Romans · Chapter 5

V. 1. Being justified by faith-This is the sum of the preceding chapters. We have peace with God-Being enemies to God no longer, Romans 5:10; neither fearing his wrath, Romans 5:9. We have peace, hope, love, and power over sin, the sum of the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth chapters. These are the fruits of justifying faith: where these are not, that faith is not.

Verse 1. Therefore being justified by faith] The apostle takes it for granted that he has proved that justification is by faith, and that the Gentiles have an equal title with the Jews to salvation by faith. And now he proceeds to show the effects produced in the hearts of the believing Gentiles by this doctrine. We are justified-have all our sins pardoned by faith, as the instrumental cause; for, being sinners, we have no works of righteousness that we can plead.

We have peace with God] Before, while sinners, we were in a state of enmity with God, which was sufficiently proved by our rebellion against his authority, and our transgression of his laws; but now, being reconciled, we have peace with God. Before, while under a sense of the guilt of sin, we had nothing but terror and dismay in our own consciences; now, having our sin forgiven, we have peace in our hearts, feeling that all our guilt is taken away. Peace is generally the first-fruits of our justification. Through our Lord Jesus Christ] His passion and death being the sole cause of our reconciliation to God.

Verse 1. Therefore being justified — In the way shown in the preceding chapter, we receive many blessed privileges and advantages in consequence thereof. Here, to comfort the believers at Rome, and elsewhere, under the sufferings which the profession of the gospel brought upon them, the apostle proceeds to enumerate the privileges which belong to true believers in general. And from his account it appears, that the privileges of Abraham’s seed by faith, are far greater than those which belong to such as were his seed by natural descent, and which are described, Romans 2:17Romans

Verse 1. Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God. Faith in the atonement removes the guilt of sin, and makes us heirs of all the promised righteousness of God; the prodigals are brought home to their Father’s house with joy. Justification is never alone; all the graces follow in clusters, with privileges of the highest order. The apostle, still keeping the jews in his eye, seems to ask the grand question; What need then for christians so justified and ennobled to be circumcised, and keep the ceremonial law? They have peace which surpasses knowledge. Philippians 4:7.

1. In its progressive work in the human soul.

Justification is contemplated as a condition of things within the soul, (1-5,) and as a gracious and sure result of Christ’s death, (6-11.) The passage 1-5 describes the justified state as a state of reconciliation, access, and confident hope.

1. Therefore—As the result from this statement of justification, (Romans 4:23-25.) Peace with God—The removal of God’s just wrath from us by our being brought from a state of condemnation to justification. That it is not the removal of our enmity toward God so much as his condemnation and penal justice toward us is manifest from the whole discussion. The argument is that man is guilty, under the curse of the law, the wrath of God revealed against him. Justification is the removal of guilt, curse, and wrath from upon him, and his being held as acquitted and righteous. (Compare particularly Romans 1:18, 32; 2:2-16.)

Ver. 1. Justified by faith: a summary of Doctrine I, asserted in Romans 3:21, 22 and defended in Romans 4:1-24. By faith: as in Romans 3:30.

Let us have peace: a practical and logical consequence of being justified by faith.

Let-us-have peace was read probably by Tertullian at the close of the 2nd century; and is found in all, or very nearly all, the Latin copies used throughout the Western Church. The same reading is repeatedly quoted and expounded by Origen and Chrysostom, who do not seem to have known the other reading; and is found in all existing Greek copies earlier than the 9th century, and in some of the best cursives. The earliest trace of the reading we have peace is in the Sinai MS., in a correction of the other reading made perhaps in the 4th century. In the Vatican MS. a similar correction was made, perhaps in the 6th century. Three of the later uncials and a majority of the Greek cursives read we have peace. So do the existing copies of the writings of three Greek Fathers of the 4th and 5th centuries. But the point in question does not affect their arguments. Therefore as their works exist only in a few copies made after this reading had become common, we cannot be sure that it was actually adopted by these Fathers. No early version has it except the later Syriac, which exists here, I believe, only in one copy.

If we looked only at documentary evidence, we should at once decide that Paul wrote let us have peace. But some able expositors, e.g. Meyer, Godet, and Oltramare, have thought this reading much less suited to the context than the weakly-supported reading we have peace. They say that exhortation would be out of place at the beginning of a calm exposition like that now before us; and that, since in Romans 5:9-11 Paul takes for granted that his readers are already reconciled, he would not now urge them to be at peace with God. They therefore suppose that, in very early times, the single letter which compels us to translate let us have crept as an error into some important copy, and thus led to what would in this case be an almost universal corruption of the verse.

This opinion is simple desperation. It requires us to believe, not only that all existing Greek copies earlier than the 9th century were made, directly or indirectly, from this one corrupted MS., but that copies of it were carried into both East and West, and that from them only were made all the Latin versions and MSS, and the four Eastern versions, and that copies of this corrupted MS. were the only copies known to the commentators Origen and Chrysostom. It is more easy to believe that the reading we have peace is a correction arising from inability to understand the other. Perhaps we have such a correction before our eyes in the Sinai MS. When once made, it would commend itself by its greater simplicity, and might be gradually adopted in the Greek Church as the ordinary reading. This would account for its presence in a majority of the later Greek copies, and for its absence from all the Latin copies and from the early Eastern versions. The reading I have adopted was given by Lachmann in his margin, and is given without note by all later Critical Editors. It is given by the Revisers, with a remarkable marginal note saying that “Some authorities read we have.” They render it, “Being therefore justified by faith, let us have peace with God.” This rendering is in my view incorrect; and has been the cause of the rejection, by so many able expositors, of the reading found in all our best ancient copies.

It has generally been assumed that the words justified by faith imply that the readers are already justified, and make this a reason why they should have peace with God. But this interpretation is by no means the only one which the words admit or indeed suggest. The aorist participle implies only that peace with God must be preceded by justification by faith, and leaves the context to determine whether justification is looked upon as actual and as a reason for having peace with God, or as a means by which it must be obtained. This last is the use of the aorist participle in all the many passages in the N.T. in which it precedes a subjunctive or imperative. Compare 1 Corinthians 6:15; Acts 15:36; Ephesians 4:25; also Aristotle Nicom. Ethics bks. iii. 5. 23, vi. 3. 1. The same construction is found even with a future indicative in Romans 15:28; Acts 24:25: contrast Romans 5:9, 10.

This interpretation gives good sense here. The present subjunctive, let us have peace, denotes, not an entrance into, but an abiding state of peace with God, which Paul sets before his readers as their present privilege. The aorist participle preceding it implies that this abiding state must be preceded by the event of justification. In other words, this verse asserts that the doctrine of justification through faith, already stated and defended, puts within our reach an abiding state of peace with God. The above exposition is required by the meaning of the phrases justified by faith and peace with God. For, as we have seen, to justify the guilty is to pardon: and every king is at peace with those whom he pardons. The justified are already, by the very meaning of the word, at peace with God; and remain so as long as they continue in a state of justification. To exhort such to have peace with God, as in the R.V., is mere tautology. This tautology is avoided in my exposition. For, though justification involves peace with God, the two phrases represent the same blessing in different aspects. Justification is a judge’s declaration in a man’s favour: the phrase peace with God reminds us that formerly there was ruinous war between us and God, and asserts that this war has ceased. It is our privilege to be henceforth at peace with God. The same idea is kept before us in Romans 5:10, 11, in the phrases “reconciled to God” and “received the reconciliation.”

The only objection to this exposition is that in Romans 5:2, 9-11 and in Romans 8:1 Paul speaks of his readers as already justified. To this objection, an answer is found in Paul’s habit of writing from an ideal and rapidly-changing standpoint. In Romans 3:7, he puts himself among liars, and asks “why am I also still judged as a sinner?” In Romans 2:1; 3:9, he leaves out of sight those saved by Christ, and writes as though all men were still sinning, and therefore under condemnation. In Romans 3:21, 22, we hear a proclamation of pardon; and in Rom. 4 its condition is discussed. As Paul describes Abraham’s faith and justification, he declares that it was recorded in order to confirm beforehand the good news to be afterwards brought by Christ. As he stands by the writer of Genesis, he looks forward (Romans 4:24) to the day when faith “will be reckoned for righteousness” to all who believe the Gospel. A prospect of peace with God opens before him. While he contemplates it, the Gospel day dawns upon him. In this verse, he calls his readers to wake up to the brightness of its rising. What he bids them do, he conceives to be actually taking place in himself and in them. In Romans 5:2, the sun has risen; and we stand in the sunshine of God’s favour.

If this exposition be correct, the subjunctive present, let us have peace, is rhetorical. Paul might have written, as so many later copies have given us his words, we have peace. But he prefers to urge his readers to appropriate the blessing about which he writes; and immediately afterwards assumes that they are doing what he bids them. In other words, my rendering is much nearer to that of the Authorised Version than is that of the Revisers. It also permits us to translate in Romans 5:2, 3 we exult instead of the same rendering in R.V. “let us rejoice.”

Dr. Sanday in The International Commentary, if I rightly understand him, accepts my exposition. His paraphrase of Romans 5:1 is, “We Christians ought to enter upon our privileges. By that strong and eager impulse with which we enroll ourselves as Christ’s we may be accepted as righteous in the sight of God, and it becomes our duty to enjoy to the full the new state of peace with Him which we owe to our Lord Jesus the Messiah.” In other words, he represents Paul as setting before his readers justification, which he has already expounded, as a gateway to peace with God. In his exposition, he correctly says, “ The aor. part. dikaiwqentev marks the initial moment of the state eirhnhn ecwmen. The declaration of not guilty, which the sinner comes under by a heartfelt embracing of Christianity, at once does away with the state of hostility in which he had stood to God, and substitutes for it a state of peace which he has only to realise.” Dr. Sanday acknowledges that my exposition “is perfectly tenable on the score of grammar; and it is also true that justification necessarily involves peace with God.” His only criticism is that my “argument goes too much upon the assumption that eir ec. =obtain peace, which we have seen to be erroneous.” But this I have neither said nor suggested. These words denote only an abiding state of peace with God.

My exposition of the words let us have peace finds further support in Romans 5:2, 3, where I have rendered and we exult, a rendering accepted by Dr. Sanday: see my note.

Peace with God: not “peace from God” as in Romans 1:7, nor “the peace of God” as in Philippians 4:7, but a new relation to God. Its sudden introduction without explanation and the argument based upon it imply that it is involved in Paul’s previous teaching. And this we see at once. Since all men have sinned, and God has threatened (Romans 2:12) to destroy all who continue in sin, He is in a correct and awful sense the adversary and enemy of such. They are at war with God. Just so every good king is an uncompromising foe of all who break his laws. Although he loves his subjects and desires to be at peace with them, he lifts his arm to smite those that rebel: for by rebellion they injure themselves and others. Similarly in the O.T. we find God an active enemy of Sin and in some sense of sinners: Exodus 17:16; Malachi 1:4; Ezekiel 39:1. In the great day, His anger and fury (Romans 2:8) will burst forth against them. And not only is God against sinners but they are against Him: Romans 8:7. For they are fighting the battle of Sin, His inveterate enemy: Romans 6:13. They are thoughtlessly resisting His purposes of mercy for themselves and others. There are therefore two obstacles to peace between God and sinners, viz. their opposition to Him, and His justice which demands their punishment. Of these, the latter obstacle is the more serious. For, whereas our opposition to God arises from ignorance and therefore may be removed by divine teaching, God’s purpose to punish sin is right and good, and cannot, as we saw under Romans 3:26, be set aside except in conjunction with such manifestation of His justice as is given in the death of Christ. In this sense we are “reconciled to God through the death of His Son:” Romans 5:10. It is now evident that justification is a declaration of peace between God and man. For pardon always implies that the king’s officers will no longer pursue or detain the pardoned man, but if needful protect him. Consequently, justification involves peace with God.

These last words set before us another view of our position: for they remind us that in former days we had an adversary against whom resistance was useless, and fatal to ourselves. He was our adversary because we were bad and He is good. But now the conflict is past; and we can go into His presence without fear. Of this peace with God, the peace which God gives (Romans 1:7; Philippians 4:7) is a result. Through our Lord Jesus Christ: parallel to “through the redemption in Christ” in Romans 3:24. These words are the keynote of the chapter. They are further expounded in Romans 5:10: “through the death of His Son.”

V. 2. Into this grace-This state of favour.

Verse 2. By whom also] We are not only indebted to our Lord Jesus Christ for the free and full pardon which we have received, but our continuance in a justified state depends upon his gracious influence in our hearts, and his intercession before the throne of God.

We have access] prosagwghn eschkamen, We have received this access. It was only through Christ that we could at first approach God; and it is only through him that the privilege is continued to us. And this access to God, or introduction to the Divine presence, is to be considered as a lasting privilege. We are not brought to God for the purpose of an interview, but to remain with him; to be his household; and, by faith, to behold his face, and walk in the light of his countenance. Into this grace] This state of favour and acceptance.

Wherein we stand] Having firm footing, and a just title through the blood of the Lamb to the full salvation of God.

And rejoice] Have solid happiness, from the evidence we have of our acceptance with Him.

In hope of the glory of God.] Having our sins remitted, and our souls adopted into the heavenly family, we are become heirs; for if children, then heirs, Galatians 4:7; and that glory of God is now become our endless inheritance. While the Jews boast of their external privileges-that they have the temple of God among them; that their priests have an entrance to God as their representatives, carrying before the mercy-seat the blood of their offered victims; we exult in being introduced by Jesus Christ to the Divine presence; his blood having been shed and sprinkled for this purpose; and thus we have, spiritually and essentially, all that these Jewish rites, &c., signified. We are in the peace of God, and we are happy in the enjoyment of that peace, and have a blessed foretaste of eternal glory. Thus we have heaven upon earth, and the ineffable glories of God in prospect.

2:17-20. The first privilege of this spiritual seed is, that, being justified by faith, we have peace with God — Being alienated from God and exposed to condemnation and wrath no longer, but brought into a state of reconciliation and peace with him. “Our guilty fears are silenced, and we are taught to look up to him with sweet serenity of soul, while we no longer conceive of him as an enemy, but under the endearing character of a Friend and a Father.” Through our Lord Jesus Christ — Through his mediation and grace. They have also divers other privileges and blessings here enumerated, which are all the fruits of justifying faith; so that where they are not, that faith is not. “It seems very unreasonable,” says Dr. Doddridge, “that when the apostle wrote such passages as this, and Ephesians 1:1-3, he should mean to exclude himself, who was no Gentile; they are not therefore to be expounded as spoken particularly of the Gentiles; nor could he surely intend by these grand descriptions, and pathetic representations, to speak only of such external privileges as might have been common to Simon Magus, or any other hypocritical and wicked professor of Christianity. And if he did not intend this, he must speak of all true Christians as such, and as taking it for granted that those to whom he addressed this and his other epistles were, in the general, such, though there might be some few excepted cases, which he did not think it necessary often to touch upon. And this is the true key to such passages in his epistles as I have more particularly stated and vindicated in the postscript which I have added to the preface of my Sermons on Regeneration, to which I must beg leave to refer my reader, and hope I shall be excused from a more particular examination of that very different scheme of interpretation which Dr. Taylor has so laboriously attempted to revive. The main principles of it are, I think, well confuted by my pious and worthy friend, Dr. Guyse, in the preface to his Paraphrase on this epistle. Verse 2. By whom also we have access — Greek, thn prosagwghn, admittance, entrance, or introduction. The word, as Raphelius has shown from the heathen historian, Herodotus, is often used as a sacerdotal phrase, and signifies, “being with great solemnity introduced as into the more immediate presence of a deity in his temple, so as (by a supposed interpreter, from thence called prosagwgeuv, the introducer) to have a kind of conference with such a deity.” By faith into this grace — Into this state of favour, and a state in which we receive, or may receive, grace to help in every time of need. The word also shows that the blessing here spoken of is different from and superior to the peace with God, mentioned in the preceding verse. Wherein we stand — Remain, abide; or rather, stand firm, as the word esthkamen signifies. “As the apostle often compares the conflicts which the first Christians maintained, against persecutors and false teachers, to the Grecian combats, perhaps, by standing firm, he meant that, as stout wrestlers, they successfully maintained their faith in the gospel, in opposition both to the Jews and heathen, notwithstanding the sufferings which the profession of their faith had brought on them.” And rejoice in hope of the glory of God — Here two other blessings are mentioned, rising in degree above both the preceding; a hope of the glory of God, and joy arising therefrom. By the glory of God is meant the vision and enjoyment of the God of glory in a future state, particularly after the resurrection and the general judgment; including a full conformity to Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, in soul and body; (to whom we shall be made like, because we shall see him as he is, 1 John 3:2;) also the glorious society of saints and angels, and a glorious world, the place of our eternal abode. Of this, those that are justified by faith have a lively and well-grounded hope, being heirs of it in consequence of their justification, Titus 3:7; and of their adoption, Romans 8:14-17; Galatians 4:6, 7; and through this hope, to which they are begotten again by faith in the resurrection of Christ, who rose the first-fruits of them that sleep, and by pardoning and renewing grace, communicated in and through him, they rejoice frequently with joy unspeakable and full of glory, 1 Peter 1:3-8; being sealed to the day of redemption and having an earnest of their future inheritance by God’s Spirit in their hearts.

2. Access—As Esther obtained an entrance to and gracious hearing from the king, so the justified man has access to God’s face. He has audience with the Deity. His prayers come up before God. His intercessions are prevalent with God. Well may saint and sinner say to him, Pray for us. Hope of the glory of God—He is animated now with the hope of a future glory.

Ver. 2. Through whom also etc.: through the agency of Christ we are not only saved from a disastrous war with God but

also brought into a position in which we enjoy the grace or smile of God, and therefore stand securely. We were far off from God’s favour: Romans 3:23. But Jesus took us by the hand and brought us near. Same word in Ephesians 2:18, cognate word in 1 Peter 3:18: close parallels.

This access is by faith: keeping before us the condition of pardon. Had we not believed, we should still be far off. Since justification is a gift of God’s undeserved favour (Romans 3:24; 4:4, 16), Christ, through whose death God’s favour reached us, may be said to have brought us into this grace. Under His smile, conscious of His favour, we stand, i.e. we maintain our position in spite of burdens which would otherwise weigh us down and in face of foes who would otherwise drive us back. Same word in Romans 11:20; 1 Corinthians 10:12; 15:1; 2 Corinthians 1:24; Ephesians 6:11-14.

Exult: as in Romans 2:17. Grammatically we may render either and let-us-exult or and we-exult. If we accept the above-given exposition of “let us have peace,” we may accept here-and in Romans 5:3 the latter rendering. And this gives much better sense. To say that we actually exult in hope of glory and even in afflictions, is much more in harmony with the heroic confidence of Paul than is an exhortation to exult. The glory of God: the splendour in which God dwells and with which He will clothe His servants: Romans 1:23; 8:17f; 21, 30; 1 Thessalonians 2:12; 2 Thessalonians 2:14. Notice the immediate consequences of justification, viz. peace with God, approach to God, the favour of God, a sure standing-ground, hope of the coming splendour, and exultation in view of it.

V. 3. We glory in tribulations also-Which we are so far from esteeming a mark of God's displeasure, that we receive them as tokens of his fatherly love, whereby we are prepared for a more exalted happiness. The Jews objected to the persecuted state of the Christians as inconsistent with the people of the Messiah. It is therefore with great propriety that the apostle so often mentions the blessings arising from this very thing.

Verse 3. And not only so] We are not only happy from being in this state of communion with our God, and the prospect of being eternally with him; But we glory in tribulations also] All the sufferings we endure for the testimony of our Lord are so sanctified to us by his grace, that they become powerful instruments of increasing our happiness.

Tribulation worketh patience] uJpomonhn, Endurance under trials, without sustaining loss or deterioration. It is a metaphor taken from refining metals. We do not speak thus from any sudden raptures, or extraordinary sensations we may have of spiritual joy: for we find that the tribulations through which we pass are the means of exercising and increasing our patience, our meek forbearance of injuries received, or persecutions experienced, on account of the Gospel.

Verses 3, 4. And not only so — Not only do we possess the four fore- mentioned inestimable blessings; but we glory in tribulations also — Which we are so far from esteeming a mark of God’s displeasure, that we receive them as tokens of his fatherly love, whereby we may be enabled to do him more singular honour, and be prepared for a more exalted happiness. The Jews often objected the persecuted state of the Christians as inconsistent with what they concluded would be the condition of the people of the Messiah. It is therefore with great propriety that the apostle so often discourses on the benefit arising from this very thing. The apostles and first Christians gloried in tribulations: 1st, Because hereby their state was made to resemble that of Christ, with whom they died, that they might live; suffered, that they might reign, Romans 8:17; 2 Timothy 2:11,

12. 2d, Because their graces were hereby exercised, and therefore increased. And, 3d, They were hereby purified and refined, as gold and silver in the furnace. See Isaiah 1:4, 5; Zechariah 13:9. Knowing that tribulation — Under the influence of divine grace, without which it could produce no such effect; worketh patience — Calls into exercise, and so gradually increases our patience; even an humble, resigned, quiet, contented state of mind: suggesting those considerations which at once show the reasonableness of that duty, and lay a solid foundation for it. And patience, experience — The patient enduring of tribulation gives us more experience of the truth and degree of our grace, of God’s care of us, and of his power, and love, and faithfulness, engaged in supporting us under our sufferings, and causing them to work for our good. The original expression, dokimh, rendered experience, signifies being approved on trial. Before we are brought into tribulation, knowing God’s power, we may believe he can deliver; and knowing his love and faithfulness to his word, we may believe he will deliver: but after we have been actually brought into tribulation, and have been supported under it, and delivered out of it, we can say, from experience, he hath delivered; and are thus encouraged to trust in him in time to come. Thus Shadrach and his companions, before they were cast into the furnace, could say (Daniel 3:17) to Nebuchadnezzar, Our God: whom we serve, is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace; and they could also add, He will deliver us. But after they had been cast into the furnace, and their faith in, and obedience to, their God had been put to that fiery trial, their patience wrought experience; and they could say, from experience, He hath delivered us, as was acknowledged by the haughty monarch himself, saying, Blessed be the God of Shadrach, &c., who hath delivered his servants that trusted in him. And experience, hope — That is, an increased and more confirmed hope than is possessed before experience is attained; namely, 1st, Of continued help, support, and deliverance. 2d, Of a comfortable issue of our trials in due time. 3d, Of eternal salvation at last, Matthew 5:12, John 16:20-22. Observe, reader, as soon as we are justified, and made the children and heirs of God, chap. 8:17, we hope, on good grounds, for the glory of God; but our faith and other graces not having then been tried, our hope of eternal life must be mixed with doubts and fears respecting our steadfastness when exposed to trials, (which we are taught in the word of God to expect,) and our enduring to the end. But when we have been brought into and have passed through various and long-continued trials, and in the midst of them have been so supported by divine grace as to be enabled to continue in the faith, grounded and settled, and not to be moved away from the hope of the gospel, our expectation of persevering in the good way, and being finally saved, attains a confirmation and establishment: and our gratitude and joy, 1 Peter 1:3, our patience, purity, and diligence in all the works of piety and virtue, 1 Thessalonians 1:3, 1 John 3:3; 1 Corinthians 15:58, are increased and confirmed in proportion thereto.

Ver. 3. We glory in tribulations also, as did Habakkuk the prophet, who would rejoice though the figtree did not blossom, and though the army of the Chaldeans devoured the land. Our Saviour also commands us to rejoice in suffering for righteousness sake, knowing that great will be our reward in heaven. Matthew 5:12. To glory in the cross is the highest state of divine attainments. The exercises of faith strengthen us in all the active and passive graces of the Holy Spirit. Patience worketh experience, and experience hope, for he who has delivered us in six troubles, will also deliver us in the seventh.

3. Glory in tribulations—This is the greatest of triumphs, by which the Gospel may make us shout from amid the fires. Under the inspiration of this peace the martyrs did not merely endure, but exulted in suffering. Tribulation worketh patience—Rather translate, tribulation worketh endurance. Trial produces the hardness by which we endure trials to come.

Verses 3, 4 meet, and more than overturn, the objection that present trials are a counter-balance to the glory awaiting us. Our trials strengthen our hope, and thus increase our joy. The fury of the storm only reveals the strength of the rock on which God has placed our feet.

V. 4. And patience works more experience of the sincerity of our grace, and of God's power and faithfulness.

Verse 4. And patience, experience] dokimen, Full proof, by trial, of the truth of our religion, the solidity of our Christian state, and the faithfulness of our God. In such cases we have the opportunity of putting our religion to the test; and, by every such test, it receives the deeper sterling stamp. The apostle uses here also a metaphor taken from the purifying, refining, and testing of silver and gold.

Experience, hope] For we thus calculate, that he who has supported us in the past will support us in those which may yet come; and as we have received so much spiritual profiting by means of the sufferings through which we have already passed, we may profit equally by those which are yet to come: and this hope prevents us from dreading coming trials; we receive them as means of grace, and find that all things work together for good to them that love God.

Verses 3, 4. And not only so — Not only do we possess the four fore- mentioned inestimable blessings; but we glory in tribulations also — Which we are so far from esteeming a mark of God’s displeasure, that we receive them as tokens of his fatherly love, whereby we may be enabled to do him more singular honour, and be prepared for a more exalted happiness. The Jews often objected the persecuted state of the Christians as inconsistent with what they concluded would be the condition of the people of the Messiah. It is therefore with great propriety that the apostle so often discourses on the benefit arising from this very thing. The apostles and first Christians gloried in tribulations: 1st, Because hereby their state was made to resemble that of Christ, with whom they died, that they might live; suffered, that they might reign, Romans 8:17; 2 Timothy 2:11,

12. 2d, Because their graces were hereby exercised, and therefore increased. And, 3d, They were hereby purified and refined, as gold and silver in the furnace. See Isaiah 1:4, 5; Zechariah 13:9. Knowing that tribulation — Under the influence of divine grace, without which it could produce no such effect; worketh patience — Calls into exercise, and so gradually increases our patience; even an humble, resigned, quiet, contented state of mind: suggesting those considerations which at once show the reasonableness of that duty, and lay a solid foundation for it. And patience, experience — The patient enduring of tribulation gives us more experience of the truth and degree of our grace, of God’s care of us, and of his power, and love, and faithfulness, engaged in supporting us under our sufferings, and causing them to work for our good. The original expression, dokimh, rendered experience, signifies being approved on trial. Before we are brought into tribulation, knowing God’s power, we may believe he can deliver; and knowing his love and faithfulness to his word, we may believe he will deliver: but after we have been actually brought into tribulation, and have been supported under it, and delivered out of it, we can say, from experience, he hath delivered; and are thus encouraged to trust in him in time to come. Thus Shadrach and his companions, before they were cast into the furnace, could say (Daniel 3:17) to Nebuchadnezzar, Our God: whom we serve, is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace; and they could also add, He will deliver us. But after they had been cast into the furnace, and their faith in, and obedience to, their God had been put to that fiery trial, their patience wrought experience; and they could say, from experience, He hath delivered us, as was acknowledged by the haughty monarch himself, saying, Blessed be the God of Shadrach, &c., who hath delivered his servants that trusted in him. And experience, hope — That is, an increased and more confirmed hope than is possessed before experience is attained; namely, 1st, Of continued help, support, and deliverance. 2d, Of a comfortable issue of our trials in due time. 3d, Of eternal salvation at last, Matthew 5:12, John 16:20-22. Observe, reader, as soon as we are justified, and made the children and heirs of God, chap. 8:17, we hope, on good grounds, for the glory of God; but our faith and other graces not having then been tried, our hope of eternal life must be mixed with doubts and fears respecting our steadfastness when exposed to trials, (which we are taught in the word of God to expect,) and our enduring to the end. But when we have been brought into and have passed through various and long-continued trials, and in the midst of them have been so supported by divine grace as to be enabled to continue in the faith, grounded and settled, and not to be moved away from the hope of the gospel, our expectation of persevering in the good way, and being finally saved, attains a confirmation and establishment: and our gratitude and joy, 1 Peter 1:3, our patience, purity, and diligence in all the works of piety and virtue, 1 Thessalonians 1:3, 1 John 3:3; 1 Corinthians 15:58, are increased and confirmed in proportion thereto.

4. Patience, experience—Rather translate, endurance worketh approvedness. Our endurance of trial brings into an approved state with our heavenly Master. Experience, hope—Our approvedness produces a firm hope that we shall stand the final test and attain the future glory.

Verses 3, 4 meet, and more than overturn, the objection that present trials are a counter-balance to the glory awaiting us. Our trials strengthen our hope, and thus increase our joy. The fury of the storm only reveals the strength of the rock on which God has placed our feet.

V. 5. Hope shameth us not-That is, gives us the highest glorying. We glory in this our hope,

because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts-The divine conviction of God's love to us, and that love to God which is both the earnest and the beginning of heaven.

By the Holy Ghost-The efficient cause of all these present blessings, and the earnest of those to come.

Verse 5. And hope maketh not ashamed] A hope that is not rationally founded will have its expectation cut off; and then shame and confusion will be the portion of its possessor. But our hope is of a different kind; it is founded on the goodness and truth of God; and our religious experience shows us that we have not misapplied it; nor exercised it on wrong or improper objects.

Because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts] We have the most solid and convincing testimony of God’s love to us, by that measure of it which he has communicated to our hearts. There, ekkecutai, it is poured out, and diffused abroad; filling, quickening, and invigorating all our powers and faculties. This love is the spring of all our actions; it is the motive of our obedience; the principle through which we love God, we love him because he first loved us; and we love him with a love worthy of himself, because it springs from him: it is his own; and every flame that rises from this pure and vigorous fire must be pleasing in his sight: it consumes what is unholy; refines every passion and appetite; sublimes the whole, and assimilates all to itself. And we know that this is the love of God; it differs widely from all that is earthly and sensual. The Holy Ghost comes with it; by his energy it is diffused and pervades every part; and by his light we discover what it is, and know the state of grace in which we stand. Thus we are furnished to every good word and work; have produced in us the mind that was in Christ; are enabled to obey the pure law of our God in its spiritual sense, by loving him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength; and our neighbour, any and every soul of man, as ourselves. This is, or ought to be, the common experience of every genuine believer; but, in addition to this, the primitive Christians had, sometimes, the miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit. These were then needful; and were they needful now, they would be again communicated.

Verse 5. And hope — Such hope as is the fruit of faith, patience, and experience, namely, the full assurance of hope; maketh not ashamed — Does not shame and confound us with disappointment, but we shall certainly obtain the good things hoped for; yea, we know it cannot shame or disappoint us, because we have already within ourselves the very beginning of that heaven at which it aspires. For the love of God — That is, love to God, arising from a manifestation of his love to us, even that love which constitutes us at once both holy and happy, and is therefore an earnest of our future inheritance in our hearts; that love, in the perfection of which the blessedness of that celestial world consists; is shed abroad — Greek, ekkecutai, is poured out; into our hearts, by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us — The efficient cause of all these present blessings, and the earnest of those to come. As a Spirit of wisdom and revelation, the Holy Ghost enables us to discern God’s love to us; and as a Spirit of holiness and consolation, he enables us to delight ourselves daily in him, though for the present he appoint us trials which may seem rigorous and severe.

Ver. 5. Because the love of God is shed abroad in our heart; the inestimable love of God in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ. Then it is not a mere warmth of the passions and affections, not a mere philosophical flame; it is the love which gave the Son to die for us, as in the eighth verse. “God commendeth his love towards us,” brightened and enhanced by this act of unmerited grace and mercy, that “while we were yet sinners Christ died for the ungodly.” It is a divine emanation, streaming down into the soul of the believer. It is the Sun of righteousness, the Lord of glory shining into the heart, and healing all the desolations of winter. It revives the torpid to heavenly life, as languid nature is revived by the solar rays. It converts men into angels, as one of the fathers has said; it makes sinners the children of God, the brothers of Christ, and heirs together with him.

In this precious text, the expressions claim a full attention.

(1) The grace itself, the love of God.

(2) Its manifestation. It is shed abroad in the dark dungeon of the heart, restoring the desecrated ruin, again to become the temple of the living God.

(3) The agent, it is shed abroad in our hearts “by the Holy Ghost, which is given unto us.”

Hence follow the joyful songs so often sung by the saints. Psalms 40:2Psalm 40:2. 103:3-5. Isaiah 12:1-3. Avaunt then, ye Jortins, ye Sternes, who sneer at “hearing a voice, and having converse with God;” who mock at the in- comings, the out-goings, and in-dwellings of the holy and blessed Spirit. Your poor dry philosophy is not like David’s lovingkindness of God, which is better than life. The soul of the prophet was satisfied as with marrow and fatness, when he remembered the Lord on his bed, and meditated on his statutes in the night watches. Psalms 63:3Psalm 63:3, 5. It is, What nothing earthly gives, or can destroy,

The soul’s calm sunshine, and the heart-felt joy.

POPE.

5. Hope maketh not ashamed—Our hope can never disappoint or shame us. Love of God… Holy Ghost—For our hope is confirmed by God’s own testimony shed into our hearts. That testimony is in the form of God’s love in our hearts awakening a reciprocal love to God. And being from God is sure.

We have here (3-5) a beautiful climax of causes and effects, resulting in train from our justification. Tribulation, endurance, approvedness, hope— hope ratified by God’s own testimony, and pointing us to a future glory.

Ver. 5. And our hope: which is not overthrown, but strengthened, by present trials.

Does not put to shame: an abiding characteristic of it. Many a hope which has enabled a man bravely to battle with great difficulties has eventually by its failure covered him with ridicule. Paul asserts that this is not the case with the Christian hope. Of this assertion, Romans 5:5b-11 are a proof. Cp. Psalms 22:4Psalm 22:4, 5.

The love of God: expounded in Romans 5:8 to be God’s love to us. Poured-out: abundantly put within us, as in Acts 2:17; 10:45. In our hearts: as in Romans 1:21, the seat of the understanding and the will. God’s love is put within us as an object of our thought, and as a power evoking and moulding our emotions, purposes, actions: in other words, the knowledge that God loves us fills and rules us. These words appeal to our experience. Each will interpret them according as he has found God’s love to be a living power within him.

The Holy Spirit: now first mentioned, except the momentary reference in Romans 2:29.

Which was given to us: to all the justified: otherwise Paul could not appeal to the love made known by the Spirit as a sure ground of the hope which immediately follows justification. Cp. Romans 8:9. In our hearts: not into. The Spirit first Himself enters to be the soul of our soul, and then from within makes known to us God’s love. That Paul makes no further reference to the Holy Spirit, implies that his argument rests upon God’s love to us, not upon the fact that His love was revealed to us by the Spirit. The proof of God’s love in Romans 5:6-8 rests simply on the historic fact of Christ’s death. The reference to the Spirit is only casual. Paul cannot speak of God’s love, on which rests our glorious hope, without a tribute of honour to the Spirit through whose agency God makes known His love. This passing reference is a precursor of important teaching in Rom. 8.

V. 6. How can we now doubt of God's love?

For when we were without strength-Either to think, will, or do anything good.

In due time-Neither too soon nor too late; but in that very point of time which the wisdom of God knew to be more proper than any other. Christ died for the ungodly-Not only to set them a pattern, or to procure them power to follow it. It does not appear that this expression, of dying for any one, has any other signification than that of rescuing the life of another by laying down our own.

Verse 6. For when we were yet without strength] The apostle, having pointed out the glorious state of the believing Gentiles, takes occasion to contrast this with their former state; and the means by which they were redeemed from it. Their former state he points out in four particulars; which may be applied to men in general.

I. They were asqeneiv, without strength; in a weak, dying state: neither able to resist sin, nor do any good: utterly devoid of power to extricate themselves from the misery of their situation.

II. They were asebeiv, ungodly; without either the worship or knowledge of the true God; they had not God in them; and, consequently, were not partakers of the Divine nature: Satan lived in, ruled, and enslaved their hearts.

III. They were amartwloi, sinners, Romans 5:8, aiming at happiness, but constantly missing the mark, which is the ideal meaning of the Hebrew acj chata, and the Greek amartanw. See this explained, Genesis 13:13. And in missing the mark, they deviated from the right way; walked in the wrong way; trespassed in thus deviating; and, by breaking the commandments of God, not only missed the mark of felicity, but exposed themselves to everlasting misery.

IV. They were ecqroi enemies, Romans 5:10, from ecqov, hatred, enmity, persons who hated God and holiness; and acted in continual hostility to both. What a gradation is here! 1. In our fall from God, our first apparent state is, that we are without strength; have lost our principle of spiritual power, by having lost the image of God, righteousness and true holiness, in which we were created. 2. We are ungodly, having lost our strength to do good; we have also lost all power to worship God aright. The mind which was made for God is no longer his residence. 3. We are sinners; feeling we have lost our centre of rest, and our happiness, we go about seeking rest, but find none: what we have lost in losing God, we seek in earthly things; and thus are continually missing the mark, and multiplying transgressions against our Maker. 4. We are enemies; sin, indulged, increases in strength; evil acts engender fixed and rooted habits; the mind, every where poisoned with sin, increases in averseness from good; and mere aversion produces enmity; and enmity, acts of hostility, fell cruelty, &c.: so that the enemy of God hates his Maker and his service; is cruel to his fellow creatures; “a foe to God, was ne’er true friend to man;” and even torments his own soul! Though every man brings into the world the seeds of all these evils, yet it is only by growing up in him that they acquire their perfection-nemo repente fuit turpissimus-no man becomes a profligate at once; he arrives at it by slow degrees; and the speed he makes is proportioned to his circumstances, means of gratifying sinful passions, evil education, bad company, &c., &c. These make a great diversity in the moral states of men: all have the same seeds of evil-nemo sine vitiis nascitur-all come defiled into the world; but all have not the same opportunities of cultivating these seeds. Besides, as God’s Spirit is continually convincing the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment, and the ministers of God are seconding its influence with their pious exhortations, as the Bible is in almost every house, and is less or more heard or read by almost every person, these evil seeds are receiving continual blasts and checks, so that, in many cases, they have not a vigorous growth. These causes make the principal moral differences that we find among men; though in evil propensities they are all radically the same.

That all the preceding characters are applied by some learned men to the Gentiles, exclusively as such, I am well aware; and that they may be all applied to them in a national point of view, there can be little doubt. But there are too many correspondences between the state of the modern Gentiles and that of the ancient Gentiles, to justify the propriety of applying the whole as fully to the former as to the latter. Indeed, the four particulars already explained point out the natural and practical state of every human being, previously to his regeneration by the grace and Spirit of God.

In due time Christ died for the ungodly.] This due or proper time will appear in the following particulars:-1. Christ was manifested in the flesh when the world needed him most. 2. When the powers of the human mind had been cultivated to the utmost both in Greece and Rome, and had made every possible effort, but all in vain, to find out some efficient scheme of happiness. 3. When the Jews were in the lowest state of corruption, and had the greatest need of the promised deliverer. 4. When the fulness of the time came, foretold by the prophets. 5. When both Jews and Gentiles, the one from their jealousy, the other from their learning, were best qualified to detect imposture and to ascertain fact. 6. In a word, Christ came when his advent was most likely to promote its great object-glory to God in the highest, and peace and good will among men. And the success that attended the preaching of Christ and his apostles, together with the wide and rapid spread of the Gospel, all prove that it was the due time, kata kairon, the proper season; and that Divine wisdom was justified in fixing upon that time in preference to all others.

Died for the ungodly] uJper asebwn apeqane, He died INSTEAD of the ungodly, see also Romans 5:8; so Luke 22:19. The body of Christ, to uper umwn didomenon, which is given FOR you; i.e. the life that is laid down in your STEAD. In this way the preposition uper, is used by the best Greek writers.

Verses 6-8. For — How can we now doubt of God’s love, since when we were without strength — Either to think, will, or do any thing good; were utterly incapable of making any atonement for our transgressions, or of delivering ourselves from the depth of guilt and misery into which we were plunged; in due time — Neither too soon nor too late, but in that very point of time which the wisdom of God knew to be more proper than any other; Christ died for the ungodly — For the sake, and instead of, such as were enemies to God, (verse 10,) and could not merit any favour from him: that is, for Jews and Gentiles, when they were, as has been proved in the first three chapters, all under sin. Observe, reader, Christ not only died to set us an example, or to procure us power to follow it, but to atone for our sins; for it does not appear that this expression, of dying for any one, has any other signification than that of rescuing his life by laying down our own. “By the ungodly here, Mr. Locke understands Gentiles, as also by weak, sinners, enemies, &c. They are undoubtedly included; but it seems very inconsistent with the whole strain of the apostle’s argument in the preceding chapters, to confine it to them. Compare Romans 3:9-20, 22, 23; 4:5; 5:20. I therefore,” says Dr. Doddridge, “all along explain such passages in the most extensive sense; and think nothing in the whole New Testament plainer, than that the gospel supposes every human creature, to whom it is addressed, to be in a state of guilt and condemnation, and incapable of being accepted with God, any otherwise than through the grace and mercy which it proclaims. Compare John 3:16, 36; 5:24; 1 John 3:14; Mark 16:15, 16; Luke 24:47; and especially 1 John 1:10, than which no assertion can be more positive and express.” For scarcely for a righteous, or rather, honest, just, and unblameable man — One who gives to all what is strictly their due; would one be willing to die — Though apprehended to be in the most immediate danger: yet for a good man — A kind, merciful, compassionate, bountiful man; peradventure some would even dare to die — Every word increases the strangeness of the thing, and declares even this to be something great and unusual. But God commendeth — Greek, sunisthsi, recommendeth. A most elegant and proper expression; for those are wont to be recommended to us who were before either unknown to, or alienated from us. In that while we were yet sinners — So far from being good, that we were not even just; and were not only undeserving of his favour, but obnoxious to wrath and punishment; Christ died for us — Died in our stead, that our guilt might be cancelled, and we brought into a state of acceptance with God.

6. Without strength—Impotent to help ourselves; hopeless of salvation except from some aid without ourselves; powerless but by some gracious power from some foreign source; fully competent to our own ruin, but wholly incompetent to our own salvation. Such is depraved man apart from a gracious ability bestowed through the atonement.

Verse 6. Christ: put prominently forward as Himself the great proof of God’s love.

Powerless: unable to save ourselves, either by atonement for the past or by future obedience.

In due season: at the most suitable point of time: cp. Galatians 4:4. This is in part evident even to us, and is an additional proof of God’s love. On-behalf-of: uper with gen.: it denotes benefit or help or service, and is thus distinguished from anti (Matthew 20:28), which means instead of Cp. 2 Macc. vi. 28; vii. 9; viii. 21, “to die on behalf of the laws;” Ignatius to The Romans ch. iv., “to die on behalf of God.” What the benefit is, must be inferred from the context.

Christ died on behalf of ungodly-ones, i.e. in order that they may be saved: cp. Romans 8:32; 14:15, etc. And since, had He not died, we must, He may be said as in Matthew 20:28 to have died instead of us. Ungodly: as in Romans 4:5.

V. 7. A just man-One who gives to all what is strictly their due. The good man-One who is eminently holy; full of love, of compassion, kindness, mildness, of every heavenly and amiable temper. Perhaps-one-would-even-dare to die-Every word increases the strangeness of the thing, and declares even this to be something great and unusual.

Verse 7. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die] The Jews divide men, as to their moral character, into four classes: 1. Those who say, “what is mine, is my own; and what is thine, is thy own.” These may be considered the just, who render to every man his due; or rather, they who neither give nor take. The second class is made up of those who say, “what is mine, is thine; and what is thine, is mine.” These are they who accommodate each other, who borrow and lend. The third class is composed of those who say, “What is mine, is thine; and what is thine, let it be thine.” These are the pious, or good, who give up all for the benefit of their neighbour. The fourth class are those who say, “What is mine, is mine; and what is thine, shall be mine.” These are the impious, who take all, and give nothing.

Now, for one of the first class, who would die? There is nothing amiable in his life or conduct that would so endear him to any man, as to induce him to risk his life to save such a person.

Peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die.] This is for one of the third class, who gives all he has for the good of others. This is the truly benevolent man, whose life is devoted to the public good: for such a person, peradventure, some who have had their lives perhaps preserved by his bounty, would even dare to die: but such cases may be considered merely as possible: they exist, it is true, in romance; and we find a few rare instances of friends exposing themselves to death for their friends. See the case of Jonathan and David; Damon and Pythias, Val. Max. lib. iv. c, 7; Nisus and Euryalus, Virgil. And our Lord says, John 15:13: Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. This is the utmost we can expect among men.

Verses 6-8. For — How can we now doubt of God’s love, since when we were without strength — Either to think, will, or do any thing good; were utterly incapable of making any atonement for our transgressions, or of delivering ourselves from the depth of guilt and misery into which we were plunged; in due time — Neither too soon nor too late, but in that very point of time which the wisdom of God knew to be more proper than any other; Christ died for the ungodly — For the sake, and instead of, such as were enemies to God, (verse 10,) and could not merit any favour from him: that is, for Jews and Gentiles, when they were, as has been proved in the first three chapters, all under sin. Observe, reader, Christ not only died to set us an example, or to procure us power to follow it, but to atone for our sins; for it does not appear that this expression, of dying for any one, has any other signification than that of rescuing his life by laying down our own. “By the ungodly here, Mr. Locke understands Gentiles, as also by weak, sinners, enemies, &c. They are undoubtedly included; but it seems very inconsistent with the whole strain of the apostle’s argument in the preceding chapters, to confine it to them. Compare Romans 3:9-20, 22, 23; 4:5; 5:20. I therefore,” says Dr. Doddridge, “all along explain such passages in the most extensive sense; and think nothing in the whole New Testament plainer, than that the gospel supposes every human creature, to whom it is addressed, to be in a state of guilt and condemnation, and incapable of being accepted with God, any otherwise than through the grace and mercy which it proclaims. Compare John 3:16, 36; 5:24; 1 John 3:14; Mark 16:15, 16; Luke 24:47; and especially 1 John 1:10, than which no assertion can be more positive and express.” For scarcely for a righteous, or rather, honest, just, and unblameable man — One who gives to all what is strictly their due; would one be willing to die — Though apprehended to be in the most immediate danger: yet for a good man — A kind, merciful, compassionate, bountiful man; peradventure some would even dare to die — Every word increases the strangeness of the thing, and declares even this to be something great and unusual. But God commendeth — Greek, sunisthsi, recommendeth. A most elegant and proper expression; for those are wont to be recommended to us who were before either unknown to, or alienated from us. In that while we were yet sinners — So far from being good, that we were not even just; and were not only undeserving of his favour, but obnoxious to wrath and punishment; Christ died for us — Died in our stead, that our guilt might be cancelled, and we brought into a state of acceptance with God.

Ver. 7. For a good man some would even dare to die. Clio is represented in battle as taking the blow aimed at the head of Alexander the great, when he stopped Xerxes’s whole army at the pass of Thermopylæ. Leonides died bravely for his country. But who would die merely for a saint? Much less, who would die for an enemy? Oh the unutterable love of God to fallen man.

7. A righteous man… a good man—A righteous man is one rigidly just; a good man is one never unjust, but often more than just, namely, kind, generous, bountiful. The former all may respect, few will love, but scarce one will die for; the latter is loved, and for him many would sacrifice much, perhaps even life.

Ver. 7. Proof, by contrast with the most that man will do for man, of the greatness of the love implied in the foregoing statement. Hardly, or scarcely: an extreme supposition.

Righteous: one whose conduct agrees with the Law. The above unlikely supposition is justified by a case which perhaps occurs. Good: beneficent, and therefore more than righteous.

The good man: one whose conspicuous beneficence makes him a definite object of thought.

Dares: suggesting the fearful reality of facing death, even for the good man. Notice the hesitation of these words as going almost beyond possibility, and the prominence given to the character of the man for whom conceivably one might perhaps venture to die. All human experience tells how rare is the case here supposed.

V. 8. But God recommendeth-A most elegant expression. Those are wont to be recommended to us, who were before either unknown to, or alienated from, us.

While we were sinners-So far from being good, that we were not even just.

Verse 8. But God commendeth his love, &c.] sunisthsi: God hath set this act of infinite mercy in the most conspicuous light, so as to recommend it to the notice and admiration of all.

While we were yet sinners] We were neither righteous nor good; but impious and wicked. See the preceding verse, and see Clarke’s note on “Romans 5:6”.

Verses 6-8. For — How can we now doubt of God’s love, since when we were without strength — Either to think, will, or do any thing good; were utterly incapable of making any atonement for our transgressions, or of delivering ourselves from the depth of guilt and misery into which we were plunged; in due time — Neither too soon nor too late, but in that very point of time which the wisdom of God knew to be more proper than any other; Christ died for the ungodly — For the sake, and instead of, such as were enemies to God, (verse 10,) and could not merit any favour from him: that is, for Jews and Gentiles, when they were, as has been proved in the first three chapters, all under sin. Observe, reader, Christ not only died to set us an example, or to procure us power to follow it, but to atone for our sins; for it does not appear that this expression, of dying for any one, has any other signification than that of rescuing his life by laying down our own. “By the ungodly here, Mr. Locke understands Gentiles, as also by weak, sinners, enemies, &c. They are undoubtedly included; but it seems very inconsistent with the whole strain of the apostle’s argument in the preceding chapters, to confine it to them. Compare Romans 3:9-20, 22, 23; 4:5; 5:20. I therefore,” says Dr. Doddridge, “all along explain such passages in the most extensive sense; and think nothing in the whole New Testament plainer, than that the gospel supposes every human creature, to whom it is addressed, to be in a state of guilt and condemnation, and incapable of being accepted with God, any otherwise than through the grace and mercy which it proclaims. Compare John 3:16, 36; 5:24; 1 John 3:14; Mark 16:15, 16; Luke 24:47; and especially 1 John 1:10, than which no assertion can be more positive and express.” For scarcely for a righteous, or rather, honest, just, and unblameable man — One who gives to all what is strictly their due; would one be willing to die — Though apprehended to be in the most immediate danger: yet for a good man — A kind, merciful, compassionate, bountiful man; peradventure some would even dare to die — Every word increases the strangeness of the thing, and declares even this to be something great and unusual. But God commendeth — Greek, sunisthsi, recommendeth. A most elegant and proper expression; for those are wont to be recommended to us who were before either unknown to, or alienated from us. In that while we were yet sinners — So far from being good, that we were not even just; and were not only undeserving of his favour, but obnoxious to wrath and punishment; Christ died for us — Died in our stead, that our guilt might be cancelled, and we brought into a state of acceptance with God.

8. Sinners, Christ died for us—For us, who were neither good nor just, the Saviour died.

Ver. 8. Proof of God’s love for us involved in what Christ has actually done on behalf of sinners, in contrast to the difficult suggestion of a man dying even for the good man. This event of the past is ever with us, and each day gives-proof of God’s love.

Still sinners: continuing in sin even while God was giving proof of His love to them.

V. 9. By his blood-By his bloodshedding.

We shall be saved from wrath through him-That is, from all the effects of the wrath of God. But is there then wrath in God? Is not wrath a human passion? And how can this human passion be in God? We may answer this by another question: Is not love a human passion? And how can this human passion be in God? But to answer directly: wrath in man, and so love in man, is a human passion. But wrath in God is not a human passion; nor is love, as it is in God. Therefore the inspired writers ascribe both the one and the other to God only in an analogical sense.

Verse 9. Much more then, being now justified] If Jesus Christ, in his endless comparison towards us gave his life for ours, while we were yet enemies; being now justified by his blood-by his death on the cross, and thus reconciled to God, we shall be saved from wrath-from punishment for past transgression, through him-by what he has thus suffered for us.

Verses 9-11. Much more then — Since, therefore, it hath pleased the blessed God to give us such an unexampled display of his love as this, how high may our expectations rise, and how confidently may we conclude, that much more, being now justified by his blood — Shed for us: that is, by his death, which is the meritorious cause of our justification, while faith in that blood is the instrumental cause; we shall be saved from wrath — From future punishment, from the vengeance of eternal fire; through him — If he so loved us as to give his Son to die for us, when we were mere guilty sinners, we may assure ourselves that, having now constituted us righteous, and accepted us as such, pardoning all our sins for the sake of the sacrifice of Christ’s blood, he will certainly save us from eternal damnation; us who continue in the faith, grounded and settled, and are not moved away from the hope of the gospel. For if when we were enemies — Through the perverseness of our minds, and the rebellion of our lives, (see Colossians 1:21;) we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son — Which expiated our sins, and rendered God reconcileable, and which procured for us the Holy Spirit, to remove the enmity from our minds, giving us, at the same time, such a display of the love of God to us, as won our affections over to him; much more, being thus reconciled, we shall be saved — Sanctified and glorified; by his life — Restored in order to our being thus saved: that is, by his ever living to make intercession, and his thereby receiving for us, and communicating to us, continual supplies of grace. He that has done the greater thing, which is, of enemies to make us friends, will certainly do the lesser, which is, when we are friends to treat us as such, and be kind and gracious to us. But the opposition is not only between reconciling enemies, and preserving friends, the latter being less difficult than the former, but also between Christ’s death and life; his life here spoken of, being not his life in the flesh, but his life in heaven, that life which ensued after his death. See Romans 19:9. Now if his death, when he was crucified in weakness, performed the harder work, that is, reconciled his enemies, shall not his life, which is stronger, (for he liveth by his divine power as the Prince of life, that could not be held in death,) effect the easier work, and preserve and save to the uttermost, those that are already made his friends? For, we are reconciled by Christ humbled, and finally saved by Christ exalted, it being in consequence of his exaltation to the right hand of God, and his being invested with all power in heaven and on earth, and made head over all things to his church, that he completes and consummates our salvation. And not only so — Namely, that we should be reconciled and saved; but we also joy, Greek, kaucwmenoi, glory, in God — In the relation in which he stands to us as our God, and in all his glorious and boundless perfections, which we see are engaged for us; through our Lord Jesus Christ — By whom we are introduced into this happy state, who is our peace, and hath made God and us one; by whom we have now — That we are believers; received the atonement — Greek, thn katallaghn, the reconciliation. So the word signifies, and in all other passages where it occurs is so translated, being derived from the verb katallassw, which is twice rendered reconcile in the preceding verse, and to which it has so apparent a reference, that it is surprising it should have been here rendered by so different a word as atonement, especially as it is quite improper to speak of our receiving an atonement which God receives as made for our sins. But, when we are made true believers in Christ, we receive the reconciliation, and that not only averts the terrors of God’s wrath, but opens upon us all the blessings of his perpetual friendship and love; so that the Father and the Son come unto us, and make their abode with us, John 14:23; and we know and believe the love that he hath to us, and in consequence thereof dwell in love, and therefore dwell in God, and God in us. The whole paragraph from verse 3 to 11 may be taken together thus: We not only rejoice in hope of the glory of God, but also in the midst of tribulations, we glory in God himself through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have received the reconciliation.

Ver. 9. Triumphant inference from the proof of God’s love given in Romans 5:6-8, supporting the assertion in Romans 5:5 that His love makes it impossible that our hope will put us to shame. Much more: not greater abundance, as in Romans 11:12, but greater certainty, as in Romans 5:10, 15, 17. It is much more easy to believe that

we shall be saved by Christ’s life than that we have been justified by His death. To believe the latter, compels us to believe the former. Now: in contrast to days gone by.

In His blood: recalling same words in Romans 3:25: a vivid picture. The blood which flowed from His hands and feet purchased our pardon. Shall be saved: final deliverance from all evil: so Romans 10:10; 13:11; Philippians 1:19; 1 Thessalonians 5:8; 2 Timothy 2:10. This salvation has already begun and is progressing: so Romans 8:24; Ephesians 2:5; 1 Corinthians 1:18; 2 Corinthians 2:15. Paul here looks forward to its completion.

From the anger: of God against sin: so Romans 1:18; 2:5, 8; 1 Thessalonians 1:10. From the past Paul draws an inference for the future. If God loves us so much as to pardon our sins at the cost of the blood of Christ, He will not leave the pardoned ones to perish in the day of judgment.

V. 10. If-As sure as; so the word frequently signifies; particularly in this and the eighth chapter.

We shalt be saved-Sanctified and glorified.

Through his life-Who ever liveth to make intercession for us.

Verse 10. For if, when we were enemies] See under Romans 5:6. We were reconciled] The enmity existing before rendered the reconciliation necessary. In every human heart there is a measure of enmity to holiness, and, consequently to the author of it. Men seldom suspect this; for one property of sin is to blind the understanding, so that men do not know their own state.

We shall be saved by his life.] For, as he died for our sins, so he rose again for our justification; and his resurrection to life, is the grand proof that he has accomplished whatever he had purposed in reference to the salvation of man. 2. This may be also understood of his life of intercession: for it is written. He ever LIVETH to make INTERCESSION for us, Hebrews 7:25. Through this life of intercession at the right hand of God we are spared and blessed. 3. And it will not be amiss to consider that, as our salvation implies the renovation of our nature, and our being restored to the image of God, so, swqhsomeqa en th zwn autou, may be rendered: we shall be saved IN his life; for, I suppose, it is pretty generally agreed, that the life of God in the soul of man is essential to its salvation. 4. The example also of the life of Christ is a means of salvation. He hath left us an example that we should follow his steps: and he that followeth him, shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of LIFE, John 8:12.

Verses 9-11. Much more then — Since, therefore, it hath pleased the blessed God to give us such an unexampled display of his love as this, how high may our expectations rise, and how confidently may we conclude, that much more, being now justified by his blood — Shed for us: that is, by his death, which is the meritorious cause of our justification, while faith in that blood is the instrumental cause; we shall be saved from wrath — From future punishment, from the vengeance of eternal fire; through him — If he so loved us as to give his Son to die for us, when we were mere guilty sinners, we may assure ourselves that, having now constituted us righteous, and accepted us as such, pardoning all our sins for the sake of the sacrifice of Christ’s blood, he will certainly save us from eternal damnation; us who continue in the faith, grounded and settled, and are not moved away from the hope of the gospel. For if when we were enemies — Through the perverseness of our minds, and the rebellion of our lives, (see Colossians 1:21;) we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son — Which expiated our sins, and rendered God reconcileable, and which procured for us the Holy Spirit, to remove the enmity from our minds, giving us, at the same time, such a display of the love of God to us, as won our affections over to him; much more, being thus reconciled, we shall be saved — Sanctified and glorified; by his life — Restored in order to our being thus saved: that is, by his ever living to make intercession, and his thereby receiving for us, and communicating to us, continual supplies of grace. He that has done the greater thing, which is, of enemies to make us friends, will certainly do the lesser, which is, when we are friends to treat us as such, and be kind and gracious to us. But the opposition is not only between reconciling enemies, and preserving friends, the latter being less difficult than the former, but also between Christ’s death and life; his life here spoken of, being not his life in the flesh, but his life in heaven, that life which ensued after his death. See Romans 19:9. Now if his death, when he was crucified in weakness, performed the harder work, that is, reconciled his enemies, shall not his life, which is stronger, (for he liveth by his divine power as the Prince of life, that could not be held in death,) effect the easier work, and preserve and save to the uttermost, those that are already made his friends? For, we are reconciled by Christ humbled, and finally saved by Christ exalted, it being in consequence of his exaltation to the right hand of God, and his being invested with all power in heaven and on earth, and made head over all things to his church, that he completes and consummates our salvation. And not only so — Namely, that we should be reconciled and saved; but we also joy, Greek, kaucwmenoi, glory, in God — In the relation in which he stands to us as our God, and in all his glorious and boundless perfections, which we see are engaged for us; through our Lord Jesus Christ — By whom we are introduced into this happy state, who is our peace, and hath made God and us one; by whom we have now — That we are believers; received the atonement — Greek, thn katallaghn, the reconciliation. So the word signifies, and in all other passages where it occurs is so translated, being derived from the verb katallassw, which is twice rendered reconcile in the preceding verse, and to which it has so apparent a reference, that it is surprising it should have been here rendered by so different a word as atonement, especially as it is quite improper to speak of our receiving an atonement which God receives as made for our sins. But, when we are made true believers in Christ, we receive the reconciliation, and that not only averts the terrors of God’s wrath, but opens upon us all the blessings of his perpetual friendship and love; so that the Father and the Son come unto us, and make their abode with us, John 14:23; and we know and believe the love that he hath to us, and in consequence thereof dwell in love, and therefore dwell in God, and God in us. The whole paragraph from verse 3 to 11 may be taken together thus: We not only rejoice in hope of the glory of God, but also in the midst of tribulations, we glory in God himself through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have received the reconciliation.

10. Enemies… reconciled… saved—If when enemies God reconciled us, much more, being friends, he will save us. He will deal far better with friends than foes, even though they are the same persons. Saved by his life—We are reconciled by his atoning death, and saved by his ever-living power.

2. In the grand antithesis between Adam and Christ. (12-21.) This memorable passage is here with great distinctness set, as a living picture presenting, as it were to the eye, the tableau of ruin and renovation. To the Jew, with whom St. Paul is discussing, Christ is thus installed in his exalted position in the organic system of the world. Adam, as head of the race, is the type; yet the mournful contrast and dark background to this new world-wide Saviour.

Ver. 10. Fuller restatement of the above argument.

Enemies: sinners (Romans 5:8) exposed to God’s righteous hostility to sin. So Romans 11:28; Colossians 1:21; Ephesians 2:16. Reconciled: brought into a peaceful relation to God: so 2 Corinthians 5:18-20; Ephesians 2:16; Colossians 1:20, 22. It is not merely or chiefly removal of our hostility to God, but our deliverance from His righteous hostility and anger against sin.

This is God’s work: hence we-were-reconciled. For the meaning of this phrase, see Matthew 5:24; 1 Corinthians 7:11; 1 Samuel 29:4. It denotes here the removal, by means of Christ’s death, of a barrier to peace with God having its foundation in the essential justice of God. Of His Son: the point of the argument. Christ’s death proves God’s love to us: for He is the Son of God.

We shall be saved: repeating the argument of Romans 5:9. In His life: by means of the power of the living and ascended Saviour, this looked upon as the environment of our salvation. What God has already done has cost the death of His Son. To complete our deliverance, will require no fresh suffering; but will require only the living power of Christ. The costliness of the beginning is a pledge of the completion of the work. Similar argument in Romans 8:32.

V. 11. And not only so, but we also glory-The whole sentence, from the third to the eleventh verse, may be taken together thus: We not only rejoice in hope of the glory of God, but also in the midst of tribulations we glory

in God himself through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the reconciliation.

Verse 11. We also joy (kaucwmenoi, we exult, or glory) in God, &c.] We now feel that God is reconciled to us, and we are reconciled to him: the enmity is removed from our souls; and He, for Christ’s sake, through whom we have received the atonement, katallaghn, the reconciliation, has remitted the wrath, the punishment which we deserved: and now, through this reconciliation, we expect an eternal glory. It was certainly improper to translate katallagh here by atonement, instead of reconciliation; as katallassw signifies to reconcile, and is so rendered by our translators in all the places where it occurs. It does not mean the atonement here, as we generally understand that word, viz. the sacrificial death of Christ; but rather the effect of that atonement, the removal of the enmity, and by this, the change of our condition and state; from kata, intensive, and allassw to change; the thorough change of our state from enmity to friendship. God is reconciled to us, and we are reconciled to him by the death of his Son; and thus there is a glorious change from enmity to friendship; and we can exult in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have received this reconciliation. Though boasting is forbidden to a Jew, because his is a false confidence, yet boasting is enjoined to a Christian, to one reconciled to God; for, his boasting is only in that reconciliation, and the endless mercy by which it is procured. So he that glorieth (boasteth) must glory in the Lord.

Verses 9-11. Much more then — Since, therefore, it hath pleased the blessed God to give us such an unexampled display of his love as this, how high may our expectations rise, and how confidently may we conclude, that much more, being now justified by his blood — Shed for us: that is, by his death, which is the meritorious cause of our justification, while faith in that blood is the instrumental cause; we shall be saved from wrath — From future punishment, from the vengeance of eternal fire; through him — If he so loved us as to give his Son to die for us, when we were mere guilty sinners, we may assure ourselves that, having now constituted us righteous, and accepted us as such, pardoning all our sins for the sake of the sacrifice of Christ’s blood, he will certainly save us from eternal damnation; us who continue in the faith, grounded and settled, and are not moved away from the hope of the gospel. For if when we were enemies — Through the perverseness of our minds, and the rebellion of our lives, (see Colossians 1:21;) we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son — Which expiated our sins, and rendered God reconcileable, and which procured for us the Holy Spirit, to remove the enmity from our minds, giving us, at the same time, such a display of the love of God to us, as won our affections over to him; much more, being thus reconciled, we shall be saved — Sanctified and glorified; by his life — Restored in order to our being thus saved: that is, by his ever living to make intercession, and his thereby receiving for us, and communicating to us, continual supplies of grace. He that has done the greater thing, which is, of enemies to make us friends, will certainly do the lesser, which is, when we are friends to treat us as such, and be kind and gracious to us. But the opposition is not only between reconciling enemies, and preserving friends, the latter being less difficult than the former, but also between Christ’s death and life; his life here spoken of, being not his life in the flesh, but his life in heaven, that life which ensued after his death. See Romans 19:9. Now if his death, when he was crucified in weakness, performed the harder work, that is, reconciled his enemies, shall not his life, which is stronger, (for he liveth by his divine power as the Prince of life, that could not be held in death,) effect the easier work, and preserve and save to the uttermost, those that are already made his friends? For, we are reconciled by Christ humbled, and finally saved by Christ exalted, it being in consequence of his exaltation to the right hand of God, and his being invested with all power in heaven and on earth, and made head over all things to his church, that he completes and consummates our salvation. And not only so — Namely, that we should be reconciled and saved; but we also joy, Greek, kaucwmenoi, glory, in God — In the relation in which he stands to us as our God, and in all his glorious and boundless perfections, which we see are engaged for us; through our Lord Jesus Christ — By whom we are introduced into this happy state, who is our peace, and hath made God and us one; by whom we have now — That we are believers; received the atonement — Greek, thn katallaghn, the reconciliation. So the word signifies, and in all other passages where it occurs is so translated, being derived from the verb katallassw, which is twice rendered reconcile in the preceding verse, and to which it has so apparent a reference, that it is surprising it should have been here rendered by so different a word as atonement, especially as it is quite improper to speak of our receiving an atonement which God receives as made for our sins. But, when we are made true believers in Christ, we receive the reconciliation, and that not only averts the terrors of God’s wrath, but opens upon us all the blessings of his perpetual friendship and love; so that the Father and the Son come unto us, and make their abode with us, John 14:23; and we know and believe the love that he hath to us, and in consequence thereof dwell in love, and therefore dwell in God, and God in us. The whole paragraph from verse 3 to 11 may be taken together thus: We not only rejoice in hope of the glory of God, but also in the midst of tribulations, we glory in God himself through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have received the reconciliation.

Ver. 11. A supplementary argument supporting the confidence expressed in Romans 5:10, and another exultation in addition to those in Romans 5:2, 3.

Not only have we been reconciled but we are exulting in God. Cp. Romans 2:17, 23. This recalls “exult in hope” in Romans 5:2, and “exult in afflictions” in Romans 5:3.

Through our Lord etc.: recalling Romans 5:1, and noting the completion of the argument there begun. Not only have we been reconciled to God through the death of His Son, but day by day we find in God matter of joyful confidence.

Through whom etc.: emphatic repetition of the truth that our salvation in all its elements is through Christ.

Already: or now, as in Romans 5:9. The argument is this. Our present joyful confidence is itself a pledge that our hope of final salvation will be fulfilled. For it has its root in God and has been evoked in us by means of the coming and death and resurrection of Christ. Such a confidence, thus evoked, cannot deceive. It therefore confirms the proof of blessing to come already deduced from our reconciliation through the death of Christ. The argument begun in Romans 5:5b is now complete. God’s love to us has been proved by the death of Christ for sinners compared with what man will do for the best of his fellows. And it has been shown that what God has already done for us at so great cost, and the confidence in God thus evoked, are a sure pledge that He will save us to the end. If so, we shall enter (Romans 5:2) the glory of God; and our hope of glory, strengthened by endurance of so many hardships, will not put us to shame. Notice the perfect confidence with which Paul assumes that all his readers, like himself, were once sinners and enemies of God; that they have been justified and reconciled, and are now at peace with God; and that they know this. For nothing less than a full assurance of the favour of God could prompt the joyful exultation which glows in every line of this section, an exultation not quenched but intensified by the hardships of life. In Romans 5:10, as in Romans 1:3, 4, we find the title Son of God. That enemies have been reconciled to God through the death of His Son, implies an infinite difference between Him and them, a difference based upon His relation to God as His Son. Moreover, Paul’s appeal to the death of Christ as a proof of the love, not of Christ, but of God, reveals the peculiar closeness of Christ’s relation to God. For it suggests a father who gives up his own son, whom he loves with a peculiar affection, to rescue others who are not his sons. This implies that Christ’s relation to God is altogether different from ours. This important doctrine, Paul assumes here, as in Romans 1:3, 4, without proof, except the historic proof afforded by His resurrection. See Diss. i. And on this great doctrine rests the whole argument of this section.

In Romans 2:29, we felt for a moment the presence of the Spirit, as author of the circumcision of the heart. With this slight exception, the Holy Spirit and the love of God come before us now for the first time, and in the same verse. The connection is significant. The love of God, which is His inmost essence, is made known to us only by the inward presence of the Spirit of God. A knowledge of His love and the presence of the Spirit belong to the new life which in this chapter we have entered. The love of God was manifested in the historic fact of the death of Christ; and is proved by Paul, from this fact, by human argument. Nevertheless, the assurance of God’s love is produced ln our hearts by the Holy Spirit. Notice here the true place and office and connection of the facts of Christianity, of human reasoning, and of the Holy Spirit. Upon the facts is built up a logical argument: into this argument the Spirit breathes life and power, and thus makes the facts real to us. Therefore, before Paul begins to reason about the facts he pays homage to the Spirit. But he is none the less careful to prove by conclusive reasoning the historic certainty on which rests the Christian hope. It is always dangerous to accept as the voice of the Spirit that which does not rest on historic fact and sound logic. See notes under Romans 8:17.

Let us now analyse the spiritual life described in this section. Here are men once living in sin because forgetful of God. They were therefore looked upon by God as enemies; and were powerless to escape from, or make peace with, their great adversary. But God loved them: and, since their salvation was not otherwise possible, He gave His Son to die for them, and proclaimed through His death the justification of all who believe. They believed; and were justified, and thus reconciled to their adversary, and consequently are now at peace with God. Christ has brought them near to God. They know that they are justified, and that their justification is a gift of God’s favour towards them. Conscious of this, they stand securely, and look forward with exultation to an entrance into the glory in which God dwells. It is true that their path is crowded with enemies who press heavily upon them: but in spite of these they go forward. Each victory reveals the strength of the arm on which they lean. Thus each conflict increases their assurance of final victory: and the trials of life, of which they understand the purpose, call forth in them a song of triumph. When they believed, God gave His Spirit to dwell in their hearts: and the Spirit has made them conscious that God loves them. Their assurance of His love, though produced by the Spirit, rests upon outward evidence which can be tested by human reasoning. Their present position has cost the death of Christ, and is therefore a proof of God’s love, and a pledge that God will not leave them to perish. Indeed, their exultation in God is itself a proof of this. Therefore, although their entire life rests upon a hope of the future, their position is secure. For their hope is one which puts no man to shame.

V. 12. Therefore-This refers to all the preceding discourse; from which the apostle infers what follows. He does not therefore properly make a digression, but returns to speak again of sin and of righteousness. As by one man-Adam; who is mentioned, and not Eve, as being the representative of mankind.

Sin entered into the world-Actual sin, and its consequence, a sinful nature.

And death-With all its attendants. It entered into the world when it entered into being; for till then it did not exist.

By sin-Therefore it could not enter before sin.

Even so-Namely, by one man.

In that-So the word is used also, 2 Corinthians 5:4. All sinned-In Adam. These words assign the reason why death came upon all men; infants themselves not excepted, in that all sinned.

Verse 12. Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world] From this verse, to the conclusion of the chapter, the apostle produces a strong argument to prove that, as all mankind stood in need of the grace of God in Christ to redeem them from their sins, so this grace has been afforded equally to all, both Jews and Gentiles.

Dr. Taylor has given the following analysis of the apostle’s mode of argumentation. The argument stands thus:-“The consequences of Christ’s obedience extend as far as the consequences of Adam’s disobedience. The consequences of Adam’s disobedience extend to all mankind; and therefore, so do the consequences of Christ’s obedience. Now, if the Jews will not allow the Gentiles any interest in Abraham, as not being naturally descended from him, yet they must own that the Gentiles are the descendants of Adam, as well as themselves; and being all equally involved in the consequences of his sin, from which” (as far as the death of the body is concerned) “they shall all equally be released at the resurrection, through the free gift of God, therefore they could not deny the Gentiles a share in all the other blessings included in the same gift.”

This argument, besides proving the main point, goes to show: 1. That the grace of God in the Gospel abounds beyond, or very far exceeds, the mere reversing of the sufferings brought upon mankind by Adam’s one offence; as it bestows a vast surplusage of blessings which have no relation to that offence, but to the many offences which mankind have committed, and to the exuberance of the Divine grace. 2. To show how justly the Divine grace is founded on the obedience of Christ, in correspondence to the dispensation Adam was under, and to the consequences of his disobedience: if this disobedience involved all mankind in death, it is proper that the obedience of Christ should be the cause not only of reversing that death to all mankind, but also of other blessings which God should see fit (through him) to bestow on the world. 3. It serves to explain, and set in a clear view, the difference between the law and grace. It was the law which, for Adam’s one transgression, subjected him and his posterity, as included in him when he transgressed, to death, without hopes of a revival. It is grace which restores all men to life at the resurrection; and, over and above that, has provided a gracious dispensation for the pardon of their sins; for reducing them to obedience; for guarding them against temptations; supplying them with strength and comfort; and for advancing them to eternal life. This would give the attentive Jew a just notion of the law which himself was under, and under which he was desirous of bringing the Gentiles.

The order in which the apostle handles this argument is this:- 1. He affirms that death passed upon all men by Adam’s one transgression, Romans 5:12. 2. He proves this, Romans 5:13, 14: 3. He affirms there is a correspondence between Adam and Christ; or between the paraptwma, offence, and the carisma, free gift, Romans 5:14. 4. This correspondence, so far as the two opposite parts answer to each other, is justly expressed, Romans 5:18, 19; and there we have the main or fundamental position of the apostle’s argument, in relation to the point which he has been arguing from the beginning of the epistle, namely, the extensiveness of the grace of the Gospel, that it actually reaches to ALL MEN, and is not confined to the Jews. 5. But, before he laid down this position, it was necessary that he should show that the correspondence between Adam and Christ, or between the offence and the gift, is not to be confined strictly to the bounds specified in the position, as if the gift reached no farther than the consequences of the offence; when in reality it extends vastly beyond them, Romans 5:15-17. 6. Having settled these points, as previously necessary to clear his fundamental position, and fit to his argument, he then lays down that position in a diversified manner of speech, Romans 5:18, 19, just as in 1 Corinthians 15:20, 21, and leaves us to conclude, from the premises laid down, Romans 5:15-17, that the gift and the grace in its utmost extent, is as free to all mankind who are willing to accept of it, as this particular instance, the resurrection from the dead. They shall all be raised from the dead hereafter; they may all be quickened by the Spirit here. 7. Having thus shown the extensiveness of the Divine grace, in opposition to the dire effects of the law under which Adam was; that the Jews might not overlook what he intended they should particularly observe, he puts them in mind that the law given to Adam, transgress and die, was introduced into the Jewish constitution by the ministry of Moses; and for this end, that the offence, with the penalty of death annexed to it, might abound, Romans 5:20. But, to illustrate tho Divine grace by setting it in contrast to the law, he immediately adds: where sin, subjecting to death, hath abounded, grace hath much more abounded; that is, in blessings bestowed; it has stretched far beyond both Adam’s transgression, and the transgressions under the law of Moses, Romans 5:20, 21, and see the note on the first of these verses. Upon this argument the learned doctor makes the following general remarks:-

“I. As to the order of time: the apostle carries his arguments backwards from the time when Christ came into the world

(Romans 1:17; to Rom. 4.) to the time when the covenant was made with Abraham, (Rom. 4.,) to the time when the judgment to condemnation, pronounced upon Adam, came upon all men,

Romans 5:12, to the end. And thus he gives us a view of the principal dispensations from the beginning of the world.

“II. In this last case, as well as in the two former, he uses law or forensic terms; judgment to condemnation, justification, justify, made sinners, made righteous. And therefore, as he considers both Jews and Gentiles at the coming of Christ, and Abraham when the covenant was made with him, so he considers Adam, and all men, as standing in the court before the tribunal of God. And this was the clearest and concisest way of representing his arguments.” Notes, p. 283.

Sin entered into the world] There was neither sin nor death before the offence of Adam; after that there were both. Adam’s transgression was therefore the cause of both.

And death by sin] Natural evil is evidently the effect of moral evil; if man had never sinned, he had never suffered. Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return, was never spoken till after Adam had eaten the forbidden fruit.

Death passed upon all men] Hence we see that all human beings partook in the consequences of Adam’s sin. He propagated his like; and, with the rudiments of his own nature, propagated those of his moral likeness. For that all have sinned] All are born with a sinful nature; and the seeds of this evil soon vegetate, and bring forth corresponding fruits. There has never been one instance of an immaculate human soul since the fall of Adam. Every man sins, and sins too after the similitude of Adam’s transgression. Adam endeavoured to be independent of God; all his offspring act in the same way: hence prayer is little used, because prayer is the language of dependence; and this is inconsistent with every emotion of original sin. When these degenerate children of degenerate parents are detected in their sins, they act just as their parents did; each excuses himself, and lays the blame on another. What hast thou done?-The woman whom THOU gavest me, to be with me; SHE gave me, and I did eat. What hast THOU done? -The SERPENT beguiled me, and I did eat. Thus, it is extremely difficult to find a person who ingenuously acknowledges his own transgressions.

See Clarke’s notes on “Genesis 3:6”, &c., where the doctrine of original sin is particularly considered.

Verses 12, 13. Wherefore — This refers to all the preceding discourse, from which the apostle infers what follows: he does not therefore make a digression, but returns to speak again of sin and righteousness; as if he had said, “We may from these premises infer, that the benefit which we believers receive from Christ is equal to the detriment we derive from Adam; yea, is on the whole greater than that.” For, as by one man — That is, Adam, the common father of the human species; (he is mentioned, and not Eve, as being the representative of mankind;) sin entered into the world — Actual sin, namely, the transgression of Adam and its consequence, a sinful nature, which took place in him, through his first sin, and which he conveyed to all his posterity; and death — With all its attendants. It entered into the world when it entered into being; for till then it did not exist; by sin — Therefore it could not enter in before sin; and so — Namely, by one man; death passed — From one generation to another; upon all men, for that all have sinned — Namely, in Adam, their representative, and as being in his loins. That is, they are so far involved in his first transgression and its consequences, and so certainly derive a sinful nature from him, that they become obnoxious to death. Instead of, for that, Dr. Doddridge renders ef’ w, unto which, (namely, unto death, mentioned in the preceding clause,) all have sinned. In which ever way the expression is rendered, the words are evidently intended to assign the reason why death came upon all men, infants themselves not excepted. For until the law — For, from the fall of Adam, unto the time when God gave the law by Moses, as well as after it; sin was in the world — As appeared by the continual execution of its punishment; that is, death: but — It is a self- evident principle that sin is not, and cannot be, imputed where there is no law — Since the very essence of sin consists in the violation of a law. And consequently, since we see, in fact, that sin was imputed, we must conclude that the persons, to whose account it was charged, were under some law. Now this, with respect to infants, could not be the law of nature, (any more than the law of Moses,) for infants could not transgress that; it must therefore have been the law given to Adam, the transgression whereof is, in some sense, imputed to all, even to infants, he being the representative of all his posterity, and they all being in his loins. In other words, they do not die for any actual sins of their own, being incapable, while in infancy, of committing any, but through Adam’s sin alone.

Ver. 12. By one man sin entered into the world. In Tirinus, the learned jesuit, I find a luminous note on original sin, a note sanctioned by ancient councils of the church. After comprising sin and death, and all other punishments under one head, the sin of Adam, he adds, Sed per ipsum in reliquos omnes homines, ejus filios, pertransit; non sola imitatione (as the Pelagians contend) sed vera propagatione; nam peccante Adamo, qui omnium parens et princeps erat, in eo omnes simul pecaverunt, quia omnium voluntates et consensus erant collocate in voluntate unius Adami, ut fusè docent scholastici, et ss. patres, tam Græci tam Latini. That is, the sin of Adam is transmitted through him into the whole human kind. Being his children, they do not sin by imitation alone, as the Pelagians contend, but by real propagation; for Adam sinning, who was the parent and prince or all, in him all sinned together, because all their wills and consent were collocated in the one will of Adam, as divines and the holy fathers, both Greek and Latin, teach at large.

12. Wherefore—As the result of all that has gone before, describing man’s natural fall and gracious delivery, but more specially now suggested by that ruin and redemption in verses 10 and 11. One man—Adam, (and not Eve.) as the representative of the race. Sin entered—The first actual human sin was committed. Satan had sinned before, and both he and his sin were in the physical world, that is, on earth. Indeed, Satan’s sin in tempting preceded Adam’s sin in the world; so that it is not the physical earth that is meant, but the human world, the race of man.

By the sin that entered many understand the state of sin (sometimes called corruption) into which man is fallen as a nature. And no doubt there is a state of evil, as well as evil action, which in the Scriptures is called sin. Sin is not in action alone: there may be a permanently wrong and wicked state of mind, of purpose, of temper, of character. A man may for years entertain a purpose of murder, waiting the opportunity for the deed. He is thus in heart, state, and character a permanent murderer. Whether awake, asleep, or in a swoon, there is the same unsuspended state of character. A man’s sensual nature may have the entire predominance over his moral nature, so that, awake or asleep, he may be a sensual, drunken being. So pride, ambition, scepticism, and a thousand other vices, may be triumphant in a man’s permanent mental state and fixed moral character. He is, therefore, in a state of sin. And whatever good there is in him is so subordinated to, harmonized with, and tainted by, these predominant evils as to be only qualifiedly good. Yet it was Adam’s flagrant act of disobedience to God’s law which at once thus subordinated the good to evil in his moral constitution God; law, conscience, were no longer supreme; self submission to temptation, animal indulgence, took the ascendant. That changed condition of soul becoming hereditary, has been called “Original Sin.” Whatever may be the suitableness of the term, Scripture, consciousness, and experience amply attest the mournful fact. Death by sin—Geologists declare, and science seems universally to accept the declaration, that animal death existed for ages before the human race existed. Indeed death, disintegration, dissolution, appears to belong to the very nature of all material organisms. This fact seems to be recognised in the Genesis history. Adam’s first organism seems to have been naturally dissoluble, and its dissolution to have been prevented by the tree of life. His bodily immortality seems thus to have been properly supernatural. Just so his holiness was supernatural, being superinduced by the blessed indwelling and communion of the Divine Spirit. Sin removed the Holy Spirit; the sentence upon sin removed him from the tree of life, (Genesis 3:22,) and so when sin entered then also entered death by sin. It was, as above said, into the human world that both sin and death now entered. It is said explicitly that “death passed upon all men,” not upon the lower animal races. On Adam’s sin, moral subversion and mortality obtained full sway over him, and so of all his descendants by the law of propagation; the law by which throughout the entire generative kingdoms, whether vegetable, animal, or human, like nature begets like nature, bodily, mental, and moral.

“When the apostle here teaches that all evil has its origin in sin, and all sin in that of the ancestor of the human race, he by no means propounds an entirely new doctrine. It is substantially contained in the third chapter of Genesis, and is frequently declared in the Apocrypha: Wisdom of Solomon, 11:23, 24; Ecclesiasticus 25:24. It has likewise been handed down in the exegetical traditions of the rabbins, among whom, for example, are to be found such sentiments as the following: The Targum, on the text, Ecclesiastes 7:29, ‘God hath made man upright,’ observes: ‘But the serpent and the woman seduced him, and caused death to be brought upon him and all the inhabitants of the earth;’ and on Ruth 4:22, ‘Jesse lived many days, until the counsel which the serpent gave to Eve was called to mind before God. In consequence of this counsel all men upon earth are obnoxious to death.’ To the same purpose are the words of R. Shemtob (died anno 1293) in the book Sepher Haemunoth: ‘In their mystical commentaries our doctors say that if Adam and Eve had not sinned their descendants would not have been infected with the propensity to evil; their form would have remained perfect like that of the angels, and they would have continued forever in the world, subject neither to death nor change.’ ‘Bereschith Rabba,’ a mystical commentary upon Genesis from an early period of the Middle Ages, par. 12, 14: ‘Although created perfect, yet when the first man sinned all was perverted, and shall not return to order until the Messiah come.’”—Tholuck. Yet some of these authorities are probably the borrowers from the apostle rather than originals. Other Jewish doctors maintain an implanted tendency to evil born in every man. All have sinned—How does the apostle mean that all have sinned? Theologians have replied, All have sinned in Adam. But no such phrase as sinned in Adam occurs in Scripture. The phrase In Adam all die does occur. This does not mean, however, that any man’s body or person was physically, materially, or morally present, or so incorporated in the body of Adam as to expire with him when he expired. No more was any person present in Adam to eat the forbidden fruit when he ate. Every man dies conceptually in the first mortal man, just as every lion dies in the first mortal lion; that is, by being subjected to death by the law of likeness to the primal progenitor. The first lion was the representative lion, in whose likeness every descended lion would roar, devour, and die; and so in him all the lion race die. Adam, separated by sin from the Holy Spirit, was a naturally disposed sinner, and, shut from the tree of life, a natural mortal; and so by the law of descent his posterity are naturally disposed sinners, and both naturally and penally mortal.

But when the apostle declares that all have sinned, he declares not merely the natural disposition, but the actual sinning of all. Our view is this: The aorist or past tense, here used of the word sinned, does in this epistle often imply a general certain fact or state of facts. So it is used in Romans 3:23; 9:22, 23; 8:29, 30, (where see notes,) where justified and glorified express a uniform general fact in the same tense. And it is so regularly used throughout this very passage, 12-21. Verse 15, Hath abounded, essentially means always abounds and always will abound; 17, Death reigned; 21, Sin hath reigned, express permanent, universal facts. The clause all have sinned, therefore, means just the same as all sin—thus stating a fact which (allowing for volitional freedom) is as uniform as a law of nature. Now such a uniform law of nature, however generally stated, takes effect only in those circumstances or conditions which allow it possible. Thus “water runs,” that is, such is the nature of water if gravitation permit. “Lead melts,” that is, when the temperature allows. “All men sin”—such is their nature—when their probation presents itself. Such being their normal action, such must be their permanent nature. And infants are of the same nature, they needing only the possible conditions for actual sinning. The sentence of universal death must stand, therefore, because in the divine view men are by nature universal sinners. Not because they literally sinned in Adam; not because Adam’s personal sin is imputed to them, but because such is their nature that in this scene of probation, hemmed in with temptations on all sides, sooner or later they will sin; and of whatever act a being is the normal, if not absolutely universal, performer, of that he is normally called the doer; if of sin, then a sinner.

The aoristic character of the verbs we have quoted is preserved by the writer’s being considered as assuming his standpoint at the close of the whole series of transactions they express. Standing at the finale of all probationary history, he recognises that all sinned when the lengthened trial came. (For the reconciliation of volitional freedom with this universality of sin see WILL, pp. 338-343.)

In verse 12 the apostle states one side of the comparison, but he does not state the other side until verse 18. What intervenes may be considered logically parenthetic. To obtain the gist of the parallel, verses 12 and 18 may be read together.

The Adamic side of the comparison the apostle assumes on the admitted authority of Genesis. The purpose of the parallel is, (1.) To show the illustrious place of Christ in the history of our world. (2.) To show that justification by Christ extends beyond mere Judaism, and embraces the race. (3.) To show that the redemption more than repairs the fall.

Verse 12 is incomplete: it states only one side of an important comparison. For, although grammatically the clause also in this way etc. might be taken as introducing the second member of the comparison, this would yield no adequate contrast. Evidently the comparison is broken off in order to prove the former side of it. The second side is informally introduced in Romans 5:15; and the whole comparison is formally stated in Romans 5:18, 19. Similar broken constructions are found in Galatians 2:6-9; Ephesians 2:1-5.

V. 13. For until the law sin was in the world-All, I say, had sinned, for sin was in the world long before the written law; but, I grant, sin is not so much imputed, nor so severely punished by God, where there is no express law to convince men of it. Yet that all had sinned, even then, appears in that all died.

Verse 13. For until the law sin was in the world] As death reigned from Adam to Moses, so also did sin. Now, as there was no written law from Adam to that given to Moses, the death that prevailed could not be the breach of that law; for sin, so as to be punished with temporal death, is not imputed where there is no law, which shows the penalty of sin to be death. Therefore, men are not subjected to death for their own personal transgressions, but for the sin of Adam; as, through his transgression, all come into the world with the seeds of death and corruption in their own nature, superadded to their moral depravity. All are sinful-all are mortal-and all must die.

Verses 12, 13. Wherefore — This refers to all the preceding discourse, from which the apostle infers what follows: he does not therefore make a digression, but returns to speak again of sin and righteousness; as if he had said, “We may from these premises infer, that the benefit which we believers receive from Christ is equal to the detriment we derive from Adam; yea, is on the whole greater than that.” For, as by one man — That is, Adam, the common father of the human species; (he is mentioned, and not Eve, as being the representative of mankind;) sin entered into the world — Actual sin, namely, the transgression of Adam and its consequence, a sinful nature, which took place in him, through his first sin, and which he conveyed to all his posterity; and death — With all its attendants. It entered into the world when it entered into being; for till then it did not exist; by sin — Therefore it could not enter in before sin; and so — Namely, by one man; death passed — From one generation to another; upon all men, for that all have sinned — Namely, in Adam, their representative, and as being in his loins. That is, they are so far involved in his first transgression and its consequences, and so certainly derive a sinful nature from him, that they become obnoxious to death. Instead of, for that, Dr. Doddridge renders ef’ w, unto which, (namely, unto death, mentioned in the preceding clause,) all have sinned. In which ever way the expression is rendered, the words are evidently intended to assign the reason why death came upon all men, infants themselves not excepted. For until the law — For, from the fall of Adam, unto the time when God gave the law by Moses, as well as after it; sin was in the world — As appeared by the continual execution of its punishment; that is, death: but — It is a self- evident principle that sin is not, and cannot be, imputed where there is no law — Since the very essence of sin consists in the violation of a law. And consequently, since we see, in fact, that sin was imputed, we must conclude that the persons, to whose account it was charged, were under some law. Now this, with respect to infants, could not be the law of nature, (any more than the law of Moses,) for infants could not transgress that; it must therefore have been the law given to Adam, the transgression whereof is, in some sense, imputed to all, even to infants, he being the representative of all his posterity, and they all being in his loins. In other words, they do not die for any actual sins of their own, being incapable, while in infancy, of committing any, but through Adam’s sin alone.

13. The apostle suspends the prosecution of the parallelism in order to show to the Jews that the antithesis is not narrowed to the period of the Mosaic law alone, but covers the whole human history and race, including the patriarchate from Adam to Moses.

Until the law—During the patriarchal period. This verse reasons thus: During the patriarchate there was sin, and therefore law. (See notes 9:6-14.)

Ver. 13.-14. Proof, from historic facts, of the doctrine stated in Romans 5:12. That Paul interrupts his comparison in order to prove this first member of it, shows that it was not so generally accepted as to make proof needless.

Law: the Law of Moses looked at in its abstract quality as a prescription of conduct: so Romans 2:12.

Until the Law: throughout the time preceding the giving of the Law: see Romans 2:14.

Sin reckoned: so Romans 4:8. We have here a universal principle bearing upon the foregoing historic fact. It is true that during the whole period up to the time of Moses

sin was in the world. But this will not account for the reign of death. For, although death is the penalty of sin, the penalty is not inflicted while there is no law.

Nevertheless, death reigned-as-king: although there was no law prescribing such penalty.

There was sin… death reigned: but the latter was not a result of the former, because the connecting link, law, was absent.

Likeness (as in Romans 1:23) of Adam’s transgression: their sin was not, like his, an overstepping of a marked-out line. These words leave room for any men from Adam to Moses who may have broken definite commands prescribing a penalty, and who therefore died because of their own sin. Paul reminds us that the reign of death was not limited to any such cases.

This argument is Paul’s proof of the teaching in Romans 5:12 that all men die because Adam sinned. It is true that all have sinned and that death is the penalty of sin prescribed to Adam in Paradise and afterwards in the Law given to Israel. But the universal reign of death long before Moses cannot be an infliction of the penalty threatened to him. It must therefore be an infliction on Adam’s children of the penalty laid upon him (Genesis 3:19) for his first transgression.

The above argument is not invalidated by the law written in the heart, by which, as we read in Romans 2:14, 15, they who have not received the Mosaic Law will be judged and punished. For this law belongs to the inner and unseen world, and in that unseen world its penalty will be inflicted. The punishment of bodily death belongs to the outer and visible world; and therefore cannot be inflicted in fulfilment of a law written only within. A similar argument may be drawn from the death of infants. Upon them, though innocent of actual sin, the punishment of death is inflicted. This proves that they come into the world sharing the punishment, and therefore in effect the sin, of Adam. But it suited Paul better to use an argument which keeps the Law before his readers. The case of infants confirms the conclusion at which, by another path, Paul arrived.

Notice that to Paul death is essentially and always the penalty of sin. He sees men die; and inquires for whose sin the penalty is inflicted. His view is confirmed by the fact that both in Paradise and at Sinai God threatened to punish sin by death, and thus set it apart from all natural processes as a mark of His anger. See further in the note below.

Type: so Romans 6:17: a Greek word denoting a mark made by the pressure of something hard. It is used in John 20:25 for a mark of nails; in Acts 7:43 for a copy or imitation; and in Acts 7:44; Hebrews 8:5 for a model or pattern to be imitated. Hence commonly for a pattern to be followed: 1 Corinthians 10:6, 11; Philippians 3:17; 1 Thessalonians 1:7; 1 Timothy 4:12; Titus 2:7; 1 Peter 5:3.

The Coming One: Christ, to whom, standing by Adam, Paul looks forward as still to come. After teaching that God put Adam in such relation to mankind that his sin brought death to all men, he now teaches that in this, in an inverse direction, Adam was a pattern of Christ. He thus introduces the second side of the comparison broken off at the end of Romans 5:12. This second side will occupy Romans 5:15-19.

V. 14. Death reigned-And how vast is his kingdom! Scarce can we find any king who has as many subjects, as are the kings whom he hath conquered.

Even over them that had not sinned after the likeness of Adam's transgression-Even over infants who had never sinned, as Adam did, in their own persons; and over others who had not, like him, sinned against an express law.

Who is the figure of him that was to come-Each of them being a public person, and a federal head of mankind. The one, the fountain of sin and death to mankind by his offence; the other, of righteousness and life by his free gift. Thus far the apostle shows the agreement between the first and second Adam: afterward he shows the differences between them. The agreement may be summed up thus: As by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; so by one man righteousness entered into the world, and life by righteousness. As death passed upon all men, in that all had sinned; so life passed upon all men, (who are in the second Adam by faith,) in that all are justified. And as death through the sin of the first Adam

reigned even over them who had not sinned after the likeness of Adam's transgression; so through the righteousness of Christ, even those who have not obeyed, after the likeness of his obedience, shall reign in life. We may add, As the sin of Adam, without the sins which we afterwards committed, brought us death; so the righteousness of Christ, without the good works which we afterwards perform, brings us life: although still every good, as well as evil, work, will receive its due reward.

Verse 14. Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses] This supposes, as Dr. Taylor very properly observes:-1. That sin was in the world from Adam to Moses. 2. That law was not in the world from Adam to Moses during the space of about 2500 years; for, after Adam’s transgression, that law was abrogated; and, from that time, men were either under the general covenant of grace given to Adam or Noah, or under that which was specially made with Abraham. 3. That, therefore, the sins committed were not imputed unto them to death, for they did not sin after the similitude of Adam’s transgression; that is, they did not, like him, transgress a law, or rule of action, to which death, as the penalty, was annexed. And yet-4. Death reigned over mankind during the period between Adam and Moses; therefore men did not die for their own transgressions, but in consequence of Adam’s one transgression. Who is the figure of him that was to come.] Adam was the figure, tupov, the type, pattern, or resemblance of him who was to come; i.e. of the Messiah. The correspondence between them appears in the following particulars:-1. Through him, as its spring and fountain, sin became diffused through the world, so that every man comes into the world with sinful propensities: for by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, Romans 5:12. Through Christ, as its spring and fountain, righteousness becomes diffused through the earth; so that every man is made partaker of a principle of grace and truth; for he is the true light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world, John 1:9.

2. As in Adam all die; so in Christ shall all be made alive, 1 Corinthians 15:22. For, since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead, 1 Corinthians 15:21.

3. As in or through Adam guilt came upon all men, so, through Christ, the free gift comes upon all men unto justification of life, Romans 5:18. These alone seem to be the instances in which a similitude exists between Adam and Christ.

Verse 14. Nevertheless — Though the law was not yet given by Moses, yet sin was in the world, and was imputed, as appears by this, that death, which is the punishment of sin, was in the world at that time, and reigned — Brought all under its power, from Adam to Moses — As verse 21, and Romans 6:12, even over them, &c. — Not only over them that had sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression, but also over infants that had not committed actual sin, as Adam had done, and over others who had not, like him, sinned against an express law. Who is the figure of him that was to come — A lively type of Christ in his public capacity, each of them being a public person, and a federal head of mankind: the one the fountain of sin and death to mankind by his offence, the other of righteousness and life by his free gift. Thus far the apostle shows the agreement between the first and second Adam: afterward he shows the difference between them. The agreement may be summed up thus: As by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; so by one man righteousness entered into the world, and life by righteousness. As death passed upon all men, in that all had sinned; so life passed upon all men, (who are in the second Adam by faith,) in that all are justified. And as death, through the sin of the first Adam, reigned even over them who had not sinned after the likeness of Adam’s transgression: so through the righteousness of Christ, even those who have not obeyed after the likeness of his obedience, shall reign in life. We may add, as the sin of Adam, without the sins which we afterward committed, brought us death: so the righteousness of Christ, without the good works which we afterward perform, brings us life, although still every good as well as evil work will receive its due reward.

Ver. 14. Death reigned from Adam to Moses, though no man had sinned as he sinned, being the fœderal head, and having no inward temptations to sin. But sin is not imputed where there is no law, which secures the salvation of infants, who have no law. Therefore death reigns for Adam’s sin, but is often hastened by our own sin.

14. Nevertheless, death reigned—The previous verse assumed that there was sin during the patriarchate; this verse proves it from the existence of death. That death implies sin he assumes from the account of the fall in Genesis. Changing the order of the steps of the apostle’s reasoning in these two verses, we arrange it thus: During the patriarchate there was death, therefore sin, therefore law. The inference is, if that period is covered by death, sin, and law, it is included in the parallel ruin from Adam and redemption by Christ; and the Messiah and justification must not be monopolized by Judaism.

Sinned after… Adam’s transgression—Referring not to infants, but to all who lived during the patriarchate. They did not, like Adam, (nor like the Jews,) transgress a revealed law, but only the inner law written on the heart. (See note Romans 2:14.)

Paul now specifies three particulars of the antithesis, namely, the quality, the number, and the results, showing in each the excess of the good in Christ over the evil in Adam.

Ver. 13.-14. Proof, from historic facts, of the doctrine stated in Romans 5:12. That Paul interrupts his comparison in order to prove this first member of it, shows that it was not so generally accepted as to make proof needless.

Law: the Law of Moses looked at in its abstract quality as a prescription of conduct: so Romans 2:12.

Until the Law: throughout the time preceding the giving of the Law: see Romans 2:14.

Sin reckoned: so Romans 4:8. We have here a universal principle bearing upon the foregoing historic fact. It is true that during the whole period up to the time of Moses

sin was in the world. But this will not account for the reign of death. For, although death is the penalty of sin, the penalty is not inflicted while there is no law.

Nevertheless, death reigned-as-king: although there was no law prescribing such penalty.

There was sin… death reigned: but the latter was not a result of the former, because the connecting link, law, was absent.

Likeness (as in Romans 1:23) of Adam’s transgression: their sin was not, like his, an overstepping of a marked-out line. These words leave room for any men from Adam to Moses who may have broken definite commands prescribing a penalty, and who therefore died because of their own sin. Paul reminds us that the reign of death was not limited to any such cases.

This argument is Paul’s proof of the teaching in Romans 5:12 that all men die because Adam sinned. It is true that all have sinned and that death is the penalty of sin prescribed to Adam in Paradise and afterwards in the Law given to Israel. But the universal reign of death long before Moses cannot be an infliction of the penalty threatened to him. It must therefore be an infliction on Adam’s children of the penalty laid upon him (Genesis 3:19) for his first transgression.

The above argument is not invalidated by the law written in the heart, by which, as we read in Romans 2:14, 15, they who have not received the Mosaic Law will be judged and punished. For this law belongs to the inner and unseen world, and in that unseen world its penalty will be inflicted. The punishment of bodily death belongs to the outer and visible world; and therefore cannot be inflicted in fulfilment of a law written only within. A similar argument may be drawn from the death of infants. Upon them, though innocent of actual sin, the punishment of death is inflicted. This proves that they come into the world sharing the punishment, and therefore in effect the sin, of Adam. But it suited Paul better to use an argument which keeps the Law before his readers. The case of infants confirms the conclusion at which, by another path, Paul arrived.

Notice that to Paul death is essentially and always the penalty of sin. He sees men die; and inquires for whose sin the penalty is inflicted. His view is confirmed by the fact that both in Paradise and at Sinai God threatened to punish sin by death, and thus set it apart from all natural processes as a mark of His anger. See further in the note below.

Type: so Romans 6:17: a Greek word denoting a mark made by the pressure of something hard. It is used in John 20:25 for a mark of nails; in Acts 7:43 for a copy or imitation; and in Acts 7:44; Hebrews 8:5 for a model or pattern to be imitated. Hence commonly for a pattern to be followed: 1 Corinthians 10:6, 11; Philippians 3:17; 1 Thessalonians 1:7; 1 Timothy 4:12; Titus 2:7; 1 Peter 5:3.

The Coming One: Christ, to whom, standing by Adam, Paul looks forward as still to come. After teaching that God put Adam in such relation to mankind that his sin brought death to all men, he now teaches that in this, in an inverse direction, Adam was a pattern of Christ. He thus introduces the second side of the comparison broken off at the end of Romans 5:12. This second side will occupy Romans 5:15-19.

V. 15. Yet not-St. Paul now describes the difference between Adam and Christ; and that much more directly and expressly than the agreement between them. Now the fall and the free gift differ,

1. In amplitude, Romans 5:15. 2. He from whom sin came, and He from whom the free gift came, termed also the gift of righteousness, differ in power, Romans 5:16. 3. The reason of both is subjoined, Romans 5:17. 4. This premised, the offence and the free gift are compared, with regard to their effect, Romans 5:18, and with regard to their cause, Romans 5:19.

Verse 15. But not as the offence, so also is the free gift.] The same learned writer, quoted above, continues to observe:- “It is evident that the apostle, in this and the two following verses, is running a parallel, or making a comparison between the offence of Adam and its consequence; and the opposite gift of God and its consequences. And, in these three verses, he shows that the comparison will not hold good in all respects, because the free gift, carisma, bestows blessings far beyond the consequences of the offence, and which, therefore, have no relation to it. And this was necessary, not only to prevent mistakes concerning the consequence of Adam’s offence, and the extent of Gospel grace; but it was also necessary to the apostle’s main design, which was not only to prove that the grace of the Gospel extends to all men, so far as it takes off the consequence of Adam’s offence, [i.e. death, without the promise or probability of a resurrection,] but that it likewise extends to all men, with respect to the surplusage of blessings, in which it stretches far beyond the consequence of Adam’s offence. For, the grace that takes off the consequence of Adam’s offence, and the grace which abounds beyond it, are both included in the same carisma, or free gift, which should be well observed; for in this, I conceive, lie the connection and sinews of the argument: the free gift, which stands opposed to Adam’s offence, and which, I think, was bestowed immediately after the offence; Genesis 3:15: The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s head. This gift, I say, includes both the grace which exactly answers to the offence, and is that part of the grace which stretches far beyond it. And, if the one part of the gift be freely bestowed on all mankind, as the Jews allow, why not the other? especially, considering that the whole gift stands upon a reason and foundation in excellence and worth, vastly surpassing the malignity and demerit of the offence; and, consequently, capable of producing benefits vastly beyond the sufferings occasioned by the offence. This is the force of the apostle’s argument; and therefore, supposing that in the 18th and l9th verses, {Romans 5:18, 19} literally understood, he compares the consequence of Adam’s offence and Christ’s obedience, only so far as the one is commensurate to the other, yet his reasoning, Romans 5:15-17, plainly shows that it is his meaning and intention that we should take into his conclusion the whole of the gift, so far as it can reach, to all mankind.” For if, through the offence of one, many be dead] That the oi polloi, the many of the apostle here means all mankind needs no proof to any but that person who finds himself qualified to deny that all men are mortal. And if the many, that is, all mankind, have died through the offence of one; certainly, the gift by grace, which abounds unto touv pollouv, the many, by Christ Jesus, must have reference to every human being. If the consequences of Christ’s incarnation and death extend only to a few, or a select number of mankind-which, though they may be considered many in themselves, are few in comparison of the whole human race-then the consequences of Adam’s sin have extended only to a few, or to the same select number: and if only many, and not all have fallen, only that many had need of a Redeemer. For it is most evident that the same persons are referred to in both clauses of the verse. If the apostle had believed that the benefits of the death of Christ had extended only to a select number of mankind, he never could have used the language he has done here: though, in the first clause, he might have said, without any qualification of the term, Through the offence of one, MANY are dead; in the 2nd clause, to be consistent with the doctrine of particular redemption, he must have said, The grace of God, and the gift by grace, hath abounded unto SOME. As by the offence of one judgment came upon ALL men to condemnation; so, by the righteousness of one, the free gift came upon SOME to justification, Romans 5:18. As, by one man’s disobedience, MANY were made sinners; so, by the obedience of one, shall SOME be made righteous, Romans 5:19. As in Adam ALL die; so, in Christ, shall SOME be made alive, 1 Corinthians 15:22. But neither the doctrine nor the thing ever entered the soul of this divinely inspired man.

Hath abounded unto many.] That is, Christ Jesus died for every man; salvation is free for all; saving grace is tendered to every soul; and a measure of the Divine light is actually communicated to every heart, John 1:9. And, as the grace is offered, so it may be received; and hence the apostle says, Romans 5:17: They which receive abundance of grace, and of the gift of righteousness, shall reign in life by Christ Jesus: and by receiving is undoubtedly meant not only the act of receiving, but retaining and improving the grace which they receive; and, as all may receive, so ALL may improve and retain the grace they do receive; and, consequently, ALL may be eternally saved. But of multitudes Christ still may say, They WILL not come unto me, that they might have life.

Verses 15, 16. But not as the offence, &c. — The apostle now describes the difference between Adam and Christ, and that much more directly and expressly than the agreement between them. Now, the fall and the free gift differ, 1st, In amplitude, verse 15; 2d, He, from whom sin came, and He from whom the free gift came, (termed also the gift of righteousness,) differ in power, verse 16; 3d, The reason of both is subjoined, verse 17; 4th, This premised, the offence and the free gift are compared with regard to their effect, verse 18. And with regard to their cause, verse 19. Not as the offence — The sin of Adam, and the misery that follows upon it; so also is the free gift — The benefit that arises to us from the obedience of Christ; that is, there is not a perfect equality and proportion between the evil that comes through Adam, and the benefit that comes by Christ: they are not equal in their influence and efficacy. For if through the offence of one many be dead — If the transgression of one mere man was effectual to bring down death, condemnation, and wrath upon all his posterity, or natural seed; much more the grace of God — His love and favour; and the gift — The salvation; by grace, which is by one man — Who, however, is God as well as man; even Jesus Christ — The divinely-commissioned and anointed Saviour; hath abounded unto many — Is more abundantly efficacious to procure reconciliation, pardon, righteousness, and life, for all that will accept them, and become his spiritual seed. The apostle’s design here is to compare Adam’s sin and Christ’s obedience, in respect of their virtue and efficacy, and to show that the efficacy of Christ’s obedience must needs be much more abundant than that of Adam’s sin. And not, &c. — As there is a difference in respect of the persons from whom these effects are derived, and the advantage is on the side of Christ; so there is a difference also in respect of the extent of the efficacy of their acts: thus, one sin brought condemnation; the mischief arose from one offence: here not only that one sin, but also many sins, — yea, all the sins of believers, — are pardoned, and their nature is renewed: so that the benefit exceeds the mischief. For the judgment — The guilt which exposed to judgment; was by one — Namely, by one offence; to Adam’s condemnation — Occasioning the sentence of death to be passed upon him, which, by consequence, overwhelmed his posterity: but the free gift — To carisma, the gift of grace, is of many offences — Extends to the pardon not only of that original sin, but of all other personal and actual sins; unto justification — Unto the purchasing of it for all men, notwithstanding their many offences, and the conferring of it upon all the truly penitent that believe in Christ.

Ver. 15. Not as the offence, so also is the free gift of righteousness. In every view, as Paul elsewhere says, the condition of man is bettered by the mediation of Christ. He has higher glory, a better paradise, and a more blessed hope than Adam lost. And, as sin and death came on all, the free gift comes with more abundant grace on every believer.

15. Offence… gift—In QUALITY the former is evil, the latter is good. Much more then, a fortiori, should the latter abound rather than the former. Grace—The divine cause. Gift—The divine effect. Many— Literally, the many, that is, the mass of mankind.

Ver. 15. Nevertheless, not as etc.: although Adam is a type of Christ, the comparison between the trespass (see Romans 4:25) of Adam and the gift-of-grace (see Romans 1:11) of Christ does not hold good in everything. Where it fails, Paul will explain in Romans 5:16. But he has introduced a new word, gift-of-grace, and must explain and justify it before he proves the denial of which it is a part. This explanation occupies the rest of Romans 5:15: it is also a partial statement of the other side of the comparison broken off in Romans 5:12.

For if etc.: explanation of the gift-of-grace which Paul has just put beside the trespass of Adam.

By the trespass of the one, the many died: a restatement of Romans 5:12.

The free-gift: explained in Romans 5:17 as “the free gift of righteousness.”

It is a manifestation of the grace of God: cp. Romans 3:24: “justified as a free gift by His grace.” God’s favour and the gift of righteousness reached us

in the grace of the one man, i.e. amid the favour shown to us by Jesus Christ. Cp. 2 Corinthians 8:9.

Abounded for: as in Romans 3:7: produced overflowing results in a definite direction, viz. towards the many. These last words denote a tendency, not necessarily an actual result. Nor does the indefinite term the many denote necessarily the same number of persons in each case: see under Romans 5:19. The article implies only in each case a definite object of thought.

Much more: greater certainty, as in Romans 5:9, 10. For here there can be no comparison in quantity. But considering God’s character, it is much more easy to believe that the many are blessed than that the many die through one man. The former, Paul has proved: and his proof of it compels us to believe the latter. A similar kind of argument in Romans 5:9, 10.

V. 16. The sentence was by one offence to Adam's condemnation-Occasioning the sentence of death to pass upon him, which, by consequence, overwhelmed his posterity. But the free gift is of many offences unto justification-Unto the purchasing it for all men, notwithstanding many offences.

Verse 16. And not as it was by one that sinned] That is, the judicial act that followed Adam’s sin (the sentence of death pronounced upon him, and his expulsion from paradise) took its rise from his one offence alone, and terminated in condemnation; but the free gift of God in Christ takes its rise also from the many offences which men, in a long course of life, have personally committed; and the object of this grace is to justify them freely, and bring them to eternal life.

Verses 15, 16. But not as the offence, &c. — The apostle now describes the difference between Adam and Christ, and that much more directly and expressly than the agreement between them. Now, the fall and the free gift differ, 1st, In amplitude, verse 15; 2d, He, from whom sin came, and He from whom the free gift came, (termed also the gift of righteousness,) differ in power, verse 16; 3d, The reason of both is subjoined, verse 17; 4th, This premised, the offence and the free gift are compared with regard to their effect, verse 18. And with regard to their cause, verse 19. Not as the offence — The sin of Adam, and the misery that follows upon it; so also is the free gift — The benefit that arises to us from the obedience of Christ; that is, there is not a perfect equality and proportion between the evil that comes through Adam, and the benefit that comes by Christ: they are not equal in their influence and efficacy. For if through the offence of one many be dead — If the transgression of one mere man was effectual to bring down death, condemnation, and wrath upon all his posterity, or natural seed; much more the grace of God — His love and favour; and the gift — The salvation; by grace, which is by one man — Who, however, is God as well as man; even Jesus Christ — The divinely-commissioned and anointed Saviour; hath abounded unto many — Is more abundantly efficacious to procure reconciliation, pardon, righteousness, and life, for all that will accept them, and become his spiritual seed. The apostle’s design here is to compare Adam’s sin and Christ’s obedience, in respect of their virtue and efficacy, and to show that the efficacy of Christ’s obedience must needs be much more abundant than that of Adam’s sin. And not, &c. — As there is a difference in respect of the persons from whom these effects are derived, and the advantage is on the side of Christ; so there is a difference also in respect of the extent of the efficacy of their acts: thus, one sin brought condemnation; the mischief arose from one offence: here not only that one sin, but also many sins, — yea, all the sins of believers, — are pardoned, and their nature is renewed: so that the benefit exceeds the mischief. For the judgment — The guilt which exposed to judgment; was by one — Namely, by one offence; to Adam’s condemnation — Occasioning the sentence of death to be passed upon him, which, by consequence, overwhelmed his posterity: but the free gift — To carisma, the gift of grace, is of many offences — Extends to the pardon not only of that original sin, but of all other personal and actual sins; unto justification — Unto the purchasing of it for all men, notwithstanding their many offences, and the conferring of it upon all the truly penitent that believe in Christ.

16. By one… of many—Contrast of NUMBER. By one sinner (supply also by one sin) was the condemnation; of many offences (supply also of many offenders) was the justification. By the apostle’s ellipsis the one sinner stands against many offences; but the very nature of the contrast shows the ellipses on both sides should be filled.

Ver. 16. Paul now adds to the surpassing comparison in Romans 5:15b a restatement of the denial in Romans 5:15a, i.e. of the one point in which the comparison does not hold good:

and not as etc. The free gift through Christ differs from the death which came through Adam in that the latter was occasioned only by one man having sinned: i.e. by one man’s sin. This denial is expounded and proved in Romans 5:16b, 17.

The judgment: the sentence pronounced in Paradise on Adam’s sin. In consequence of one man, i.e. of his sin, this judgment became adverse, i.e. condemnation. These words look upon sin from a new point of view, viz. that of the judge who condemns it. This result followed from the action of one man.

But the gift-of-grace follows, and undoes the effect of, many trespasses, and leads up to a decree-of-righteousness, i.e. acquittal, a direct contrast to condemnation. See under Romans 5:18.

V. 17. There is a difference between grace and the gift. Grace is opposed to the offence; the gift, to death, being the gift of life.

Verse 17. Death reigned by one] Death is here personified, and is represented as reigning over the human race; and death, of course, reigns unto death; he is known as reigning, by the destruction of his subjects. Shall reign in life] Those who receive, retain, and improve the abundant grace offered by Jesus Christ, shall be redeemed from the empire of death, and exalted to the throne of God, to live and reign with him ever, world without end. See Revelation 1:5, 6; 2:7, 10, 11; 3:21. If we carefully compare Romans 5:15 with Romans 5:17, we shall find that there is a correspondence between perisseian, the abounding, Romans 5:17, and eperiseuse hath abounded, Romans 5:15; between thv dwreav thv dikaiosunhv, the gift of righteousness, i.e. justification, Romans 5:17, and h dwrea en cariti, the gift by grace, Romans 5:15; therefore, if we understand the abounding of grace, and the gift of justification, Romans 5:17, we shall understand the grace of God, and the gift by grace which hath abounded unto the many, Romans 5:15. But the abounding of grace, and the gift of justification, Romans 5:17, is that grace and gift which is RECEIVED by those who shall reign in eternal life. Reigning in life is the consequence of receiving the grace and gift. Therefore, receiving the grace is a necessary qualification on our part for reigning in life; and this necessarily implies our believing in Christ Jesus, as having died for our offences, receiving the grace so freely offered us; using the means in order to get more grace, and bringing forth the fruits of the Spirit. Receive must here have the same sense as in Matthew 13:20: He heareth the word, and anon with joy RECEIVETH it. John 1:12: But as many as RECEIVED him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God. John 3:11: Ye RECEIVE not our witness.-See also John 3:32, 33. John 5:43: I am come in my Father’s name, and ye RECEIVE me not. John 12:48: He that RECEIVETH not my words. John 13:20: He that receiveth whomsoever I send, RECEIVETH me. John 14:17: The Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot RECEIVE. John 17:8: I have given them the words which thou gavest me; and they have RECEIVED them. In all these passages it is evident that receiving and not receiving imply improving or not improving.

Verse 17. For, &c. — Here he shows the difference in respect of the consequence of those acts, or the different nature of the effects, that death came from one, life from the other; as if he had said, Moreover, there is another important article, in which the grace of the gospel exceeds the seeming severity which attended the imputation of guilt from our first father, Adam, namely, that, if by one man’s offence death reigned by one — Over all his posterity, as we observed above; they who receive — By faith, John 1:12; abundance of grace — An abundant measure of God’s love, of the influences of his Spirit, and the gift of righteousness, exhibited in the gospel; namely, those benefits which Christ, by his obedience unto death, has purchased for us; shall much more reign in life, by one — The great restorer and recoverer of his seed; Jesus Christ — That is, believers shall by him be brought to a much nobler and more excellent life than that from which Adam fell, and which they lost in him.

17. Death reigned… reign in life—Contrast in RESULTS, the death-reign and the life-reign. Receive—Voluntarily and freely. Where, indeed, the being is not a free-agent, as an infant or idiot, the grace and gift are unconditional. This entire paragraph presents the divine idea of redemption as offered to man’s acceptance. Nothing but man’s voluntary rejection of the offer can prevent the idea from becoming realized, and resulting in his salvation.

Ver. 17. Practical result of the decree of acquittal just mentioned, prefaced by a restatement of the darker side of the comparison.

Death became king: restatement of “the many died” in Romans 5:15, in a form already adopted in Romans 5:14. This reign of death was the punishment following the condemnation pronounced in Paradise. The abundance of the grace and of the free gift of righteousness: resuming and expounding similar words in Romans 5:15. They who receive etc.: only to those who believe does the blessing which comes through Christ surpass the loss through Adam. Notice the emphatic repetition, keeping before us the point of comparison:

by the one man’s trespass… through the one… through the one. Also the tone of triumph. Through Adam’s sin death became our king. His dread summons, we are compelled to obey. But a day is coming when upon the throne now occupied by death ourselves

will sit and reign in endless life.

That the numbers affected are not the same on both sides, does not mar the comparison: for Paul writes as a believer to believers. To them the gift through Christ outweighs the effect not only of Adam’s sin but of their own (Romans 5:16) many trespasses.

V. 18. Justification of life-Is that sentence of God, by which a sinner under sentence of death is adjudged to life.

Verse 18. Therefore, as by the offence of one, &c.] The Greek text of this verse is as follows:-ara oun, wv diJ enov paraptwmatov, eiv pantav anqrwpouv eiv katakrima, autw kai enov dikaiwmatov, eiv pantav anqrwpouv, eiv dikaiwsin zwhv; which literally rendered stands thus:-Therefore, as by one offence unto all men, unto condemnation; so likewise, by one righteousness unto all men, to justification of life. This is evidently an elliptical sentence, and its full meaning can be gathered only from the context. He who had no particular purpose to serve would, most probably, understand it, from the context, thus:- Therefore, as by one sin all men came into condemnation; so also by one righteous act all men came unto justification of life: which is more fully expressed in the following verse. Now, leaving all particular creeds out of the question, and taking in the scope of the apostle’s reasoning in this and the preceding chapter, is not the sense evidently this?-Through the disobedience of Adam, a sentence of condemnation to death, without any promise or hope of a resurrection, passed upon all men; so, by the obedience of Christ unto death, this one grand righteous act, the sentence was so far reversed, that death shall not finally triumph, for all shall again be restored to life. Justice must have its due; and therefore all must die. The mercy of God, in Christ Jesus, shall have its due also; and therefore all shall be put into a salvable state here, and the whole human race shall be raised to life at the great day. Thus both justice and mercy are magnified; and neither is exalted at the expense of the other.

The apostle uses three remarkable words in these three verses:-l. dikaiwma, justification, Romans 5:16. 2. dikaiosunh, which we render righteousness, Romans 5:17; but is best rendered justification, as expressing that pardon and salvation offered to us in the Gospel: see Clarke’s note on “Romans 1:16”. 3. dikaiwsiv, which is also rendered justification, Romans 5:18.

The first word, dikaiwma, is found in the following places: Luke 1:6; Romans 1:32; 2:26; 5:16, 18; 8:4; Hebrews 9:1, 10; Revelation 15:4; 19:8; to which the reader may refer. dikaiwma signifies, among the Greek writers, the sentence of a judge, acquitting the innocent, condemning and punishing the guilty; but in the New Testament it signifies whatever God has appointed or sanctioned as a law; and appears to answer to the Hebrew hwhy cpvm mishpat Yehovah, the statute or judgment, of the Lord; It has evidently this sense in Luke 1:6: Walking in all the commandments and ORDINANCES,

dikaiwmasi, of the Lord blameless; and it has the like meaning in the principal places referred to above; but in the verse in question it most evidently means absolution, or liberation, from punishment, as it is opposed to katakrima, condemnation, Romans 5:18. See Clarke’s note on “Romans 1:16”; and see Schleusner in voce. The second word, dikaiosunh, I have explained at large in Romans 1:16, already referred to.

The third word dikaiwsiv, is used by the Greek writers, almost universally, to denote the punishment inflicted on a criminal, or the condemnatory sentence itself; but in the New Testament where it occurs only twice, (Romans 4:25, he was raised for our justification, dikaiwsin; and Romans 5:18, unto justification of life, dikaiwsin zwhv,) it evidently signifies the pardon and remission of sins; and seems to be nearly synonymous with dikaiwma. Dr. Taylor thinks that “dikaiosunh is Gospel pardon and salvation, and has reference to God’s mercy. dikaiwma is our being set quite clear and right; or our being restored to sanctity, delivered from eternal death, and being brought to eternal life; and has reference to the power and guilt of sin. And dikaiwsiv he thinks may mean no more than our being restored to life at the resurrection.” Taking these in their order, there is: First, pardon of sin. Secondly, purification of heart, and preparation for glory. Thirdly, the resurrection of the body, and its being made like to his glorious body, so as to become a fit tabernacle for the soul in a glorified state for ever and ever. The same writer observes that, when the apostle speaks of forgiveness of sins simply, he insists on faith as the condition; but here, where he speaks of justification of life, he mentions no condition; and therefore he supposes justification of life, the phrase being understood in a forensic sense, to mean no more than the decree or judgment that determines the resurrection from the dead. This is a favourite point with the doctor, and he argues largely for it: see his notes.

Verses 18, 19. Therefore, &c. — Here the apostle compares Christ and Adam together again, as he began to do verse 12, with which this verse seems to be connected, (all the intermediate verses coming in as a parenthesis,) and he makes the comparison full in both members; which there, by reason of intervening matter, was left off imperfect. As if he had said, On the whole you see, as I began to observe to you before, that as by the offence of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation — Or, the condemnatory sentence was passed upon all men; even so, by the righteousness of one — The obedience of Christ, the free gift — Or gift of grace; came upon all men — Is provided for, and offered to, the whole human race, and is actually conferred on all the spiritual seed of the second Adam, on all true believers; unto justification of life — Unto that justification by grace through faith, whereby we have a right and title to eternal life. Or, leaving out the words in Italics, which are not in the original, the verse may be paraphrased thus: “As the consequence of one offence on the one hand extended to all men, to bring condemnation upon them; so also, on the other side, the consequence of one grand act of righteousness extended to all men, who receive and embrace it; securing to them that justification which will be crowned with the enjoyment of eternal life.” For, as by one man’s disobedience many — That is, all men; were made, or constituted sinners — Being then in the loins of their first parent, the common head and representative of them all, and became obnoxious to death; so by the obedience of one — By his obedience unto death, by his dying for us; many — Namely, all that believe with a faith working by love; shall be, or are, constituted righteous — That is, pardoned, justified, and sanctified, and shall be treated as such in the day of God’s final account; though they have no perfect righteousness of their own to plead, in consequence of which they should stand before God and claim the reward. With respect to Dr. Taylor’s scheme of interpretation, it is justly observed here by Dr. Doddridge, that although “to become liable to death for the offence of another is indeed being thereby constituted, or rather treated, as a sinner, since death is in its primary view to be considered as the wages of sin, or the animadversion of a righteous God upon it;” yet, “simply to be raised from the dead is not being made righteous, or treated as a righteous person; since it is a very supposable case, and will in fact be the case of millions, that a sinner may be raised in order to more condign and dreadful punishment. The whole interpretation, therefore, which Dr. Taylor has given of this text, in this view, appears to me destitute of a sufficient foundation.”

18. Condemnation… justification—From Adam’s offence resulted condemnation upon all men; from Christ’s righteousness, justification upon all men. The condemnation would have produced the exclusion of the race from existence by the infliction of immediate death upon Adam. (Note on Romans 11:32.) But the justification of all in view of the atonement secured the continuity of the race, by which every person comes into the world in a justified state. That justification is unto life—that is, results in salvation—unless forfeited by sin.

Says Dr. Wilbur Fisk on this verse: “Guilt is not imputed until, by a voluntary rejection of the Gospel, man makes the depravity of his nature the object of his own choice. Hence, although, abstractly considered, this depravity is destructive to the possessors, yet through the grace of the Gospel all are born free from condemnation.”

Ver. 18. After the digression in Romans 5:13, 14, inserted to prove the former side of the great comparison in Romans 5:12, and the second digression (Romans 5:15-17), in which he proves that the parallel does not hold good in all details, and also states the essential and glorious matter of the second side of the comparison, Paul comes now formally to state in Romans 5:18 and to restate in Romans 5:19 the whole comparison. The resumed thread is indicated by the phrase for all men, already used in Romans 5:12 for the former side, now for the first time used for both sides, of the comparison.

Therefore: a logical summing up and inference, as in Romans 7:3, 25; 8:12; 9:16, 18; 14:12, 19.

Through one trespass: emphatic resumption of similar words in Romans 5:15, 17.

For all men: resuming the same words in Romans 5:12. For condemnation: resuming the same words in Romans 5:16. Decree-of-righteousness: acquittal, as in Romans 5:16, where its meaning is determined by its contrast to condemnation. In Romans 5:16, this acquittal was mentioned as an outworking of God’s grace: here it is a channel through which come justification and life eternal. It is best to take the word as denoting the Gospel announcement of pardon for all who believe, this being looked upon as a judicial decree and as pronounced once for all in Christ.

For all men: a definite universal phrase which cannot denote less than the entire race, a meaning it must have in the former part of this verse. Same words, in same universal sense, in 1 Timothy 2:1, 4; Titus 2:11. In Romans 12:17; 1 Corinthians 7:7; 15:19; 2 Corinthians 3:2, the compass is less definite, but still universal.

Justification: announcement of pardon, as in Romans 4:25. Of life: result of justification. So Romans 5:17. The meaning of Romans 5:18 is obscured by the absence of any verb in either clause. So Romans 5:15a, 16a and b. The verb here must be supplied from the foregoing argument. The verse reads literally, Therefore, as through one trespass for all men, for condemnation, so also through one decree of righteousness for all men for justification of life. The word eiv which I have rendered for, denotes tendency, whether of actual result or more frequently of purpose. In Romans 7:10, we have both uses in one short verse; the commandment was designed for life, but actually it resulted in death. The precise meaning in each case must be determined by the context. In Romans 5:18a, we have an actual result: through one moral fall an influence has gone forth which has reached all men, and has resulted to all in condemnation to death. Through one proclamation of pardon has gone forth an influence designed for all men and leading to justification and life eternal. Over against a universal result, Paul sets a universal purpose to counteract that result. This universal purpose is all that his words grammatically mean, and all that his argument demands. When he speaks in the indicative future of actual results, as in Romans 5:17, 19, he does not use the definite term all men.

V. 19. As by the disobedience of one man many (that is, all men) were constituted sinners-Being then in the loins of their first parent, the common head and representative of them all.

So by the obedience of one-By his obedience unto death; by his dying for us.

Many-All that believe.

Shall be constituted righteous-Justified, pardoned.

Verse 19. For, as by one man’s disobedience, &c.] The explanation of this verse has been anticipated in the foregoing.

Verses 18, 19. Therefore, &c. — Here the apostle compares Christ and Adam together again, as he began to do verse 12, with which this verse seems to be connected, (all the intermediate verses coming in as a parenthesis,) and he makes the comparison full in both members; which there, by reason of intervening matter, was left off imperfect. As if he had said, On the whole you see, as I began to observe to you before, that as by the offence of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation — Or, the condemnatory sentence was passed upon all men; even so, by the righteousness of one — The obedience of Christ, the free gift — Or gift of grace; came upon all men — Is provided for, and offered to, the whole human race, and is actually conferred on all the spiritual seed of the second Adam, on all true believers; unto justification of life — Unto that justification by grace through faith, whereby we have a right and title to eternal life. Or, leaving out the words in Italics, which are not in the original, the verse may be paraphrased thus: “As the consequence of one offence on the one hand extended to all men, to bring condemnation upon them; so also, on the other side, the consequence of one grand act of righteousness extended to all men, who receive and embrace it; securing to them that justification which will be crowned with the enjoyment of eternal life.” For, as by one man’s disobedience many — That is, all men; were made, or constituted sinners — Being then in the loins of their first parent, the common head and representative of them all, and became obnoxious to death; so by the obedience of one — By his obedience unto death, by his dying for us; many — Namely, all that believe with a faith working by love; shall be, or are, constituted righteous — That is, pardoned, justified, and sanctified, and shall be treated as such in the day of God’s final account; though they have no perfect righteousness of their own to plead, in consequence of which they should stand before God and claim the reward. With respect to Dr. Taylor’s scheme of interpretation, it is justly observed here by Dr. Doddridge, that although “to become liable to death for the offence of another is indeed being thereby constituted, or rather treated, as a sinner, since death is in its primary view to be considered as the wages of sin, or the animadversion of a righteous God upon it;” yet, “simply to be raised from the dead is not being made righteous, or treated as a righteous person; since it is a very supposable case, and will in fact be the case of millions, that a sinner may be raised in order to more condign and dreadful punishment. The whole interpretation, therefore, which Dr. Taylor has given of this text, in this view, appears to me destitute of a sufficient foundation.”

Ver. 19. By one man’s disobedience many were made sinners — the family which cannot be counted. The contrast from the twelfth verse is a masterpiece of argumentation. The apostle keeps close to the grand chain of cause and consequence, that as sin, misery, and death have devolved alike on jew and gentile, it is the foulest injustice in the jews to deny the promised mercy of the covenant to the gentile world. The Father says to the Messiah, when deploring the obduration of the jews, “I will also give thee for a light to the gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation to the ends of the earth.” Isaiah 49:6. The christian fathers in their books against the jews cite numerous prophecies to the same effect. This idea, that God is the God of the gentiles, as well as of the jews, is the key to the sense, and the apostle resumes it in full, in Romans 8:19. The leaves of the tree of life are all medicinal, for the healing of the nations. Revelation 22:2. Ezekiel 47:12.

19. Made… made—The Greek word signifies constituted or assigned the position of. From Adam the continued race is, by the law of natural descent, born and constituted sinners, (see note on ver. 12.) Yet justification by Christ overlies the condemnation at birth; and even when forfeited by sin may, by repentance and faith, be recovered, and mature into holiness and eternal life.

Ver. 19. Summary of the reasons and explanations, as Romans 5:18 summed up the conclusions, of Romans 5:12-17; 5:18 corresponds with “to all men death passed through;” Romans 5:19, with “inasmuch as all sinned.”

Constituted sinners: made sharers of the punishment inflicted on Adam, and in this sense made sharers of his sin: a forensic reckoning. In a still deeper sense we have become sinners through Adam’s sin: see note below. But of this deeper sense we have no hint here.

Obedience: Christ’s obedience to death, as in <502308> Philippians 2:8. For in Romans 3:24-26, of which Rom. 5 is a practical and experimental exposition, justification is attributed, not to Christ’s obedient life, of which as yet in this epistle we have read nothing, but conspicuously to His death and blood.

Shall be constituted righteous: faith reckoned for righteousness, as each one from time to time appropriates by faith the one decree of righteousness. The future tense as in Romans 4:24, “us to whom it shall be reckoned:” cp. Romans 5:14, “the Coming One.” This is better than to refer it to the great day: for believers are already accepted as righteous. Paul puts himself between Adam and Christ, and looks back to the sentence pronounced on the many because of Adam’s sin and forward to the justification which in Gospel days will be announced to the many because of Christ’s obedience to death.

The change from all men in Romans 5:12, 18 to

the many in Romans 5:15, 19 cannot have been adopted merely to remind us of the large number of persons referred to. For this would be more forcefully done by the words all men. But Paul could not say that all men will be constituted righteous. For there are some of whom he writes with tears, in Philippians 3:19, that their “end is destruction.” And in Romans 5:17 he limits his assertion to “those who will receive the abundance of the grace.” That in the 2nd clause of Romans 5:19 the phrase

the many does not include so many as it does in the 1st clause, does not mar the comparison. For the blessing is designed for all men, and will be actually received by all except those who reject it.

We will now build up Paul’s argument from his own premises. God created man without sin, and gave him a law of which death was the penalty. Adam broke the law, and was condemned to die: and this sentence we find inflicted also upon his descendants. It is true that they are sinners: but, since no law prescribing death as penalty has been given to them, their death cannot be a punishment of their own sins. We therefore infer that the condemnation pronounced on Adam was designed for them, and that God treated them as in some sense sharers of his sin. In later days, another Man appears. He was obedient, even when obedience involved death. Through His death, pardon is proclaimed for all who believe: and through Him many enjoy God’s favour and will reign in endless life. Since the Gospel offers salvation to all men and is designed for all, we have in it a parallel, in an opposite direction, to the condemnation pronounced in Paradise, and in Adam a pattern of Christ. But we have more than a parallel. We also have broken definite commands. For our own sins, we deserve to die: but through Christ we shall escape the result, not only of Adam’s sin, but of our own many trespasses. Therefore to all men the blessing is equal to the curse: for it offers eternal life to all. To believers, it is infinitely greater. Verse 18 implies clearly that God’s purpose to save embraced all men. It therefore contradicts any theory which limits the efficacy of the Gospel by some secret purpose of God to withhold from some men the influences leading to repentance and faith which He brings to bear on others. The universality of these influences is implied, as we have seen, in Romans 2:4. It is asserted or implied in Romans 14:15; 1 Corinthians 8:11; 1 Timothy 2:4; 4:10, Titus 2:11; John 3:16; 6:51; 12:47; 1:29; 1 John 4:14; 2:2. Against these passages, there is nothing to set. For the more limited reference in Acts 20:28; Ephesians 5:25; John 10:11, 15; 15:13; 11:52 is included in the wider; and is easily explained. Similarly, the still narrower references in 2 Corinthians 8:9; Galatians 2:20. For they who accept salvation are in a special sense objects of Christ’s love, even as compared with those who reject it. The entire N.T. assumes that the ruin of the wicked is due only to their rejection of a salvation designed for all.

In Romans 5:1-11, Doctrine 2, Justification through the Death of Christ, was expounded in its bearing on the individual: in Romans 5:12-19, it is expounded in its bearing on the race as a whole and on our relation to the father of the race. In the reversal not only of the evils we have brought upon ourselves but of those resulting from a curse pronounced in the infancy of mankind, we see the importance and the triumph of the Gospel. Again, in Rom. 4, Paul supported Doctrine 1, Justification through Faith, by pointing out its harmony with God’s treatment of Abraham. He has now supported Doctrine 2 by pointing out its harmony with God’s treatment of Adam; and has thus given a wonderful and unexpected confirmation both of the Gospel and of the story of Paradise. Lastly and chiefly, we here find in the Gospel a solution (the only conceivable solution) of what would otherwise be an inexplicable mystery. Independently of the Gospel, Paul has proved that all men suffer and die because of the sin of one who lived before they were born. This would be, if it were the whole case, inconsistent with every conception we can form of the justice of God. We now find that it is not the whole case. The pardon proclaimed through Christ for all who believe justifies the curse pronounced on all because of Adam’s sin. Thus the dark shadow of death discloses a bright light shining beyond it.

Notice that Paul accepts the story of Paradise as embodying important truth. But, that he refers only to broad principles, leaves us uncertain whether he held the literal meaning of all its details.

ORIGINAL SIN. We have no indication that the word death in Romans 5:12-19 means anything except the death of the body. The argument rests on the story of Genesis; and there we have no hint of any death except (Genesis 3:19) the return of dust to dust. The proof in Romans 5:14 of the statement in Romans 5:12 refers evidently to the visible reign of natural death. And the comparison of Adam and Christ requires no other meaning of the word. Through one man’s sin, the race was condemned to go down into the grave: and through one man’s obedience and one divine proclamation of pardon believers will obtain a life beyond the grave. The whole argument is but a development of 1 Corinthians 15:22.

Nor have we any direct reference to universal depravity as a result of Adam’s sin. Had it been Paul’s purpose to assert this result, this section would have been out of its place in the epistle. For as yet he has not referred explicitly to any moral change wrought in us by Christ. We may go further and say that the Bible nowhere teaches plainly and explicitly that in consequence of Adam’s sin all men are born naturally prone to evil. That this important doctrine may however be inferred with complete certainty from the teaching of this section read in the light of other teaching of Holy Scripture, I shall now endeavour to show.

In Romans 2:1, 3, 5, Paul assumed that, apart from the Gospel, all men are committing sin. In spite of (Romans 2:14, 26) occasional and fragmentary obedience, he has convicted (Romans 3:9) both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin. By works of law (Romans 3:20) Will no flesh be justified before Him: for (Romans 3:23) all have sinned. Unless justified through faith, all men are (Romans 5:6-10) morally powerless godless, sinners, and enemies of God. All are or have been slaves of sin: Romans 6:17, 19, 20. The awful reality of this bondage is described in Romans 7:23, 24. It is closely connected with bodily life: for (Romans 8:8) they that are in flesh cannot please God. All this implies an inborn and universal tendency to evil. And throughout the N.T. we find similar teaching.

We cannot conceive man to have been thus made by a righteous and loving Creator. And that everything that He made was very good, is asserted in Genesis 1:31. A change has taken place: we seek its cause. In Romans 6:16-22, we shall learn that to sin is to surrender ourselves to an evil power greater than our own, to be its slaves. This is plainly and solemnly asserted by Christ in John 8:34. Therefore, unless the sinner be rescued by one mightier than himself, his first trespass will inevitably be followed by a course of sin. If so, by his first sin Adam must have lost his moral balance, and fallen under the power of sin. And, since even the powers of evil are in God’s hand, this inner result of sin must have been by His permission and ordinance. It was therefore a divinely-inflicted punishment. God decreed that the first act of disobedience should be followed by proneness to sin.

It is now evident that the consequences of Adam’s sin were both outward and inward. God gave up his body to the worms, and (cp. Romans 1:24, 26, 28) his spirit, in some real measure, to the power of sin. The former part of this penalty, we find inflicted on all Adam’s children. This, Paul describes by saying, in Romans 5:10, 19, that in him they all sinned, and that through his disobedience many were constituted sinners. This suggests an original relation between him and them such that, in its physical consequence, his sin became theirs. It is equally certain that the latter part of the penalty is inflicted upon all. For we find that all men are actually, unless saved by Christ, slaves of sin. This cannot have been their state as created. We can account for it only by supposing that they share not only the physical but the moral effect of their father’s fall. By sin he sold himself into moral bondage: and because of his sin his children are born slaves to sin.

The above is confirmed by an important picture of universal sin in Ephesians 2:1-3, concluding with the words “and were by nature children of anger, as the rest.” Paul here traces actual sins to an inborn tendency. Similarly in John 3:6 Christ traces the necessity for a new birth to the origin of our bodily life, “born from the flesh.” In Psalms 51:5Psalm 51:5; Job 11:12; 14:4; 15:14, we have indications of an inborn defect of human nature. Since this defect cannot be attributed to the Creator, it must have another cause: and this cause lies open to our view in the fall of the first father of our race, from whom we inherit the corruption of death. This inference is confirmed by all the facts of human heredity. Indisputably men inherit from their parents not only special physical weaknesses but special tendencies to various sins.

In this sense we may say that Adam’s sin was reckoned or imputed to his children: not that God looks on them as though they were in any way responsible for it, but simply that the evils which God threatened should follow sin have fallen upon Adam’s descendants, by the decree of God, because Adam sinned. About the state of men unsaved, see further at the close of § 22.

In Romans 5:12-19; 1 Corinthians 15:22, Paul asserts plainly, following earlier Jewish writers, e.g. Wisdom ii. 23, Sirach xxv. 24, that the doom of death now resting on all men is a result of Adam’s sin. On the other hand, modern Science leaves no room to doubt that animals died long ages before man appeared; and that the death of man is closely related to that of animals. This apparent contradiction demands careful consideration.

The statement that “through one man sin entered into the world” does not necessarily include the death of animals. For the term the world may fairly be limited to the human race, as in Romans 3:6, “God will judge the world,” and in Romans 3:19, “all the world become guilty before God;” where all else except the human race lies outside the writer’s thought. Consequently Paul’s statement is not directly contradicted by the earlier death of animals.

The real question before us is, What would have happened if Adam had not sinned? This question Natural Science cannot answer. For the intelligence and moral sense of man cannot be accounted for by any forces observed working in animal life; and therefore reveal in him an element higher than everything in animals and closely related to the unseen Creator of animals and men.[*] Moreover, each of these elements, the animal and the divine, claims to rule the entire life of man. Between them, capable of being influenced by either, is the mysterious self-determination of man. All this belongs to his original constitution.

* This is well argued, by a naturalist of the first rank, in Wallace’s Darwinism, pp. 461-474.

In the inevitable conflict resulting from this dual constitution, man accepted as his lord the lower element of his nature. Like an animal, he ate attractive food, disregarding the divine prohibition. We need not wonder that by so doing he fell under the doom of death to which all animal life had long been subject. But we cannot doubt that man was absolutely free to yield submission to the higher, instead of the lower, side of his nature. And we have no proof whatever that, if he had done this, and thus claimed his affinity to God, he would have fallen under the doom of animals. This possibility lies outside the range of Natural Science. This last reports that animals died long before man appeared, and that to their death the death of man is closely related. Beyond this it cannot go; except that it finds in man phenomena which cannot be accounted for by the forces observed in animals, thus revealing in him a higher life. It cannot therefore contradict the teaching of the great apostle.

This teaching is confirmed by the repulsiveness of the phenomena of death, a repulsiveness increasing as we ascend the scale of life. This repulsiveness suggests irresistibly that a world in which death is the doom of every living thing is not itself the consummation of the Creator’s purpose. It compels us to look for a new earth and heaven not darkened by the shadow of death. Against this hope, Natural Science, which sees only things around, has nothing to say. The objection we are considering need not therefore deter us from accepting the doctrine before us.

We shall however do well to remember that this doctrine is taught in the N.T. only by Paul; and that it is not made, even by him, a fundamental truth on which other teaching is built. It is introduced only to show how far-reaching is the salvation announced by Christ; and therefore ought not to be quoted as one of the great doctrines of the Gospel.

V. 20. The law came in between-The offence and the free gift. That the offence might abound-That is, the consequence (not the design) of the law's coming in was, not the taking away of sin, but the increase of it.

Yet where sin abounded, grace did much more abound-Not only in the remission of that sin which Adam brought on us, but of all our own; not only in remission of sins, but infusion of holiness; not only in deliverance from death, but admission to everlasting life, a far more noble and excellent life than that which we lost by Adam's fall.

Verse 20. The law entered that (ina) the offence might abound.] After considering various opinions concerning the true meaning of this verse, (see under Romans 5:12,) I am induced to prefer my own, as being the most simple. By law I understand the Mosaic law. By entering in, pareishlqen, or, rather, coming in privily, see Galatians 2:4, (the only place where it occurs besides,) I understand the temporary or limited use of that law, which was, as far as its rites and ceremonies are considered, confined to the Jewish people, and to them only till the Messiah should come; but considered as the moral law, or rule of conscience and life, it has in its spirit and power been slipped in-introduced into every conscience, that sin might abound-that the true nature, deformity, and extent of sin might appear; for by the law is the knowledge of sin: for how can the finer deviations from a straight line be ascertained, without the application of a known straight edge? Without this rule of right, sin can only be known in a sort of general way; the innumerable deviations from positive rectitude can only be known by the application of the righteous statutes of which the law is composed. And it was necessary that this law should be given, that the true nature of sin might be seen, and that men might be the better prepared to receive the Gospel; finding that this law worketh only wrath, i.e. denounces punishment, forasmuch as all have sinned. Now, it is wisely ordered of God, that wherever the Gospel goes there the law goes also; entering every where, that sin may be seen to abound, and that men may be led to despair of salvation in any other way or on any terms but those proposed in the Gospel of Christ. Thus the sinner becomes a true penitent, and is glad, seeing the curse of the law hanging over his soul, to flee for refuge to the hope set before him in the Gospel. On the meaning of ina, in various places, see Chrysost. vol. iii. p. 241. See also Hammond on the word in his notes on the New Testament.

But where sin abounded] Whether in the world, or in the heart of the individual, being discovered by this most pure and righteous law, grace did much more abound: not only pardon for all that is past is offered by the Gospel, so that all the transgressions for which the soul is condemned to death by the law, are freely and fully forgiven; but also the Holy Spirit, in the abundance of his gifts and graces, is communicated, so as to prepare the receiver for an exceeding and eternal weight of glory. Thus the grace of the Gospel not only redeems from death, and restores to life, but brings the soul into such a relationship with God, and into such a participation of eternal glory, as we have no authority to believe ever would have been the portion even of Adam himself, had he even eternally retained his innocence. Thus, where sin abounded, grace doth much more abound.

Verses 20, 21, Moreover the law entered — Made a little entrance, as Dr. Doddridge translates pare ishlqen; the sense also given it by the Vulgate, sub intravit. Thus the partial and limited entrance of the law is distinguished from that universal entrance of sin which passed on all. Others, however, as L’Enfant and Wesley, render it, The law intervened, or came between Adam and Christ, the offence and the free gift; that the offence might abound — That is, the consequence (not the design) of the law’s coming in, was not the taking away of sin, but the increase of it; yet where sin abounded, grace did much more abound — Not only in the remission of that sin which Adam brought on us, but of all our own sins; not only in remission of sins, but infusion of holiness; not only in deliverance from death, but admission to everlasting life; a far more noble and excellent life than that which we lost by Adam’s fall. That as sin hath reigned unto death — In the wide and universal destruction made of those whom it had brought under that fatal sentence; so grace might reign — Which could not reign before the fall, before man had sinned; through righteousness — Imputed, implanted, and practised; through the justification of men’s persons, the renovation of their nature, and their practical obedience to God’s holy law; unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord — Here is pointed out, 1st, The source of all our blessings, the rich and free grace of God. 2d, The meritorious cause; not any works or righteousness of man, but the alone merits of our Lord Jesus Christ. 3d, The effect or end of all; not only pardon, but life, divine life, leading to glory.

Ver. 20. The law entered that the offence might abound. The law illustrates the plenitude of the obedience we owe to God, and by consequence demonstrates the shame, the baseness, and turpitude of sin, as reflected in that celestial mirror. There only can the real contrast between sin and holiness, love and hatred be seen.

20. The law entered—Subordinately, yet indispensably, to impose upon the evil deeds of men their guilt and responsibility as sins, so as to render Christ and grace necessary. Abound—Multiply in number. The more the law took the shape of special enactments, as in the Mosaic covenant, the more offences multiplied. Sin abounded—Sin multiplied, but grace abounded.

ROMANS

SECTION 16 — THE PURPOSE OF THE LAW

CH. 5:20, 21

But a law entered beside, in order that the trespass might multiply. But where sin multiplied, grace abounded beyond measure; in order that, just as sin became king in death, in this way also grace might become king, through righteousness, for eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

In § 15, we saw the bearing, each upon the other, of the two greatest events in the spiritual history of mankind, viz. the Fall and the Gospel. But Paul cannot overlook the third greatest event, the giving of the Law. He will now tell us the place and purpose of the Law in its relation to the other two events. This will teach us both its importance and its subordinate position: it was only a means to an end, but a divinely-chosen means to the noblest of all ends.

Ver. 20. A law: the Mosaic Law, in its abstract character. God gave from Sinai a rule of conduct.

Entered-beside, or along-side: coming in between sin and death, and the Gospel.

In order that etc.: purpose of God in giving a rule of conduct. The trespass: Adam’s disobedience, as in Romans 5:15. Multiply, or become-more: in the “many trespasses” of Romans 5:16. The express commands given at Sinai, following the one command given in Paradise, were followed by many acts of disobedience. If, as we have just seen, Adam’s children inherited his fallen nature, these many trespasses were a result, and in this sense a multiplication, of his first trespass. Moreover, this was the only possible result of the gift of a divine law to a race born in sin. Paul therefore speaks of it as the designed result: in order that etc.

But where etc.: another and surpassing event.

Sin: the abstract principle underlying the concrete trespass. It prepares a way for the personification of sin in Romans 5:21. Grace abounded-beyond-measure: the favour of God produced results far surpassing those of the one trespass. As explained in Romans 5:15-17, they were superabundant in reversing the effects not of one but of many trespasses, and in giving life to many, each of whom deserved death for his own transgression. The one act of disobedience was followed by many such acts: and thus the empire of sin extended its sway. But this multiplication of the trespass, instead of evoking a corresponding outburst of divine anger, called forth God’s goodwill, in the form of saving mercy, in measure greater than the spread of the evil.

V. 21. That as sin had reigned-so grace also might reign-Which could not reign before the fall; before man had sinned.

Through righteousness to eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord-Here is pointed out the source of all our blessings, the rich and free grace of God. The meritorious cause; not any works of righteousness of man, but the alone merits of our Lord Jesus Christ. The effect or end of all; not only pardon, but life; divine life, leading to glory.

Verse 21. That as sin hath reigned unto death] As extensively, as deeply, as universally, as sin, whether implying the act of transgression or the impure principle from which the act proceeds, or both. Hath reigned, subjected the whole earth and all its inhabitants; the whole soul, and all its powers and faculties, unto death, temporal of the body, spiritual of the soul, and eternal of both; even so, as extensively, deeply, and universally might grace reign-filling the whole earth, and pervading, purifying, and refining the whole soul: through righteousness-through this doctrine of free salvation by the blood of the Lamb, and by the principle of holiness transfused through the soul by the Holy Ghost: unto eternal life-the proper object of an immortal spirit’s hope, the only sphere where the human intellect can rest, and be happy in the place and state where God is; where he is seen AS HE IS; and where he can be enjoyed with out interruption in an eternal progression of knowledge and beatitude: by Jesus Christ our Lord-as the cause of our salvation, the means by which it is communicated, and the source whence it springs. Thus we find, that the salvation from sin here is as extensive and complete as the guilt and contamination of sin; death is conquered, hell disappointed, the devil confounded, and sin totally destroyed. Here is glorying: To him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and has made us kings and priests to God and his Father, be glory and dominion, for ever and ever. Amen. Hallelujah! The Lord God Omnipotent reigneth! Amen and Amen.

WHAT highly interesting and momentous truths does the preceding chapter bring to our view! No less than the doctrine of the fall of man from original righteousness; and the redemption of the world by the incarnation and death of Christ. On the subject of the FALL, though I have spoken much in the notes on Genesis, chap. 3, yet it may be necessary to make a few farther observations:-

1. That all mankind have fallen under the empire of death, through this original transgression, the apostle most positively asserts; and few men who profess to believe the Bible, pretend to dispute. This point is indeed ably stated, argued, and proved by Dr. Taylor, from whose observations the preceding notes are considerably enriched. But there is one point which I think not less evident, which he has not only not included in his argument, but, as far as it came in his way, has argued against it, viz. the degeneracy and moral corruption of the human soul. As no man can account for the death brought into the world but on the ground of this primitive transgression, so none can account for the moral evil that is in the world on any other ground. It is a fact, that every human being brings into the world with him the seeds of dissolution and mortality. Into this state we are fallen, according to Divine revelation, through the one offence of Adam. This fact is proved by the mortality of all men. It is not less a fact, that every man that is born into the world brings with him the seeds of moral evil; these he could not have derived from his Maker; for the most pure and holy God can make nothing impure, imperfect, or unholy. Into this state we are reduced, according to the Scripture, by the transgression of Adam; for by this one man sin entered into the world, as well as death.

2. The fact that all come into the world with sinful propensities is proved by another fact, that every man sins; that sin is his first work, and that no exception to this has ever been noticed, except in the human nature of Jesus Christ; and that exempt case is sufficiently accounted for from this circumstance, that it did not come in the common way of natural generation.

3. As like produces its like, if Adam became mortal and sinful, he could not communicate properties which he did not possess; and he must transmit those which constituted his natural and moral likeness: therefore all his posterity must resemble himself. Nothing less than a constant miraculous energy, presiding over the formation and development of every human body and soul, could prevent the seeds of natural and moral evil from being propagated. That these seeds are not produced in men by their own personal transgressions, is most positively asserted by the apostle in the preceding chapter; and that they exist before the human being is capable of actual transgression, or of the exercise of will and judgment, so as to prefer and determine, is evident to the most superficial observer: 1st, from the most marked evil propensities of children, long before reason can have any influence or control over passion; and, 2ndly, it is demonstrated by the death of millions in a state of infancy. It could not, therefore, be personal transgression that produced the evil propensities in the one case, nor death in the other.

4. While misery, death, and sin are in the world, we shall have incontrovertible proofs of the fall of man. Men may dispute against the doctrine of original sin; but such facts as the above will be a standing irrefragable argument against every thing that can be advanced against the doctrine itself.

5. The justice of permitting this general infection to become diffused has been strongly oppugned. “Why should the innocent suffer for the guilty?” As God made man to propagate his like on the earth, his transmitting the same kind of nature with which he was formed must be a necessary consequence of that propagation. He might, it is true, have cut off for ever the offending pair; but this, most evidently, did not comport with his creative designs. “But he might have rendered Adam incapable of sin.” This does not appear. If he had been incapable of sinning, he would have been incapable of holiness; that is, he could not have been a free agent; or in other words he could not have been an intelligent or intellectual being; he must have been a mass of inert and unconscious matter. “But God might have cut them off and created a new race.” He certainly might; and what would have been gained by this? Why, just nothing. The second creation, if of intelligent beings at all, must have been precisely similar to the first; and the circumstances in which these last were to be placed, must be exactly such as infinite wisdom saw to be the most proper for their predecessors, and consequently, the most proper for them. They also must have been in a state of probation; they also must have been placed under a law; this law must be guarded by penal sanctions; the possibility of transgression must be the same in the second case as in the first; and the lapse as probable, because as possible to this second race of human beings as it was to their predecessors. It was better, therefore, to let the same pair continue to fulfil the great end of their creation, by propagating their like upon the earth; and to introduce an antidote to the poison, and by a dispensation as strongly expressive of wisdom as of goodness, to make the ills of life, which were the consequences of their transgression, the means of correcting the evil, and through the wondrous economy of grace, sanctifying even these to the eternal good of the soul.

6. Had not God provided a Redeemer, he, no doubt, would have terminated the whole mortal story, by cutting off the original transgressors; for it would have been unjust to permit them to propagate their like in such circumstances, that their offspring must be unavoidably and eternally wretched.

God has therefore provided such a Saviour, the merit of whose passion and death should apply to every human being, and should infinitely transcend the demerit of the original transgression, and put every soul that received that grace (and ALL may) into a state of greater excellence and glory than that was, or could have been, from which Adam, by transgressing, fell.

7. The state of infants dying before they are capable of hearing the Gospel, and the state of heathens who have no opportunity of knowing how to escape from their corruption and misery, have been urged as cases of peculiar hardship. But, first, there is no evidence in the whole book of God that any child dies eternally for Adam’s sin. Nothing of this kind is intimated in the Bible; and, as Jesus took upon him human nature, and condescended to be born of a woman in a state of perfect helpless infancy, he has, consequently, sanctified this state, and has said, without limitation or exception, Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of God. We may justly infer, and all the justice as well as the mercy of the Godhead supports the inference, that all human beings, dying in an infant state, are regenerated by that grace of God which bringeth salvation to all men, Titus 2:11, and go infallibly to the kingdom of heaven. As to the Gentiles, their case is exceedingly clear. The apostle has determined this; see Romans 2:14, 15, and the notes there. He who, in the course of his providence, has withheld from them the letter of his word, has not denied them the light and influence of his SPIRIT; and will judge them in the great day only according to the grace and means of moral improvement with which they have been favoured. No man will be finally damned because he was a Gentile, but because he has not made a proper use of the grace and advantages which God had given him. Thus we see that the Judge of all the earth has done right; and we may rest assured that he will eternally act in the same way.

8. The term FALL we use metaphorically, to signify degradation: literally, it signifies stumbling, so as to lose the centre of gravity, or the proper poise of our bodies, in consequence of which we are precipitated on the ground. The term seems to have been borrowed from the paraptwma of the apostle, Romans 5:15-18, which we translate offence, and which is more literally FALL, from para, intensive, and piptw, I fall; a grievous, dangerous, and ruinous fall, and is property applied to transgression and sin in general; as every act is a degradation of the soul, accompanied with hurt, and tending to destruction. The term, in this sense, is still in common use; the degradation of a man in power we term his fall; the impoverishment of a rich man ve express in the same way; and when a man of piety and probity is overcome by any act of sin, we say he is fallen; he has descended from his spiritual eminence, is degraded from his spiritual excellence, is impure in his soul, and becomes again exposed to the displeasure of his God.

ROMANS

Verses 20, 21, Moreover the law entered — Made a little entrance, as Dr. Doddridge translates pare ishlqen; the sense also given it by the Vulgate, sub intravit. Thus the partial and limited entrance of the law is distinguished from that universal entrance of sin which passed on all. Others, however, as L’Enfant and Wesley, render it, The law intervened, or came between Adam and Christ, the offence and the free gift; that the offence might abound — That is, the consequence (not the design) of the law’s coming in, was not the taking away of sin, but the increase of it; yet where sin abounded, grace did much more abound — Not only in the remission of that sin which Adam brought on us, but of all our own sins; not only in remission of sins, but infusion of holiness; not only in deliverance from death, but admission to everlasting life; a far more noble and excellent life than that which we lost by Adam’s fall. That as sin hath reigned unto death — In the wide and universal destruction made of those whom it had brought under that fatal sentence; so grace might reign — Which could not reign before the fall, before man had sinned; through righteousness — Imputed, implanted, and practised; through the justification of men’s persons, the renovation of their nature, and their practical obedience to God’s holy law; unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord — Here is pointed out, 1st, The source of all our blessings, the rich and free grace of God. 2d, The meritorious cause; not any works or righteousness of man, but the alone merits of our Lord Jesus Christ. 3d, The effect or end of all; not only pardon, but life, divine life, leading to glory.

21. By Jesus Christ our Lord—And so the apostle closes his contrast in rounded triumph with the glorious name and title of the divine hero, “the Captain of our salvation.” He has now depicted the elements of the remedy; he is henceforth ready to trace the process of the renovation produced by the remedy.

Ver. 21. Purpose of this superabounding grace, and ultimate purpose of the Law.

Sin became-king: so Romans 5:14, 17, “death became king.” In death: the visible throne from which sin proclaims its tremendous power. Every corpse laid in the grave is a result of sin, and reveals its power. Moreover, sometimes men have committed sin for fear of death: cp. Hebrews 2:15.

Grace may-reign-as-king: the undeserved favour of God personified; as death and sin have been. God’s purpose is that His own undeserved favour, with royal bounty, may rule and bless those who once were under the sway of sin and death.

Through righteousness: recalling “the gift of righteousness,” in Romans 5:17. It is a necessary condition of

life eternal. This last (see under Romans 2:7) is the ultimate aim of God’s favour towards us. So Romans 6:22, 23.

Through Jesus Christ, our Lord: the one channel of grace and righteousness and life eternal. It is a conspicuous feature of Rom. 5: see Romans 5:1, 11, 17: cp. Romans 1:5, 8; 3:24; 1 Corinthians 8:6; 2 Corinthians 5:18.

The purpose of the Law as here stated supplements and explains that stated in Romans 3:19. The Law commends itself to our moral sense as right; and, by bidding us do something beyond our power, it inevitably produces a consciousness of guilt, and leads up to further disobedience. All this was foreseen and designed by God as a means to a further end, viz. pardon and life. So Galatians 3:23, 24.

The above teaching about the Law of Moses is in part true of the law written in the heart. Had there been in Adam’s children no inborn moral sense, his moral fall would not have produced the far-reaching and terrible results we now see. By erecting in every man this barrier against sin, God has revealed the mighty power of sin which breaks down the barrier, and the terrible moral consequences of Adam’s fall. But to this inner law there is no reference here.

DIVISION II. is now complete. The whole of it is a logical development of two great doctrines asserted in Romans 3:21-26. In Romans 3:27-Romans 4:25, Paul shows that Doct. I, Justification through Faith, shuts out all self-exultation, but is in harmony with God’s treatment of Abraham: in Rom. 5, he develops Doct. 2, Justification through the Death of Christ, and shows that it gives us a well-grounded exultation in hope of glory, and is in harmony with, and is the only conceivable explanation of, God’s dealings with mankind in Adam.

The complete confidence with which Paul accepts the facts and utterances of Genesis and uses them to defend the great doctrines of the Gospel proves that in the days of the apostles the substantial truth of Genesis was admitted by Jews and Christians. See further is Diss. iii. If we accept the great doctrines asserted and assumed in Romans 3:21-26, and the truth of Genesis, Paul’s reasoning will compel us to accept the teaching of the whole division.

DIV. II., like DIV. I., concludes with an exposition of the purpose of the Law. The difference between the two expositions marks the progress we have made. DIV. I. left us trembling beneath the shadow of Sinai, silent and guilty. But we have just learnt that the thunders of the Law are a voice of mercy, designed to lead us to Christ and thus to eternal life. DIV. I. made us conscious of our guilt: DIV. II. has reconciled us to God, brought us under His smile, and opened before our eyes a prospect of eternal glory. But as yet we have heard nothing about an inward moral change. This will be the lesson of the great division before whose portal we now stand.