Ro 5:1–11. The Blessed
Effects of Justification by Faith.
The proof
of this doctrine being now concluded, the apostle comes here to treat of its fruits,
reserving the full consideration of this topic to another stage of the argument
(Ro 8:1–39).
1.
Therefore being—“having been.”
justified
by faith, we have peace with God,
&c.—If we are to be guided by manuscript authority, the true reading here,
beyond doubt, is, “Let us have peace”; a reading, however, which most reject,
because they think it unnatural to exhort men to have what it belongs to
God to give, because the apostle is not here giving exhortations, but
stating matters of fact. But as it seems hazardous to set aside the decisive
testimony of manuscripts, as to what the apostle did write, in favor of
what we merely think he ought to have written, let us pause and ask—If
it be the privilege of the justified to “have peace with God,” why might
not the apostle begin his enumeration of the fruits of justification by calling
on believers to “realize” this peace as belonged to them, or cherish the joyful
consciousness of it as their own? And if this is what he has done, it would not
be necessary to continue in the same style, and the other fruits of
justification might be set down, simply as matters of fact. This “peace” is
first a change in God’s relation to us; and next, as the consequence of this, a
change on our part towards Him. God, on the one hand, has “reconciled us to
Himself by Jesus Christ” (2Co 5:18); and we, on the other hand, setting our
seal to this, “are reconciled to God” (2Co 5:20). The “propitiation” is the
meeting-place; there the controversy on both sides terminates in an honorable
and eternal “peace.”
2.
By whom also we have—“have had”
access
by faith into this grace—favor
with God.
wherein
we stand—that is “To that same faith which first
gave us ‘peace with God’ we owe our introduction into that permanent
standing in the favor of God which the justified enjoy.” As it is difficult
to distinguish this from the peace first mentioned, we regard it as merely an
additional phase of the same [Meyer,
Philippi, Mehring], rather than something new [Beza, Tholuck, Hodge].
and
rejoice—“glory,” “boast,”
“triumph”—“rejoice” is not strong enough.
in
hope of the glory of God—On
“hope,” see on Ro 5:4.
3,
4. we glory in tribulation also; knowing that tribulation worketh patience—Patience is the quiet endurance of what we cannot but wish
removed, whether it be the withholding of promised good (Ro 8:25), or the
continued experience of positive ill (as here). There is indeed a patience of
unrenewed nature, which has something noble in it, though in many cases the
offspring of pride, if not of something lower. Men have been known to endure
every form of privation, torture, and death, without a murmur and without even
visible emotion, merely because they deemed it unworthy of them to sink under
unavoidable ill. But this proud, stoical hardihood has nothing in common with
the grace of patience—which is either the meek endurance of ill because
it is of God (Job 1:21, 22; 2:10), or the calm waiting for promised good till
His time to dispense it come (Heb 10:36); in the full persuasion that such
trials are divinely appointed, are the needed discipline of God’s children, are
but for a definite period, and are not sent without abundant promises of “songs
in the night.” If such be the “patience” which “tribulation worketh,” no wonder
that
4.
patience worketh experience—rather,
“proof,” as the same word is rendered in 2Co 2:9; 13:3; Php 2:22; that is,
experimental evidence that we have “believed through grace.”
and
experience—“proof.”
hope—“of the glory of God,” as prepared for us. Thus have we
hope in two distinct ways, and at two successive stages of the Christian life: first,
immediately on believing, along with the sense of peace and abiding access to
God (Ro 5:1); next, after the reality of this faith has been “proved,”
particularly by the patient endurance of trials sent to test it. We first get
it by looking away from ourselves to the Lamb of God; next by looking into
or upon ourselves as transformed by that “looking unto Jesus.” In the
one case, the mind acts (as they say) objectively; in the other, subjectively.
The one is (as divines say) the assurance of faith; the other, the assurance
of sense.
5.
And hope maketh not ashamed—putteth
not to shame, as empty hopes do.
became
the love of God—that is, not “our love to God,” as
the Romish and some Protestant expositors (following some of the Fathers)
represent it; but clearly “God’s love to us”—as most expositors agree.
is
shed abroad—literally, “poured forth,” that is,
copiously diffused (compare Jn 7:38; Tit 3:6).
by
the Holy Ghost which is—rather,
“was.”
given
unto us—that is, at the great Pentecostal
effusion, which is viewed as the formal donation of the Spirit to the Church of
God, for all time and for each believer. (The Holy Ghost is here first
introduced in this Epistle.) It is as if the apostle had said, “And how can
this hope of glory, which as believers we cherish, put us to shame, when we
feel God Himself, by His Spirit given to us, drenching our hearts in sweet,
all-subduing sensations of His wondrous love to us in Christ Jesus?” This leads
the apostle to expatiate on the amazing character of that love.
6–8.
For when we were yet without strength—that
is, powerless to deliver ourselves, and so ready to perish.
in
due time—at the appointed season.
Christ
died for the ungodly—Three signal properties of God’s
love are here given: First, “Christ died for the ungodly,” whose
character, so far from meriting any interposition in their behalf, was
altogether repulsive to the eye of God; second, He did this “when they were without
strength”—with nothing between them and perdition but that self-originating
divine compassion; third, He did this “at the due time,” when it was
most fitting that it should take place (compare Ga 4:4), The two former of
these properties the apostle now proceeds to illustrate.
7.
For scarcely for a righteous man—a
man of simply unexceptionable character.
will
one—“any one”
die:
yet peradventure for a good man—a
man who, besides being unexceptionable, is distinguished for goodness, a
benefactor to society.
some—“some one.”
would—rather, “doth.”
even
dare to die—“Scarce an instance occurs of
self-sacrifice for one merely upright; though for one who makes himself a
blessing to society there may be found an example of such noble
surrender of life” (So Bengel, Olshausen, Tholuck, Alford,
Philippi). (To make the
“righteous” and the “good” man here to mean the same person, and the whole
sense to be that “though rare, the case may occur, of one making a sacrifice of
life for a worthy character” [as Calvin,
Beza, Fritzsche, Jowett],
is extremely flat.)
8.
But God commendeth—“setteth off,” “displayeth”—in
glorious contrast with all that men will do for each other.
his
love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners—that is, in a state not of positive “goodness,” nor even of
negative “righteousness,” but on the contrary, “sinners,” a state which His
soul hateth.
Christ
died for us—Now comes the overpowering
inference, emphatically redoubled.
9,
10. Much more then, being—“having
been”
now
justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.
10.
For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his
Son, much more, being now—“having
now been”
reconciled,
we shall be saved by his life—that
is “If that part of the Saviour’s work which cost Him His blood, and which had
to be wrought for persons incapable of the least sympathy either with His love
or His labors in their behalf—even our ‘justification,’ our ‘reconciliation’—is
already completed; how much more will He do all that remains to be done, since
He has it to do, not by death agonies any more, but in untroubled ‘life,’ and
no longer for enemies, but for friends—from whom, at every stage of it, He
receives the grateful response of redeemed and adoring souls?” To be “saved
from wrath through Him,” denotes here the whole work of Christ towards believers,
from the moment of justification, when the wrath of God is turned away from
them, till the Judge on the great white throne shall discharge that wrath upon
them that “obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ”; and that work may all
be summed up in “keeping them from falling, and presenting them faultless
before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy” (Jud 1:24): thus are they
“saved from wrath through Him.”
11.
And not only so, but we also joy—rather,
“glory.”
in
God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by—“through”
whom
we have now received the atonement—rather,
“the reconciliation” (Margin), as the same word is rendered in Ro 5:10
and in 2Co 5:18, 19. (In fact, the earlier meaning of the English word
“atonement” was “the reconciliation of two estranged parties”) [Trench]. The foregoing effects of
justification were all benefits to ourselves, calling for gratitude; this last
may be termed a purely disinterested one. Our first feeling towards God, after
we have found peace with Him. is that of clinging gratitude for so costly a
salvation; but no sooner have we learned to cry, Abba, Father, under the sweet
sense of reconciliation, than “gloriation” in Him takes the place of dread of
Him, and now He appears to us “altogether lovely!”
On this
section, Note, (1) How gloriously does the Gospel evince its divine
origin by basing all acceptable obedience on “peace with God,” laying the
foundations of this peace in a righteous “justification” of the sinner “through
our Lord Jesus Christ,” and making this the entrance to a permanent standing in
the divine favor, and a triumphant expectation of future glory! (Ro 5:1, 2).
Other peace, worthy of the name, there is none; and as those who are strangers to
it rise not to the enjoyment of such high fellowship with God, so they have
neither any taste for it nor desire after it. (2) As only believers possess the
true secret of patience under trials, so, although “not joyous but grievous” in
themselves (Heb 12:17), when trials divinely sent afford them the opportunity
of evidencing their faith by the grace of patience under them, they should
“count it all joy” (Ro 5:3, 4; and see Jam 1:2, 3). (3) “Hope,” in the New
Testament sense of the term, is not a lower degree of faith or assurance (as
many now say, I hope for heaven, but am not sure of it); but
invariably means “the confident expectation of future good.” It presupposes
faith; and what faith assures us will be ours, hope accordingly expects.
In the nourishment of this hope, the soul’s look outward to Christ for
the ground of it, and inward upon ourselves for evidence of its reality,
must act and react upon each other (Ro 5:2 and Ro 5:4 compared). (4) It is the
proper office of the Holy Ghost to beget in the soul the full conviction and
joyful consciousness of the love of God in Christ Jesus to sinners of mankind,
and to ourselves in particular; and where this exists, it carries with it such
an assurance of final salvation as cannot deceive (Ro 5:5). (5) The justification
of sinful men is not in virtue of their amendment, but of “the blood of
God’s Son”; and while this is expressly affirmed in Ro 5:9, our reconciliation
to God by the “death of His Son,” affirmed in Ro 5:10, is but a variety
of the same statement. In both, the blessing meant is the restoration of the
sinner to a righteous standing in the sight of God; and in both, the
meritorious ground of this, which is intended to be conveyed, is the expiatory
sacrifice of God’s Son. (6) Gratitude to God for redeeming love, if it
could exist without delight in God Himself, would be a selfish and worthless
feeling; but when the one rises into the other—the transporting sense of
eternal “reconciliation” passing into “gloriation in God” Himself—then the
lower is sanctified and sustained by the higher, and each feeling is perfective
of the other (Ro 5:11).
Ro 5:12–21. Comparison
and Contrast between Adam and Christ in Their Relation to the Human Family.
(This
profound and most weighty section has occasioned an immense deal of critical
and theological discussion, in which every point, and almost every clause, has
been contested. We can here but set down what appears to us to be the only
tenable view of it as a whole and of its successive clauses, with some slight
indication of the grounds of our judgment).
12.
Wherefore—that is, Things being so; referring
back to the whole preceding argument.
as
by one man—Adam.
sin—considered here in its guilt, criminality, penal desert.
entered
into the world, and death by sin—as
the penalty of sin.
and
so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned—rather, “all sinned,” that is, in that one man’s first sin.
Thus death reaches every individual of the human family, as the penalty due to himself.
(So, in substance, Bengel, Hodge, Philippi).
Here we should have expected the apostle to finish his sentence, in some such
way as this: “Even so, by one man righteousness has entered into the world, and
life by righteousness.” But, instead of this, we have a digression, extending
to five verses, to illustrate the important statement of Ro 5:12; and it is
only at Ro 5:18 that the comparison is resumed and finished.
13,
14. For until the law sin was in the world—that
is during all the period from Adam “until the law” of Moses was given, God
continued to treat men as sinners.
but
sin is not imputed where there is no law—“There
must therefore have been a law during that period, because sin was then
imputed”; as is now to be shown.
14.
Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not
sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression—But who are they?—a much contested question. Infants
(say some), who being guiltless of actual sin, may be said not to have
sinned in the way that Adam did [Augustine,
Beza, Hodge]. But why should infants be specially connected with
the period “from Adam to Moses,” since they die alike in every period? And if
the apostle meant to express here the death of infants, why has he done it so
enigmatically? Besides, the death of infants is comprehended in the universal
mortality on account of the first sin, so emphatically expressed in Ro 5:12;
what need then to specify it here? and why, if not necessary, should we presume
it to be meant here, unless the language unmistakably point to it—which it
certainly does not? The meaning then must be, that “death reigned from Adam to
Moses, even over those that had not, like Adam, transgressed against a positive
commandment, threatening death to the disobedient.” (So most interpreters). In
this case, the particle “even,” instead of specifying one particular class of
those who lived “from Adam to Moses” (as the other interpretation supposes),
merely explains what it was that made the case of those who died from Adam to
Moses worthy of special notice—namely, that “though unlike Adam and all since
Moses, those who lived between the two had no positive threatening of death for
transgression, nevertheless, death reigned even over them.”
who
is the figure—or, “a type.”
of
him that was to come—Christ. “This clause is inserted on
the first mention of the name “Adam,” the one man of whom he is
speaking, to recall the purpose for which he is treating of him, as the
figure of Christ” [Alford].
The point of analogy intended here is plainly the public character which
both sustained, neither of the two being regarded in the divine procedure
towards men as mere individual men, but both alike as representative
men. (Some take the proper supplement here to be “Him [that is] to come”;
understanding the apostle to speak from his own time, and to refer to Christ’s
second coming [Fritzsche, De Wette, Alford]. But this is unnatural, since the analogy of the
second Adam to the first has been in full development ever since “God exalted
Him to be a Prince and a Saviour,” and it will only remain to be consummated at
His second coming. The simple meaning is, as nearly all interpreters agree,
that Adam is a type of Him who was to come after him in the same public
character, and so to be “the second Adam”).
15.
But—“Yet,” “Howbeit.”
not
as the offence—“trespass.”
so
also is the free gift—or “the gracious gift,” “the gift
of grace.” The two cases present points of contrast as well as resemblance.
For
if, &c.—rather, “For if through the
offense of the one the many died (that is, in that one man’s first sin), much
more did the grace of God, and the free gift by grace, even that of the one
man, Jesus Christ, abound unto the many.” By “the many” is meant the mass
of mankind represented respectively by Adam and Christ, as opposed, not to few,
but to “the one” who represented them. By “the free gift” is meant (as in Ro
5:17) the glorious gift of justifying righteousness; this is expressly
distinguished from “the grace of God,” as the effect from the cause;
and both are said to “abound” towards us in Christ—in what sense will appear in
Ro 5:16, 17. And the “much more,” of the one case than the other, does not mean
that we get much more of good by Christ than of evil by Adam (for it is not a
case of quantity at all); but that we have much more reason to expect, or it is
much more agreeable to our ideas of God, that the many should be benefited by
the merit of one, than that they should suffer for the sin of one; and if the
latter has happened, much more may we assure ourselves of the former [Philippi, Hodge].
16.
And not as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift—“Another point of contrast may be mentioned.”
for
the judgment—“sentence.”
was
by one—rather, “was of one,” meaning not
“one man,” but, as appears from the next clause, “one offense.”
to
condemnation, but the free gift—“gift
of grace.”
is
of many offences unto justification—a
glorious point of contrast. “The condemnation by Adam was for one sin;
but the justification by Christ is an absolution not only from the guilt of
that first offense, mysteriously attaching to every individual of the race, but
from the countless offenses it, to which, as a germ lodged in the bosom
of every child of Adam, it unfolds itself in his life.” This is the meaning of
“grace abounding towards us in the abundance of the gift of
righteousness.” It is a grace not only rich in its character, but rich
in detail; it is a “righteousness” not only rich in a complete
justification of the guilty, condemned sinner; but rich in the amplitude
of the ground which it covers, leaving no one sin of any of the justified
uncancelled, but making him, though loaded with the guilt of myriads of
offenses, “the righteousness of God in Christ.”
17.
For if by—“the”
one
man’s offence death reigned by one—“through
the one.”
much
more shall they which receive—“the”
abundance
of grace and of the gift of—justifying
righteousness
… reign in life by one Jesus Christ—“through
the one.” We have here the two ideas of Ro 5:15 and Ro 5:16 sublimely combined
into one, as if the subject had grown upon the apostle as he advanced in his
comparison of the two cases. Here, for the first time in this section, he
speaks of that life which springs
out of justification, in contrast with the death which springs from sin and
follows condemnation. The proper idea of it therefore is, “Right to
live”—“Righteous life”—life possessed and enjoyed with the good will, and in
conformity with the eternal law, of “Him that sitteth on the Throne”; life
therefore in its widest sense—life in the whole man and throughout the whole
duration of human existence, the life of blissful and loving relationship to
God in soul and body, for ever and ever. It is worthy of note, too, that while
he says death “reigned over” us through Adam, he does not say Life “reigns over
us” through Christ; lest he should seem to invest this new life with the very
attribute of death—that of fell and malignant tyranny, of which we were the
hapless victims. Nor does he say Life reigns in us, which would have
been a scriptural enough idea; but, which is much more pregnant, “We
shall reign in life.” While freedom and might are implied in the
figure of “reigning,” “life” is represented as the glorious territory or
atmosphere of that reign. And by recurring to the idea of Ro 5:16, as to the
“many offenses” whose complete pardon shows “the abundance of grace and of the
gift of righteousness,” the whole statement is to this effect: “If one man’s
one offense let loose against us the tyrant power of Death, to hold us as its
victims in helpless bondage, ‘much more,’ when we stand forth enriched with
God’s ‘abounding grace’ and in the beauty of a complete absolution from
countless offenses, shall we expatiate in a life divinely owned and legally
secured, ‘reigning’ in exultant freedom and unchallenged might, through that
other matchless ‘One,’ Jesus Christ!” (On the import of the future tense
in this last clause, see on Ro 5:19, and Ro 6:5).
18.
Therefore—now at length resuming the
unfinished comparison of Ro 5:12, in order to give formally the
concluding member of it, which had been done once and again substantially,
in the intermediate verses.
as
by the offence of one judgment came—or,
more simply, “it came.”
upon
all men to condenmation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came—rather, “it came.”
upon
all men to justification of life—(So
Calvin, Bengel, Olshausen,
Tholuck, Hodge, Philippi).
But better, as we judge: “As through one offense it [came] upon all men to
condemnation; even so through one righteousness [it came] upon all men to
justification of life”—(So Beza, Grotius, Ferme,
Meyer, De Wette, Alford,
Revised Version). In this case, the apostle, resuming the statement of
Ro 5:12, expresses it in a more concentrated and vivid form—suggested no doubt
by the expression in Ro 5:16, “through one offense,” representing Christ’s
whole work, considered as the ground of our justification, as “one righteousness.” (Some would render
the peculiar word here employed, “one righteous act” [Alford, &c.]; understanding by it Christ’s death
as the one redeeming act which reversed the one undoing act of Adam. But this
is to limit the apostle’s idea too much; for as the same word is properly
rendered “righteousness” in Ro 8:4, where it means “the righteousness of the
law as fulfilled by us who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit,” so
here it denotes Christ’s whole “obedience unto death,” considered as the one
meritorious ground of the reversal of the condemnation which came by Adam. But
on this, and on the expression, “all men,” see on Ro 5:19. The expression
“justification of life,” is a vivid combination of two ideas already expatiated
upon, meaning “justification entitling to and issuing in the rightful
possession and enjoyment of life”).
19.
For, &c.—better, “For as by the one
man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so by the obedience of the
One shall the many be made righteous.” On this great verse observe: First,
By the “obedience” of Christ here is plainly not meant more than what divines
call His active obedience, as distinguished from His sufferings and
death; it is the entire work of Christ in its obediential character. Our
Lord Himself represents even His death as His great act of obedience to the
Father: “This commandment (that is, to lay down and resume His life) have I
received of My Father” (Jn 10:8). Second, The significant word twice
rendered made, does not signify to work a change upon a person or
thing, but to constitute or ordain, as will be seen from all the
places where it is used. Here, accordingly, it is intended to express that judicial
act which holds men, in virtue of their connection with Adam, as sinners; and,
in connection with Christ, as righteous. Third, The change of tense
from the past to the future—“as through Adam we were made sinners, so
through Christ we shall be made righteous”—delightfully expresses the
enduring character of the act, and of the economy to which such acts belong, in
contrast with the for-ever-past ruin of believers in Adam. (See on Ro 6:5). Fourth,
The “all men” of Ro 5:18 and the “many” of Ro 5:19 are the same party, though
under a slightly different aspect. In the latter case, the contrast is between
the one representative (Adam—Christ) and the many whom he
represented; in the former case, it is between the one head
(Adam—Christ) and the human race, affected for death and life
respectively by the actings of that one. Only in this latter case it is the
redeemed family of man that is alone in view; it is humanity as actually
lost, but also as actually saved, as ruined and recovered. Such as refuse to
fall in with the high purpose of God to constitute His Son a “second Adam,” the
Head of a new race, and as impenitent and unbelieving finally perish, have no
place in this section of the Epistle, whose sole object is to show how God
repairs in the second Adam the evil done by the first. (Thus the doctrine of universal
restoration has no place here. Thus too the forced interpretation by which
the “justification of all” is made to mean a justification merely in possibility
and offer to all, and the “justification of the many” to mean the actual
justification of as many as believe [Alford,
&c.], is completely avoided. And thus the harshness of comparing a whole
fallen family with a recovered part is got rid of. However true it be in
fact that part of mankind is not saved, this is not the aspect in
which the subject is here presented. It is totals that are compared and
contrasted; and it is the same total in two successive
conditions—namely, the human race as ruined in Adam and recovered in
Christ).
20,
21. Moreover the law—“The law, however.” The Jew might
say, If the whole purposes of God towards men center in Adam and Christ, where
does “the law” come in, and what was the use of it? Answer: It
entered—But the word expresses an important idea besides
“entering.” It signifies, “entered incidentally,” or “parenthetically.” (In Ga
2:4 the same word is rendered, “came in privily.”) The meaning is, that
the promulgation of the law at Sinai was no primary or essential feature of the
divine plan, but it was “added” (Ga 3:19) for a subordinate purpose—the more
fully to reveal the evil occasioned by Adam, and the need and glory of the
remedy by Christ.
that
the offence might abound—or, “be
multiplied.” But what offense? Throughout all this section “the offense” (four
times repeated besides here) has one definite meaning, namely, “the one first
offense of Adam”; and this, in our judgment, is its meaning here also: “All our
multitudinous breaches of the law are nothing but that one first offense,
lodged mysteriously in the bosom of every child of Adam as an offending
principal, and multiplying itself into myriads of particular
offenses in the life of each.” What was one act of disobedience in the
head has been converted into a vital and virulent principle of
disobedience in all the members of the human family, whose every act of wilful
rebellion proclaims itself the child of the original transgression.
But
where sin abounded—or, “was multiplied.”
grace
did much more abound—rather, “did exceedingly abound,”
or “superabound.” The comparison here is between the multiplication of one
offense into countless transgressions, and such an overflow of grace as more
than meets that appalling case.
21.
That as sin—Observe, the word “offense” is no
more used, as that had been sufficiently illustrated; but—what better befitted
this comprehensive summation of the whole matter—the great general term sin.
hath
reigned unto death—rather, “in death,” triumphing and
(as it were) revelling in that complete destruction of its victims.
even
so might grace reign—In Ro 5:14, 17 we had the reign of death
over the guilty and condemned in Adam; here it is the reign of the mighty causes
of these—of SIN which clothes Death a Sovereign with venomous power (1Co
15:56) and with awful authority (Ro 6:23), and of GRACE, the grace which
originated the scheme of salvation, the grace which “sent the Son to be the
Saviour of the world,” the grace which “made Him to be sin for us who knew no
sin,” the grace which “makes us to be the righteousness of God in Him,” so that
“we who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness
do reign in life by One, Jesus Christ!”
through
righteousness—not ours certainly (“the
obedience of Christians,” to use the wretched language of Grotius) nor yet exactly “justification”
[Stuart, Hodge]; but rather, “the (justifying) righteousness of
Christ” [Beza, Alford, and in substance, Olshausen, Meyer]; the same which in Ro 5:19 is called His “obedience,”
meaning His whole mediatorial work in the flesh. This is here represented as
the righteous medium through which grace reaches its objects and attains
all its ends, the stable throne from which Grace as a Sovereign dispenses its
saving benefits to as many as are brought under its benign sway.
unto
eternal life—which is salvation in its highest
form and fullest development for ever.
by
Jesus Christ our Lord—Thus, on that “Name which is above
every name,” the echoes of this hymn to the glory of “Grace” die away, and
“Jesus is left alone.”
On
reviewing this golden section of our Epistle, the following additional remarks
occur: (1) If this section does not teach that the whole race of Adam, standing
in him as their federal head, “sinned in him and fell with him in his first
transgression,” we may despair of any intelligible exposition of it. The
apostle, after saying that Adam’s sin introduced death into the world, does not
say “and so death passed upon all men for that Adam “sinned,” but “for
that all sinned.” Thus, according to the teaching of the apostle, “the
death of all is for the sin of all”; and as this cannot mean the personal sins
of each individual, but some sin of which unconscious infants are guilty
equally with adults, it can mean nothing but the one “first transgression” of
their common head, regarded as the sin of each of his race, and
punished, as such, with death. It is vain to start back from this imputation to
all of the guilt of Adam’s first sin, as wearing the appearance of injustice.
For not only are all other theories liable to the same objection, in some other
form—besides being inconsistent with the text—but the actual facts of human
nature, which none dispute, and which cannot be explained away, involve essentially
the same difficulties as the great principle on which the apostle here
explains them. If we admit this principle, on the authority of our apostle, a
flood of light is at once thrown upon certain features of the divine procedure,
and certain portions of the divine oracles, which otherwise are involved in
much darkness; and if the principle itself seem hard to digest, it is not
harder than the existence of evil, which, as a fact, admits of no
dispute, but, as a feature in the divine administration, admits of no
explanation in the present state. (2) What is called original sin—or
that depraved tendency to evil with which every child of Adam comes into the
world—is not formally treated of in this section (and even in the seventh
chapter, it is rather its nature and operation than its connection with the
first sin which is handled). But indirectly, this section bears testimony to
it; representing the one original offense, unlike every other, as having an enduring
vitality in the bosom of every child of Adam, as a principle of
disobedience, whose virulence has gotten it the familiar name of “original
sin.” (3) In what sense is the word “death” used throughout this
section? Not certainly as mere temporal death, as Arminian commentators
affirm. For as Christ came to undo what Adam did, which is all comprehended in
the word “death,” it would hence follow that Christ has merely dissolved the
sentence by which soul and body are parted in death; in other words, merely
procured the resurrection of the body. But the New Testament throughout teaches
that the salvation of Christ is from a vastly more comprehensive “death” than
that. But neither is death here used merely in the sense of penal evil,
that is, “any evil inflicted in punishment of sin and for the support of law” [Hodge]. This is too indefinite, making
death a mere figure of speech to denote “penal evil” in general—an idea foreign
to the simplicity of Scripture—or at least making death, strictly so called,
only one part of the thing meant b.y it, which ought not to be resorted to if a
more simple and natural explanation can be found. By “death” then, in this
section, we understand the sinner’s destruction, in the only sense in
which he is capable of it. Even temporal death is called “destruction” (De
7:23; 1Sa 5:11, &c.), as extinguishing all that men regard as life. But a
destruction extending to the soul as well as the body, and into the
future world, is clearly expressed in Mt 7:13; 2Th 1:9; 2Pe 3:16, &c.
This is the penal “death” of our section, and in this view of it we retain its
proper sense. Life—as a state of enjoyment of the favor of God, of pure
fellowship with Him, and voluntary subjection to Him—is a blighted thing from
the moment that sin is found in the creature’s skirts; in that sense, the threatening,
“In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die,” was carried into
immediate effect in the case of Adam when he fell; who was thenceforward “dead
while he lived.” Such are all his posterity from their birth. The separation of
soul and body in temporal death carries the sinner’s destruction” a stage
farther; dissolving his connection with that world out of which he extracted a
pleasurable, though unblest, existence, and ushering him into the presence of
his Judge—first as a disembodied spirit, but ultimately in the body too, in an
enduring condition—“to be punished (and this is the final state) with everlasting
destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of His
power.” This final extinction in soul and body of all that constitutes life,
but yet eternal consciousness of a blighted existence—this, in its amplest and
most awful sense, is “death”! Not
that Adam understood all that. It is enough that he understood “the day” of his
disobedience to be the terminating period of his blissful “life.” In that
simple idea was wrapt up all the rest. But that he should comprehend its details
was not necessary. Nor is it necessary to suppose all that to be intended in
every passage of Scripture where the word occurs. Enough that all we have
described is in the bosom of the thing, and will be realized in as many
as are not the happy subjects of the Reign of Grace. Beyond doubt, the whole of
this is intended in such sublime and comprehensive passages as this: “God …
gave His … Son that whosoever believeth in Him might not perish, but have everlasting life” (Jn 3:16). And should not the
untold horrors of that “death”—already
“reigning over” all that are not in Christ, and hastening to its
consummation—quicken our flight into “the second Adam,” that having “received
the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness, we may reign in life by the One, Jesus Christ?”
Excerpt from:
A Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
by Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset and David Brown
Rick Meyers.
e-Sword ®: www.e-sword.net
