Paraphrase of the Book of Romans
by E.H. “Jack” Sequeira
Chapter 5The Fruits of Justification by Faith
1 Having convinced you of God’s way of salvation in
Christ, let me now describe some of the wonderful blessings that come to those who
respond positively to the gospel. The first and immediate blessing that comes to us
who are justified by faith is inner peace with God. This peace is made possible
through Jesus Christ, in whom we have been fully reconciled to God by His life and
death.
2 Secondly, Christ also places us justified believers
in a new relationship with God so that we are now standing in grace; this means that
through this same faith we now have full access to the very power of God manifested
in Christ’s earthly life [1 Cor. 15:10; 2 Cor. 12:9]. This, in turn, gives us
hope of experiencing the glorious character of Christ, being reproduced in us now, and
His glorified perfection when He comes.
3 Naturally, all this involves suffering and depriving
our sinful nature of its evil desires while waiting patiently for the blessed hope; but
we happily put up with these things because of the ultimate hope, which is worth waiting
for; 4 and this ultimate hope we patiently wait for is, of
course, glorification, which will be realized at the second advent.
5 In the meantime, we are not ashamed of being called
Christians but, instead, willingly share and display the wonderful agape
love of God which we are experiencing through the indwelling Holy Spirit.
6 This agape love of God is so wonderful that I
would like to describe it to you: while we were utterly helpless to save ourselves
God sent His Son, at the right time, to die for us ungodly rebels.
7 There is nothing in secular human history that can
be compared with this agape love, for the ultimate display of human love is
when a person is brave enough to die for a good person or maybe a good cause, and even
this is something which very rarely happens. 8 But in
contrast, God directed His agape love towards us undeserving sinners by sending
His beloved Son to die the wages of sin, the equivalent of the second death, while we
were still sinners. 9 But that is not all. Having brought
us into a right standing with God [justified] by His supreme sacrifice, Christ
ascended into heaven and is now interceding on our behalf against the accusations of
Satan, and finally He will vindicate us in the judgment.
All these superabundant blessings are the results of God’s great unconditional
agape love for us. 10 For, if while we were still
God’s bitter enemies, He poured this agape love on us and reconciled us unto
Himself through the death of His Son, you can be absolutely sure that this unfailing
agape love will continue to work on our behalf and for our ultimate salvation
through Christ’s priestly ministry in heaven. 11 It is
for this reason we not only have assurance and peace, but we should by our life
continue exulting in God’s inexpressible gift, our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we
have obtained our reconciliation and redemption.
The Two Adams
12 In order to fully understand and appreciate this
glorious truth of salvation in Christ, let us consider our situation in Adam; for we
are saved IN CHRIST in the same way we are lost IN ADAM [1 Cor. 15:21,22].
It was through Adam, the father of the human race, that sin and death became part of
mankind’s heritage. Let me explain. Adam’s original sin resulted in his coming under
condemnation and the sentence of death. This is because God made it absolutely clear
to him that the day he ate of the forbidden fruit he would surely die [Gen. 2:17].
But this death has pervaded the whole human race because all mankind, though not
responsible, was involved or participated in that one sin. This is true because God
created all mankind in Adam [Acts 17:26] and therefore we were all in him
or part of him when he sinned. [*See note.]
13 Let me prove my point: Take for example the human
race that lived before Moses. These people were certainly sinning; but since God had
not yet given mankind His law as a legal code until the time of Moses, He certainly
would not be a just and fair God if He would condemn them to death for their sins.
14 Yet the facts are that these people who lived from the
time of Adam to Moses were dying. Was God punishing them unjustly, seeing their sins
were not open violations of His law as was Adam’s one transgression? The answer is
No; but the truth is that they were dying because in Adam we all
participated in his willful sin and therefore must die, apart from our own personal
sins. That is why Adam is, in a sense, a type of Christ who was to come to save all
humanity. For just as what Adam did affected all mankind, so in the same way what
Christ did affected all mankind except in the opposite sense.
15 This is because what Adam and Christ did were
absolutely opposite. Unlike Adam’s sin, which brought about universal death, Christ
obeyed all of God’s requirements and brought in the free gift of eternal life to all
mankind [Heb. 9:12]. God accomplished this out of pure grace in a most remarkable
way: He united our corporate fallen humanity that needed redeeming to His Son’s divinity
in the incarnation so that we actually participatcd or were implicated in Christ’s
obedience and holy history [1 Cor. 1:30; Eph. 1:3]; this is how Christ, as the
second Adam, saved all mankind and set us free. 16 Further,
I would like to add that God accomplishcd much more in Christ than simply
cancelling Adam’s one sin that brought the death sentence on all mankind. For in Christ’s
sacrificial death not only was Adam’s sin cancelled, but on the cross all our own personal
sins, past, present, and future were cancelled, too, so that in Him we have been justified
from all sins.
17 And this is not all; while Adam’s sin placed all
mankind under the reign of death so that none can escape the “grim reaper,”
the wonderful truth of God’s grace is that all who by faith receive the gift of life
in Christ will not only be raiscd to eternal life, but much more, they will reign
with Christ throughout the ceaseless ages of eternity [Rom. 8:17; Rev. 20:6; 22:5].
I am sure you will agree with me that this is superabundant grace.
18 This, then, is the sum of what l have been trying to get
across: by Adam’s one sin the whole human race was judged condemned and received the
sentence of eternal death. This means that legally none of us really have the right to
live and, therefore, are as good as dead [Eph. 2:3]. In the same way, Christ’s
perfect obedience has acquitted all mankind so that in Him we stand legally
justified and are qualified to live forever. This is the good news of the gospel.
19 Besides this, Adam’s one sin also made us captives
to sin [Rom. 7:14] so that all of us are born with a sinful nature that, in and
of itself, is incapable of obeying God’s holy and righteous law [Rom. 7:14-25].
Likewise, Christ’s obedience has also redeemed us from the corruption of our sinful
natures so that, when He comes to take us to heaven, He will replace our sinful bodies
with sinless bodies, similar to His when He rose from the dead. This is part of our
glorious inheritance in Christ [Rom. 8:23; Phil. 3:20,21].
20 And how does the law fit into all this? God introduced
the law to show or convince us of the awful result of Adam’s one sin; it produced a whole
human race of sinners dominated by the power of sin. But just as Adam’s one sin multiplied
through his posterity, the good news of the gospel is that God’s saving grace has
multiplied all the more. For in Christ not only has God redeemed all mankind from
sin, Adam’s plus ours, but through Him we can be more than conquerors (Rom. 8:3t).
21 Therefore, just as sin rules over every child of Adam
from birth to death; so we believers must now allow grace to rule over us until Jesus
Christ ushers in eternity at His second advent.
*Explanatory Note on Romans 5:12
Paul discusses mankind’s situation
in Adam in verses 12-14 in order to show
Adam is a type or pattern of Christ (verse 14 last part). The reason the death that
resulted from Adam’s one sin passed on to all humanity is not because God transfers
Adam’s guilt to us but because all sinned in Adam (not like Adam). At
least four reasons may be given to show that this is Paul’s idea in verse 12:
1. Paul’s use of the aorist tense implies a once-for-all act in the past.
2. In verses 13 and 14 the people who lived from Adam to Moses were dying even
though their sins were not like Adam’s transgression.
3. In verses 15-18 Paul declares four times that we are judged, condemned, and
die because we are
in Adam’s sin and not because of our sin.
4. If all die because all have sinned
like Adam; for this analogy to fit
Christ, we would have to teach that all live because all obeyed like Christ.
Not only is this the very opposite of Paul’s thought, but we would be guilty of
teaching legalism.
The whole force of the parallel in
Rom. 5:12-21 between Adam and
Christ depends on the idea of the solidarity of mankind in Adam and
in Christ. In the great majority of the five to 10 times the word Adam
is used in the Old Testament it possesses a collective significance. In the same sense,
Christ is referred to as the last or second Adam in the New Testament.
According to the New Testament scholar Brooke Foss Westcott: “If Christ took our nature upon Him,
as we believe, by an act of love, it was not that of one but of all. He was not one man
only among many men, but in Him all humanity was gathered up And thus now, as at all
time, mankind are, so to speak, organically united with Him. His acts are in a true
sense our acts, so far as we realize the union. His death is our death, His resurrection
our resurrection.” (The Gospel of the Resurrection, p. 39.) —EHS