{"commentary":{"id":"jamieson-fausset-brown","name":"Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary","website":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamieson-Fausset-Brown_Bible_Commentary","licenseUrl":"https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/","licenseNotes":null,"licenseNotice":null,"englishName":"Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary","language":"eng","textDirection":"rtl","sha256":"db3d4c8b3c1f32ef9d1430a57392e02bda3a17aac1f9bbe398461de021a3cb13","availableFormats":["json"],"listOfBooksApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/books.json","listOfProfilesApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/profiles.json","numberOfBooks":66,"totalNumberOfChapters":1187,"totalNumberOfVerses":17056,"totalNumberOfProfiles":0,"languageName":"English","languageEnglishName":"English"},"book":{"id":"ROM","commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","name":"Romans","commonName":"Romans","introduction":"THE GENUINENESS of the Epistle to the Romans has never been questioned. It has the unbroken testimony of all antiquity, up to CLEMENT OF ROME, the apostle's \"fellow laborer in the Gospel, whose name was in the Book of Life\" (Phi 4:3), and who quotes from it in his undoubted Epistle to the Corinthians, written before the close of the first century. The most searching investigations of modern criticism have left it untouched.\n\nWHEN and WHERE this Epistle was written we have the means of determining with great precision, from the Epistle itself compared with the Acts of the Apostles. Up to the date of it the apostle had never been at Rome (Rom 1:11, Rom 1:13, Rom 1:15). He was then on the eve of visiting Jerusalem with a pecuniary contribution for its Christian poor from the churches of Macedonia and Achaia, after which his purpose was to pay a visit to Rome on his way to Spain (Rom 15:23-28). Now this contribution we know that he carried with him from Corinth, at the close of his third visit to that city, which lasted three months (Act 20:2-3; Act 24:17). On this occasion there accompanied him from Corinth certain persons whose names are given by the historian of the Acts (Act 20:4), and four of these are expressly mentioned in our Epistle as being with the apostle when he wrote it--Timotheus, Sosipater, Gaius, and Erastus (Rom 16:21, Rom 16:23). Of these four, the third, Gaius, was an inhabitant of Corinth (Co1 1:14), and the fourth, Erastus, was \"chamberlain of the city\" (Rom 16:23), which can hardly be supposed to be other than Corinth. Finally, Phœbebe, the bearer, as appears, of this Epistle, was a deaconess of the Church at Cenchrea, the eastern port of Corinth (Rom 16:1). Putting these facts together, it is impossible to resist the conviction, in which all critics agree, that Corinth was the place from which the Epistle was written, and that it was despatched about the close of the visit above mentioned, probably in the early spring of the year 58. The FOUNDER of this celebrated church is unknown. That it owed its origin to the apostle Peter, and that he was its first bishop, though an ancient tradition and taught in the Church of Rome as a fact not to be doubted, is refuted by the clearest evidence, and is given up even by candid Romanists. On that supposition, how are we to account for so important a circumstance being passed by in silence by the historian of the Acts, not only in the narrative of Peter's labors, but in that of Paul's approach to the metropolis, of the deputations of Roman \"brethren\" that came as far as Appii Forum and the Three Taverns to meet him, and of his two years' labors there (Act 28:15, Act 28:30)? And how, consistently with his declared principle--not to build on another man's foundation (Rom 15:20) --could he express his anxious desire to come to them that he might have some fruit among them also, even as among other Gentiles (Rom 1:13), if all the while he knew that they had the apostle of the circumcision for their spiritual father? And how, if so, is there no salutation to Peter among the many in this Epistle? or, if it may be thought that he was known to be elsewhere at that particular time, how does there occur in all the Epistles which our apostle afterwards wrote from Rome not one allusion to such an origin of the church at Rome? The same considerations would seem to prove that this church owed its origin to no prominent Christian laborer; and this brings us to the much-litigated question.\n\nFor WHAT CLASS of Christians was this Epistle principally designed--Jewish or Gentile? That a large number of Jews and Jewish proselytes resided at this time at Rome is known to all who are familiar with the classical and Jewish writers of that and the immediately subsequent periods; and that those of them who were at Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost (Act 2:10), and formed probably part of the three thousand converts of that day, would on their return to Rome carry the glad tidings with them, there can be no doubt. Nor are indications wanting that some of those embraced in the salutations of this Epistle were Christians already of long standing, if not among the earliest converts to the Christian faith. Others of them who had made the apostle's acquaintance elsewhere, and who, if not indebted to him for their first knowledge of Christ, probably owed much to his ministrations, seemed to have charged themselves with the duty of cherishing and consolidating the work of the Lord in the capital. And thus it is not improbable that up to the time of the apostle's arrival the Christian community at Rome had been dependent upon subordinate agency for the increase of its numbers, aided by occasional visits of stated preachers from the provinces; and perhaps it may be gathered from the salutations of the last chapter that it was up to that time in a less organized, though far from less flourishing state, than some other churches to whom the apostle had already addressed Epistles. Certain it is, that the apostle writes to them expressly as a Gentile Church (Rom 1:13, Rom 1:15; Rom 15:15-16); and though it is plain that there were Jewish Christians among them, and the whole argument presupposes an intimate acquaintance on the part of his readers with the leading principles of the Old Testament, this will be sufficiently explained by supposing that the bulk of them, having before they knew the Lord been Gentile proselytes to the Jewish faith, had entered the pale of the Christian Church through the gate of the ancient economy.\n\nIt remains only to speak briefly of the PLAN and CHARACTER Of this Epistle. Of all the undoubted Epistles of our apostle, this is the most elaborate, and at the same time the most glowing. It has just as much in common with a theological treatise as is consistent with the freedom and warmth of a real letter. Referring to the headings which we have prefixed to its successive sections, as best exhibiting the progress of the argument and the connection of its points, we here merely note that its first great topic is what may be termed the legal relation of man to God as a violator of His holy law, whether as merely written on the heart, as in the case of the heathen, or, as in the case of the Chosen People, as further known by external revelation; that it next treats of that legal relation as wholly reversed through believing connection with the Lord Jesus Christ; and that its third and last great topic is the new life which accompanies this change of relation, embracing at once a blessedness and a consecration to God which, rudimentally complete already, will open, in the future world, into the bliss of immediate and stainless fellowship with God. The bearing of these wonderful truths upon the condition and destiny of the Chosen People, to which the apostle next comes, though it seem but the practical application of them to his kinsmen according to the flesh, is in some respects the deepest and most difficult part of the whole Epistle, carrying us directly to the eternal springs of Grace to the guilty in the sovereign love and inscrutable purposes of God; after which, however, we are brought back to the historical platform of the visible Church, in the calling of the Gentiles, the preservation of a faithful Israelitish remnant amidst the general unbelief and fall of the nation, and the ultimate recovery of all Israel to constitute, with the Gentiles in the latter day, one catholic Church of God upon earth. The remainder of the Epistle is devoted to sundry practical topics, winding up with salutations and outpourings of heart delightfully suggestive. \n\n\n\nNext: Romans Chapter 1\n\n","order":45,"numberOfChapters":16,"sha256":"b8a602d2ed3395e50b3ee5f84c6c9c736a6e21b7c0aabb38a28263eef72f3b6d","firstChapterNumber":1,"firstChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/ROM/1.json","firstChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"ROM","chapter":1},"lastChapterNumber":16,"lastChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/ROM/16.json","lastChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"ROM","chapter":16},"totalNumberOfVerses":385},"chapter":{"number":5,"content":[{"type":"verse","number":2,"content":["By whom also we have--\"have had\" \n\naccess by faith into this grace--favor with God. \n\nwherein we stand--that is \"To that same faith which first gave us 'peace with God' we owe our introduction into that permanent standing in the favor of God which the justified enjoy.\" As it is difficult to distinguish this from the peace first mentioned, we regard it as merely an additional phase of the same [MEYER, PHILIPPI, MEHRING], rather than something new [BEZA, THOLUCK, HODGE]. \n\nand rejoice--\"glory,\" \"boast,\" \"triumph\"--\"rejoice\" is not strong enough. \n\nin hope of the glory of God--On \"hope,\" see on Rom 5:4.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":3,"content":["we glory in tribulation also; knowing that tribulation worketh patience--Patience is the quiet endurance of what we cannot but wish removed, whether it be the withholding of promised good (Rom 8:25), or the continued experience of positive ill (as here). There is indeed a patience of unrenewed nature, which has something noble in it, though in many cases the offspring of pride, if not of something lower. Men have been known to endure every form of privation, torture, and death, without a murmur and without even visible emotion, merely because they deemed it unworthy of them to sink under unavoidable ill. But this proud, stoical hardihood has nothing in common with the grace of patience--which is either the meek endurance of ill because it is of God (Job 1:21-22; Job 2:10), or the calm waiting for promised good till His time to dispense it come (Heb 10:36); in the full persuasion that such trials are divinely appointed, are the needed discipline of God's children, are but for a definite period, and are not sent without abundant promises of \"songs in the night.\" If such be the \"patience\" which \"tribulation worketh,\" no wonder that\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":4,"content":["patience worketh experience--rather, \"proof,\" as the same word is rendered in Co2 2:9; Co2 13:3; Phi 2:22; that is, experimental evidence that we have \"believed through grace.\" \n\nand experience--\"proof.\" \n\nhope--\"of the glory of God,\" as prepared for us. Thus have we hope in two distinct ways, and at two successive stages of the Christian life: first, immediately on believing, along with the sense of peace and abiding access to God (Rom 5:1); next, after the reality of this faith has been \"proved,\" particularly by the patient endurance of trials sent to test it. We first get it by looking away from ourselves to the Lamb of God; next by looking into or upon ourselves as transformed by that \"looking unto Jesus.\" In the one case, the mind acts (as they say) objectively; in the other, subjectively. The one is (as divines say) the assurance of faith; the other, the assurance of sense.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":5,"content":["And hope maketh not ashamed--putteth not to shame, as empty hopes do. \n\nbecause the love of God--that is, not \"our love to God,\" as the Romish and some Protestant expositors (following some of the Fathers) represent it; but clearly \"God's love to us\"--as most expositors agree. \n\nis shed abroad--literally, \"poured forth,\" that is, copiously diffused (compare Joh 7:38; Tit 3:6). \n\nby the Holy Ghost which is--rather, \"was.\" \n\ngiven unto us--that is, at the great Pentecostal effusion, which is viewed as the formal donation of the Spirit to the Church of God, for all time and for each believer. (The Holy Ghost is here first introduced in this Epistle.) It is as if the apostle had said, \"And how can this hope of glory, which as believers we cherish, put us to shame, when we feel God Himself, by His Spirit given to us, drenching our hearts in sweet, all-subduing sensations of His wondrous love to us in Christ Jesus?\" This leads the apostle to expatiate on the amazing character of that love.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":6,"content":["For when we were yet without strength--that is, powerless to deliver ourselves, and so ready to perish. \n\nin due time--at the appointed season. \n\nChrist died for the ungodly--Three signal properties of God's love are here given: First, \"Christ died for the ungodly,\" whose character, so far from meriting any interposition in their behalf, was altogether repulsive to the eye of God; second, He did this \"when they were without strength\"--with nothing between them and perdition but that self-originating divine compassion; third, He did this \"at the due time,\" when it was most fitting that it should take place (compare Gal 4:4), The two former of these properties the apostle now proceeds to illustrate.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":7,"content":["For scarcely for a righteous man--a man of simply unexceptionable character. \n\nwill one--\"any one\" \n\ndie: yet peradventure for a good man--a man who, besides being unexceptionable, is distinguished for goodness, a benefactor to society. \n\nsome--\"some one.\" \n\nwould--rather, \"doth.\" \n\neven dare to die--\"Scarce an instance occurs of self-sacrifice for one merely upright; though for one who makes himself a blessing to society there may be found an example of such noble surrender of life\" (So BENGEL, OLSHAUSEN, THOLUCK, ALFORD, PHILIPPI). (To make the \"righteous\" and the \"good\" man here to mean the same person, and the whole sense to be that \"though rare, the case may occur, of one making a sacrifice of life for a worthy character\" [as CALVIN, BEZA, FRITZSCHE, JOWETT], is extremely flat.)\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":8,"content":["But God commendeth--\"setteth off,\" \"displayeth\"--in glorious contrast with all that men will do for each other. \n\nhis love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners--that is, in a state not of positive \"goodness,\" nor even of negative \"righteousness,\" but on the contrary, \"sinners,\" a state which His soul hateth. \n\nChrist died for us--Now comes the overpowering inference, emphatically redoubled.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":9,"content":["Much more then, being--\"having been\" \n\nnow justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":10,"content":["For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being now--\"having now been\" \n\nreconciled, we shall be saved by his life--that is \"If that part of the Saviour's work which cost Him His blood, and which had to be wrought for persons incapable of the least sympathy either with His love or His labors in their behalf--even our 'justification,' our 'reconciliation'--is already completed; how much more will He do all that remains to be done, since He has it to do, not by death agonies any more, but in untroubled 'life,' and no longer for enemies, but for friends--from whom, at every stage of it, He receives the grateful response of redeemed and adoring souls?\" To be \"saved from wrath through Him,\" denotes here the whole work of Christ towards believers, from the moment of justification, when the wrath of God is turned away from them, till the Judge on the great white throne shall discharge that wrath upon them that \"obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ\"; and that work may all be summed up in \"keeping them from falling, and presenting them faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy\" (Jde 1:24): thus are they \"saved from wrath through Him.\"\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":11,"content":["And not only so, but we also joy--rather, \"glory.\" \n\nin God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by--\"through\" \n\nwhom we have now received the atonement--rather, \"the reconciliation\" (Margin), as the same word is rendered in Rom 5:10 and in Co2 5:18-19. (In fact, the earlier meaning of the English word \"atonement\" was \"the reconciliation of two estranged parties\") [TRENCH]. The foregoing effects of justification were all benefits to ourselves, calling for gratitude; this last may be termed a purely disinterested one. Our first feeling towards God, after we have found peace with Him, is that of clinging gratitude for so costly a salvation; but no sooner have we learned to cry, Abba, Father, under the sweet sense of reconciliation, than \"gloriation\" in Him takes the place of dread of Him, and now He appears to us \"altogether lovely!\"\n\nOn this section, Note, (1) How gloriously does the Gospel evince its divine origin by basing all acceptable obedience on \"peace with God,\" laying the foundations of this peace in a righteous \"justification\" of the sinner \"through our Lord Jesus Christ,\" and making this the entrance to a permanent standing in the divine favor, and a triumphant expectation of future glory! (Rom 5:1-2). Other peace, worthy of the name, there is none; and as those who are strangers to it rise not to the enjoyment of such high fellowship with God, so they have neither any taste for it nor desire after it. (2) As only believers possess the true secret of patience under trials, so, although \"not joyous but grievous\" in themselves (Heb 12:17), when trials divinely sent afford them the opportunity of evidencing their faith by the grace of patience under them, they should \"count it all joy\" (Rom 5:3-4; and see Jam 1:2-3). (3) \"Hope,\" in the New Testament sense of the term, is not a lower degree of faith or assurance (as many now say, I hope for heaven, but am not sure of it); but invariably means \"the confident expectation of future good.\" It presupposes faith; and what faith assures us will be ours, hope accordingly expects. In the nourishment of this hope, the soul's look outward to Christ for the ground of it, and inward upon ourselves for evidence of its reality, must act and react upon each other (Rom 5:2 and Rom 5:4 compared). (4) It is the proper office of the Holy Ghost to beget in the soul the full conviction and joyful consciousness of the love of God in Christ Jesus to sinners of mankind, and to ourselves in particular; and where this exists, it carries with it such an assurance of final salvation as cannot deceive (Rom 5:5). (5) The justification of sinful men is not in virtue of their amendment, but of \"the blood of God's Son\"; and while this is expressly affirmed in Rom 5:9, our reconciliation to God by the \"death of His Son,\" affirmed in Rom 5:10, is but a variety of the same statement. In both, the blessing meant is the restoration of the sinner to a righteous standing in the sight of God; and in both, the meritorious ground of this, which is intended to be conveyed, is the expiatory sacrifice of God's Son. (6) Gratitude to God for redeeming love, if it could exist without delight in God Himself, would be a selfish and worthless feeling; but when the one rises into the other--the transporting sense of eternal \"reconciliation\" passing into \"gloriation in God\" Himself--then the lower is sanctified and sustained by the higher, and each feeling is perfective of the other (Rom 5:11).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":12,"content":["COMPARISON AND CONTRAST BETWEEN ADAM AND CHRIST IN THEIR RELATION TO THE HUMAN FAMILY. (Rom 5:12-21)\n\nWherefore--that is, Things being so; referring back to the whole preceding argument. \n\nas by one man--Adam. \n\nsin--considered here in its guilt, criminality, penal desert. \n\nentered into the world, and death by sin--as the penalty of sin. \n\nand so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned--rather, \"all sinned,\" that is, in that one man's first sin. Thus death reaches every individual of the human family, as the penalty due to himself. (So, in substance, BENGEL, HODGE, PHILIPPI). Here we should have expected the apostle to finish his sentence, in some such way as this: \"Even so, by one man righteousness has entered into the world, and life by righteousness.\" But, instead of this, we have a digression, extending to five verses, to illustrate the important statement of Rom 5:12; and it is only at Rom 5:18 that the comparison is resumed and finished.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":13,"content":["For until the law sin was in the world--that is during all the period from Adam \"until the law\" of Moses was given, God continued to treat men as sinners. \n\nbut sin is not imputed where there is no law--\"There must therefore have been a law during that period, because sin was then imputed\"; as is now to be shown.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":14,"content":["Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression--But who are they?--a much contested question. Infants (say some), who being guiltless of actual sin, may be said not to have sinned in the way that Adam did [AUGUSTINE, BEZA, HODGE]. But why should infants be specially connected with the period \"from Adam to Moses,\" since they die alike in every period? And if the apostle meant to express here the death of infants, why has he done it so enigmatically? Besides, the death of infants is comprehended in the universal mortality on account of the first sin, so emphatically expressed in Rom 5:12; what need then to specify it here? and why, if not necessary, should we presume it to be meant here, unless the language unmistakably point to it--which it certainly does not? The meaning then must be, that \"death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those that had not, like Adam, transgressed against a positive commandment, threatening death to the disobedient.\" (So most interpreters). In this case, the particle \"even,\" instead of specifying one particular class of those who lived \"from Adam to Moses\" (as the other interpretation supposes), merely explains what it was that made the case of those who died from Adam to Moses worthy of special notice--namely, that \"though unlike Adam and all since Moses, those who lived between the two had no positive threatening of death for transgression, nevertheless, death reigned even over them.\" \n\nwho is the figure--or, \"a type.\" \n\nof him that was to come--Christ. \"This clause is inserted on the first mention of the name \"Adam,\" the one man of whom he is speaking, to recall the purpose for which he is treating of him, as the figure of Christ\" [ALFORD]. The point of analogy intended here is plainly the public character which both sustained, neither of the two being regarded in the divine procedure towards men as mere individual men, but both alike as representative men. (Some take the proper supplement here to be \"Him [that is] to come\"; understanding the apostle to speak from his own time, and to refer to Christ's second coming [FRITZSCHE, DE WETTE, ALFORD]. But this is unnatural, since the analogy of the second Adam to the first has been in full development ever since \"God exalted Him to be a Prince and a Saviour,\" and it will only remain to be consummated at His second coming. The simple meaning is, as nearly all interpreters agree, that Adam is a type of Him who was to come after him in the same public character, and so to be \"the second Adam\").\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":15,"content":["But--\"Yet,\" \"Howbeit.\" \n\nnot as the offence--\"trespass.\" \n\nso also is the free gift--or \"the gracious gift,\" \"the gift of grace.\" The two cases present points of contrast as well as resemblance. \n\nFor if, &c.--rather, \"For if through the offense of the one the many died (that is, in that one man's first sin), much more did the grace of God, and the free gift by grace, even that of the one man, Jesus Christ, abound unto the many.\" By \"the many\" is meant the mass of mankind represented respectively by Adam and Christ, as opposed, not to few, but to \"the one\" who represented them. By \"the free gift\" is meant (as in Rom 5:17) the glorious gift of justifying righteousness; this is expressly distinguished from \"the grace of God,\" as the effect from the cause; and both are said to \"abound\" towards us in Christ--in what sense will appear in Rom 5:16-17. And the \"much more,\" of the one case than the other, does not mean that we get much more of good by Christ than of evil by Adam (for it is not a case of quantity at all); but that we have much more reason to expect, or it is much more agreeable to our ideas of God, that the many should be benefited by the merit of one, than that they should suffer for the sin of one; and if the latter has happened, much more may we assure ourselves of the former [PHILIPPI, HODGE].\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":16,"content":["And not as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift--\"Another point of contrast may be mentioned.\" \n\nfor the judgment--\"sentence.\" \n\nwas by one--rather, \"was of one,\" meaning not \"one man,\" but, as appears from the next clause, \"one offense.\" \n\nto condemnation, but the free gift--\"gift of grace.\" \n\nis of many offences unto justification--a glorious point of contrast. \"The condemnation by Adam was for one sin; but the justification by Christ is an absolution not only from the guilt of that first offense, mysteriously attaching to every individual of the race, but from the countless offenses it, to which, as a germ lodged in the bosom of every child of Adam, it unfolds itself in his life.\" This is the meaning of \"grace abounding towards us in the abundance of the gift of righteousness.\" It is a grace not only rich in its character, but rich in detail; it is a \"righteousness\" not only rich in a complete justification of the guilty, condemned sinner; but rich in the amplitude of the ground which it covers, leaving no one sin of any of the justified uncancelled, but making him, though loaded with the guilt of myriads of offenses, \"the righteousness of God in Christ.\"\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":17,"content":["For if by--\"the\" \n\none man's offence death reigned by one--\"through the one.\" \n\nmuch more shall they which receive--\"the\" \n\nabundance of grace and of the gift of--justifying \n\nrighteousness . . . reign in life by one Jesus Christ--\"through the one.\" We have here the two ideas of Rom 5:15 and Rom 5:16 sublimely combined into one, as if the subject had grown upon the apostle as he advanced in his comparison of the two cases. Here, for the first time in this section, he speaks of that LIFE which springs out of justification, in contrast with the death which springs from sin and follows condemnation. The proper idea of it therefore is, \"Right to live\"--\"Righteous life\"--life possessed and enjoyed with the good will, and in conformity with the eternal law, of \"Him that sitteth on the Throne\"; life therefore in its widest sense--life in the whole man and throughout the whole duration of human existence, the life of blissful and loving relationship to God in soul and body, for ever and ever. It is worthy of note, too, that while he says death \"reigned over\" us through Adam, he does not say Life \"reigns over us\" through Christ; lest he should seem to invest this new life with the very attribute of death--that of fell and malignant tyranny, of which we were the hapless victims. Nor does he say Life reigns in us, which would have been a scriptural enough idea; but, which is much more pregnant, \"We shall reign in life.\" While freedom and might are implied in the figure of \"reigning,\" \"life\" is represented as the glorious territory or atmosphere of that reign. And by recurring to the idea of Rom 5:16, as to the \"many offenses\" whose complete pardon shows \"the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness,\" the whole statement is to this effect: \"If one man's one offense let loose against us the tyrant power of Death, to hold us as its victims in helpless bondage, 'much more,' when we stand forth enriched with God's 'abounding grace' and in the beauty of a complete absolution from countless offenses, shall we expatiate in a life divinely owned and legally secured, 'reigning' in exultant freedom and unchallenged might, through that other matchless 'One,' Jesus Christ!\" (On the import of the future tense in this last clause, see on Rom 5:19, and Rom 6:5).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":18,"content":["Therefore--now at length resuming the unfinished comparison of Rom 5:12, in order to give formally the concluding member of it, which had been done once and again substantially, in the intermediate verses. \n\nas by the offence of one judgment came--or, more simply, \"it came.\" \n\nupon all men to condenmation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came--rather, \"it came.\" \n\nupon all men to justification of life--(So CALVIN, BENGEL, OLSHAUSEN, THOLUCK, HODGE, PHILIPPI). But better, as we judge: \"As through one offense it [came] upon all men to condemnation; even so through one righteousness [it came] upon all men to justification of life\"--(So BEZA, GROTIUS, FERME, MEYER, DE WETTE, ALFORD, Revised Version). In this case, the apostle, resuming the statement of Rom 5:12, expresses it in a more concentrated and vivid form--suggested no doubt by the expression in Rom 5:16, \"through one offense,\" representing Christ's whole work, considered as the ground of our justification, as \"ONE RIGHTEOUSNESS.\" (Some would render the peculiar word here employed, \"one righteous act\" [ALFORD, &c.]; understanding by it Christ's death as the one redeeming act which reversed the one undoing act of Adam. But this is to limit the apostle's idea too much; for as the same word is properly rendered \"righteousness\" in Rom 8:4, where it means \"the righteousness of the law as fulfilled by us who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit,\" so here it denotes Christ's whole \"obedience unto death,\" considered as the one meritorious ground of the reversal of the condemnation which came by Adam. But on this, and on the expression, \"all men,\" see on Rom 5:19. The expression \"justification of life,\" is a vivid combination of two ideas already expatiated upon, meaning \"justification entitling to and issuing in the rightful possession and enjoyment of life\").\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":19,"content":["For, &c.--better, \"For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, even so by the obedience of the One shall the many be made righteous.\" On this great verse observe: First, By the \"obedience\" of Christ here is plainly not meant more than what divines call His active obedience, as distinguished from His sufferings and death; it is the entire work of Christ in its obediential character. Our Lord Himself represents even His death as His great act of obedience to the Father: \"This commandment (that is, to lay down and resume His life) have I received of My Father\" (Joh 10:8). Second, The significant word twice rendered made, does not signify to work a change upon a person or thing, but to constitute or ordain, as will be seen from all the places where it is used. Here, accordingly, it is intended to express that judicial act which holds men, in virtue of their connection with Adam, as sinners; and, in connection with Christ, as righteous. Third, The change of tense from the past to the future--\"as through Adam we were made sinners, so through Christ we shall be made righteous\"--delightfully expresses the enduring character of the act, and of the economy to which such acts belong, in contrast with the for-ever-past ruin of believers in Adam. (See on Rom 6:5). Fourth, The \"all men\" of Rom 5:18 and the \"many\" of Rom 5:19 are the same party, though under a slightly different aspect. In the latter case, the contrast is between the one representative (Adam--Christ) and the many whom he represented; in the former case, it is between the one head (Adam--Christ) and the human race, affected for death and life respectively by the actings of that one. Only in this latter case it is the redeemed family of man that is alone in view; it is humanity as actually lost, but also as actually saved, as ruined and recovered. Such as refuse to fall in with the high purpose of God to constitute His Son a \"second Adam,\" the Head of a new race, and as impenitent and unbelieving finally perish, have no place in this section of the Epistle, whose sole object is to show how God repairs in the second Adam the evil done by the first. (Thus the doctrine of universal restoration has no place here. Thus too the forced interpretation by which the \"justification of all\" is made to mean a justification merely in possibility and offer to all, and the \"justification of the many\" to mean the actual justification of as many as believe [ALFORD, &c.], is completely avoided. And thus the harshness of comparing a whole fallen family with a recovered part is got rid of. However true it be in fact that part of mankind is not saved, this is not the aspect in which the subject is here presented. It is totals that are compared and contrasted; and it is the same total in two successive conditions--namely, the human race as ruined in Adam and recovered in Christ).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":20,"content":["Moreover the law--\"The law, however.\" The Jew might say, If the whole purposes of God towards men center in Adam and Christ, where does \"the law\" come in, and what was the use of it? Answer: It \n\nentered--But the word expresses an important idea besides \"entering.\" It signifies, \"entered incidentally,\" or \"parenthetically.\" (In Gal 2:4 the same word is rendered, \"came in privily.\") The meaning is, that the promulgation of the law at Sinai was no primary or essential feature of the divine plan, but it was \"added\" (Gal 3:19) for a subordinate purpose--the more fully to reveal the evil occasioned by Adam, and the need and glory of the remedy by Christ. \n\nthat the offence might abound--or, \"be multiplied.\" But what offense? Throughout all this section \"the offense\" (four times repeated besides here) has one definite meaning, namely, \"the one first offense of Adam\"; and this, in our judgment, is its meaning here also: \"All our multitudinous breaches of the law are nothing but that one first offense, lodged mysteriously in the bosom of every child of Adam as an offending principal, and multiplying itself into myriads of particular offenses in the life of each.\" What was one act of disobedience in the head has been converted into a vital and virulent principle of disobedience in all the members of the human family, whose every act of wilful rebellion proclaims itself the child of the original transgression. \n\nBut where sin abounded--or, \"was multiplied.\" \n\ngrace did much more abound--rather, \"did exceedingly abound,\" or \"superabound.\" The comparison here is between the multiplication of one offense into countless transgressions, and such an overflow of grace as more than meets that appalling case.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":21,"content":["That as sin--Observe, the word \"offense\" is no more used, as that had been sufficiently illustrated; but--what better befitted this comprehensive summation of the whole matter--the great general term sin. \n\nhath reigned unto death--rather, \"in death,\" triumphing and (as it were) revelling in that complete destruction of its victims. \n\neven so might grace reign--In Rom 5:14, Rom 5:17 we had the reign of death over the guilty and condemned in Adam; here it is the reign of the mighty causes of these--of SIN which clothes Death a Sovereign with venomous power (Co1 15:56) and with awful authority (Rom 6:23), and of GRACE, the grace which originated the scheme of salvation, the grace which \"sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world,\" the grace which \"made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin,\" the grace which \"makes us to be the righteousness of God in Him,\" so that \"we who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness do reign in life by One, Jesus Christ!\" \n\nthrough righteousness--not ours certainly (\"the obedience of Christians,\" to use the wretched language of GROTIUS) nor yet exactly \"justification\" [STUART, HODGE]; but rather, \"the (justifying) righteousness of Christ\" [BEZA, ALFORD, and in substance, OLSHAUSEN, MEYER]; the same which in Rom 5:19 is called His \"obedience,\" meaning His whole mediatorial work in the flesh. This is here represented as the righteous medium through which grace reaches its objects and attains all its ends, the stable throne from which Grace as a Sovereign dispenses its saving benefits to as many as are brought under its benign sway. \n\nunto eternal life--which is salvation in its highest form and fullest development for ever. \n\nby Jesus Christ our Lord--Thus, on that \"Name which is above every name,\" the echoes of this hymn to the glory of \"Grace\" die away, and \"Jesus is left alone.\"\n\nOn reviewing this golden section of our Epistle, the following additional remarks occur: (1) If this section does not teach that the whole race of Adam, standing in him as their federal head, \"sinned in him and fell with him in his first transgression,\" we may despair of any intelligible exposition of it. The apostle, after saying that Adam's sin introduced death into the world, does not say \"and so death passed upon all men for that Adam \"sinned,\" but \"for that all sinned.\" Thus, according to the teaching of the apostle, \"the death of all is for the sin of all\"; and as this cannot mean the personal sins of each individual, but some sin of which unconscious infants are guilty equally with adults, it can mean nothing but the one \"first transgression\" of their common head, regarded as the sin of each of his race, and punished, as such, with death. It is vain to start back from this imputation to all of the guilt of Adam's first sin, as wearing the appearance of injustice. For not only are all other theories liable to the same objection, in some other form--besides being inconsistent with the text--but the actual facts of human nature, which none dispute, and which cannot be explained away, involve essentially the same difficulties as the great principle on which the apostle here explains them. If we admit this principle, on the authority of our apostle, a flood of light is at once thrown upon certain features of the divine procedure, and certain portions of the divine oracles, which otherwise are involved in much darkness; and if the principle itself seem hard to digest, it is not harder than the existence of evil, which, as a fact, admits of no dispute, but, as a feature in the divine administration, admits of no explanation in the present state. (2) What is called original sin--or that depraved tendency to evil with which every child of Adam comes into the world--is not formally treated of in this section (and even in the seventh chapter, it is rather its nature and operation than its connection with the first sin which is handled). But indirectly, this section bears testimony to it; representing the one original offense, unlike every other, as having an enduring vitality in the bosom of every child of Adam, as a principle of disobedience, whose virulence has gotten it the familiar name of \"original sin.\" (3) In what sense is the word \"death\" used throughout this section? Not certainly as mere temporal death, as Arminian commentators affirm. For as Christ came to undo what Adam did, which is all comprehended in the word \"death,\" it would hence follow that Christ has merely dissolved the sentence by which soul and body are parted in death; in other words, merely procured the resurrection of the body. But the New Testament throughout teaches that the salvation of Christ is from a vastly more comprehensive \"death\" than that. But neither is death here used merely in the sense of penal evil, that is, \"any evil inflicted in punishment of sin and for the support of law\" [HODGE]. This is too indefinite, making death a mere figure of speech to denote \"penal evil\" in general--an idea foreign to the simplicity of Scripture--or at least making death, strictly so called, only one part of the thing meant by it, which ought not to be resorted to if a more simple and natural explanation can be found. By \"death\" then, in this section, we understand the sinner's destruction, in the only sense in which he is capable of it. Even temporal death is called \"destruction\" (Deu 7:23; Sa1 5:11, &c.), as extinguishing all that men regard as life. But a destruction extending to the soul as well as the body, and into the future world, is clearly expressed in Mat 7:13; Th2 1:9; Pe2 3:16, &c. This is the penal \"death\" of our section, and in this view of it we retain its proper sense. Life--as a state of enjoyment of the favor of God, of pure fellowship with Him, and voluntary subjection to Him--is a blighted thing from the moment that sin is found in the creature's skirts; in that sense, the threatening, \"In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die,\" was carried into immediate effect in the case of Adam when he fell; who was thenceforward \"dead while he lived.\" Such are all his posterity from their birth. The separation of soul and body in temporal death carries the sinner's destruction\" a stage farther; dissolving his connection with that world out of which he extracted a pleasurable, though unblest, existence, and ushering him into the presence of his Judge--first as a disembodied spirit, but ultimately in the body too, in an enduring condition--\"to be punished (and this is the final state) with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of His power.\" This final extinction in soul and body of all that constitutes life, but yet eternal consciousness of a blighted existence--this, in its amplest and most awful sense, is \"DEATH\"! Not that Adam understood all that. It is enough that he understood \"the day\" of his disobedience to be the terminating period of his blissful \"life.\" In that simple idea was wrapt up all the rest. But that he should comprehend its details was not necessary. Nor is it necessary to suppose all that to be intended in every passage of Scripture where the word occurs. Enough that all we have described is in the bosom of the thing, and will be realized in as many as are not the happy subjects of the Reign of Grace. Beyond doubt, the whole of this is intended in such sublime and comprehensive passages as this: \"God . . . gave His . . . Son that whosoever believeth in Him might not PERISH, but have everlasting LIFE\" (Joh 3:16). And should not the untold horrors of that \"DEATH\"--already \"reigning over\" all that are not in Christ, and hastening to its consummation--quicken our flight into \"the second Adam,\" that having \"received the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness, we may reign in LIFE by the One, Jesus Christ?\"\n\n\n\n\nNext: Romans Chapter 6\n\n"]}],"introduction":"THE BLESSED EFFECTS OF JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH. (Rom 5:1-11)\n\nTherefore being--\"having been.\" \n\njustified by faith, we have peace with God, &c.--If we are to be guided by manuscript authority, the true reading here, beyond doubt, is, \"Let us have peace\"; a reading, however, which most reject, because they think it unnatural to exhort men to have what it belongs to God to give, because the apostle is not here giving exhortations, but stating matters of fact. But as it seems hazardous to set aside the decisive testimony of manuscripts, as to what the apostle did write, in favor of what we merely think he ought to have written, let us pause and ask--If it be the privilege of the justified to \"have peace with God,\" why might not the apostle begin his enumeration of the fruits of justification by calling on believers to \"realize\" this peace as belonged to them, or cherish the joyful consciousness of it as their own? And if this is what he has done, it would not be necessary to continue in the same style, and the other fruits of justification might be set down, simply as matters of fact. This \"peace\" is first a change in God's relation to us; and next, as the consequence of this, a change on our part towards Him. God, on the one hand, has \"reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ\" (Co2 5:18); and we, on the other hand, setting our seal to this, \"are reconciled to God\" (Co2 5:20). The \"propitiation\" is the meeting-place; there the controversy on both sides terminates in an honorable and eternal \"peace.\"\n\n"},"thisChapterLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/ROM/5.json","thisChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"ROM","chapter":5},"nextChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/ROM/6.json","nextChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"ROM","chapter":6},"previousChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/ROM/4.json","previousChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"ROM","chapter":4},"numberOfVerses":20}