The increase of sin and the abounding of grace. Rom. 5:18-21

Verses 18 and 19 of Romans 5 not only complete the comparison that Paul began in verse 12, but they also summarize the overall argument of the apostle in these verses.  They are parallel and state the same truth in different ways.  They tell us that “one trespass led to condemnation for all men” and that “by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners.”  The apostle here says explicitly that we are all condemned and regarded as sinners by Adam’s transgression in the Garden of Eden.  Since the human race exists in solidarity with Adam, what he did affects every one of his descendants.  It is the explanation for the sad state of the world that we see today.

But that is not the only thing the apostle says.  Adam is not the only one who has left his mark on the world.  There is another Adam, the Second and Last Adam, Jesus Christ, who has come into this world to put right what Adam messed up.  So the apostle also says that “one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men” and that “by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.”  What is the “one act of righteousness”?  What is the “obedience” referred to here?  Paul is almost certainly referring to what our Lord did on the cross.  You may remember a few weeks ago, we made the case that our Lord’s redemptive work should be seen in the context of his obedience to the Father.  This is why Paul writes elsewhere that our Lord “humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:8).  So our Lord’s obedience in yielding up his life to the Father is what stands in contrast to Adam’s rebellion against God’s authority over him.  

The apostle says that it is by virtue of what our Lord did in yielding up his life an obedient sacrifice to the Father for us that we are granted justification and life.  Now Paul’s argument all along has never been that we obey God just as Jesus obeyed God and are justified.  No, his argument is that we are justified by grace by virtue of what Christ has done for us and in our stead.  This is why God can justify the ungodly (Rom. 4:5).  We are not saved by our righteousness but by the righteousness of God imputed to us when we believe on his Son.  

Now this is where the comparison is so important.  Notice the words of comparison in these two verses: “as . . . so . . .”  The apostle is teaching us that Adam’s sin bears upon our condemnation in much the same way that our Lord’s righteousness bears upon our justification.  The inevitable conclusion is this: just as Adam’s sin was imputed to us for condemnation, even so our Lord’s righteousness is imputed to us for justification.

Why is this so important, one may ask.  What difference does it make?  It makes this difference: if we are really to understand just how much we need the grace of God and work of Christ on our behalf, we need to understand how deep our need is.  And our need is deeper than our sinning against God.  Now don’t get me wrong: our own sin is enough to condemn every one of us.  Our own sin definitely has to be dealt with.  But our need goes beyond the first time we sin.  It goes all the way back to the point of Adam’s sin.  It is why we are born dead in sin and slaves to sin.  It is the explanation of the universality of sin and the universality of death.  Because of Adam’s sin, we are not born into the garden of Eden.  We are born, as it were, into a graveyard.  We are broken people in a broken world.

But what Paul is saying is that our Lord has undone what Adam did.  As we pointed out last time, Christ didn’t just put us back to where Adam was, but he has put us in an infinitely better position.  In Christ, we are not only potentially able to inherit life, but we most definitely will and must inherit the life purchased for us by our Lord and Redeemer.

Now this brings us to verses 20 and 21, which is where I want to focus our thoughts this morning.  Remember that in verses 13 and 14, the apostle had explained that the Law of Moses couldn’t explain why people died, because it couldn’t explain why people died between Adam and Moses.  But what he does here is to say that the Law of Moses can’t explain why people get saved.  

You see, someone may have tracked Paul up to this point, and said, “Okay, I get that the Law is not the ultimate reason why there is death in the world.  But why did God give the Law?  Didn’t he give it in order to save people from the sin, condemnation, and death that the sin of Adam brought into the world?”  The apostle’s answer comes to us in verses 20 and 21: “Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”  In other words, not only is not Law of Moses not the reason why people get saved, it is actually the reason why sin has increased among those to whom it was given.  The law can’t save; it only puts us in a worse condition, one where sin has increased and abounded.

The obvious question at this point is: in what ways did the offense abound through the law?  In what ways dd the law cause sin to increase?  Looking ahead, we will see in chapter 7 that the apostle spends a lot of time defending the law and arguing for its essential holiness.  The law is not the problem; we are the problem.  The law is holy and just and good (Rom. 7:12).   We are the ones who are unholy and unjust and bad.  So we can’t say that the reason why sin increased through the law is because the law is bad.  

In a sermon on this text, Martyn Lloyd-Jones argued that the law cause sin to increase in three main ways: by giving us information about sin, by moving us to the conviction of sin, and through the provocation of sin.  I think he is on cue here, and so I am going to follow his general outline in our consideration of how the law causes sin to increase.

The law increases sin by giving us information about sin.

The first way in which the law causes sin to abound, or increase, is by giving us information about sin.  Though it is true that God’s law is written on our hearts by virtue of being created in his image, and that conscience testifies to this law, yet the fact of the matter is that our conscience is not infallible, and the law of God written on the heart often gets overwritten with data that is very different from what God’s law says.  Our environment, our culture, our upbringing, our life experiences all affect the way we read what is right and what is wrong.  In the book of Isaiah, we read of those who “call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter” (Isa. 5:20).  And so we can become blinded to what is true and pure and good.

That is where God’s law is so important.  What is sin?  The apostle John defines it for us: “Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin the transgression of the law” (1 Jn. 3:4, KJV).  If you really want to know what sin is, you must look to God’s word.  You must look to his law.  You must look to what he has said about what is right and what is wrong.  At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what society claims is just and right; what mattes is what the Lord says.  We need to understand that we can think that something is unjust not because it is but because our society has programmed us to think it is unjust (or vice versa).  We don’t realize just how much we are enslaved to the thinking of our culture.  

This is why we must constantly expose ourselves to the light of God’s word and law.  If God’s word seems strange to us, it is not because it is wrong but because we are.  And so this is, in a strange sense, how God’s law increases sin.  We suddenly become aware that there is something in our life that we thought was completely innocuous.  But there is it in the Bible: it tells us that it is wrong and sinful.  We didn’t think it was sinful before; now we are aware that an authority far above our own or that of our culture that says that this is sinful.  The law defines sin for us and tells us that certain things that we before thought were completely harmless are wrong, and in that sense causes in to increase.

Let me give you an example of one place where the law is especially helpful in causing us to see something as sin that we might not normally see on our own.  It is sin in the desires of our heart.  Paul himself confesses that, blameless though he was in respect to the external conformity to the law, the commandment, “Thou shalt not covet” made him realize that the reach of the law extended to the heart and its desires.  And suddenly a million sins rose up from the shadows and stood before his consciousness.  It’s not enough to avoid committing adultery, but you must also abstain from lust.  You must not only not extend your hand to take another’s life, but you must also abstain from hating them.  God’s word condemns pride with all the ferocity as it does robbing the poor of justice.  It takes aim not only at your actions but also at your affections.

This is the way our Lord deployed the law when confronted with the Rich Young Ruler.  Like Paul, he led a morally blameless life, at least in respect of his outward conduct.  But then our Lord confronts him with his covetousness, and his greed.  He prized his wealth more than he did the kingdom of God.  When he walked away, “disheartened” and “sorrowful” we are told (cf. Mk. 10:22), he was acutely aware of the reach of the law of God in ways he had never been before.  Sin certainly had increased in its scope because his knowledge of God’s law had expanded.

The law causes sin to increase by moving us to the conviction of sin.

Sin increases not only when we become aware of sin by virtue of its definition in God’s word, but also by being brought to the conviction of sin by God’s word.  If we are just confronted with the knowledge of sin, that knowledge is likely to flit in and then out of our minds just as quickly.  It only takes hold of our imaginations and thoughts and hearts when it becomes cemented there through conviction.  

It is not enough to know right and wrong.  We must also be moved to action through that knowledge, and that is where conviction comes in.  What is conviction of sin?  I would say that conviction of sin has taken hold of us when we agree with all our hearts with the judgment of Gods word upon our lives. It happens when we stop making excuses for our sins but are convinced that what we are doing is wrong and is worthy of God’s just judgment.  It happens when we surrender to the verdict of God’s word upon our lives.  It happens not only when we are aware of God’s sentence upon our lives and deeds, but when we are willing to say “yes” to it.  In the words of the hymn by Isaac Watts: 

“My lips with shame my sins confess

Against Thy law, against Thy grace;

Lord, should Thy judgments grow severe, 

I am condemned, but Thou art clear.

  Should sudden vengeance seize my breath,

I must pronounce Thee just in death; 

And if my soul were sent to hell,

Thy righteous law approves it well.”

There are many examples of this throughout Scripture.  David, for example, after he had sinned by adultery and complicity in the murder of Uriah, didn’t just admit he had sinned, but really believed that God’s judgment upon him was completely just and that any staying of his deserved punishment was sheer mercy.  He put it this way in Psalm 51: “For I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.  Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment” (3-4).  You may judge a person’s conviction of sin by two things: by their willingness to admit that they are not only wrong but that the punishment that God’s word threatens is just, and by their desire to stop what they are doing and repent.

Now it is true that you can knowledge of sin without conviction, but you cannot have conviction of sin without the knowledge of sin.  And you cannot have knowledge of sin apart from God’s law – whether that written on the heart or that written in the pages of Scripture.  And by creating conviction of sin, God’s law in that sense causes sin to abound.  

Of course, conviction of sin is not enough for salvation.  It is necessary, because without it we will never reach for the mercy of God offered in the gospel of Jesus Christ.  Conviction is a mercy and, painful though it can often be, we ought to be thankful for it.  But conviction is not salvation.  Our sin has to be dealt with, and this the law cannot do.  And that ultimately is Paul’s point.

The law increases sin by increasing the provocation to sin.

Now we must never say that God causes anyone to sin.  So that is not what we mean when we say that God’s law increases the provocation of sin.  This is because the reason for the provocation does not lie in God’s law itself, but in ourselves.  

What do I mean, then, when I say that the law causes the provocation of sin?  I mean that the law actually stirs up rebellion when it meets rebellious hearts.  In chapter 8, the apostle characterizes people who are not born again as “hostile to God” having hearts and minds that do “not submit to God’s law” (Rom. 8:7).  What does a rebel do when faced down with a decree from the king?  Does he not rebel against it?  Isn’t that what it means to be a rebel?  When a law was passed by the British parliament demanding the colonists to pay a tax on tea, what did they do?  They poured the tea into the Boston harbor!  They didn’t just not pay the tax, but committed an additional act of defiance.  When God’s law meets a rebel heart and demands its surrender, it doesn’t meekly submit.  It creates more sin by ignoring God’s authority and by doing the exact opposite of what God’s law commands.

I think this is primarily what the apostle is thinking of when he penned this verse.  This is how the law entering in caused sin to abound and increase.  So, far from promoting our salvation, by itself the law only makes the problem of sin more difficult.  The law does not draw us to heaven; it increases our transgressions and causes the separation between us and God to grow.  The law is not a bridge to forgiveness and fellowship with God; it is a barrier to it.

Now it’s very important to consider the corollary to this truth.  The law is God’s word to us on what we are to do and not to do.  The law tells us to stop sinning, to repent, to love God with all our heart and our neighbor as ourselves.  But that is all the law can do.  It cannot do more than that.  And that is the problem.  We need more than law written on a stone telling us what to do.  We need God’s law to be written on our hearts in a way that causes us to love what God has commanded.  And that the law itself can never do.  We need grace; we need the Spirit of God.  That is not a product of law, but a product of the work of Christ for us on our behalf.  

This is what Paul was getting at when he wrote to the Corinthians, “And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts” (2 Cor. 3:3).  He is contrasting the power of the gospel with the power of the law.  The point is that the law is powerless to produce in us the obedience that it commands.  Only the power of the Spirit of Christ who works in and through the gospel can do that.  

So it is not enough just to tell people what they need to do.  People need the grace of God.  They need the Spirit of God working in them to produce in them the obedience God’s law demands.  That is why they need the gospel, why they need to trust in Christ.  It is only when we trust in Christ that we receive the grace needed to obey.

But more than that, it is only when we trust in Christ that we receive his righteousness.  Remember, it’s not only a problem of future obedience, it’s also a problem of the guilt of sins.  We not only need to become new people, we also need to deal with the very real guilt from our sins, past, present, and future.  We not only need regeneration; we also need justification.  That doesn’t come from the law; it can only come through Christ and what he has done for us as the Second Adam.  

The way some people use the law reminds me of a skit done some time ago (with Bob Newhart), where a woman comes to see a counselor with a phobia that she hadn’t been able to conquer.  After she comes into the office, he explains to her that he charges $5 for the first five minutes and nothing after that.  She is very happy to agree to these conditions, of course, and sits down for the therapy session.  After she explains to him her phobia (being buried alive in a box), he tells her that he has two words that should clear everything up.  Upon which he says, very forcefully, “Stop it!”  (After a bit more give and take, the session ends when he tells her to listen to 10 words that will definitely clear everything up: “Stop it or I’ll bury you alive in a box!”)  

Now that is what the law does.  It tells us to stop it, good advice of course and one that we should take heed to.  But the problem is that we are not neutral people.  We are not neutral with respect to our sins.  The problem is that we love them.  Telling someone to stop it is not going to get them to fall out of love with their sin.  That takes the grace of God, and that is something that only comes to us through Christ.

How grace abounds.

So the law causes sin to increase.  But, thank God, that is not the whole story.  For the apostle continues: “but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”  The idea here is not that grace matches the increase of sin, so that as sin scores points grace puts the same number of points on the board.  No, the idea is that grace completely overwhelms the advance of sin.  

Is the law impotent against the march of sin?  Yes.  Does it not only not stop its advance but in some sense contribute to its ravaging the soul?  Sadly, yes.  Then how can we stop it?  Not by speaking powerless commands into the air!  The advance of sin is stopped, and along with it the condemnation and death that it brings, by the grace of God.  Paul is anticipating what he will write in the next chapter; in particular, in verse 14: “For sin will not have dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.”  

Grace, in this context, is all that God is for us in Christ Jesus so that sin’s penalty, power, and presence are defeated.  That is how grace comes and abounds: “through Jesus Christ our Lord.”  How did our Lord do it?  By “righteousness.”  The righteousness here is the righteousness of Christ, his righteousness in obeying the Father, not only at the end of his life but from beginning to end so that he would be the perfect sacrifice.  He fully fulfilled the law, not only the types and shadows but also all the commandments, in our place.  And then he satisfied the law’s penalty by standing in for us and bearing the punishment that we deserved.  The righteousness of Christ therefore saves us.  And this righteousness is so powerful that it not only makes eternal life possible, but leads inevitably to eternal life for those who belong to him.

It’s important for us to see that in order for grace to abound where sin increased, grace must defeat sin in every aspect.  Some of Paul’s hearers apparently misunderstood him at this point, and therefore drew the false conclusion that if grace abounds where sin abounded, then let us continue in sin that grace might abound.  But that would be to misinterpret the work of Christ.  He didn’t come to leave us entrapped in the clutches of sin.  He didn’t come to give us forgiveness but leave us helpless.  No, grace does not leave a person where it found him or her.  It empowers us against sin; it does what the law cannot do.  This will be the theme of chapter 6, but we need to be aware of it as we end our consideration of this chapter.  It pains me to see people celebrate grace through the wounds that sin has given people.  Yes, grace can forgive us no matter what we have done, that is gloriously true!  But we dishonor the grace of God when we make people whose lives remain a wreck as exemplars of grace.  Grace is most honored when it not only clears our past but also makes us new people with new desires and new lives.  Like the saintly John Newton put it: "I am not what I ought to be.  I am not what I hope to be in another world.  But thank God, I am not what I used to be, and by the grace of God I am what I am."  Grace does not allow sin to reign but displaces sin from its throne and reigns in its place.  Praise God for the grace of God that comes to us through Christ our Lord!

Adam and Christ Contrasted – Romans 5:15-17

At the end of verse 14, the apostle makes a comparison between Christ and Adam in the words, “who is a type of the one who was to come.”  Adam is a type of Christ.  How?  Paul makes it very clear in verses 12-19, that they are similar in that their actions affect many.  Adam’s initial sin brought death and condemnation to all who belong to him, and Christ’s righteous act in his obedient death brings life and justification to all who belong to him. 

Another way to put it is that Adams’s sin was imputed to those who are in Adam (which is the entire human race), just as Christ’s righteousness is imputed to those who are in him (the elect).  Both Christ and Adam stand as federal heads or representatives of those who are “in Christ” or “in Adam.”  This is the sense in which they are similar, in which Adam is a type of Christ.

It needs to be stressed that the emphasis here is not on our sinning, for that would be to subvert Paul’s entire argument.  Paul ties the universal reality of death and condemnation back to Adam’s sin, and Adam’s sin alone.  Now that doesn’t mean that our sins aren’t significant, or that they don’t have consequences.  Of course they do.  Paul has already made that point in chapters 1-3.  But that is not his point here.  Here the apostle is arguing that we die because of Adam’s sin.  If Paul was saying that we die because we sinned just as Adam sinned, then in point of fact Adam is not responsible for our dying: we are, not Adam.  Adam would not come into the matter at all.  But the apostle ties death back to Adam again and again in this paragraph.  It can only be properly explained in light the solidarity of the human race in Adam, and his sin being imputed to all.

This is the reason we are born in a state of spiritual death, separated from the life of God, and condemned – “children of wrath” (Eph. 2:1-3).  As the hymn by Isaac Watts puts it, “Our life is ever on the wing,/ And death is ever nigh;/ The moment when our lives begin/ We all begin to die.”  Adam’s sin explains this reality.  It is the reason we are born under a cloud of sin and condemnation and death.  It is the only satisfactory explanation for the universality of death and sin.  Every generation confirms what the apostle has written here.  

But this is not all there is to the story.  Adam and Christ are not just similar; there are also very distinct and definite differences.  This is what the apostle highlights in the text before us.  But he doesn’t stop there.  He goes on to argue that these differences are what guarantee the final victory of the believer over the sin, condemnation, and death that Adam brought into the world.

I am thankful for this two-fold perspective of the apostle, the perspective of Adam and Christ.  It is the perspective of a realist, and yet it is also a perspective of hope that doesn’t give in to despair.  In our day, people generally tend to either be Pollyannaish or fatalists.  Some people have this attitude that “all will be right in the end,” without having any real reason to hope for that.  They also tend to be the type that thinks that people are basically good and that good must ultimately triumph for that reason.  But that is not a very realistic lens through which to see the world, and if you are at all an observant person, you are likely to give in to despair after a while.  The Biblical perspective, however, warns us that people are not born into this world with a blank slate, but under the condemnation of Adam’s sin, born into the world dead in sin.  The expectation is not for people to be good, but to be bad.  And that is, by the way, what we see on a daily basis.  That is why we need law, and why anarchy always tends to the destruction of society.

On the other hand, it is easy to have a doomsday perspective, and to throw up one’s hands in defeat and to become a perpetual Eeyore.  But the Biblical perspective does not allow us to embrace that narrative either.  For Adam is not the only one who defines what the world is like.  The second Adam, Jesus Christ, has come into the world to undo what Adam has done.  But he not only undoes what Adam did, he does more.  He doesn’t just put us back to where Adam was before he sinned, but he puts us in an impregnable position, one that guarantees that if we belong to him we must and shall inherit eternal life.  All that is wrong with this world will one day be swallowed up in the life that Christ has purchased for his people on the cross.  Though today death reigns, it will not reign forever.  Therefore the Christian can look at this world, messed up as it is, and know two things: it is not at all surprising that it is this way, and it will not be this way forever.  The first comes from the knowledge of what Adam has brought by his sin; the second comes from the knowledge of what Christ has accomplished by his sacrifice.  The first saves us from naivety, and the second from despair.

How then does the apostle contrast Adam and Christ?  We see it laid out for us in verses 15 and 16.  Then in verse 17, Paul sums up the previous two verses in order to highlight the ultimate triumph of the believer through Christ.  Christ is not only different from Adam – the differences are of such a nature that they make our triumph over death inevitable (see also verse 21).

The “much more” of grace – verse 15

In the first place, the apostle writes, “But the free gift is not like the trespass.  For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many.”  Notice that there are three “for” clauses in verses 15-17.  The first two are clearly meant to give a reason why the work of Christ is not like the sin of Adam.  I , in light of the context, that the third “for” functions in the same way.  All three verses therefore highlight why Christ is different from Adam.

So you have these contrasts.  But the first contrast in verse 15 doesn’t go quite like we might expect.  The apostle says that “many died through one man’s trespass.”  We would therefore expect the contrast to go like this: “if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have many been made alive through one man’s righteousness.”  But that is not what Paul says.  Instead of contrasting death with life, he contrasts death with grace.

Now there is no doubt that this grace leads to life.  The context makes this clear.  In the next verse, we are told that the “free gift” of verse 15 is one which brings justification and righteousness.  Of course, righteousness leads to life: “those who receive abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ” (17).  This is the way Paul closes his argument in chapter 5: “as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (21).

Nevertheless, the apostle chooses to focus on grace as the point of contrast in verse 15.  There are four words in this verse alone that highlight the fact that what Jesus did for us was a gracious gift.  The point is that, because of Adam’s sin, none of us deserve God’s favor.  God could have left the world in its broken condition and remained just and holy.  However, he has not done so.  But the fact that he has not done so is not because we deserve a second chance.  It is a free gift.  It is undeserved.  

We need to constantly remind ourselves of this reality.  We do not become saved because of our merit.  We do not enter into a justified state and into God’s favor and family on the basis of our works and worthiness.  The only way we can savingly relate to God is by his grace through the work of his Son for us.

This is connected to the second point of contrast in verse 15.  The first point of contrast is that whereas Adam’s condemnation was a matter of justice, Christ’s obedience for us was a matter of grace.  But the second point of contrast is indicated by the words “much more” and “abounded.”  As I said a minute ago, our Savior doesn’t just put us back to square one.  He doesn’t put us back in the Garden of Eden where we too might mess up and lose God’s favor once again.  No, what he has done is “much more” effective than the sin of Adam.  The grace of Christ “abounds.”  Verses 20-21 tell us how it abounds: it abounds by reigning where death reigned and giving eternal life to us through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Grace doesn’t just make eternal life possible; it makes it inevitable for those who belong to Christ.

This is due, not only to the potency of Christ’s redemptive work, but to the fact that we relate to God through Christ by grace.  This means that if you are in Christ by faith, God is not waiting for you to mess up so he can zap you with judgment.  Grace means that eternal life is secure because it doesn’t depend upon your goodness.  Grace is protection.  It is security.  It abounds over and above the sin of Adam and undoes all the death and guilt and sin that he brought into the world.

Justification versus Judgment – verse 16

In verse 16, Paul continues with the contrast: “And the free gift is not like the result of that one man’s sin.  For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification.”  Again, we have two points of contrast here in this verse.  The first is that Adam’s sin brought condemnation whereas the grace of our Lord brings justification.  The second is the contrast between the one sin of Adam and the many trespasses that had to be overcome in order to bring about the justification.  Let’s consider them in order.

Adam’s sin brought condemnation.  Now that doesn’t mean that the only condemnation we stand under is that which comes from Adam’s disobedience.  Rom. 1:18 defeats that idea.  We stand condemned by our own sins (cf. Jn. 3:18, 36).  Nevertheless, as our federal head, Adam’s failure is our failure and so his condemnation is our condemnation as well.  Moreover, this state of condemnation led to death in all its dimensions, including spiritual as well as physical death.  Because of Adam’s sin, we are dead in sins, and “by nature the children of wrath” (Eph. 2:3).  We therefore go on to incur our own guilt by our own sins, the “many trespasses” the apostle mentions in the second part of this verse.

But our Lord brings justification.  Justification is the gracious declaration by God that we are right in his sight.  If we are justified, we are no longer condemned.  Thus our Lord has undone what Adam did.  And this justification is free, as the apostle has already argued in the previous chapters.  

But then there is this other point of difference.  It is this.  It just took one sin to mess up everything, to bring death into the world.  Now we live in a world characterized by death, by decay, by evil and hate, by suffering and pain.  But here is the problem: Adam’s sin led to more sins.  In fact, it led to “many trespasses.”  Our world is filled with people who sin.  It is no different, really, from the world that was destroyed by the flood, about which we are told that “the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Gen. 6:5).  As bad as the world became when Adam sinned; it is much, much worse now.

Though it is true that the main point of this passage is not that we copy Adam and therefore incur guilt, yet this is hinted at in this verse.  Adam’s sin did lead to condemnation for all of us.  But we have added to that condemnation.  We have added to his guilt by our own sins.  So in order to undo what Adam has done, our Lord must not only atone for Adam’s sin; he must also atone for our sins.  And how many of those are there?  Who could count even our own sins, let alone the sins of the world?  When we truly consider just how much evil Adam’s sin brought upon this world, that is daunting enough.  But when we add to that the sins of all his descendants, the problem becomes almost too much to comprehend.  How in the world could such evil be overcome?

And yet that is exactly what the apostle claims here.  The free gift which follows many trespasses bring justification.  I imagine a tidal wave 100 feet high – that’s Adam’s sin and that’s destructive enough.  But then add to this all the sins of his descendants, and you have a tidal wave hundreds or thousands of feet high.  What could stop it?  It would seem impossible,  and yet that is exactly what our Lord has done.  

How the reign of death is stopped – verse 17

In verse 17, we have the final contrast.  But here what the apostle does is to sum up the content of the previous two verses in order to establish the conclusion that what Christ has done secures our final victory over death.  Note the emphasis on the reign of death or the reign of sin in death throughout this passage (ver. 14, 17, 21).  Sin and death sit like kings over this present order.  We must remember that in that time, kings were not constitutional monarchs: they held absolute power.  Paul is saying that when Adam sinned, death came in to reign like a king over people.  The book of Hebrews presents a similar picture when it describes those who through fear of death were all their lives subject to slavery (Heb. 2:15).  This is the kind of rule that death holds over us: it is the rule of slavery and bondage.

How can we be delivered from it?  By Christ.  Because of the abundance of grace (ver. 15) and the free gift of righteousness (ver. 16) that come through the one man Jesus Christ, “much more” will we “reign in life” (ver. 17).  The dominion of sin and death is completely overturned by the Lordship of Jesus Christ.  He delivers us from death and brings us into the dominion of life.  We not only live, but reign in life.  This is not just deliverance from death; it is more than that.  It is the enthronement of the saints in eternal life, forever out of the reach of sin and death.

It is important to see that this life is both present and future.  The fullness of the life is yet to come.  We will not fully experience it until the end when death is finally defeated in the resurrection (1 Cor. 15:20-28).  Death and sin have been dethroned, but they are still waging guerilla warfare against us.  Nevertheless, there is a present aspect to this life as well.  When we are born again, and given newness of life, we enter into the first-fruits of the life that is to come.  Thus, in 6:4, the apostle argues that “just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”

But one of the implications of this is that once we have this life, it is not something that can be taken away.  The “much more” of Christ’s victory over Adam’s sin and the death that followed it should keep us from thinking that we can have this life and then lose it.  Thus, the overall thrust of this passage is one which should cause the saints to hope and to be assured that their hope is secure.  Adam cannot take away what Christ has purchased by his death.  We do not reign in life if we are always in danger of losing that life.  No, the saints are secure; their hope is sure and firm.  For Christ is not only like Adam, but gloriously different as well.

Universalism?

Now the security of our hope in Christ is certainly the proper implication to draw from this passage.  However, there is another implication that many have tried to draw from this text that is not so proper.  That is, some have argued from the parallel between Adam and Christ and the universal language that the apostle uses that every human being will be saved.  The argument is this: just as Adam’s sin brought death to everyone, even so Christ’s righteousness will bring life to everyone.  They say that because Adam’s sin is universal, so also must Christ’s salvation.  The “many” of verse 15 must be coextensive, it is argued.  And then there is verse 18: “Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.”  That seems pretty definite.

However, this is to ignore the larger context of the apostle’s argument.  Death is universal because all men are in Adam – that is, Adam is their federal head by virtue of their being related to him.  How are we related to Adam?  By birth.  Paul clearly understood that every human being has descended from Adam.  He was a real, historical figure, and along with Eve stands as the first ancestor of every person who has ever lived or ever will live.  

But how are we related to Christ?  We are not related to him by physical birth (see Jn. 1:12-13).  This is important because Christ stands as a federal head and representative for all who are related to him.  Paul again and again stresses the importance of being in Christ (Eph. 1:3-14).  As he puts it in 1 Cor. 15:22-23, “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.  But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.”  How are you “in Christ”?  How do we belong to him?  

The answer is by new birth and by faith.  We must “receive the reconciliation” (Rom. 5:11); it is not automatically ours.  The propitiation that Christ offered on the Christ, and by which we are forgiven and reconciled to God, is available to us, not on the basis of physical birth, but through faith (Rom. 3:25).  

Therefore the “many” of verse 15 and the “all” of verse 18 are not coextensive.  They are to be understood as referring to those who are in Adam and in Christ.  All who are in Adam died and all who are in Christ will live.  But we are not in Adam the same way we are in Christ, and therefore we must not take this text to teach that salvation is universal.

That doesn’t mean, however, that salvation is not extensive.  Now I think it is silly to inquire about the relative numbers in heaven and hell.  Some have argued that the “much more” of Christ’s salvation means that there will be more in heaven than hell.  Well, I don’t think that necessarily follows.  But we do stand on firmer ground when we affirm that there will be an innumerable multitude of the saved in heaven (cf. Rev. 7:9).  Our Lord did not die for nothing.  He will see the travail of his soul and be satisfied (Isa. 53:11, KJV).  

However, what difference does it make if you are not among the saved?  Do not let this world tempt you to neglect the next.  The salvation that our Lord offers is infinitely better and enduring than anything this world can offer.  “Nothing of earth is sure,/ Vain hope soon dies;/ Things of the Lord endure,/ Christ satisfies.”

Nor let the guilt of your past sins keep you from coming.  Salvation is a gift, a gift of grace that was bought and paid for by Jesus Christ.  And the invitation is for you to come and receive this gift: “The Spirit and the Bride say, ‘Come.’  And let the one who hears say, ‘Come.’  And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price” (Rev. 22:17).

Finally, if you belong to Christ, take heart.  Your hope is sure.  Death has come to us because of Adam, but death will be one day swallowed up in victory because of what Christ has done.  “Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain” (1 Cor. 15:58).

The Sin of Adam and Its Consequences – Romans 5:12-14

The Christian is someone who hopes in the glory of God (5:3).  This hope is sure; it will not put those who have it to shame (5:5).  God’s love, which is most clearly seen in the redemptive work of Christ, will infallibly secure the hopes of those who trust in his Son (5:6-11).  This is the theme, not only of the first verses of chapter 5, but, as we’ve been arguing, of all of chapters 5-8.  So how does 5:12-21 fit into this scheme?

That it does tie in with the previous verses is indicated by the word “therefore” at the beginning of verse 12.  The question is, what is the “therefore” there for?  

Some have argued that Paul is drawing a conclusion from all the previous chapters.  That is certainly possible because, as we shall see, the theme of this section of the epistle is certainly tied in with the main point the apostle has been laboring to make.  That point is that we are justified not by our own righteousness, but by the righteousness of God.  Moreover, this righteousness is imputed, or counted, to us, not on the basis of our goodness, but simply by faith in Christ.  We can sum it up like this: when we believe in Christ, his righteousness becomes our righteousness by imputation, and on this basis we are declared to be right in the sight of God.  Now in these verses, the imputation of righteousness to the ungodly is now summed up and illustrated by a comparison and contrast between Christ and Adam.

Though that is all true, yet I think these verses also build the case the apostle is making for the security of the believer.  The point is made by this comparison and contrast between our Lord and Adam.  In order to really understand just how secure we are in Christ, we have to understand just how he has undone the misery introduced into the world by Adam.  All of our problems ultimately boil down to these three things: sin, condemnation, and death.  Adam brought all these things into the world.  The apostle will show that Christ has so conquered sin, guilt, and death, that all who belong to him will triumph in the end.  Yes, sin reigns in death, but grace reigns through righteousness that leads inevitably to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord (5:21).

The word “therefore” could then refer to the previous verses; in particular, it could refer us back to verse 11, where we are told that “we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”  We have received reconciliation, or atonement, through Jesus Christ, so that our hope is secure – indeed, it is something in which we can rejoice.  The question is: how have we received this reconciliation by which our hope is secure?  And the answer is: much in the same way that we received sin, condemnation, and death from Adam.  But there is not only this comparison, but also this contrast.  There are similarities, but there are also differences.  Christ’s atonement was much more efficacious than Adam’s fall, so that in Christ we need not fear the death that Adam brought into the world.  We see the comparison in verses 12-14 and 18-19.  We see the contrast in verses 15-17.

  

So Paul is saying something like this: “Therefore, just as we receive reconciliation through Christ, we receive death through Adam, and this tell us something that is at once heart-breaking but also hope-filling.  Heart-breaking because of what Adam caused.  But also hope-filling because of what Christ has done.”

Interestingly, though Paul does not call Christ the “second Adam” in this chapter, he clearly thinks of him in that way.  In 1 Cor. 15:45, 47, Paul explicitly refers to our Lord in just these terms.  Christ stands in relation to those who belong to him in much the same way that Adam stands in relation to those who belong to him.  In fact, you could say that the argument of the apostle in Romans 5 is nicely summed up in 1 Cor. 15:22 – “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.”  In Rom. 5:14, the apostle will say that Adam was “a type of the one who was to come,” referring of course to Jesus.  It is incredibly important, in order to understand this chapter rightly, to keep this before us at all times.  Once you forget that this comparison runs throughout these verses and you will be tempted to read them in a way that is foreign to the intent of the apostle.  Keep this in mind, and everything fits into place and makes sense. 

The Comparison

Now we said a minute ago that the comparison between Christ and Adam is made in verses 12-14 and 18-19.  However, what happens is that the apostle begins to make the comparison in verse 12, then breaks off and doesn’t finish it until verses 18 and 19.  Note how the verse reads: “Therefore, just as [here the comparison begins] sin came into the world though one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned –“ and then he breaks off the comparison.  However, he does complete it in verse 18: “Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.”

Why does the apostle break off the comparison?  He does so because he has just said something in verse 12 that he feels needs some explanation, and that explanation is found in verses 13 and 14.  He ends verse 14 saying that Adam is a type of Christ (and so similar in some sense), but then feels that this too has to be kept from misunderstanding and so verses 15-17 show that Adam is not only similar to our Lord but that there are also very definite and distinct differences.  Having done this and cleared away the difficulties, he then completes the comparison in verses 18-19.

But what was so controversial in verse 12 that Paul felt that he needed to give some explanation for it?  I think what Paul is saying is that we sinned in Adam, and on that basis also receive his condemnation, namely, death.  When the apostle says, “because all sinned” at the end of verse 12, I don’t think he’s referring to our individual acts of sin, but to our sinning in Adam.  But I need to make an argument for that, because this understanding of the verse is hotly disputed, even by some who call themselves orthodox and evangelical.

Indeed, if you were to take this verse and cut it from the text, and pin it on a wall somewhere isolated from the overall context, it could be legitimately read to mean nothing more than that Adam introduced sin and death into the world since he was the first one who sinned, and we follow his example by sinning and dying.  Adam sinned and therefore died; we also sin and therefore die.  However, I don’t think that’s what the apostle is saying here, and I want to give you three arguments from the text itself for the position that “because all sinned” means that we sinned in Adam.

Before I do that, however, let me clarify what I mean by “sinned in Adam.”  What I mean is that the human race was so constituted by God that Adam was made our federal head and representative, so that the legal consequences of his acts were imputed to the human race.  When he sinned and alienated himself from God, he not only involved himself but every member of the human family.  Death spreads to all not just because we commit individual acts of sin, but also because we inherit the guilt of Adam’s sin.  

This may seem strange to us, but this may partly be because we live in such an individualistic culture.  Apparently, cultures that emphasize the community over the individual don’t tend to find this doctrine very mysterious.  And in fact, this was the world of patriarchs, prophets, and apostles.  And we see this principle illustrated in a number of striking incidents in the Bible.  For example, when Achan stole and hid his loot from Jericho, his sin affected not only himself, and not even just his immediate family, but also all of Israel.  Men who had no knowledge nor partook with Achan in his sin died because of this man’s covetousness.    They were affected by Achan’s sin, even though they did not copy his sin themselves.  Moreover, when God alerts Joshua to the fact that something was wrong, he puts it in this way: “Israel has sinned” (Josh. 7:11).  Achan’s sin was Israel’s sin.  Charles Hodge put it this way in his commentary on this passage: “The curse of Canaan fell on his posterity; the Egyptians perished for the sins of Pharaoh; the Moabites and Amalekites were destroyed for the transgressions of their fathers; the leprosy of Naaman was to cleave to Gehazi, and ‘to his seed forever;’ the blood of all the prophets was exacted, says our Lord, of the men of his generation.  We must become not only infidels but atheists, if we deny that God deals thus with men, not merely as individuals, but as communities and on the basis of imputation.  The apostacy of our race in Adam, therefore, and the imputation of his sin to his posterity, although the most signal of the illustrations of this principle, is only one among thousands of a like kind.”[1]

But that does not yet answer the question: why must we understand, “because all sinned,” to mean our sinning in Adam?  Again, let me give you three reasons why I believe this is the right way to read this text.

The explanation in verses 13-14 demands it.

Whatever these verses are doing, they are meant to function as an explanation of verse 12.  We see this as Paul opens verse 13 with the word “for.”  “For sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin Is not counted where there is no law.  Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come” (13-14).  How do these verses help explain the previous one?

The main point of verse 12 is that death which spreads from Adam to us is universal.  How then do we explain the universality of death?  What Paul is saying in these verses (13-14) is that neither the Law of Moses nor the law of conscience can explain the universality of death.  People sinned and people died before the law of Moses was given; that’s the point of verse 13 and 14a, so it can’t be that people only die because they have violated the positive revelation of God’s law in the Mosaic covenant.  But Paul goes further; I think he does this because one could argue that even though people don’t necessarily die because of the Law of Moses, yet Paul has already argued that God’s moral law is written on people’s hearts and perhaps that’s why death is so universal.  We sin against conscience and that’s enough to condemn us.  That’s why people die.

But the apostle says, “Wait a minute.  Hold on.  What about all those people who didn’t sin like Adam?”  Now admittedly there is a lot of debate as to who Paul is referring to by this phrase.  But I agree with John Piper (among others) that Paul is referring, at least partially, to the problematic case of infants here.[2]  Infants don’t sin like Adam did, since Adam sinned against personal revelation, and infants can’t do that.  They can’t read the law of God in Scripture; neither can they read God’s law written in their hearts.  I’m not of course arguing that infants are born with a nature pure and clean (this is contradicted by passages like Eph. 2:3), but I am saying what I think is fairly obvious: infants don’t sin against Scripture or conscience because they don’t yet have the faculties developed to do so.

And yet infants die.  If, as Scripture says over and over and over again, that death is the result of sin and that death is the penalty attached to sin, then why do infants die?  You can’t explain it by the violation of the law of Moses and you can’t explain it by the violation of the law of conscience.  How then do you explain it?  The implication of the apostle’s argument is that the only way you can explain it is by the solidarity of the human race in Adam.  Infants die because they are connected to Adam; his sin is imputed to them and therefore even before they are able to commit personal acts of sin, they are already liable to death.  That’s why infants die.

Verses 13-14 therefore explain how it is that death has spread to all – it has spread to all because all have sinned in Adam.

The analogy between Christ and Adam points to the imputation of Adam’s sin to his posterity.

At the end of verse 14, Paul says that Adam is a figure, or type, or Christ.  I said earlier that we have to keep this fact in mind if we are to interpret this passage correctly.  Now, if the point of verse 12 is that we die because we copy Adam in committing personal acts of sin, then the analogy would demand that we live because we imitate Christ in perfoming personal acts of righteousness.  But that would be to turn the gospel on its head.  The apostle has labored to show that we are saved and justified, not because of who we are or what we’ve done, but because of what Christ has done for us and in our place.  Righteousness is imputed to us – not ours, but God’s.  

No, rather, Adam is a type of Christ, partly at least because he stands in relation to his posterity the way Christ stands in relation to his people.  They both represent others before God so that their merit is transferred or imputed to those who belong to them.  Adam’s sin is imputed to us in virtue of our connection with him by birth, and Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us in virtue of our connection with him by new birth.  

Now I am not saying that our personal acts of sin don’t have consequences, both temporal and eternal.  That is of course true.  I’m not saying that we will not be judged according to our works.  That’s true.  What I am arguing, and what I believe the apostle to be arguing, is that the fundamental reason we are born under a cloud of sin and guilt and death is because when Adam sinned, so did we.  His sin was imputed to us and we bear with him the consequences of it.

But the glorious counterpart to that truth is that the fundamental reason we are granted eternal life is because when Christ died, so did we.  When he rose to newness of life, so did we.  We are not saved because we must claw our way to heaven; we are saved because Christ has won eternal life for us, so that we receive by grace what we do not in ourselves deserve.

The emphasis on the “one man’s sin.”

Throughout this passage, the emphasis is not on the individual acts of sin that we commit and the consequences stemming from that.  Instead, the emphasis is upon Adam’s sin and the consequences stemming from that.  For example, in verse 15, we are told, “For if many died through one man’s trespass,” and in verse 16, Paul is writing again about “the result of that one man’s sin.”  In verse 17, he comes back to it again: “because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man.”  In verse 18, “as one trespass led to condemnation for all men,” and in verse 19, “by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners.”  And the point of all this is not on what Adam’s sin did to himself, but what it did on his posterity, to us.  Because of his sin, we died (15, 17), are condemned (16, 18), and were made, or constituted, sinners (19).

Verses 18 and 19 are especially important in this connection, because not only do they carry the same emphasis, but they also complete the apostle’s comparison from verse 12.  Verse 18 says that Adam’s sin led to condemnation, not just for himself, but for all men.  In the same way (“so”) “one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.”  Here the analogy is explicit: Adam and Christ are similar in the way they act for others.  Adam sinned and brought condemnation to all; Christ obeyed and brought righteousness and life for all.  Adam’s sin is imputed to us just as Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us.

In verse 19, we read that “For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.”  Now the point here is not that we are made personally righteous by the obedience of Christ.  The context, remember, is justification, not sanctification.  Rather, we are made legally and declarative righteous by the obedience of Christ.  How?  Because his righteousness is imputed to us.  Even so, the point here is not that we are made corrupt by Adam’s sin (though that is true), but rather that we put in the category of sinners because of our connection with Adam, because his sin was imputed to us.

Verse 12, therefore, should be read as saying that Adam brought sin and consequently death into the world, and death spread to all men because all sinned in him.  For good and wise purposes, Adam’s sin was imputed to his posterity.

One of those good and wise purposes is that it provides a way out of our sinful and sad state.  For if we can lose our life through one man, then that means life and salvation can be regained through one man.  And we see, both in this text and everywhere in the NT, this is exactly the case.  Did sin and death come into the world through Adam?  Yes.  Did we die in him?  Yes.  But it is also the case, thank God, that righteousness and life have come into the world through the second Adam, Jesus Christ.  As we died in Adam, so we come to life in Christ.  Our connection to Adam guarantees that we will die; our connection to Christ guarantees that we will live.

What should we say to these things?  Three implications.

Sin is a horrible thing.

This text teaches us that one sin brought into the world all the misery that we see.  No, that doesn’t mean that our own sinful choices and acts don’t contribute.  It doesn’t mean that we don’t fact the consequences of our own evil desires and acts.  But it does mean that the primary explanation for all the misery and suffering and evil that we see is Adam’s first choice to disobey God.

But this has enormous applications to our own daily choices, especially when we are tempted to take the easy way out and give in to that sin and temptation.  Eating the fruit must not have seemed that bad to Adam.  In fact, we are told that it looked good.  But what consequences followed!  So let us resist the temptation that one little sin, one little forbidden fruit, will do us no harm.  If Romans 5 and Genesis 3 teaches us anything, it is that no sin is really little.  For it is not the sin, it’s the God that we sin against, that is the problem.

The righteousness that saves us is a wonderful thing.

This is the main point Paul is wanting to drive home.  It’s not Adam’s sin but Christ’s righteousness that is the main thing here.  And what Paul is laboring to bring home is that what saves us is not anything we do, not even our perseverance and good works (though they are necessary) – what saves us is the righteousness of Christ, and it is perfect.  Adam’s sin brought us death in all its forms; but Christ’s righteousness brings us life, eternal life.

Jesus is not just a tribal deity; he is the Savior of the world.

I owe John Piper for this observation.  The point is this: since all are connected to Adam, and Jesus is the only remedy for the situation brought about by Adam, this must mean that Jesus is the only way any man or woman can be saved.  People aren’t saved by different gospels; there is only one gospel and one name by which we must be saved.  It is Jesus Christ by which we must be saved.  Thank God, he came to save, not the righteous, but sinners; he came to justify, not the godly, but the ungodly.  Would you be saved?  Look to him, trust in him, hope in him, and you will never be disappointed.

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[1] Charles Hodge, The Epistle to the Romans (Banner of Truth, 1972 [reprint of 1864 ed.]), p. 153-154.

[2] John Piper, Counted Righteous in Christ: Should We Abandon the Imputation of Christ’s Righteousness? (Crossway, 2002), p. 95-96.  I think one reason why Paul doesn’t explicitly refer to infants here is that they are not the only ones who necessarily fall into this category; some people with diminished reasoning faculties perhaps belong here as well.

The Logic of (God’s) Love – Romans 5:6-11

God’s Love Redeems

The foundation of the text we are considering this morning is actually contained in verse 5.  There the apostle writes, “and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”  What the apostle is doing in these verses is showing why it is that our hope will not put us to shame.  Why?  Because God loves his own, those who have been justified by the blood of his Son.  The apostle explains that one way we know that God loves us is from the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit who pours out God’s love in our hearts.

But he does not stop there.  Telling someone you love them is meaningless apart from some objective demonstration of that love.  Thus, the apostle goes on to show how God’s love has been objectively manifested.  This is the purpose of the word “for” at the beginning of verse 6: Paul is grounding God’s love in the death of Christ for us.  This is confirmed from the parallel structure of verse 8 to verse 6.  In verse 6, we have that God did something “while we were still weak” – in verse 8, “while we were still sinners.”  In verse 6, “Christ died for the ungodly,” and in verse 8, “Christ died for us.”  However, in verse 8, the apostle begins that verse by saying that “God shows his love for us in that . . .”  That phrase in verse 8 does explicitly what the word “for” at the beginning of verse 6 does implicitly.  How does God show and demonstrate and commend his love for us?  He does so in the death of Christ.

Of course this is echoed throughout Scripture.  “God so love the world that he gave his only Son” (Jn. 3:16).  “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 Jn. 4:10).  The death of Christ is the supreme demonstration of his love for us.

Why is this?  It is because what Christ did on the cross he did not do for himself but for others.  But what did he do for others?  Well, just looking at the text before us, we see it spelled out in various ways.  Christ “died for the ungodly” (6).  He “died for us” (8).  The word “for” in those verses (hyper) does not simply say that our Lord did something that benefits us in some way.  No, it implies that what Jesus did on the cross, he did as our substitute and in our place.  And this points back to the idea of substitutionary atonement which is so central to the gospel.  

What did Jesus do in our place?  The answer is that he satisfied the wrath of God that was against our sin, and he did this by suffering the punishment for our sins in our place.  If we are going to take the gospel seriously, we have to reckon with these two realities: the reality of our sin and the reality of the wrath of God against our sin.  Both are highlighted in the text.  Note how Paul describes us: “weak” and “ungodly” in verse 6; “sinners” in verse 8; “enemies” in verse 10.  We were enemies, not just because of our hostility toward God, but more importantly, because of his hostility toward us because of our sin.  Our sins have made us obnoxious to God and have exposed us to his just and holy judgment.  And thus we come in verse 9 to this mention of the wrath of God: “Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.”  

Now someone might object that the words “of God” do not appear in the Greek text and that is true.  So could this refer to the wrath of man?  Certainly not.  Paul has already argued that “for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury.  There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek” (Rom. 2:8-9).  It’s obvious that the wrath there is God’s wrath.  It is the fundamental problem that sets up the necessity for the gospel: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth” (Rom. 1:18).  We need to be saved from wrath, the wrath of God, and God is not unjust to inflict wrath on us (cf. Rom. 3:5).  Sin, which is treason against God, demands and deserves the severest judgment.  To be saved at least partly means to be saved from the wrath of God.  As John the Baptist said to the Pharisees who came to his baptism: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” (Mt. 3:7).  To take the sign of salvation, baptism, without even dealing with the fundamental problem that salvation solves – namely, escaping God’s wrath – is problematic to say the least.

It has sometimes been objected that this emphasis upon God’s wrath undoes the emphasis on God’s love.  But it should suffice us to observe that the Scripture emphasizes both.  Christ’s death on the cross demonstrates God’s love to us; and, it turns away God’s wrath which was aimed at us.  It does both.  We have to remember that God’s wrath is not a pagan concept; it is the necessary corollary of his holiness.  If God is holy, he must hate sin and he must punish sin.  If we have sinned, our sins must be punished.  If we have sinned, God’s wrath is aimed at us.  How then can we escape it?  We escape God’s holy wrath by the provision which God’s holy love provided: namely, the sacrifice of his Son on the cross for us.

Now, how is it that Christ’s death on the cross turns away God’s wrath?  The answer to this question can be found in verses 9 and 10.  In verse 9 we are told that we are justified by his blood and in verse 10 that we are reconciled by his death.  The phrase “since . . . we have now been justified” recalls chapters 1-4.  We are justified when we are declared righteous before God.  And we can be declared righteous because on the cross Christ took our sin and expiated it, purged it.  We are then clothed with his righteousness by imputation.  Our sins were imputed to Christ and his righteousness imputed to us.  That is what it means to be justified.  Of course, if this is true of us, then we can no longer be exposed to God’s wrath; on the contrary, we are accepted by him into his family.

Moreover, verse 10 tells us that we are reconciled to God.  As we have already argued in a previous message, this is not primarily a reference to the laying aside of our enmity against God; that would make nonsense out of the verse.  For Paul says that “while we were enemies we were reconciled.”  That would be like saying, “While we were hostile to God, we were no longer hostile to God.”  Rather, what this means is that Christ by his death did away with the objective cause of our alienation from God, which is our sin and the wrath of God which it provoked.  He died for our sins and therefore made it possible, not only for us to move toward God, but also for God to move toward us.

Paul’s perspective throughout this text is not on the here and now; it is on the future consummation of the glory of God which was purchased by Christ for us and on the future outpouring of the wrath of God which can only be avoided by the deliverance from it that Christ bought by his death.  When he says that “hope does not put us to shame” he is referring to the hope that we will make it through the final judgment unscathed and enter into the joy of the Lord.  The “glory of God” will be fully revealed only at the end of the age which will coincide with the final judgment.  You will not experience the glory of God’s mercy which is to be desired above all things unless you escape the glory of God’s judgment which is to be feared above all things.

That’s not to say that the cross didn’t accomplish things for us in the present.  After all, Paul says that because of our Lord’s death we are now justified (9) and now reconciled (10).  However, even then the emphasis is on the future life which awaits us.  Because we are now justified, “we shall (future tense) be saved from wrath through him” (9).  Because we are now reconciled, “we shall be saved by his life” (10).  We normally think of salvation as something we experience in the here and now.  However, in Scripture salvation is not something which is complete until the resurrection and the new heavens and new earth.  Therefore, in the fullest sense, we are not yet saved – that will not happen until we hear the words, “Well done, good and faithful servant: enter into the joy of your Lord.”  

But the point is this: you will not fully appreciate the death of Christ unless you have this perspective that Paul brings.  Being a Christian does not mean you will be healthy, wealthy, or wise in this present life.  In fact, it could mean a tremendous amount of suffering (3-4).  But all that is nothing in comparison to the glory that awaits.  “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Rom. 8:18).  It is not enough to say that our sufferings are made up for by the life in the age to come; what Paul is saying is that the glory to come is so great that our sufferings will be completely swallowed up and forgotten.  No comparison.

Which means that if Christ’s death on the cross is the only way that we can have this life in the age to come, then it is infinitely precious.  And it is rightly valued when we view it, not as a way to feel good about ourselves so we can get on with our lives in this world, but as something which gives us that which is more valuable than any earthly possession – so valuable, in fact, that we are willing to give up things in this life for the sake of our Lord.  As the person in the parable, we should be willing to sell all our possessions so that we might have that treasure.

We pondered the meaning of “the glory of God” in verse 2.  We saw that it is incomparable in terms of its value and preciousness.  There is nothing like it.  To desire anything more than the glory of God is madness.  But the only way we can obtain it is through Christ because of what he did on the cross.

God’s Love Reasons

So that brings us to the main point of the passage: how can we as Christians be sure that we will experience the glory in the age to come?  What can we look to when the trials of this life tempt us to doubt God’s love for us?  How do we preach to ourselves when it seems plausible that God has abandoned us?  What truths can we rest our hopes upon?  What sure ground do we have for the confidence that the apostle rejoices in?

The answer is, of course, the love of God.  Paul’s argument is that the love of God will secure our final salvation.  And the reason he gives for this is that God’s love has already done the greater thing; therefore, it should not surprise us that he will inevitably do the lesser thing.

What is the greater thing?  The greater thing is that “while we were still weak . . . Christ died for the ungodly” (6); “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (8); “while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son” (10).  In other words, when Christ died for us, we were not contemplated in the purpose of God as being good and righteous.  God did not send his Son to die for good people; rather, he died for bad people.  We are described as “weak” – that is, helpless to save ourselves.  Worse still, we were ungodly, sinners, and the enemies of God.  As D. A. Carson has pointed out, the point of the word “world” in John 3:16 is not that the world is big but that the world is bad: “He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him” (Jn. 1:10).  

To make his point, Paul points out in verse 7 that what God has done, we would never do.  In fact, it is not that often that one would die even for a righteous or good person.  It does happen, but when it does it is so remarkable that we wonder at it.  But die for one’s enemies?  Die for those who have sinned against you?  Die for someone who hates you and despises you?  That just doesn’t happen.

But God did exactly that when he sent his Son to die for us.  Christ gave the most precious thing he had – his life – for those who didn’t love him but rather hated him.  Paul felt this distinctly: as he would later write to Timothy, “though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent . . . I received mercy . . . and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.  The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost” (1 Tim. 1:13-15).  That is not just true of Paul, however; this is a good description of us all.  We are all, as long as we are in the flesh – that is, unregenerate – hostile to God (Rom. 8:7).  We are not his friends but his enemies.  He died for us contemplated as his enemies.  

Christ did not die for anyone because he foresaw that they would respond to his invitation and become a good person.  If we have responded to his invitation, that is a fruit of his death, not the reason for it.  There was therefore no reason in you that explains why Christ died.  Everything in us was a reason for him to reject us.  After all, we were already justly exposed to the wrath of God.

What then is the lesser thing?  It is that, now that we are justified and reconciled to God – that is, now that we are accepted before God and declared righteous and no longer alienated from God – then it is sure that God’s love will bring us to glory, that we will be saved from the wrath of God.  If Christ out of love gave his life for us when we were his enemies, now that we are his friends, how much more will his love secure our final salvation?  How is it that God would die for his enemies and then give up on his friends?  It cannot happen; it will never happen.  That is the apostle’s argument.  

Now there are several corollaries that follow from this.  One is that God never gives up on his commitments.  Or another way to put that is that God never breaks his promises.  He doesn’t promise to save those who trust in his Son and then renege on that commitment and turn away from them in the end.  God doesn’t justify us and then withdraw his favor.  He doesn’t reconcile us to himself and then become our enemy.  His love in unchanging and unfailing.  

This is what Paul was getting at when he wrote, “As surely as God is faithful, our word to you [in the gospel] has not been Yes and No.  For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you, Silvanus and Timothy and I, was not Yes and No, but in him it is always Yes.  For all the promises of God find their Yes in him.  That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory” (2 Cor. 1:18-20).  God does not go back and forth on his word.  You can take it to the bank.  How is it that we can know that we have eternal life?  Because God has promised it: “in hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began” (Tit. 1:2).  

The apostle is also getting at this in verse 10, in the words, “we shall be saved by his life.”  What does he mean by that?  It is almost certainly a reference to the resurrection of Christ.  But I think it refers to more than just his resurrection, but also includes his ongoing ministry for his people.  “Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them” (Heb. 7:25).  Or, as the apostle will put it later in the epistle, “Who is to condemn?  Christ Jesus is the one who died – more than that, who was raised – who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us” (Rom. 8:34).  It would be good for us to remember that the ministry of Jesus Christ for us didn’t end on the cross, but continues to the present day.  He is interceding for us – what more powerful person could you have in your corner?  What more powerful reason could we have to believe that our final salvation is secure?

A second corollary to this passage is that ultimately the hope of our salvation rests upon God and not ourselves.  Note that there is not a word about what we do to secure our final salvation.  It is all about what God has done. Christ died for us.  God shows his love for us.  We have been justified – this is something that God has done.  Reconciliation here is something God has done in Christ.  We are saved by him, by his blood.  If there is anything that we do that is mentioned in these verses, it is simply that we receive the reconciliation (11).  If our final salvation depended upon us, then wouldn’t Paul have mentioned it?  After all, he is arguing why our hope will not disappoint us (5).  If we can disappoint that hope by apostacy or sin, then wouldn’t the apostle need to add some qualifications here?  “Since therefore we now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God” as long as we remain faithful to him, would needed to have been added.  In this text, our salvation depends upon God’s love for us, not upon our love for him.  His love not only gives us his Son, but also justification, reconciliation, and final salvation.

Now that doesn’t mean faithfulness isn’t important.  I’m not saying holiness is not necessary.  We could produce dozens of passages in the NT that show us that if we live in sin we have no right to this hope of which the apostle speaks.  The epistle of 1 John comes to mind.  How then do we put these two things together?  

Well, it must be that the love of God which brings us to faith will also keep us there.  The grace of God which justifies us by faith alone will also produce in us the fruits of holiness.  “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:10).  How is it that we come to produce good works?  Because we were better than those who do not?  No!  It is because we are God’s workmanship.  Those works in you are God’s works as much as they are your works.  It is why the apostle could say things like this: “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain.  On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me” (1 Cor. 15:10).  Or, “I have been crucified with Christ.  It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.  And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20).  Faithfulness is necessary, but only because faithfulness is the indispensable mark of those who are truly saved, who have been truly born again and given saving faith. 

Someone might object, “But what about those who fall away from the faith?  And what about all the warnings in Scripture about the dangers of falling away?  If God’s love will always preserve the saved until the very end, why all these warnings?”  We do not want to minimize those warnings.  They are real, and the consequences of which they warn are real.  What we need to realize, however, is that you can be a professing Christian without ever having been born again.  Just because you make a profession of faith doesn’t mean that faith is real.  That’s one of the points of James 2 and Hebrews 6.  You can have the faith of devils.  The warnings of Scripture are there because we cannot necessarily distinguish between true and false believers and in the present age the church is made up of both true and false believers.  It is only when they apostatize that the true nature of their faith is revealed.  The warnings then are there to remind us what happens to those who apostatize.  But they don’t imply that you can be saved and then lose your salvation.

That doesn’t mean the warnings don’t also function for those who have been in fact born again.  They are, under God’s providence, a means of keeping true believers in the way of obedience.  But that’s just the point: God keeps them and doesn’t lose them.  The warnings are part of God’s mercy in preserving his people from falling away.

At the end of the day, we who have trusted in Christ have a sure hope, not because of who we are or what we have done, but because of who Christ is and what he has done.  He has loved us with an undying love.  He has out of that love given his life for us, even when we were his enemies.  He has continued to love us, interceding for us even in heaven.  He has justified and reconciled us, and will save us from the wrath of God at the end of the age.

It is no wonder then that the apostle would end this passage by writing, “More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation” (11).  I think the point is this.  We don’t long for heaven for heaven’s sake.  We don’t want salvation just to escape the wrath of God.  Rather, we rejoice in God himself.  The reconciliation that we have received is precious because by being reconciled to God, we can have fellowship with him forever.  And there is nothing better than that.  If there is any reason to rejoice, it is because we can through Christ call God our Father and our Friend and can approach him with confidence through grace.  He may call us to do some hard things in this life.  He may call us to give up some things that we thought invaluable.  But he has already given us the Gift of all gifts: himself.  May God enable us more and more to rejoice in him and to see every other gift a mere shadow of himself.