Romans (Continued from p. 28).
THE second part of Romans shows us the present position of the believer before God in Christ. His justification just looked at, chapters 3 and 4, was his clearance from the sins which brought him in guilty before God. They are not then in question any more. The blood of Jesus has settled that; and he has found how “blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin.” Not only so: He stands for the present time in the favor of God, and wrath to come for him there cannot be; for the One who died for him now lives in glory, to secure his final and complete salvation.
What can there be beyond this some might perhaps ask. But there is more. For the God who has given His Son is not satisfied with simply meeting need. He is showing “the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us.” He is glorifying Himself — glorying His Son. Moreover, many a question even yet remains to be answered before there can be complete, abiding rest for the soul.
In the next section (chapter 5:12, 8) we find therefore two main topics on which the apostle dwells, and which are closely connected in his thought, however far apart in themselves they may seem to be. The first is, that the believer is before God in Christ, his Representative; that as in Christ, “accepted in the Beloved,” what he is as a man down here is no more in question than what he has done is. God reckons to him what Christ is and what Christ has done, and it is faith’s part to look where God is looking and to reckon as He reckons. The second thing, closely connected with this as I have said, is the practical righteousness in life and walk down here, which flows from the apprehension of the place we are put in. We are, even in this present world, “as Christ is.” We are responsible to “walk as he walked.” And our power to do this is in proportion to our actual occupation of heart with Him, our real reckoning of ourselves what God reckons us.
Here necessarily we have to face the reality of our having still an old nature in us, in itself as bad as ever, even after we have believed in Christ. And this puts us in connection at once with our fallen first father, through whom sin entered into the world.
The main points in chapters 5:12-21 are thus briefly these: that by one man sin entered into the world, and death, universal as the sin (12). Thus men were actually made sinners (19), and the tendency was to bring them all under final condemnation (18). But that this first man, Adam, was a figure of One to come (14), through whom God’s grace and gift (upon the same principle of “the One” for “the many” [15]) have brought justification of life as a possibility for all men (18), and by whose obedience the many connected with Him shall be actually made righteous (19). But thus God’s grace in the work of Christ goes far beyond the mere balancing the results of Adam’s disobedience (15-17). On the one side one offense brought in death; on the other grace remits many offenses (16). On the one side by one offense death reigned; on the other, through the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness, those who receive it reign in life (17). It is well seen why, for this abundant gift of righteousness is all the fruit and value of the obedience of the Son of God Himself (19).
Then as to the law. It did not cause sin. Sin was in man, and he died for it, “from Adam to Moses,” the period before law came to a fallen creature. But it did this: it imputed sin; that is, it declared what sin was, and charged it upon man in detail; and sin thus committed, in the knowledge that God had forbidden it became transgression, — not merely doing lawlessly one’s own will, but setting aside the authority of God (13:14). Thus Adam had transgressed (14), and thus the law entered that the offense might abound (20): to bring out the sin of man in its full character, in order that, his condition being completely exposed, grace might be seen as that, abounding over it, displacing and reigning in its stead, through righteousness unto eternal life, by Jesus Christ our Lord (21).
These are the great principles which are carried out and insisted on in the three following chapters. And at once we see how the question of righteousness in our ways down here unites itself with that of our righteousness before God (chapter 6) It is asked at once, “What then shall we continue in sin that grace may abound!” The reply to which is by showing how our place in Christ, when really recognized in heart by faith, forbids the thought of it. We that are dead to sin, how shall we live in it? (2)
But how are we dead to sin’s Why, he says, your baptism teaches that. You were baptized to Christ — to His death, and it was your burial, the end of you as a sinner, a child of Adam (3:4). Christ died for us, our Substitute: we, then, have died with Him; or, — since we still live, let us say, — “our old man was crucified with Him.” We, therefore, as children of Adam are gone from before God in the death of our Substitute. And He “died unto sin once,” having taken what we were upon Himself, and by dying canceled it. He lives now to God beyond it all. Faith therefore reckons all this true as to ourselves: we are to reckon ourselves “dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God in Jesus Christ our Lord.” (6-11).
It is the place God has given us, the result of Christ’s work for us; in no wise what we feel or find ourselves; but what God reckons us to be, and what therefore by faith we reckon ourselves. We are seen alone in Christ now; can there be either sin or sins — sinful nature or practice, — attaching to us there? Impossible. But, you say, I find these in myself. Well, God sees not that self that you are looking at: that ended for Him upon the cross, it is no more yourself before Him; Christ in glory is alone what you are, for He represents you there.
Oh, what a deliverance for the soul occupied but this moment with its own thoughts and feelings, its experiences of sin and evil, — gazing now upon the beauty and glory of Christ as all its own in the presence of God. But, you say, what about the practical results of all that in the life? Well, it is impossible to have real faith in this without its producing holiness. Men may of course be hypocrites, but none can really know by faith that he is dead in sin, and use that to live in it. And so the apostle goes on to test the reality of faith in it, in this very way (12-23). Now, he says, “let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body.” If you look within, sin is there still: don’t let it reign, but yield yourselves to God. You who have found the fruitlessness of sin, and that the end of it is death (2) and who have obeyed from the heart that doctrine that set you free from it, — who have embraced it as your deliverance (19:18) you are become the willing servants of righteousness. On the other hand, whatever doctrine they profess, those who yield themselves up to sin, who are its willing servants, will get its wages: “the wages of sin is death;” on the other hand, not the wages, but “the GIFT of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord.” (23)