace which has risen up like a mighty flood overtopping the mountains of man’s sins.
In the Gospel grace not only super abounds, but it reigns. We who have believed have come under the benign sway of grace, a grace which reigns through righteousness, inasmuch as the cross was pre-eminently a work of righteousness. And the glorious end and consummation of the story is eternal life. Here the boundless vista of eternity begins to open out before us. We see the river of grace. We see the channel of righteousness, cut by the work of the cross, in which it flows. We see finally the boundless ocean of eternal life, into which it flows.
And all is “by Jesus Christ our Lord.” All has been wrought by Him. He is the Head under whom, as believers, we stand, and consequently the Fountain-head from whom all these things flow to us. It is because we are in His life that all these things are ours. Our justification is a justification of life, for in Christ we have a life which is bond all possibility of condemnation—a life in which we are cleared not only from all our offenses, but also from the state of sin in which we formerly lay as connected with Adam.
That which we have thus far learned of the Gospel from this epistle has been a question of what God has declared Himself to be on our behalf, that which He has wrought for us by the death and resurrection of Christ, and which we receive in simple faith. In it all God has been having, if we may so say, His say toward us in blessing. chapter 6 opens with the pertinent question, “What shall we say then?”
This signalizes the fact that another line of thought is now about to open before us. Nothing can exceed the wonder of what God has wrought on our behalf, but what are we in consequence thereof going to be for Him? What is to be the believer’s response to the amazing grace that has been shown? Is there through the Gospel the bringing in of a power which will enable the believer’s response to be one worthy of God? As we open chapter 6 we begin to investigate these questions and to discover the way in which the Gospel sets us free to spend lives of practical righteousness and holiness.
If men attain a merely head knowledge of the grace of God, their hearts remaining unaffected, they may easily turn grace into license and say, “Well, if God’s grace can abound over our sin, let us go on sinning that grace may go on abounding.” Does the Gospel in any way countenance such sentiments? Not for one moment. The very reverse. It tells us plainly that we are dead to sin. How then can we still live in it? Once we were terribly alive to sin. Everything that had to do with our own lawless wills—with pleasing ourselves, in other words—we were keenly set on, whilst remaining absolutely dead to God and His things. Now an absolute reversal has taken place and we are dead to the sin to which formerly we were alive, and alive to the things to which formerly we were dead.
Have we been ignorant as to this, or only dimly conscious of it? It should not have been so, for the fact is plainly set forth in Christian baptism, a rite which lies at the threshold of things. Do we know, or do we not know, what our baptism means?
There is perhaps a previous question which ought to be raised. It is this, Have you been baptized? We ask it because there seems to be in some quarters distinct carelessness as to this matter, engendered we suspect by the over-emphasis placed on it in former days. If we neglect it we do so to our very distinct loss. In baptism we are buried with Christ, as verse 4 states, and not to have been buried with Him is a calamity. Moreover, if not amongst “so many of us as were baptized” the Apostle’s argument in verse 4 and 5 loses its force as far as we are concerned.
What then is the significance of baptism? It means identification with Christ in His death. It means that we are buried with Him, and that the obligation is placed upon us to walk in newness of life, even as He was raised up into a new order of things. This is its meaning and this the obligation it imposes, and our loss is great if we know it not. We greatly fear that the tremendous controversies which have raged over the manner and the mode and the subjects of baptism have led many to overlook entirely its meaning. Argumentations about baptism have been carried on in a very unbaptized way, so that no one would have thought the contestants “dead to sin.”
Baptism is however a rite, an outward sign. It accomplishes nothing vital, and alas, millions of baptized persons will find themselves in a lost eternity. It points however to that which is vital in the fullest sense, even the Cross, as we shall see.
F. B. Hole.