Living by Faith - Romans

The Triumph of Grace

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Living by Faith

Lesson: 17-64

Genre: Talk

Track: 017

Dictation Name: RR311I17

Location/Venue:

Year: ?

Let us worship God. Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord, hosanna in the highest. Let us pray.

Almighty God our heavenly Father, who of Thy grace and mercy has called us to be Thy people, and has given us a great task, to bring all things into captivity to Jesus Christ our Lord; we thank Thee that by Thy word and by Thy Spirit we have the instructions and the power, that we might do Thy work, that we may establish Thy reign, and that we might bring all things under the dominion of Christ our Lord. Bless us now as we study Thy word, and empower us by Thy Spirit to do those things which Thou wouldst have us to do. In Jesus name, amen.

Our scripture is from Romans 5:15-21. Our subject: The Triumph of Grace. The Triumph of Grace, Romans 5:15-21.

“15 But not as the offence, so also is the free gift. For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many.

16 And not as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift: for the judgment was by one to condemnation, but the free gift is of many offences unto justification.

17 For if by one man's offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.)

18 Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life.

19 For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.

20 Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound:

21 That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Having established the uniqueness of Adam and Christ, each as the head of a humanity, Paul now draws the implications. Paul does not speak against Gods law, but in terms of it. W.D. Davies commented quite validly when he wrote and I quote: “Christianity is a protest against Judaism in favor of the Old Testament.”

The thing that marked the culture of our Lords day and of Paul’s was a religious individualism, a moral anarchism, and an unwillingness to think except in terms of modernity. Greco Roman culture had infected all things, including the Judaism of the day. We cannot appreciate what life in Judea was like, unless we realize that it was very much affected by Greco Roman culture. Jerusalem in particular had a reputation of being as beautiful as any city in the world; not only had a couple of its kings, including Herod, in order to gain popularity with the Jews poured all kinds of money into public construction, into making the gates and the streets and the public buildings magnificent, but Rome not out of any love for Judea but because of its strategic importance had also poured a tremendous amount of money into Judea and Jerusalem.

As a result, while we are accustomed to thinking of what Rome was like in its heyday, we fail to realize that Jerusalem in its architectural splendor, may well have surpassed Rome. To the east lay the major threat at that time to the Roman Empire. Judea was thus strategically important, and the Romans knew that these people were hostile to their rule. As a result, they step by step built up a party that while not publicly pro-Roman, was ready to be agreeable to it. But all sides were infected by the Greco Roman culture.

The gymnasiums were to be seen in various parts of Jerusalem. A love of things Greek marked them. As a result, the kind of thinking Paul represents was a return to the Old Testament, and an indictment of the Judaism of the day. Paul was asserting convenantalism. All who were born of Adam beget in Adam. They and their children are born to sin and die, and unless we give ourselves and our children to Christ, and He receives us and them in grace and mercy, we have now and forever, the same destiny as the sons of Adam.

As (Luthie?) said and I quote: “A new year is never new, because even though a new calendar year may have begun, we have not ceased to be descendants of Adam.” Sin and death reign.

Now as Paul continues, he is eager to develop this fact of the two humanities, and the head of each Adam in Christ. This passage from verse 15 on has been called ‘the despair of translators’ and with good reason. It is very difficult to follow, because in the English it is hard, literally, to convey the contrast as well as the comparison, at one and the same time. For example, verse 15 begins: “But not as the offense, so also is the free gift.” In English which is a verbatim translation of the Greek, this is very hard to fathom. But what Paul is saying is that at one and the same time, he is saying: “Here are two people, Adam and Christ. They are similar, each are the head of a humanity; but they are at and the same time both similar and radically dissimilar. Both are covenant heads, but they differ in what they give to their humanities, and Paul says in verse 15 and subsequently that Christ’s gift is similar, yet dissimilar because it is far greater.

He speaks of the offense of Adam, a word that can be translated also as sin, trespass, and transgression. Then he speaks of the Lords gift, not as the offense, so also is the free gift. Then the gift of grace which is by one man.

The word ‘gift’ is literally in the Greek the ‘charisma’. The charisma. A gift coming out of Gods grace, and the term covers totally our endowment in Christ, everything that we have. Adams endowment to us is sin and death, but Christ’s is the totality of our life in Christ, our heirship, and the fact that the reign of death is now superseded in us by the reign of life, so that although we die in the flesh, we have life after death and then the resurrection.

Then in verse 16, Paul continues this comparison and contrast. Adam sin led to one fact, death. A sin nature for us all that leads to death. But Christ’s redemption saves us from countless sins, and has tremendous consequences for the totality of our lives. As Hodge said: “Christ does much more than remove the guilt and evils consequent on the sin of Adam.” He removes our original sin, which is the attempt by all sons of Adam to be their own God, and determine good and evil for themselves. He makes atonement for us, He redeems us from all particular sins; we are made in him a new creation. The sons of Adam are all born to die, their works add up to continual and endless towers of Babel, all doomed to confusion. Our work in Christ adds up to justice and dominion. The world has no future apart from Gods justice and dominion, dominion according to His law word. Apart from Christ, the world is going to repeat itself endlessly, and each New Year is going to be a repetition of the old, the same sin worked out with even greater damage. The same fact of death only extended, because the more the sons of Adam attempt to do on the premises of Adam, and in the nature of Adam, the further the outreaching of sin and death, and the more devastating the consequences thereof.

But our work in Christ, because we are His new creation, adds up to justice and dominion. The world has no future apart from Gods justice and dominion; this goal is impossible outside of Christ. Justification in Christ means that we have been declared righteous by God, and by the power of the Spirit in us are ordained to justice and dominion.

Then in verse 17, Paul stresses this fact further. He develops its implication. The necessary consequence of justification is that we shall by the gift of righteousness or justice, “reign in life through the one, even Jesus Christ.”

Now, there are a couple words there that are very significant; first we are told that we are given the gift of righteousness. It is not only ascribed to us by the work of Christ on the cross, but by His regenerating power made now our nature. We are the people who want justice in this world. most of the world is content, they are ready to see mafia’s run their area and run the government, and they are ready to see the civil government become itself a kind of mafia, as it always is apart from Christ. Augustine made that clear long ago. They don’t want to ruffle anyone’s feathers. Their perspective is: “I will leave you alone in your sin if you will leave me alone in my sin.”

But we have a gift, justice. So that justice is now the cry of our being, we are enraged by the injustice of the world, and we have a desire to work justice, that is our gift. By the gift of righteousness or justice, to reign in life through the one, even Jesus Christ.

The word reign comes from the same word as king, which is (Vasilios?) and it is (Vasilio?). This word has been cheapened and spiritualized by modern man. It was not in antiquity, it was not in our Lords day a word that you could use casually; you could not talk about reigning in any respect, or being a kind in any respect, without being guilty of treason. The charge against our Lord was that on the day, Palm Sunday, that he enter Jerusalem, he allowed the people to hail him as king.

“Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord. Hosanna to the highest, Hosanna to the Son of David.” That was the charge against Him, it was put on the cross. You did not use the word ‘reign’ or ‘king’ casually. When Paul included this word here, and when he speaks of it elsewhere, he was in effect putting his life on the line, and the life of those who took it seriously when they read it. For the Roman authorities to have seen this was sufficient for them to regard the Christian church as a dangerous subversive movement. Because then, a king and reigning meant literally what they imply, and it was treason. There was a death penalty for calling yourself king or talking about reigning.

How seriously this was taken we know, because it was relatives, I believe grandsons of a brother of our Lord who were brought by force before a Roman emperor to be examined, because of the fact that they were of the royal line, and when he concluded from the questioning that they were simple peasants, he turned them loose. He did not see how they could be a threat.

Thus, even to be a member of a royal family, let alone talking about reigning, was dangerous. So Paul could not have used, could never have used this word in the modern spiritualized sense; what he says, what Paul says, is that there was a universal reign of death, death comes to all. There is to be an equal reign of Christ through us, our reign is to be as far reaching and more as the reign of sin and death, and the gift of righteousness or justice is ours, first because we have been justified by the atoning blood of Jesus Christ, and second we are instructed by His law, now written on the tables of our hearts; when Christ reigns over us, we reign in our appointed place. The word ‘reign’ is used repeatedly in this passage, and we can never read it in modern spiritualized sense. It means that Christians are to prevail more thoroughly than sin and death prevail in the world today, more thoroughly than Caesar ruled the empire, more thoroughly than the IRS covers the United States today.

Calvin applied the inheritance from Adam and from Christ to our children, saying and I quote: “Hence in order to partake of the miserable inheritance of sin, it is enough for thee to be man, for it dwells in flesh and blood. But in order to enjoy the righteousness of Christ, it is necessary for Thee to be a believer, for a participation of Him is attained only by faith. He is communicated to infants in a peculiar way, for they have by covenant the rite of adoption, by which they pass over onto a participation of Christ, of the children of the Godly I speak, to whom the promise of grace is addressed, for others are by no means exempted from the common lot.”

In the baptism of children, we who are in Christ acknowledge that we and all our possessions and children belong to Christ, and we return our children to the Lord for Him to make them His very own.

Now in verse 18 Paul continues to develop this. He says the justice of Christ means the totality of his life, work, atonement, and obedience. “Lo I am come in the volume of the book it is written of me, to do Thy will oh God.” Our Lord said: “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” So he contrasts the one act of sin to the total justice of God. “Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life.”

The totality of Adams gift, of life in Adam, in death. Death reigned, Paul tells us again and again, from Adam on. Now the believer reigns in Christ. Both reigns are equally total in Gods purpose. We cannot limit our calling to dominion, we must say that it requires a total government of all things, a total justice. The kingdom of Christ must reign as universally as death has reigned since Adam. There is a contrast here. What it tells us very plainly is: “Alright, death has reigned in Adam because of his sin. Now because of the righteousness of Christ there must be an equally total reign through Christ of justice and dominion.

Something of the contrast is brought out in Moffatts paraphrase of verse 18, and this is the way he renders it: “Well then, as one man’s trespass issued in doom for all, so one man’s act of redress issued an requital and life for all.”

Paul’s phrase however, ‘justification of life’ is a very remarkable one. It means that as in Adam we are sentenced to death, in Christ we are sentenced to a justified life… a remarkable fact! We have a calling, we have a destiny, it is justice and dominion, and if we belong for Christ, that is our passion, that is our life; justice and dominion, not sin and death. We are justified to do justice.

Paul is here talking about a legal sentence, executed by the court of almighty God. In Adam the sentence is to death, in Christ because of our justification, the sentence is to life. A marvelous sentence, isn’t it? Here is a court where we go to, the court of Jesus Christ, where we are sentenced to die in Christ; and then to live in Christ, to justice and dominion.

Then in verse 19 Paul restates covenantalism: “For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.” Adams sin and his nature governs all his humanity, Christ’s obedience remakes his people righteous or just and governs them. All men are either in Christ or Adam; no man can gain life or justice in any true sense, apart from Christ; and Adams inheritance will govern his children’s work and their activities.

Then in verse 20, Paul returns directly to the law: “Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound:” Remember, Paul has said that all men know Gods law. All men know God, their whole being witnesses to God, to His works, and to His word; so that Paul says they are without excuse when they sin. The written law, Paul now says, entered history to set forth Gods justice more clearly, and to make the offense abound; to make sin more inexcusable.

Consider the implications of that; how it makes the sin of the Christian all the more inexcusable when he pays no attention to Gods law. The trespass of all is made more fearful by the fact of the written law. As great as the consequences of sin, the consequences of grace are far greater. The two consequences are not equivalent, Gods work produces greater results; grace did much more abound. Much more abound, death, sin and death from Adam, life and righteousness, justice, dominion, from Christ to be far greater than the reign of sin and death. Now that’s our future, that is our life in Christ, that is our calling.

In verse 21, Paul concludes: “Then as sin hath reigned unto death” again that word, ‘reigned’ “even so might grace reign through righteousness” (or justice) “unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Paul again refers to the dual reign, the triumph of grace renders the results of sin and of death insignificant by comparison. Insignificant. It must much more abound. Despite misrepresentations to the contrary, Calvinists has on the whole have stressed the magnificence of the triumph of grace, and also the number of the redeemed. It is an odd fact that Calvinists are accused that they are just a handful of the elect who are saved, and the rest go to hell, the vast majority of mankind. It is possible that somewhere along the line, some foolish and inconsistent Calvinists held that; but on the whole Calvinism has taken seriously what Paul here, and scripture throughout, has to say. For example in this country, among the Puritans… [Tape Ends]

[This tape ends prematurely, but this same lecture is on RR11I18, and continues without stopping there.]