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Sin and Death or Grace and Life?First Sunday in Lent, 13th February, 2005
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| v.12 | Adam's legacy of sin and death |
| vv.13-14 | a clarification concerning the law |
| vv.15-17 | Adam and Christ – alike and unalike |
| v.18 | Adam and Christ: the comparison resumed |
| v.19 | contrasting effects of obedience and disobedience |
| v.20 | the place of the law |
| v.21 | through Christ, the triumph of grace and life |
ARGUMENT
12 :– Sin had its origins in one man (Adam), and because of sin, death came into the world. ie. Death is a direct consequence / outcome of Adam's sin (disobedience, cf. Genesis 3). We know that all people die. Why? Because all people sin. Our mortality is thus a consequence of our sin.
13-14 :– q. what is sinful is defined by the law, so what about the period before the law (ie. between Adam and Moses)?
a. sin existed before the law, even though it was not defined. Thus death existed in that time, despite the fact that sins were not being "counted" or "booked up" according to the categories of the law.
15-17 :– The final phrase of v.14, which describes Adam as "the type of the one who was to come", propels us out of the digression and back into the main schema: Adam is the "type" of Christ in the sense that he is a figure of universal significance. His one act (sin) had consequences for all (death). Thus also Christ's one redemptive act (his death) had consequences for all (salvation & life). This typology, as Melbourne Jesuit Brendan Byrne points out, is the ONLY respect in which Adam can be compared to Christ. Paul spends vv.15-17 outlining the DIFFERENCES between Adam and Christ, emphasising that Christ's positive acts outweighed ("much more") the negative acts of Adam.
v.18 :– the comparison between Adam and Christ is now rearticulated, but with the qualifications of the previous verse informing that comparison.
v.19 :– Where in v.18 trespass was contrasted with an act of righteousness (ie. sin contrasted with a supremely good act), in v.19 Paul defines what it is that leads to trespass (sin) and righteousness. In the first case, disobedience, in the second case, obedience. Obedience to what? Presumably the law. But, as the digression in vv.13-14 suggests, there is a greater power which is before the law, which reigned even before the law came into being, despite the fact that sin was already in the world. Thus:
v.20 :– when the law was given, that which might be defined as sin multiplied. Human beings now (under the law) had a system by which they could classify sin, and define right from wrong. YET, so good is God, that as sin grew, so did the measure of the free gift (grace) which he offers us. This brings us to the rub of the argument:
v.21 :– sin's triumph (cf. v.12) is death. Death is the ultimate consequence of sin, and were it not for sin having entered the human race, death would have no power over us. Yet there is something more powerful than human sin – God's graciousness, his free gift. This free gift (called grace) is fully empowered, if you like, through Jesus, and the result is that death is overcome. So strong is God's gift, that it defeats sin, and thus death, leading to eternal life.
COMMENTARY
As we embark upon the Lenten journey, Paul confronts us with an extraordinary set of insights and challenges to our instinctive feeling that we are, of our very nature, bad. He says, in effect, forget about the Fall – the story in our first reading from Genesis of how death came into being through the disobedience of Adam and Eve. The extraordinary news from St Paul is that the second Adam, Jesus Christ, through the sheer luxury of God's grace, overcame sin and conquered death. The Fall, for Christians, is no more. We don't need to DO anything to be saved, to gain eternal life. We don't need to keep on feeling guilty for the sins of our forebears. As he writes elsewhere, death has been swallowed up in victory. The grace of God has defeated human wilfulness, sinfulness and stupidity, and replaced it with the free gift of eternal life. We are people of the Resurrection, not of the Fall. Our sins have been wiped away.
As, then, we move toward the agony of the cross of Christ but also towards what we know in advance will be his triumph over the cross, we are called to repent not of something that is part of our nature (like the idea of a fallen state), but rather of those things which might cause us once more to reject the grace of God; those things which stops us saying "yes" to the free gift that is placed before us.
There is evil in the world, and there is good. God is ultimate good and perfect, and humanity, created in the image of God, is ultimately good too, though not perfect. Because God allows us to be free, and to make our own choices and mistakes, sometimes we still get it wrong. Yet because of the grace of God, that which is good always remains ultimately more powerful than that which is evil. Thus even in those times when we seem to have offended against Scripture, when we seem, if you like, to have "broken the law", when we find ourselves moved to feelings of guilt; even in those times, God still holds out the gift of grace. Forgiveness is always, ALWAYS possible. All we need to do to attain grace, to gain eternal life, is to say "yes". True repentance is thus not about feeling guilty about past wrongs. True repentance is about letting God back into our lives. We are children of the gift, not of sin; children of the God of Life, not of the Law of sin and death.
Text: Romans 5:12-21 (NRSV)
12 Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned – 13 sin was indeed in the world before the law, but sin is not reckoned when there is no law. 14 Yet death exercised dominion from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sins were not like the transgression of Adam, who is a type of the one who was to come.
15 But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died through the one man's trespass, much more surely have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many. 16 And the free gift is not like the effect of the one man's sin. For the judgement following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brings justification. 17 If, because of the one man's trespass, death exercised dominion through that one, much more surely will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness exercise dominion in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.
18 Therefore just as one man's trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man's act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all. 19 For just as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous. 20 But law came in, with the result that the trespass multiplied; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, 21 so that, just as sin exercised dominion in death, so grace might also exercise dominion through justification [righteousness] leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
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