Romans 5:12-21 Why, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed on all men, for that all have sinned:… The apostle's argument turns entirely upon a parallel between the effects of Adam's sin and those of Christ's righteousness. I. HE IS ACCORDINGLY OBLIGED TO GLANCE BACK UPON THE RESULTS WHICH FOLLOWED UPON TIRE FIRST MAN'S TRANSGRESSION OF LAW. 1. The point to be proved is this: Sin and death spread to all mankind "through one man." The proof is this: All men betwixt Adam and Moses died. Why? Not, argues St. Paul, for any transgression of their own, but for Adam's. At first one may object, sin was in the world. Why should they not have died for their own sin? (1) But remember that Paul has already taught us to discriminate betwixt sin committed against, and sin committed without law. Without a law sin may be present as a defect of nature or fault of will, but sin as a violation of statute can enter only where the statute is known. "Where no law is there can be no transgression" (Romans 4:15). This he now supplements by "sin is not imputed where there is no law" (ver. 13), axioms which carry with them all the stronger assurance of truth, that they not only echo, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do," but are in accord with all that our Lord taught us concerning Him who is perfect love. (2) Turning next to the bearing of these legal maxims upon the position of men betwixt Adam and Moses, one cannot fail to see that it applies to them roundly, yet with qualifications. That they sinned "without law," and therefore "not after the fashion of Adam's transgression" (ver. 14), is true in the main, but only partially true of some of them. St. Paul himself implies as much by, "even over them that had not sinned" as Adam did. For although the ages before Moses, like the vast heathen world ever since, possessed no statute recognised to have come from heaven which denounced death as the penalty of transgression, such as Adam or the Jews had, and therefore could not break the statute with their eyes open in the same degree; yet they still retained (chap. Romans 1) the relics of natural conscience, testifying to the eternal rules of right and wrong, and testifying quite clearly enough to render some of them at least inexcusable. But in many of them conscience was undeveloped, false judgments; in all, it was defective, prescribing only certain rules of duty, and very feebly declaring, if at all, the penalty for disobedience. Besides, this inadequacy of the moral sense, being a portion of that subjection of human nature to the consequences of transgression for which we are seeking to account, needs itself to be accounted for. 2. After all fair deductions have been allowed for, let the question be put broadly: Were the sins committed without revealed law such that, had there been no antecedent transgression, they would have been in the bulk of cases punishable with eternal death? I think St. Paul's reasoning compels us to reply that they were not. Suppose it conceivable for a new-created moral agent to be left in that condition of imperfect knowledge of the Divine will, and to sin, his fall would not entail such a penalty as actually followed the transgression of Adam. Here, then, were men dying for thousands of years under a penalty which was originally attached to the express violation of a known law, but not attached to such sins as they themselves could commit. Before Adam there had been placed a clear command with precise warnings. Deliberately breaking it, he died. But his posterity could not so sin. Before them no such positive law had been set. To them no such consequences had been foretold. They made no such deliberate choice. Yet on all of them alike falls that same penalty. There is the fact. Is there any other explanation of it except St. Paul's, viz., that they died because Adam sinned; because the sentence passed on the first man for his transgression included his posterity in its sweep, be their personal offences what they might; and from this point of view it does supply an explanation for what must otherwise appear inexplicable. Moreover, if it be once admitted, it materially alters the complexion of all the subsequent sins of mankind. Those later sins of the "men without law" might not be such "transgressions" as of themselves to entail "death." Yet it is impossible to cut them off from their guilty origin in the "one transgression" which went before. If the race be one, and its whole sin be the fruit of one culpable and deliberate act of original rebellion, then it is clear that the total mass of moral evil must continue to be stained throughout with the dark hue of its origin. 3. It need hardly be added that in the case of adults under Christianity, sin has to a great extent recovered the type of Adam's first transgression. The law has long since been republished with plain spoken promises and penalties. Most of us have chosen evil with the clearest knowledge. Still, even we can be proved to underlie the penalty, not of our own, but of Adam's sin. For time was when we, too, had "no law." As children we knew nothing of sin or duty, of the Lawgiver or the penalty. Yet we were subject then to death. 4. All this, however, is not preliminary merely, but parenthetic. Now that the sweeping lapse of a race into death through the single act of a representative man has been proved, he is prepared at the close of ver. 14 to resume his interrupted sentence begun in ver. 12. He does not resume it, and the reason is very notable. He has caught sight of differences betwixt the two cases which make the parallel in some points a contrast. The cases are similar, but not equal. Is there any shortcoming? On the contrary, there is a glorious excess. The apostle, therefore, forbears to conclude his parallel, but abruptly exclaims — II. "BUT NOT AS THE TRESPASS, SO ALSO IS THE FREE GIFT!" (ver. 15). 1. One point of superiority is developed in ver. 15, "If by the trespass of the one," etc. Here are two similar procedures on the part of God, by which a vast multitude of human beings is involved in each case in the fate of one man. The one application of the principle turns out to be a terrific disaster which overwhelms countless millions of unhappy beings in the judgment and ruin that overtake their transgressing representative. The other is a blessed provision of Divine kindness brought in to remedy the sad efforts of the former through the action of a better and abler Representative. This argument bears upon us in two ways. 1. Do we feel the fact of universal condemnation for a single man's sin to be baffling? Then learn the best use to be made of this hard fact. If anything can relieve the difficulty it must be when grace pledges itself to save on the same principle. It is at least something to discover that it is a principle of the Divine administration and not an isolated occurrence. There comes out (to say no more) a certain noble consistency in God's treatment of us. When the very principle which, on its first application, in Adam worked disaster, turns its hand, so to say, in the gospel, to work a remedy for its own ruin, is there not a certain poetical justice, or dramatic completeness, in the two-fold scheme? May not the one be intended to be read in the light of the other? Is it not conceivable that both applications of the one rule to the Two Heads of Humanity may be requisite to make up that plan of Omniscience, of which each were but a broken part? At all events one thing is plain. The more keenly anyone feels the hardship of being involved without his will in the condemnation of another, with so much the more joyous eagerness ought he to embrace the parallel way of escape which has been brought nigh by the obedience of Another. 2. Are you one who stumbles, not at the fall in Adam, but at the doctrine of a free pardon in Christ apart from merits of your own? Have you never considered to whom you are indebted for your sin and condemnation? Surely, if you must take death at another man's hand, you may as well take life too! Is it not idle to quarrel with the way in which God would set us right, since it is in this very way that we have got wrong. 3. Another point of superiority arises: one of fact no less than of logic. "blot as through one that sinned, so is the gift," etc. (ver. 16, R.V). In order to men's condemnation there needed but the one trespass of Adam. In order to our being declared righteous, there need "many trespasses" to be wiped out in blood. The Restorer's work might perhaps have followed close on the fall by an instant purging of the "first transgression," and an instant replacing of the lapsed race in recovered purity again. There would in that event have been no room for the superiority St. Paul seems here to have in his eye. But it pleased the Most High to suffer sin to make its way through the world till it had grown to be a burden intolerable to the earth. Then at length came the "free gift" of an atonement which covered all. It is the same with individual experience. Is it not alter a man has for years abused his freedom to choose the wrong, adding to the inherited fault under which he is condemned a crowd of illegal acts, that the "free gift which justifies" is usually revealed to the soul? Then when it comes to a mature and experienced offender, grown penitent at last, how widely must it abound! 4. Another point of superiority remains: "If by the trespass of the One," etc. (ver. 17, R.V). The results to be expected from redemption are grander than the results of the fall were disastrous. This sounds fabulous, for the disaster entailed on mankind by the fall of "the One" might well appear too fearful ever to be overtopped by any subsequent advantage; that disaster Paul does not attempt to soften. "Death reigned"; it not only "entered" and "passed through unto all" (ver. 12), it is man's king. A triple crown it wears: over body, soul, and spirit. Over against this last extremity of ill, what can Jesus bring us of excelling good? Why, merely to undo that curse calls for the abolishing of death. To discrown our tyrant — no more; and set them free who are all their lifetime subject to his bondage; is not this as much as man's highest hope dare look for? But superabounding grace conceives a higher triumph. The Deliverer turns a rescue into a conquest. The curse is reversed till it becomes a blessing. Having brought back life, Christ raises life to glory. Death is discrowned, but only to set a crown upon the head of the redeemed. Not "death reigns" any more, but we "reign in life." (J. Oswald Dykes, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned: |
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