ROMANS 5
Part 2 of the BibleProject Summary of the Book of Romans, Chapters 5-16 is here: https://youtu.be/0SVTl4Xa5fY?si=9jSV_flw4yK_1u3T
Romans chapter 5 really takes up the thread from chapter 3 – meaning that chapter 4 was in ‘parentheses’. Paul uses this literary tool a great deal, particularly in the book of Romans. We left the thread in Romans 3 with the vital doctrine of ‘Justification by Faith Alone’. In chapter 5, Paul goes on to show that, having already been justified, the door is opened to peace, grace, and glory. The golden road from suffering is also paved with faith: from Suffering to Perseverance, to renewed Character, to Hope and reliance on the Holy Spirit. Jesus cares for us, since he chose to die for us whilst we were all still sinners – which also means that we aren’t now, then. If God gave us his best whilst we were still his enemies, how much more will he continue to lavish his love onto us now that we are his children! We therefore have every right to ask our Heavenly Father for anything and everything.
In the second half of the chapter (vv12-21), it is a tale of two ‘Adams’. The First Adam and the Second Adam (i.e. ‘Christ ‘) are spiritual ‘mirror images’. Adam sinned and allowed death to enter the world; since we are biologically descended from Adam, we all sinned therefore – being part of Adam’s body and DNA whilst he sinned. So we all inherited death from our forefather too. Jesus was sent by God as the Second ‘Adam’, enacting all the first Adam’s choices all over again, but with perfect success this time, culminating in Jesus’ death and resurrection. The key for us as humans is to move spiritually from Adam to Christ, thus attaining righteousness before God. More about that in Chapter 7. The direction that God is taking us in is to overwhelm us with grace, swallowing up sin, which causes the grace to enlarge.
Really, the logic of this second half of the chapter jumps from verse 12 directly to verses 18 and 19 (it really helps to refer to these verses in your reading). These three big verses show Adam and Christ as ‘mirror images’, with a focus on each one’s work and the effect it had on our condemnation and salvation. Sandwiched in the middle, in verses 13 to 17, Paul shows the effects of grace on the lives of those who become Christian; in these verses, there is no sense of ‘mirror image’, but a stark contrast between the sin, judgement, punishment and death that we deserved, with the grace and justification that we received as a gift. In fact, from our point of view, everything relating to the First Adam was deserved, whilst everything relating to the Second Adam (i.e. Christ) was gifted. (These eight verses are some of the most difficult to understand in all the Apostle Paul’s writings, so we need to spend time thinking about them, and meditating on them).
VV 20-21: The emergence of the Law of Moses also had contrasting effects: it first caused sin to increase, but then it provoked God’s grace to increase even more, since grace must cover every sin. Just reading these last two verses probably raises some questions in the reader’s mind – and these important questions are addressed by Paul in the next chapter.
The Big Picture 