NOTES for Rom 5:17-21; Rom 6:1-2

Two parallel, but opposing one another chains: Adam - the offence - the reign of death, Jesus Christ - the just man - the reign of life. The Fall brings distortion in a man’s nature, making him slave of sin, incapable of real righteousness and deprived of everlasting life. Redeemed by Jesus’ death, we obtain freedom in order to receive righteousness as a gift from God and enter into the kingdom of life, where reigns the Resurrection, Conqueror of dead.

When we meet with Paul's words that we, as Christians, are dead to sin, various associations appear, and the closest is often connected to a certain particularly rigorous asceticism, with a merciless fight, with a readiness to resist one’s own fallen humanity, at least to death. Perhaps such is the case in the fallen world, especially that the apostle himself in some of his messages says that we can remain faithful to the Torah, observe it till the end only at the cost of our own life: because as long as the sinful man lives, he continues to sin, such is the property of his fallen human nature.

And if Christianity was another new religion, probably, it could then be limited to this: because the fallen man is really not in the state to do more. But Christianity is not a new religion, but a new life, a life in this Kingdom, which the Savior brought on earth, saying that it is "closed". And this life is completely incompatible with sin. If only we want to live the life of the Kingdom, sin has to disappear from our life. But indeed, for that, it is necessary a complete transformation of the human nature, otherwise we shall not know how to speak about the deliverance from sin! On one hand, it is exactly so.

But, on the other hand, the transformation process of the individual in the Kingdom is inseparable from the history of the Kingdom in our world being transformed, but not yet transformed till the end. It is in a sense, two sides of the same process: as long as the Kingdom will not reveal itself in all its entirety, none of us, looking for the Kingdom or living in it, will gain all the fullness of his life, and thus, our own spiritual biography is closely linked to the history of the Kingdom in our world and is defined by this one. However, as long as our human nature will not totally be transformed, we shall not get rid of sin! Then what: the perspective of a sinless life is postponed until the day of the return of Christ and of the definitive triumph of the Kingdom?

And yes, and no. Yes because it is only then that we are definitively going to get rid of sin. No, because we can get rid of the power of sin right before, than we get rid definitively and for ever of sin. Such an assertion can seem strange, if we do not consider the fact that the Kingdom "is close" already, it is here, and we can join its life already today. Of course, in our period of transition, the period of the Kingdom to come, we are most likely going to live simultaneously in two worlds: in the former not transformed world and in the Kingdom.

And in such position, only from our spiritual state depends which of both components of our, as the philosophers say, existence, will be decisive. Ideally, our lives must be exceptionally defined by that of its components, which belongs to the Kingdom. Well then we shall be death to sin: it will exist in our life, as something outside with regard to it, without defining its quality, perhaps only sometimes making attempts to invade where it will still have no path. Probably, it is the maximum of what we can achieve in our period of transition, in the period, when the Kingdom is already here, but not yet revealed till the end.

While explaining in detail how all are saved through Christ's death, the apostle Paul also touches on the question of how our world is ordered. Death entered the world because, regardless of how we imagine the universe, we are all connected with one another invisibly yet unmistakably. Every deed and every free choice inevitably affects not only my own life and those close to me, but also people far away and the life of the entire world. Awareness of our responsibility for our lives is important not only because we are answerable to God, but also because everything in the world is interconnected. This was the reason for the Old Testament legislation which at first sight seems excessive and cumbersome.

This does not mean that, for fear of upsetting the existing balance, we may allow ourselves to sit idle. Christ's coming into the world completely changed our situation. Now that, through His righteousness and His sacrifice, grace has come to reign in the world, we have been given the opportunity to receive “the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness” and thus to obtain the Kingdom.

Continuing his reflections on the Torah, righteousness, and grace, Paul considers what the sin of the first human being became for humanity. For the apostle, as we can see, sin is not simply a violation of moral norms. For him it is defilement in the sense in which the Torah and the Bible as a whole speak of it, that is, something that destroys a person's relationship with God and deprives him of the fullness of communion with God, and together with that of life, making fallen humanity mortal. That is precisely why Paul speaks of the sin of one person spreading to all humanity (v. 12): the consequences of sin, which affected the quality of spiritual life and the dynamic of humanity's relationship with God, touched everyone, as is usually the case with sin, whose consequences practically always affect not only the sinner himself but also his surroundings to one degree or another. The scale of the catastrophe was universal for humanity, but there is nothing unusual in the mechanism by which the consequences of sin spread: as always, it turned out to resemble purely natural processes, such as atmospheric pollution or the spread of pathogens during an epidemic. This is not surprising: having lost the fullness of spiritual life, humanity thereby gives itself over to some extent to the power of purely natural, elemental processes; therefore the consequences of the fall come crashing down on people like natural disasters. In this case the Torah is by no means a panacea, since it only allows one to distinguish sin from righteousness, but does not free a person from the power of sin and death.

Still, with the appearance of the Torah in the world, the situation changes radically. Before its appearance, death, which had become the consequence of the fall, reigned without division in the world; the apostle defines this time as the period "from Adam to Moses" (v. 14). But to speak of sin in the sense in which the Torah speaks of it, that is, as the violation of a commandment given by God, was of course not possible then (v. 13). A person lived in a world defiled by sin, but did not understand what sin was or how the path of righteousness differed from the path of wickedness. Obviously, with the appearance of the Torah the situation changes; death is no longer all-powerful, for the Torah points out the path of righteousness to everyone who wants to walk it. But the Torah enters a world already stricken by sin, and it reveals, as the apostle has said more than once, not human righteousness but human sin and transgression (v. 20). The Torah points the way into the Kingdom, but it does not replace the Kingdom. The One had to come into the world who could radically change the state of things by bringing the Kingdom where no one was ready to receive it (v. 15).

This appearing of the Kingdom in the world changed the situation in principle and objectively, just as in its own time the fall had changed it no less fundamentally and no less objectively (vv. 17-19). The point was not to punish someone or, conversely, to reward someone, but to solve a task of extraordinary importance to God, changing at once the balance of forces in the world in favor of the Kingdom (v. 17). The Torah pointed out the path to the righteous; the Messiah-Christ sent by God became the One who first walked this path to the end, revealing to the world not only the fullness of righteousness available to a human being, but also the fullness of the Kingdom available only to God.

Speaking about salvation and deliverance from sin, Paul also considers this process on a cosmic scale. The damaged state of human nature, which in particular made death inevitable, is an obvious fact for everyone. In every age this fact has been known not only to Yahwists, or Jews, or Christians.

All the religious and philosophical schools and teachings of antiquity say in one way or another that human nature is either seriously damaged or at least distorted by some unknown evil force. And this is connected with the sin committed by the first human beings. The consequences of the sin committed by the first human beings are transmitted to every person born into the world, like an incurable hereditary disease that weakens a person spiritually and physically and makes him inclined toward evil and sin.

This has always been so; the whole history of fallen humanity passes under the sign of this hereditary illness, spiritual and physical. And the Torah by itself cannot change anything here. More precisely, it can, but this does not make things easier: by itself it does not help a person be freed from sin and from the corruption that became characteristic of human nature after the fall. On the contrary, the Torah only emphasizes human sinfulness, setting it in sharper relief.

Sin becomes more noticeable when there is Torah, just as a deviation from a chosen direction becomes more noticeable when there is a compass. But just as a compass by itself cannot change the direction of movement, so the Torah by itself cannot free a person from sin. What is needed here is the action of God's power and God's love. This power and love enter the world through the Messiah, through Christ, who brought the Kingdom into the world. The Kingdom is the manifestation of God's power and God's love in all the fullness available to the world; it can change the situation radically.

With Christ's coming and the manifestation of the Kingdom, the process begins of freeing humanity and the world from the consequences of the fall. That is why the coming of Christ can be compared with the sin of the first human being: in both cases there are consequences on a universal scale, but their spiritual vectors are opposite. If the sin of the first human being destroys both humanity and creation, the coming of Christ and the manifestation of the Kingdom restore them, healing them from the illness that resulted from the fall. This is the only way to overcome the consequences of the fall both in the life of an individual person and in the history of humanity. There is no other.

Continuing his reflections on the Kingdom and on righteousness, the apostle asks a rhetorical question: if the action of God's grace is especially visible against the background of the sin in which fallen humanity dwells, does this mean that even sins committed by Christians are useful to God (v. 1)? If the history of the Torah and the Kingdom is such that the Kingdom enters the world when the world reveals its sinfulness in full measure, perhaps the spiritual biography of an individual person or a particular Christian community must also include, so to speak, a stage of the "revealing of sin" in order to give room for the action of God's grace. But Paul immediately rejects this possibility, pointing out that now, when the Kingdom has entered the world, the situation has become different, and it is not worth reproducing the history of salvation in one's own life. He speaks of other spiritual processes that are inseparable from the main thing that began with the coming of Jesus Christ into the world. He reminds us that the washing (baptism) with which everyone entering the Church is washed in the name of Jesus Christ is nothing other than participation in the death by which Christ died on the cross (v. 3).

This may seem somewhat strange, since the Savior's death on the cross was only a stage of His path, which is ultimately completed not by death but by resurrection. But Paul's further reasoning clarifies what he meant when he spoke of "baptism into death." He speaks of the likeness of the death on the cross that unites the Christian with Jesus in His resurrection (v. 5). The apostle's logic is simple: sin holds a person captive only as long as he is alive (v. 7). Death frees him, so that sin no longer has power over him (v. 6). But death can be either a departure into Sheol, as it was for countless generations who lived before the Savior came into the world, or a step into new life, into the life of the Kingdom, which the faithful can share with the risen Jesus (vv. 8-9). For Paul, as we can see, life and death are not successive states of human existence, but forms of relationship with God, possessing different measures of fullness, from the Kingdom, where the fullness is absolute, to Sheol, where the relationships themselves are almost entirely absent. And righteousness and sin are two paths: one leads to the strengthening and deepening of relationship with God, ending in the Kingdom, and the other leads to their destruction, ending in Sheol. Jesus walked His earthly path, the path of the righteous One who overcame death (v. 10). But the Kingdom has not yet entered the world in all its fullness, and the Christian seeking the Kingdom must understand that every sin of his now becomes an obstacle not only on his path into the Kingdom, but also on the path of the Kingdom in the world (vv. 11-13). Before, prior to the coming of the Messiah, the question of human sinfulness was, in a certain sense, a private matter.

Of course, sin in every age separated a person from God. But before, the question concerned only purity or impurity, whether a person was ready or not ready for the meeting with God that took place at the altar. Now the question of human sinfulness has become a global question; it has become a question about the Kingdom, about whether a person will enter the Kingdom or not. And about whether he will carry the Kingdom into the world or remain on the sidelines. The history of the Torah and righteousness ended with the coming of the Savior. The history of the Kingdom conquering the world began. And as in every war, each step here can be a step leading to death. Or a step leading into life.

We often compare our own baptism and conversion to God with the beginning of a new life. The apostle Paul tells us that in reality, by becoming Christ's, we first of all accept death, and it is precisely in death that we are united with Christ. He tells us that our consent to enter His grace is first of all our consent to share Christ's suffering in this world, to take upon ourselves at least the smallest part of His wounds. It is this likeness above all that Paul is speaking about.

For unless we bid farewell to sin, to that very “old self” within us, we will not be able to come alive with Christ for eternal life. The burial the apostle has in mind is first of all the death of our passions and our self-love: our desire to have our own way no matter what, our hatred or simply our indifference toward our neighbor. We must part with all of this in order to rise again, renewed by His grace and His forgiveness, so that it will no longer be our sin that lives in us, but Christ.