Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
Romans tells some News so profoundly Good that we humans can hardly take it in. Even theologians stumble over it, like the builders stumbled over the great stone that was quarried to be the headstone of Solomon's Temple (Matt. 21:42; Psalm 118:22).
The problem is what Paul says: Christ became the "last" or Second Adam, reversing the condemnation that the first Adam brought on the entire human race. For "all men" He turned Adam's condemnation into justification, or a legal acquittal. "That News is too Good to be true," some objectors say.
Well, here's what Paul says:
"God's act of grace is out of all proportion to Adam's wrongdoing. For if the wrongdoing of that one man brought death upon so many [Greek, "all"], its effect is vastly exceeded by the grace of God and the gift that came to so many [Greek, "all"] by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ. And again, the gift of God is not to be compared in its effect with that one man's sin; for the judicial action, following on the one offence, resulted in a verdict of condemnation, but the act of grace ... resulted in a verdict of acquittal. ... As the result of one misdeed was condemnation for all people, so the result of one righteous act is acquittal and life for all" (5:15-18, The Revised English Bible). The King James Version says, "the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life."
Someone asks, "We need 'justification by faith,' but isn't this 'justification by birth'?" No more than Adam's condemnation comes upon us all "by birth." Jesus took it all upon Himself, so that His title is, "Savior of the world" (John 4:42). The same "all [who] have sinned" are "being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus" (Rom. 3:23, 24). This is why He sends His rain and sunshine on the just and the unjust alike. It's why we live.
One very wise writer says, "The sinner may resist this love, may refuse; ... but if he does not resist he will be drawn to Jesus; ... to the foot of the cross in repentance." The only reason why Esau was lost is that "for one morsel of food [he] sold his birthright" that God gave him (Heb. 12:16, 17). Jesus does not merely want to be your Savior; He is your Savior. Don't resist Him!
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: April 16, 2003.
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