Thus, being justified by faith, we have peace with God. Remark here also
the difference of Abraham's faith and ours. He believed God could perform
what He promised. We are called to believe He has performed. Faith in God's
word, believing God, and this faith laying hold on His power in
resurrection, is faith that this has lifted us out [see note #19]
of the whole effect of our sins. It reposes in God's power as having
wrought this deliverance for us, and justified us therein. Christ has been
delivered for our offences and raised again for our justification. [see note #20]
The apostle had established the great principles. He comes now to the
source and application of all (that is to say, their application to the
condition of the soul in its own feelings). He sets before us the effect of
these truths when received by faith through the power of the Holy Ghost.
The work is done; the believer has part in it, and is justified. Having
been justified, we have peace with God, we stand in divine favour, and
rejoice in hope of the glory of God. We believe in a God who has intervened
in power to raise Him from the dead who had borne our offences, and who,
being raised, is the eternal witness that our sins are put away, and that
the only true God is He who has done it in love. I have then peace with
Him; all my sins are blotted out-annulled-by the work of Christ; my
unburdened heart knows the Saviour God. I stand as a present thing in that
grace or favour, God's blessed present favour resting on me, which is
better than life. Through Christ, entered into His presence, I am even now
in the enjoyment of His favour, in present grace. All the fruits of the old
man are cancelled before God by the death of Christ. There cannot be a
question as to my sins between me and God. He has nothing to impute to
me-that has been all settled in Christ's death and resurrection. As to the
present time, I am brought into His presence in the enjoyment of His
favour. Grace characterises my present relationship with God. Further, all
my sins having been put away according to the requirements of God's glory,
and Christ being risen from the dead, having met all that glory, I rejoice
in the hope of the glory of God It is a full well-grounded hope of being in
it, not a coming short of it. All is connected with God Himself, with, and
according to, His perfections, the favour of God, and His glory for our
hope. All is connected with His power in resurrection-peace with God
already settled, the present favour of God, and the hope of glory.
Remark here that justification is distinct from peace. "Having been
justified, we have peace." Justification is my true state before God, by
virtue of the work of Christ, of His death, and of resurrection. Faith,
thus knowing God, is at peace with God; but this is a result, like the
present enjoyment of the grace wherein we stand. Faith believes in the God
who has done this, and who-exercising His power in love and in
righteousness-has raised from the dead the One who bore my sins, having
entirely abolished them, and having perfectly glorified God in so doing. On
this ground, too, "by Him" we have found access into the full favour of God
in which we stand. And what is the result? It is glory; we rejoice in the
hope of the glory of God. It is God who is the root and the accomplisher of
all. It is the gospel of God, the power of God in salvation, the
righteousness of God, and it is into the glory of God that we are
introduced in hope. Such is the efficacy of this grace with regard to us;
it is peace, grace or favour, glory. One would say, This is all we can
have: the past, present, and future are provided for.
Nevertheless there is more. First, practical experience. We pass in fact
through tribulations; but we rejoice in this, because it exercises the
heart, detaches us from the world, subdues the will, the natural working of
the heart, purifies it from those things which dim our hope by filling it
with present things, in order that we may refer more to God in all things,
which, after all, are entirely directed by Him whose faithful grace
ministered all this to us. We learn better that the scene in which we move
passes away and changes, and is but a place of exercise, and not the proper
sphere of life. Thus hope, founded on the work of Christ, becomes more
clear, more disentangled from the mixture of that which is of man here
below; we discern more clearly that which is unseen and eternal, and the
links of the soul are more complete and entire with that which is on before
us. Experience, which might have discouraged nature, works hope, because,
come what may, we have the key to all, because the love of God who has
given us this hope, made clearer by these exercises, is shed abroad in our
hearts by the Holy Ghost who is given to us, who is the God of love
dwelling in us.
Nevertheless, while giving this inward foundation of joy, the Spirit is
careful to refer it to God, and to what He has done outside us, as regards
the proof we have of it, in order that the soul may be built upon that
which is in Him, and not on that which is in ourselves. This love is indeed
in us; it sweetly explains all; but the love which is there through the
presence of the Holy Ghost is the love of God, proved, namely, in that when
we were destitute of all strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.
The due time was when man had been demonstrated to be ungodly, and without
strength to come out of this condition, although God, under the law, shewed
him the way. Man can devote himself when he has an adequate motive; God has
displayed the love that was peculiar [see note #21]
to Himself, in that, when there was no motive for Him in us, when we were
nothing but sinners, Christ died for us! The source was in Himself, or
rather was Himself. What a joy to know that it is in Him and of Him that we
have all these things!
God, then, having reconciled us to Himself according to the prompting of
His own heart, when we were enemies, will much more, now that we are
justified, go on to the end; and we shall be saved from wrath through
Christ. Accordingly he adds, speaking of the means, "If we were reconciled
to God by the death of his Son," by that which was, so to speak, His
weakness, "much more shall we be saved by his life," the mighty energy in
which He lives eternally. Thus the love of God makes peace with regard to
that which we were, and gives us security with regard to our future, making
us happy withal in the present. And it is that which God is that secures to
us all these blessings. He is love-full of consideration for us, full of
wisdom.
But there is a second "not only," after our state-peace, grace, and
glory-what seemed complete and is complete salvation, had been established.
"Not only" do we joy in tribulation, but we joy in God. We glory in
Himself. This is the second part of the Christian's blessed experience of
the joy which results from our knowledge of God's love in Christ, and our
reconciliation by Him. The first was that he gloried in tribulation because
of its effect, divine love being known The second is the love of God
Himself in man. This known, we glory, not only in our salvation, and even
in tribulation, but knowing such a Saviour God (a God who has raised up
Jesus from the dead, and has saved us in His love), we glory in Him. Higher
joy than this we cannot have.
This closes this section of the epistle, in which, through the propitiation
made by Christ, the putting away of our sins, and the love of God Himself,
has been fully made good and revealed: peace, grace possessed, and glory in
hope; and that by the pure love of God Himself known in Christ's dying for
sinners. It is purely of God and thus divinely perfect. It was no matter of
experience, whatever joy flowed from it, but God's own acting from Himself,
and so revealing Himself in what He is. Up to this, sins and personal guilt
are treated of; now, sin and the state of the race. The pure favour of God
towards us, beginning with us as sinners, is wonderfully brought out, going
on to our rejoicing in Himself who has been, and is, such to us.
Having given the foundation and the source of salvation, and the confidence
and enjoyment that flow from it, having based all on God, who had to do
with those who were nothing but sinners devoid of all strength, and that by
the death of Christ, the question of our sins was settled-that for which
each man would have had to be judged according to what each had
respectively done. Lawless, or under law, all were guilty; a propitiatory,
or mercy-seat, was set forth in the precious blood of Christ, peace made
for the guilty, and God revealed in love. But this has carried us up
higher. We have to do with God, and man as he is as a present thing. It is
a question of sinful man; the Jew had no privilege here, he had nothing to
boast of. He could not say, sin came in by us and by the law. It is man,
sin, and grace that are in question. The apostle takes up this fundamental
and essential question-not sins and guilt to be judged of hereafter if not
repented of, but the present state of man.
Man had nothing to boast of either. The God of grace is before our eyes,
acting with regard to sin, when there was nothing else, save that law had
aggravated the case by transgressions. Now sin came in by one man, and by
sin death. This brings us to the condition of the race, not merely the acts
of the individuals. That condition was exclusion from God, and an evil
nature. All were alike in it, though surely each had added his own personal
sins and guilt. Sin had come in by one, and death by sin. And thus death
passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. For sin was in the world
before the law. Nor did the law add much to the advantage of man's
condition; it definitively imputed [see note #22]
his sin to him by giving him knowledge of it and forbidding it.
Nevertheless, although there had been no imputation according to the
government of God in virtue of an imposed and known rule, yet death
reigned-a constant proof of sin (moreover, the history of Genesis made all
this incontestable, even to the Jew)-over those who had not broken a
covenant founded on a known commandment, as Adam [see note #23]
had done; and the Jews also, after the law was given. Men, between Adam and
Moses, when there was no question of a law, as there was both before and
after that interval, died just the same-sin reigned.
We must observe here that from the end of verse 12 to that of 17 is a
parenthesis: only the idea is developed, as in similar cases. In the
parenthesis the apostle, after having presented Adam as the figure of Him
who was to come-of Christ, argues that the character of the gift cannot be
inferior to that of the evil. If the sin of the one first man was not
confined in its effects to him who committed it, but extended to all those
who as a race were connected with him, with much greater reason shall the
grace which is by one, Christ Jesus, not end in Him, but embrace the many
under Him also. And with regard to the thing, as well as to the person-and
here the law is in view-one single offence brought in death, but grace
remits a multitude of offences. Thus it could suffice for that which the
law had made necessary. And, as to the effect, death has reigned; but by
grace, not only shall life reign, but we shall reign in life by One
according to the abundance of grace-by Jesus Christ.
In verse 18 the general argument is resumed in a very abstract way. "By one
offence," he says, "towards all for condemnation, even so by one
accomplished righteousness (or act of righteousness) towards all men, for
justification of life." One offence bore-in its bearing, so to speak,
referred to all, and so it was with the one act of righteousness. This is
the scope of the action in itself. Now for the application: for as by the
disobedience of one man (only) many are constituted sinners, so by the
obedience of one (only) many are constituted righteous It is still the
thought that the act of the individual is not confined, as to its effects,
within the limits of his own person. It affects many others, bringing them
under the consequences of that act. It is said "all," when the scope of the
action [see note #24]
is spoken of; "the many," when it is the definitive effect with regard to
men; that is, the "many" who were in connection with him who accomplished
the act.
This then was outside the law, though the law might aggravate the evil. It
was a question of the effect of the acts of Adam and of Christ, and not of
the conduct of individuals, to which evidently the law related. It is by
one man's disobedience the many (all men) were made sinners, not by their
own sins. Of sins each has his own: here it is a state of sin common to all
Of what use then was the law? It came in, as it were, exceptionally, and
accessory to the chief fact, "that the offence [see note #25]
might abound." But not only where the offence, but where sin abounded-for
under the law and without the law it has abounded-grace has superabounded;
in order that, as sin has reigned in death, grace should reign through
righteousness in eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord. If where sin reigns
righteousness had reigned, it would have been to condemn the whole world.
It is grace that reigns-the sovereign love of God. Righteousness is on a
level with the evil, when it deals with evil, by the fact that it is
righteousness; but God is above it, and acts, and can act-has a right to
act-according to His own nature; and He is love. Is it that He sanctions
unrighteousness and sin? No, in His love He brings about the accomplishment
of divine righteousness by Jesus Christ. He has accomplished in Him that
divine righteousness in raising Him to His right hand. But this is in
virtue of a work wrought for us, in which He has glorified God. Thus He is
our righteousness, we the righteousness of God in Him. It is the
righteousness of faith, for we have it by believing in Him. It is love
which-taking the character of grace when sin is in question-reigns, and
gives eternal life above and beyond death-life that comes from above and
ascends thither again; and that in divine righteousness, and in connection
with that righteousness, magnifying it and manifesting it through the work
of Jesus Christ, in whom we have this life, when He had wrought what
brought out divine righteousness, in order that we might possess eternal
life and glory according to it. If grace reigns, it is God who reigns. That
righteousness should be maintained is that which His nature required. But
it is more than maintained according to the measure of the claim God had on
man as such. Christ was perfect surely as man; but He has glorified what
God is Himself, and, He being raised from the dead by the glory of the
Father, God has glorified His righteousness by setting Him at His right
hand, as He did His love in giving Him. It is now righteousness in
salvation given by grace to those who possessed none-given in Jesus, who by
His work laid the full ground for it in glorifying God with regard even to
sin, in the place where in this respect all that God is has been displayed.
The fulfilment of the law would have been man's righteousness: man might
have gloried in it. Christ has glorified God-a most weighty point in
connection with righteousness, connecting it withal with glory. And grace
imparts this to the sinner by imputation, accounting him righteous
according to it, introducing him in the glory which Christ merited by His
work-the glory in which He was as Son before the world began.
But alas! in this glorious redemption accomplished by grace, which
substitutes the righteousness of God and the person of the second Adam for
the sinand the person of the first, the perversity of the flesh can find
occasion for the sin which it loves, or at least to charge the doctrine
with it. If it is by the obedience of One that I am constituted righteous,
and because grace superabounds, let us sin that it may abound: that does
not touch this righteousness, and only glorifies this superabundance of
grace. Is this the apostle's doctrine? or a legitimate consequence of his
doctrine? In no wise. The doctrine is, that we are brought into God's
presence through death, in virtue of the work which Christ therein
accomplished, and by having a part in that death. Can we live in the sin to
which we are dead? It is to contradict oneself in one's own words. But,
being baptised unto Christ (in His name, to have part with Him, according
to the truth contained in the revelation we have of Him), I am baptised to
have part in His death for through this it is that I have this
righteousness in which He appears before God, and I in Him. But it is to
sin that He has died. He has done with it for ever. When He died, He who
knew no sin came out of that condition of life in flesh and blood, to which
in us sin attached, in which we were sinners; and in which He the sinless
One, in the likeness of sinful flesh and as a sacrifice for sin, was made
sin for us. [see note #26]
We have then been buried with Him by baptism for death (v. 4), having part
in it, entering into it by baptism which represents it, in order that, as
Christ was raised up from among the dead by the glory of the Father, we
also should walk in newness of life. In a word I am brought into the
participation of this divine and perfect righteousness by having part in
death unto sin; it is impossible therefore that it should be to live in it.
Here it is not duty that is spoken of, but the nature of the thing. I
cannot die to a thing in order to live in it. The doctrine itself refutes
as absolute nonsense the argument of the flesh, which under the pretence of
righteousness will not recognise our need of grace. [see note #27]
