NOTES for Rom 5:12-21

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.

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.

How often we hear, or even say ourselves: “I am unworthy of God's grace, the worst of sinners, nothing works, there is no repentance, there is nothing good in me; I will go on weeping—God will not help me.” This position is unquestionably false and is suggested by the enemy of humankind. For grace is a gift. God does not need our merits in order to give us a present. All that is needed is our open hands: “Yes, I want to receive Your gift. Thank You.” But if we cry out about our unworthiness and hide our hands behind our backs, then of course He cannot force His gift upon us. Repentance, too, is grace, for which we must ask and which He grants in answer to our prayers.

It is not very easy to render Apostle Paul’s idea in modern representations language. Let us try like this: according to Paul's logic (corresponding with the logic of the biblical revelation), because of one man’s offence - Adam, sin entered into the world, and indwells in all of us, because we are better in nothing that Adam. Sin entails death. Sin manifests itself in each of us differently, by various offences, and the law appears for the denunciation of these offences. So the law is adequate to the offences and, by revealing them, it {the faith} becomes the judge and the executioner. But, having given the law by Moses, God goes farther and manifests His Grace through Jesus Christ. Grace is a life-giving “energy” sent by God, and one of the manifestations of the gifts of this grace is the remission of sins, the acquittal of offences. And this gift also comes from one man for "many" (the word "many" means here a "multitude" not in the sense of "all", but in the sense of "not only one "), as well as sin, quite as law. But unlike the law, this gift of grace is not adequate to the offences, but "abounds": whatever the offence is like and no matter their number - this gift is more than enough for acquittal, remission, salvation. Specially the believe that this gift is given to us through Christ, allows us to stand out of the first Adam, the sinner, and join the new humanity in the second Adam, the just, the Son of God.

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.

Perhaps many of us, since youth, have been given, say through literature classes, a "romantic" understanding of the relation of good and evil in the world: evil is numerous, ugly, and clearly in the majority, while good is lonely, understood by no one, and suffers. And so progressive "romantic heroes" must swim against the current and challenge the opinion of a conservative, hardened, and unreasonable society. "The individual and society," "the poet and the crowd" - whatever one calls this problem, it really does look like the truth. Besides the fact that this picture may be familiar to us from personal experience, we see a similar situation in the Gospel: Christ Himself was persecuted and even crucified, and He sends His disciples "as lambs among wolves" (Luke 10:3).

Yes, this is so. But is this all the Gospel says? Of course not. We confess Christ not only crucified, but also risen. This is precisely the final step that the general cultural "concept" lacks, and it cannot take it because such possibilities are simply not built into it. But only the Lord is able to bring everything to the victory of good through inevitable death and resurrection. "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it," the apostle John testifies (John 1:5), and this is the pure truth.

The "mathematics" of good is different, not like that of sin: it wins not by quantity, but by quality. And this quality is enough for everyone (see Rom 5:15), just as God promised us.