Romans 5:12 - 21 (Part 2)

Romans — Steve Gregg

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Romans 5:12 - 21 (Part 2)

RomansSteve Gregg

The debate on the concept of inherited sin among Christians is discussed in this passage from Romans 5:12-21. While some believe in a sinful nature passed down from Adam, others follow the Augustinian view that all humans are born guilty for Adam's sin. The passage emphasizes differences between Adam's selfish motive for sinning and Christ's gracious act of salvation, and through personification, Paul presents a drama where grace ultimately overcomes and abounds. The need to live in righteousness and not as slaves to sin is also emphasized, and the passage concludes with the idea that through Christ's sacrifice, we are made righteous and victorious over sin and death.

Transcript

When Paul talks about what we inherited from Adam, he says for sure that we die because of Adam. Now, what else do we have from Adam? Is it that we have inherited a sinful nature that simply inclines us to sin, which we have no power to resist without God, and therefore we inevitably do sin, and therefore we're all guilty because we sin, and we could not have helped but sin because that's the nature of man ever since the fall, to be a sinner by nature. Is that all, or is there this additional thing that Augustine certainly advanced, that in addition to becoming sinners by nature, we became sinners by history.

That is, we have sins on our record. Even when we're born and haven't sinned yet, Adam's sin is on our record, like a rap sheet. So we're born with criminal guilt and punishment hanging over our head before we've done a single thing, because Adam did it and we were in him, his guilt is now ours.

This is often thought to be a necessary part of the doctrine. And when people talk about original sin, they're not always meaning the same thing. Some people believe it only means that because of Adam we have a sinful nature and tendency, therefore we sin and incur personal guilt.

Others believe, and this would be the majority, as far as I know, at least those who are Augustinian, which is a pretty majority view of Western Christians, that we all were born guilty. And then this, of course, translates into even the doctrine of infant guilt, so that a baby is guilty before it's ever done a single thing. And if the baby is unfortunate enough to die in infancy, it dies guilty and unforgiven and unsaved, and it goes to hell.

This is frankly what Augustine believed. Unless the baby had been baptized, and hence the doctrine of infant baptism enters to try to somewhat ameliorate the otherwise offensiveness of the idea that every baby who dies is going to be burning in hell forever. That's offensive to our sensitivities.

And so maybe to make it a little less offensive, we can say, well, that can be avoided if you baptize your babies. And then, of course, that makes a very strong incentive for you to baptize your baby too. Get it baptized before it dies, because otherwise it dies guilty of Adam's sin and going to suffer the same consequences any sinner who dies in their sins suffers.

That's a really severe, a really harsh way of understanding things, but it is the Augustinian view and also perpetuated in a number of theological systems that come from Augustine. Does Paul say that? What's interesting, I note in verse 12, Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, he doesn't say, because one man sinned, sin was spread to all men. Now, he does seem to suggest that later in the passage, but that might be a new subject, in a sense, a new aspect.

What he starts by saying is, Adam's sin brought, he doesn't say sin, but death. Now, the last line, because all sinned, in the Latin Vulgate, came to be translated, in whom all sinned, implying in Adam all sinned. I mentioned Augustine, who didn't really read Greek and used the Latin Bible.

He used the in whom all sinned to argue that we have all become guilty of sin in Adam's action, not our own. But it doesn't say in whom all sinned, it says because all sinned, and that's ambiguous. It could mean because all sinned in Adam.

It could still be Augustinian in its meaning, or not. It may be just saying we all died because we all sinned. Because all sinned.

After all, the same phrase, or one very much like it, is found in Romans 3, where it says all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. It's essentially the same phrase. And so, it's talking about individual sin in that case.

So, there is much ambiguity here to sort out. Now, he comes to what's supposed to be explanatory, I suppose, and says, That seems to mean even those who didn't have a law, like Adam did. They didn't have a law that they broke, that they transgressed.

They did wrong things, but there was no law there to define what they were doing as wrong things. But the fact that they were ignorant, or they didn't have a law they were breaking, didn't prevent death from ruling over them anyway. Now, this either means, as the Augustinian would say, that people died from Adam to Moses without even a law to condemn them, because they were dying for Adam's sin.

Because Adam's sin, the guilt of it was on them, and they were being punished for it. And for that reason, they died even though there was no law. But he says there, where there's no law, sin is not imputed, which almost sounds like he's denying the Augustinian doctrine.

God doesn't impute sin to people who have not broken a law. Now, what does that mean then? Does it possibly mean that death was simply a natural consequence that came upon the human race because Adam sinned and we were banished from the garden, from the tree of life, therefore people died, whether God was imputing sin to them or not. Before the law, he didn't impute sin to them, but they still died.

And that might even be saying, that proves that death is not in every case a judgment for sin. Death, indeed, was man's consequence for being banished from the garden, and we've all been born and live our lives and die banished from that garden. And therefore, death is what we face.

But it may not be that the death of an individual means that God is imputing sin to them. Because sin is not imputed, where there's no law, and yet before the law came, they were still dying. Which means that people could die without sin being imputed to them.

That could include babies. It could be that a baby that dies, it doesn't tell us anything about whether God's imputing sin to them. They're just like the rest of us, they're alienated from the garden, alienated from the tree of life, and that's just what people do.

People die young, old, middle-aged, I mean, for different reasons. A baby that dies of a disease, or a birth defect, or whatever. They're just dying for the same reason everyone else does, in a sense.

But physical death isn't necessarily an indication of God's wrath. And we should know that, especially since Christians who have escaped the wrath of God still experience physical death. If we say that death proves God is angry, and God is judging sin, then we have to say, well then why do Christians, for whom there's no condemnation, for those who are in Christ, they die anyway? It seems like what Paul is saying is we can't assume that physical death is an indicator of God holding someone guilty of something.

And that's a very important thing, because we need to have that eternal perspective. A person is going to be judged ultimately in eternity for what they've done. But in time, their circumstances may bear little resemblance to what they deserve.

I mentioned this earlier in another connection. When we are concerned about the babies of Canaan that were killed by the Israelites, we think, oh, that's a horrible thing, why did God hold it against those babies? Well, maybe he didn't. Unfortunately, they were casualties of a war.

The war had a purpose. Unfortunately, the babies didn't do anything to deserve what they got. But God knows, if babies die, well, all they have done is die.

People all die. A baby dying isn't suffering necessarily any more judgment from God than an adult who dies, and every adult dies. So, we shouldn't see a cause and effect between sin and death in every individual case.

Of course, there is a cause and effect between, on the one hand, a person's guilt or innocence, and on the other hand, what God does for eternity to them. The post-mortem judgment will definitely have to be just. It will have to correspond with people's righteousness or their unrighteousness.

But physical death, not so much. And because we don't think in eternal categories as much as we do in natural categories, we think, well, why did that guy have to die? Why did Uzzah have to die? All he did was touch the ark. Is that all that bad? I mean, maybe it is bad, but it's not as bad as what some other people do, and they don't get struck dead.

What's up with that? How come Nadab and Abihu got consumed for offering strange fire? That seems awfully severe. Ananias and Sapphira get struck dead for not giving all the money in line about it. I mean, these are sins, and the wages of all sin is death.

So, we can't say that it was wrong for God to judge them with physical death there. But the real question is, is that the end of them? Maybe Uzzah is in heaven. Maybe Ananias and Sapphira are in heaven.

Who knows? We don't know what their state was before God. We know that God had them die in a certain situation related to a certain action, to make an example of them or whatever. A person dying doesn't tell us if they're lost or not.

Now, death is nonetheless sort of our condemnation. We're all condemned to die. But not necessarily because we have earned it by our actions more than someone else.

If I die young, it doesn't mean I deserve to die young more than somebody who dies old deserves to die old. Death is just the universal condemnation of the race. We've been condemned to be banished from the tree of life.

And it doesn't say sin reigned in verse 14. It says death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not actually broken a law or a rule, a stated command like Adam had. So, we see even between Adam and Moses, people died because that's what Adam bequeathed to us, absence from the tree of life, absence from the garden of Eden.

We do suffer because of Adam's sin. But verses 15 through 17 then, which is the rest of this parenthesis, kind of tries to work out some things and show that there's an unequalness about what Adam and Christ have done. There's some generic parallel in that you can be in Adam or be in Christ and this will affect your ultimate status and destiny and so forth.

But beyond that general fact, there's not much they have in common. In fact, if anything, they're primarily contrasted. What Adam did is the opposite of what Jesus did.

The way Paul makes this point is through really complex, convoluted kind of sentences that sometimes makes it hard to know what is the main point of this sentence. Like this one, verse 15. But the free gift is not like the offense.

For if by the one man's offense many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many. Now I might just point out that the word many, which occurs twice here, and also occurs in verse 19, it occurs twice also. Many.

In the Greek it happens to be the many. Now that doesn't change very much, but it is simply a fact that he says if by one man's offense the many died, so also by the grace of the one man it has abounded to the many. Now the many seems to be a particular group of people who happen to be many rather than few, but it's the same many.

The same ones. The many. These many people.

And so the many seems to be a reference to all humanity, of course, since we know that all people die. Then the many is the whole human race. But then the many affected by Christ would appear to be the whole human race too, because they're the same many.

The many. And this is where some of the verses that come later on have been an encouragement to Christian Universalists, because he talks about how the many were condemned to Adam, but the many are justified through Christ. Now one of the arguments against this is that the many who are condemned are not the same the many, but that he means the many who are in Adam have this experience, but the other many, the many who are in Christ have the other.

So even this reference to the many has its own ambiguities. But what is verse 15 saying? I think that this is probably an accurate thing to say, that in Paul's attempt to make some differences between what Adam did and what Christ did, very significant differences, in fact polar opposite differences, I think verse 15 probably is intended to focus on the motivational difference. Adam was motivated by self-will.

Now that is not stated in so many terms, except it's contrasted with the motive that God had, his grace. And therefore in saying this is a contrast, and on the second part of this contrast, God did this through his grace. It may be suggested that God's unselfish grace is contrasted with Adam's selfish offense.

By the way, there's a marginal note in the New King James that the word offense could be trespass. And a trespass again is a deliberate act of violation of law. And so the emphasis may well be that Adam was a deliberate lawbreaker, acting in total self-interest.

He was not unselfish, he was selfishly breaking the law. And in that sense, the consequence that came upon us from that comes from a very different motivation on Adam's part than the motivation that gave us the gift in Christ. Because he says, for if by one man's offense many died, much more the grace of God, which is of course in this case God's motive for saving, he's acting unselfishly, he's acting graciously.

And the gift by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ abounded to many. So God gives us a gift through his grace, that is through his benevolence to us, his unselfishness, his thinking about us, not about himself. Adam on the other hand was thinking only about himself.

And so in a sense, to compare Jesus and Adam is almost inappropriate, Paul is saying. Because Adam of course had a very different motive than Jesus did. Adam was motivated by evil in his heart, Christ is motivated by grace.

And therefore, before we make too much of a comparison, we better clarify that too much of a comparison would bring disrepute on Christ himself. He's not like Adam. He didn't act on the same motives Adam did.

We need to clarify that Jesus had better motives than Adam had. And then verse 16, And the gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned. Now the gift of course is the result of Christ's righteous act and it's contrasted with the result of Adam's sin.

So now if he was focusing on the difference in motives in verse 15, he now wants to focus on the difference in results. Why was the act done? Well that's the motive. What happened as a result? Well that's the result and that's different too.

The motives are different and the results are different. The gift is not like, now the gift is the result of Christ's action. And it is not like that other result, the death that came from Adam's action.

For the judgment which came from one offense resulted in condemnation, but the free gift which came from many offenses resulted in justification. So Christ was motivated differently than Adam, so we shouldn't try to press this comparison between Christ and Adam beyond what we should. Because we don't want to make Christ really like Adam in that.

And we don't even want to suggest that the effect that Adam had is similar to the effect that Christ had. In other words, Paul's backing away from his comparison. He's saying Adam was a type of Christ, but let's make sure we don't connect too many likenesses there.

Because for the most part, he's a type of Christ more by contrast than by comparison. In the one sense, they are the same in that they are both the heads of a corporate humanity. A humanity in Adam and a humanity in Christ.

Thereafter, the resemblance disappears. And so in this section, I think he's trying to say, I'm not saying this and I'm not saying this and I'm not saying this. I'm just saying this one thing.

I'm not saying that Adam and Christ were motivated the same way. No, it's not the same. I'm not saying the results are the same.

No, they're actually the opposite results. The result of Adam's transgression was condemnation. The result of Christ's free righteous act and gift was justification.

So in other words, there's more contrast here than comparison. And verse 17, for if by one man's offense, death reigned through one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the one Jesus Christ. Now, what is this reigning? This is the difference in this third contrast.

The first contrast is probably a motivation. The second contrast is in the result, at least the result in terms of legal status, condemned versus justified. But there's something beyond legal status.

There's also practical results. The result of Adamson is that death reigned over humanity. But the result of Christ act, you would think he'd say life reigned.

That's that'd be the exact contrast. But Paul doesn't even want to put it that way. He says we reign through life.

In other words, Adam's act made us slaves, reigned over by death, helplessly subject to the malice of death as a cruel master. But it's not just that Jesus gave us a new master. It's that he made us rulers.

We're no slaves of death. We are reigning in life. Now, of course, Paul doesn't want that to be pushed too far either because later in chapter 6, he's going to say we are slaves of righteousness.

I mean, these metaphors of slave market and law court, these metaphors that Paul uses, he doesn't want any of them pressed beyond what he has in mind. Each one of these metaphors gives us sort of a glimmer of light as to some of the nature of what God has done in Christ. But if you press them too far, you lose the value of them.

There's a sense in which we reign. This is in contrast to being reigned over by death. He's actually making the contrast.

We were slaves, now we're free. Not only are we free, we're reigning over whatever. Sin, reigning over our spiritual adversaries, reigning over, maybe even reigning over death.

Because death is to be conquered. I'm not sure exactly what he says we're reigning over. But his change of phraseology is making it plain.

He wants us to see that there's a liberty and an exaltation in Christ. Christ is reigning and we reign in Him. After all, Paul says in Ephesians chapter 2, I think it's verse 6 if I'm not mistaken, Paul says that we in Christ are seated in heavenly places.

In Christ, He is. He's seated in heavenly places and we're in Him. But His position in heavenly places is a place of rulership.

So in Him, we're seated in heaven and ruling. It's not really that we're really there, but we have that status in Him. These concepts kind of make the head spin, sometimes I have to confess.

But Paul does make three contrasts here. One, in the trespass being contrasted with the grace. Presumably, focusing on the difference in motivations.

Christ's motives were entirely different. His were gracious, Adam's selfish. The second contrast is in terms of legal ramifications.

Because of Adam's sin, we all have come under the condemnation. He might mean the condemnation of physical death. Whereas with Christ, it's the opposite.

We've been justified. So the results of the free gift are different than the results of the sin. And then, of course, here another difference in result is the practical.

Man has lived his life under the bondage and the rule of death. The fear of death has really held everyone in bondage. That's what it says in Hebrews 2, verse 15.

It says that Jesus destroyed him who had the power of death so that He might deliver those who all their lifetimes were held in bondage through the fear of death. Satan has held mankind in bondage because man's afraid to die. Why is man afraid to die? Because he's not prepared to meet God.

Because of sin, we ought to be afraid to die. However, Christ changes that. We are above that now.

We're above the fear of death. We've been delivered from the fear of death. We're reigning in life with Christ now.

And so Paul has, although without very much clarity, it seems to me, he has made some deliberate caveats. I would say caveats. Because he starts out by trying to cause us to see the parallel between Adam and Christ.

But with these caveats, there's actually more differences than there are parallels. Now, I'd also want to point out that Paul likes to use the phrase, much more. We saw it back, for example, in verse 9 of this chapter.

Much more than having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. Now, whether much more means more in quantity or extent, or whether it just means more certainly. Because in verse 8 he says, But God demonstrates His own love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us much more than.

It might mean much more obviously or much more certainly than. Because He did that when we were sinners, how much more obvious is it that He's going to do all things for us now that we're justified? And so it's hard to know exactly what Paul means by much more. But he seems to be saying, for example, in verse 15, almost in the middle of that verse, it says, Much more the grace of God and the gift of grace, etc., etc.

And there's another much more later on. Now, is he just speaking rhetorically, this is much more the case? Or is he saying that what Christ done is much more than what Adam did? That Christ's gift to man is much more than Adam's demerit or condemnation that he brought on man. This too would be an interesting question to know the answer to because those who teach universal reconciliation would say, If Paul is just saying that those who are in Adam die and are condemned, but those who are in Christ are justified and aren't condemned, well, those who are in Christ are a smaller number, a much smaller number than those who are condemned.

If you take the world population, a very small portion are true Christians. And even if we take all the professing Christians at this present time where Christianity is more widespread than it's ever been before, about a quarter of the world are professing Christians, of which only probably a fraction of them are real born-again people. Now, in other words, those who are not Christians far outnumber those who are.

And if Paul is saying Adam's problems he brought us are overwhelmed by the much greater benefits that Christ has brought, well, the universal reconciliation view says, Well, wait a minute, if Christ has done great things for a few people, relatively few people, but Adam has brought condemnation on the vast majority, how could what Jesus has done be considered to be much more than what Adam's done? If virtually everybody in the world, except the few who are in Christ, remain condemned in Adam, how is it that Christ saving a few has much more impact on the human race than Adam? Now, in answer to this, and it's a challenging question, but in answer it could be said, Well, the much more-ness of Christ's thing that he has done for us is not saying that he's done more for the human race, but that what he has done for those who are in him, its worth, and its value, and its benefits, are far in excess of the things that Adam has done for evil in the race. I'm not making things clear because I'm stuck with what Paul said, and he hasn't made it clear, in my opinion. There's just too many ways he might go.

And therefore, I usually look at this section, verses 15 through 17, as just a model. I mean, I can get some things out of it, but there are things about Paul's wording, how he makes the comparison is not exactly the cleanest way. I just say, what Paul's saying is here, don't take this as an exact comparison with Adam and Christ.

There's differences, big differences, opposites in some ways. But then he comes in verse 18 back to where he started in verse 12. He did not finish his sentence in verse 12, so it's time to do so and move on.

But he has to restate the first part of it, because he's gone off on so many side tracks, that he expects the reader has lost the thread. And I think quite reasonably, he's sensitive to that fact. He says, therefore, as through one man's offense, judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation.

Now, this is exactly the same statement as verse 12, with the exception that verse 12 used the word death, and verse 18 has substituted that with condemnation. But death is condemnation. Now, it might not be the kind of condemnation that results in eternal condemnation, but everyone who's born is condemned to die.

They're born in a state where their destiny is to die, whether they like it or not. We're all condemned to die because we're living in a fallen world. And so condemnation here is the parallel to death in verse 12.

And so the first half of verse 18 is just a restatement of what Paul started to say in verse 12. Now he finishes his thought, even so. See, whenever there's a sentence that starts with as this, you expect even so that, because there's a comparison that's supposed to be made.

We finally find out what the comparison is. Even so, through one man's righteous act, the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life. Now, that's not a surprising ending, because much of what Paul said in the parenthesis anticipated this.

Adam brought condemnation, Christ brought justification. Adam brought death reigning, Christ brings us reigning in life. So, I mean, these thoughts have been introduced in his comparisons earlier, his contrast, but now he actually puts it into a single sentence.

This sentence, once again, has been thought by many to teach universal reconciliation. Not that all people just die and go to heaven automatically, but that ultimately the justification that Christ has brought about will benefit all men. Now, this is something that most Christians would not agree with that interpretation.

This just happens to be one of the verses in Scripture that sounds most strongly like this could be the case, because there's a contrast between all men and all men. And the first all men is those who came under judgment because of Adam's sin. How many is that? That's really all men.

And they say, so also all men. Now, is he got a different all men now? Are there different, is there another all men somewhere that we don't know about besides the all men he mentioned earlier? Now, one could argue he means all men who are in Christ, and that would be fair enough if he said that, but he didn't qualify. He didn't say all men in Adam are condemned, and all men in Christ are justified.

He just said all men were condemned because of Adam, and all men are justified because of Christ. Now, one could argue that people are all justified until they reach an age of accountability where they actually turn against God and have rejected that justification so that some people still will not be saved. It could be that the justification that came on all men was from birth as, in a sense, the condemnation was from birth.

So that if Christ had not come, maybe all people would be condemned without exception, but since Christ has come, all people now have this justification. They are now clean for the time being when they're born, but then, of course, they grow to a stage where they're committing sins and doing it on purpose, and so forth, and they're not, that changes. It would simply be suggesting that Christ's sacrifice covers the guilt of sin in infants up to a certain age, but that's reading a lot into it, too.

I incline myself to think that that may be true, but I honestly have to say you have to read some stuff into it that's not there. So if we simply take the statement as it stands, he's saying all men were condemned in Adam, and all men have been justified in Christ. And Paul does say elsewhere in 2 Corinthians 5, 21, 5 in verse 21, no, we've got to go back further still, 19 through 21 is really what it is.

2 Corinthians 5, 19, that is, God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. Okay, the world is not usually a word that refers to the church. God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation.

In other words, we're bringing the message of this reconciliation. God's made the reconciliation. He has reconciled the world to himself.

Now we're sent out to tell them. We have the word, the message of reconciliation to bring them. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us, we implore you, on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God.

So God has been reconciled to us, but we have to be reconciled to him. He has not imputed the sins of the world to him, because he imputed them to Christ, the second Adam. And it could be said that justification, therefore, came to all men.

But men have not all benefited from it, because you might be a prisoner on death row, and the court retries your case with new DNA evidence that proves you're innocent, and therefore the judge comes back with a new verdict. You're innocent now. You're now acquitted.

You're now justified. But if the criminal doesn't believe it, if he thinks, oh yeah, you're just going to, as soon as I walk out of here, you're going to shoot me in the back and say I was trying to escape. I'm just saved right here in my cell, right where I belong.

Or I don't like the terms on which you're offering it. I don't like that judge. He condemned me before.

I dislike him so much, I'm not going to even respond to him here. I mean, it'd be stupid. It'd be a stupid response, but isn't it a stupid response for people not to receive Christ too? I mean, the point here is that it may be that a blanket acquittal has been offered to all through Christ, but they still have to appropriate it.

They still have to agree with it. They still have to believe it. They still have to act on it, and if they don't, they remain on death row.

I mean, this is a possible way of understanding what Paul's saying. One other thing I wanted to point out before we move on to the next verse in Romans is in Colossians chapter 1, there's this lengthy discussion about Christ, and among other things, Paul says in Colossians 1.16, For by him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible, invisible, whether thrones or dominions, the principalities or powers, all things are created through him and for him. And then it says some more things about him, and then it says in verse 19, For it pleased the Father that in him all the fullness should dwell, and by him to reconcile all things to himself by him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of his cross.

Now notice he talks about the reconciliation of all things. All things? Are we talking about some things or all things? Well, he says all things that are in heaven and things that are on earth. Well, that phrase was used back in verse 16 about all things that were created.

Through him all things that were created that are in heaven and earth. Is that a limited number of things? Or is that all things? I mean, all sometimes doesn't mean all. Sometimes it's a hyperbole.

But in verse 16 it's not. Verse 16, All things were made by Christ in heaven and earth. Then, what, four verses later, God's going to reconcile all things in Christ, both in heaven and earth.

It sounds like the all things in both cases are the same all things. In which case, as again the reconciliation view believes, the restorationist view, they believe that God's ultimately going to restore everything that he created. He's not going to lose anything.

You say, well, how could that be? People die lost all the time. Well, they do. But the reconciliation view would say, well, that's not necessarily the end of the opportunities.

And God is going to keep pursuing people even after they've died until they finally break down and repent. And they will repent like we did. And they'll be saved the same way we did.

The view is not teaching, as some people mistake, that people will be saved without Christ. It's just that the view is suggesting that people have an extended opportunity to respond to Christ. Just like some do in this life.

Some people die at age 18 with limited opportunities to accept Christ in their lifetime. Others live to be 88 and they have extended opportunity. And the view is, well, what if God extends that even further beyond the grave and however long it takes? Everyone being given as much opportunity as it will take.

That's what the view holds. The idea being that God wants to restore to Himself everything that He created. It's His, after all.

Anything He loses is His loss. Why should He be the loser cosmically forever? Of anything. Isn't He the winner, the victor? So these are the ways that this is argued.

Romans 5.18 is one of the chief texts about that. It says, By one man's offense, judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation, even though through one man's righteous act. That righteous act would be probably Jesus offering Himself on the cross.

The free gift came to all men. All men and all men. Resulting in justification of life.

Verse 19, For as by one man's disobedience, the many were made sinners, so also by one man's obedience, the many, is how it reads in the Greek, will be made righteous. Now again, are the many the same the many? Are the all, in verse 18, the same all in both cases? If so, then it would appear that the many, which is the same as the all in the previous verse, are the same the many in both cases. This is one of those things that can be disputed, but raises new questions that some people have never considered, which the Church has not been permitted to consider, even though people like Clement of Alexandria and Origen and so forth believed in the reconciliation of all things to God, but that was eventually branded by the Catholic Church as a heresy, but then so was Luther.

So, you know, eventually the Catholic Church branded everything as a heresy that wasn't what they ended up teaching. There are things to chew on here that may suggest a greater effect of salvation through Christ than the effect of Adam's impact on the world. Now, having waded through that muddy section, we come to something not so hard to understand.

Although Paul thinks it can be misunderstood, and he's going to take chapter 6 to clarify mistaken notions that could be drawn from the next two verses. Verses 20 and 22 say, Moreover, the law entered that the offense might abound, but where sin abounded, grace abounded much more. So that as sin reigned until death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Now, here he's personifying certain non-persons concepts. The law, grace, sin, death. In this section, as many commentators have pointed out, Paul is personifying these.

He's sort of presenting it as a drama because in verse 14 already he says, Death reigned from Adam to Moses as if death was a person reigning over humanity. It's not a person, but it is personified elsewhere in Scripture just for literary purposes. For example, in Revelation 6, when the fourth seal is broken and the pale horse is seen, it says the rider on the pale horse was death.

And following was Hades. Well, death isn't really a rider on a horse, death's not even a person. But clearly he's being personified as a player in the drama in Revelation.

And at the end of the drama, the same two players, death and Hades, are cast into the lake of fire along with the dragon and the beast and the false prophet. As if, again, death and Hades are people. They are in the story.

The story is using the personification of these things to make certain theological points. So is Paul, he's personifying death. Death has come in and reigned.

Sin has reigned too. But now the law enters in verse 20. It's like in this drama, the villains have been reigning unchallenged.

Here comes a challenger, a white hat person, a hero, the law. Man is condemned under sin, he's dying. Certainly there must be a hero that can come and rescue him from his sin and his dying.

Now here comes the law. Certainly the law will fix this. But the law fails entirely, Paul says.

He said the law entered, but the result was only that the offense abounded more. And what he means by that is the law illuminated the sin. That which was sin but undefined before the law came, was now sin defined, clearly recognizable.

That didn't help. If anything, having your sins defined makes you only more condemned. So the law, which the Jews saw as the hero in the story, Moses comes, the law comes.

Certainly this makes a righteous people. This overcomes the hegemony of sin and death reigning over the law. That's what the Jews worshipped, essentially, in a sense, the law.

That's what makes us saved. That's what is the antidote to sin. But Paul's going to argue, no, the law was never an antidote to sin.

He's going to get into this more in chapter 7. The law apparently was never even meant to be an antidote to sin. It doesn't function that way. What the law does is show you that you're a sinner.

Something you might not have known until the law said so. So the law was an anti-hero. The law was not a hero in this story.

So sin abounded. However, there's a real hero in the story called grace. The law only caused sin to abound.

That has become more obvious. But where sin abounded, grace abounded. Grace overwhelmed it.

And as abounded in the early part of that verse means became more evident, so also it means that when grace abounded, grace became more evident. When sin became more evident, God's forgiving of sin, His graciousness in doing so became more evident. You may not know how much you've been forgiven until you realize how guilty you are and how much God has said, I cancel this debt.

Remember the story that Jesus told when the woman who was a great sinner came and washed his feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. And he was criticized for letting her do that. And he said, let me tell you a story, Simon.

He said, a man had two debtors. One owed him 100 bucks. The other owed him a million bucks.

They couldn't pay, so he forgave them both. Now, which one do you think loved him most? And even the Pharisee Simon said, I suppose the one who was forgiven more, loved more. And Jesus said, that's right.

And this woman's a great sinner, so she loves much. You haven't been forgiven as many notorious sins so you don't think you have been, so you don't love much. The more you know the debt that's been canceled, the more you know the sin and the penalty that was due that has been now forgiven, the more astonishing the grace is, the more amazing the grace is.

If I think I'm just kind of not perfect and God forgave me, well, I can be thankful they did that. But if I think I'm an utter wretch, totally hopeless, doomed, and just a total slave to my iniquity, and then God says, yeah, but I'm going to forgive you for that. Suddenly, that's astonishing.

When the sin is abounding more, that is when it's more evident, then God's grace is more evident in it. Now, Paul's going to anticipate the natural thing that many people say in chapter 6, verse 1. If grace will abound that way, shouldn't we sin more? What should we say then? Shall we sin? Continue in sin so grace may abound? Because Paul just said, when sin abounded, grace abounded more. Isn't grace abounding a good thing? Well, then it must be a good thing for us to sin more so grace can abound more.

Let's go that way. And Paul says, no, that is a misrepresentation of what I'm talking about. But his words, obviously, being as they are, could lead to that impression.

Just think how much people will be impressed with the grace of God when they see how nasty I live my life and realize that he forgave me for that. So I can just live my life in sin and it'll make God's grace more glorious. Now, that's not what Paul's saying, but that's what is a perversion of what he said in verse 20.

And then he said in verse 20, so that as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Now, here's sin was reigning, but now grace is reigning. Now, what does sin reigning look like? It might mean that just because sin has the last word, sin declares our guilt and therefore we die.

Or it could be for the fact that sin actually is reigning in my body. I actually am a slave of sin. Paul's going to say that in chapter six.

He's going to talk about how we were slaves of sin. Sin was reigning, but now grace is reigning. Now, again, that means we're not under sin, we're under grace.

The reign of grace has replaced the reign of sin. But someone could misunderstand that and say, well, if we're under grace, then it's okay if we sin because we're not under law, but under grace. And so Paul addresses that in chapter six, verse 15.

What then shall we sin because we're not under the law, but under grace. So what Paul has done is introduced two thoughts in verses 20 and 21 of chapter five. There's a sense which chapter five, verse 20 is the conclusion of the book.

But there's too many things about what he has said that have historically been misunderstood and twisted. So he's got to spend several chapters making sure that he's not misunderstood. So he has said that we're sin abounded, grace abounded.

So he's got to deal with, well, shall we sin then? So grace will abound. He said, we're under the reign of grace. But now he's going to say, well, does that mean we should go ahead and sin because we're under grace? He's also said that when the law came in verse 20, the law entered, it caused the offense to abound.

That's a negative. So he's going to have to deal with the question. Well, is the law sin then? Which one might conclude? And he, you know, he asked that in chapter seven, verse seven and he answers it.

What we see then is that chapters six and seven, we could call them a parenthesis. And I think we probably should because Paul has said some things that he doesn't want to be misunderstood. So he takes out two whole chapters, raises three rhetorical questions, all of which grow out of things he has affirmed, but which would be a misunderstanding of those things that he's affirmed.

He takes time out at length to address these questions and answer them. It takes all of chapter six and seven. When seven is done, he then comes back in verse one of chapter eight.

There is therefore now no condemnation. This follows chapter five, verse 21, logically. So we've got a long parenthesis here because of what chapter five was saying, there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ.

Why? Because we're not in Adam. He's got that, those two men back in the picture here now. We're in Christ now.

There's no condemnation in Christ. So he's resumed his thought from chapter five in chapter eight, verse one, but he has interrupted it with the parenthesis of chapter six and seven where it's necessary to clarify some things that people very commonly do get wrong and they are anticipated mistakes that people might make from things he said in the closing verses of chapter five as we shall see when we come back.