A Fresh Look at Romans 5:12-21
 
Could Romans 5:12-22 give us hope for the future?  Might Paul have intended that it have that impact on the Roman Christians?  I think so.  In fact, I can’t see how so many people miss it.  Well, actually, I believe I do see how it’s been missed.  The details of this passage have been subjected to so much systematic theological analysis that the main point seems to have been overlooked.  You know, the forest for the trees and all that.
 
Paul begins with Adam and the devastation that resulted from his trespass.  Through that one man’s sin death, universal sin, condemnation, and more spread to all men.  Up until now, Paul says, “sin reigned in death” (v. 21).  But the whole reason he brings in Adam is to introduce a monumental historical change of direction.
 
This point needs to be highlighted.  Although we keep reducing it to this, the passage cannot be read and understood as abstract systematic theology.  It’s systematic in it’s teaching.  Yes.  It’s theology.  Of course.  But Paul is describing more than two complementary ideas or doctrines—the doctrine of the imputation of Adam’s sin and doctrine of the imputation of Christ’s righteousness.  
 
The way that systematic theologians, even many Reformed commentators, deal with Paul’s explanation of the two Adam’s tends to flatten out the history in favor of some symmetrical theology of sin and salvation.  Perhaps another way of saying this is that it doesn’t matter when this passage was written because it deals not so much with a historical change and possibilities that result from that historical change as with what happens with individual condemnation and salvation.
 
You see, the systematic theology of this passage is often written as if what Paul described as characteristic of the old age of Adam is still the case today.  Of course, individuals can benefit from the work of Jesus the Second Adam and experience all the benefits that Paul describes, but the world and human history continues as it was since Adam.
 
There’s no balance here in this passage.  It’s more like what happens when a grown man jumps on a teeter totter when there’s a three-year-old child on the other end.  In this case, Jesus slams his side down and sends Adam flying over the playground’s fence.  What Jesus does is not simply added to or made to overlay the mess Adam left us with.  Rather, according to this passage, he changes everything.
 
The world after Adam’s sin was not meant to be.  More importantly, it was never meant to remain that way.  This is an historical argument.  A redemptive historical argument, we say.  Paul’s purpose is not to expound the potency of sin and death or to explain to us some abstract principle of dual imputation.  Instead, he writes to show how Jesus the new Adam has come to bring righteousness and life to the world, to change the course of human history.
 
Paul begins with what Adam’s sin brought into the world and history.  “Death reigned” is a good summary (vss. 14, 17, 21).  But it reigned until the new Adam Jesus came.  Then everything changed.  The course of history changed direction.  There’s a new “Lord,” the man Jesus.  The world and human civilization cannot now remain the same.
 
  1. If, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ (v. 17).
 
Notice what is promised here.  Not just individual salvation for some individuals who happen to believe in Jesus over the ages.  There’s much more.  Paul promises that Christians will “reign in life.”  
 
Adam lost what he had been given—life.  But he also lost what he was promised—rule.  Now, however, the work of the Second Adam not only restores what Adam lost, but it also gives us what Adam never attained.  The first Adam began life as a priest but since he did not obediently serve and exercise patience in order to gain wisdom, therefore, he was never granted the privilege of ruling as a king.  This is one of the reasons why Paul heaps on the “much more” language in Romans 5.  Jesus gets what Adam never had.  And he gets it for his people, too.
 
[As an aside, let me suggest that this is the “proof text” that is being demanded by some for the truth that Adam was to move from glory to glory, from priestly service to kingly rule.  Paul says that Adam “was the type of the one who was to come” (v. 14).  What we see Jesus accomplish through his righteous service is what Adam would have received had he been faithful.   The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was about kingly discernment (as the phrase “knowledge of good and evil” is regularly used in the rest of the OT) and would have been granted to Adam in due time.]
 
Paul fully expects Christians to reign in this life.  He wants the Romans to understand this.  He will later predict that “the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet” (Rom. 16:20).  Paul anticipates that human history will change directions now that Jesus has come and reigns in heaven.  He fully expects that Christians united to Christ will begin to make a difference in the world and in human culture.  
 
Christians united to their resurrected Lord can now hope to be delivered from the wrath of God (Rom. 5:10).   And that doesn’t just mean salvation from final condemnation at the Last Day.  Remember, according to Romans 1:18-32, the “wrath of God” has worked its way into the warp and woof of human life and culture.  Whatever suffering we have to endure for now, there will be deliverance from this cultural, social wrath as the Lord of all works through his people in history.
 
When’s the last time you read something like this in your systematic theological textbook?
Christian Optimism
Monday, August 14, 2006