For until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed where there is no law.
Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses.
The sin of those who died before the law
1. Sin supposes law.
2. But sin was in the world before the law.
3. Hence there is a law in the conscience to which all men are amenable. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
The reign of death
is--
I. Perpetuated by sin.
II. Universal. Because all have sinned either against--
1. Positive commands, as Adam.
2. Or the moral law written in the heart.
3. Or in the Word of God.
III. Absolute. He strikes where and when he pleases--the young and old, etc.
IV. Irresistible. All must bow to his sceptre.
V. Would be eternal, but for the interposition of Christ. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
In Adam all die
1. Some say that there can be no criminality where there is not wilful transgression of the law: and therefore God could not impute guilt from birth to every child of Adam. To this we answer, that there is no other way of explaining the certain facts. All men suffer the penalty of sin and death. Now, why? Our explanation is that they are primarily held guilty before God. To deny this is to involve the question in yet greater darkness. It is to charge God with inflicting suffering upon our whole race without a reasonable cause.
2. Paul argues in the text that death had reigned from Adam to Moses, and therefore could not have resulted merely from the violation of the Mosaic law. It took effect on myriads who had no law to guide them but the dictates of conscience or of tradition, and on children who died in unintelligent infancy. But death is the practical imputation of sin: and such imputation implies the existence of a broken law. What law, then, can it be, but God’s command to Adam? And what breach of its but his transgression? And therefore, it was because they were regarded as having been implicated in Adam’s sin, that they were surrendered to the tyranny of death. Yet their criminality was very different from his. Theirs was indirect and accredited, while his was direct and real. Theirs was unconscious and involuntary, his deliberate and intentional. Theirs was through the crime of another, his through his own. His was the root, and in its damage the branches equally suffered. He was the fountain, and in its defilement all the stream of human existence was polluted.
3. Nor does this contravene our natural sense of justice. We ascribe blameworthiness to wrong states and tendencies of disposition, without staying to inquire how these were originated. A commoner may be elevated to the peerage, and thus confer titles and dignity on all future generations. Or a nobleman, convicted of treason, may involve his posterity in poverty and ignominy.
4. Now, this procedure on the part of God may strike you at first as unjust. And so it would be, if it stood alone. But--
I. We must consider it in connection with God’s great scheme of redemption. Paul invariably links the two together. Here he shows that Adam’s headship is a type of Christ’s: and if in one all men have been made sinners, so in the other all have, at least conditionally, been restored to righteousness. Similarly in 1Co_15:1-58 he affirms that “as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.”
II. Our ruin by the fall does not entail on us the doom of final perdition. The life to come is always set forth as the retributive consequence of the present. And no principle is more clear or more frequently stated than that each man must give an account of himself before God, and receive the reward of his own doings. We are here treated as sinners for Adam’s sake: but hereafter, if so treated, it will be for our own sake. The necessary loss which we have sustained by the fault of another is limited and temporal; it will be our own fault if we make it absolute and eternal. This arrangement, then, has simply altered the conditions of our probationary life. There are two distinct courses which such probation may take.
1. Men might be created holy, and be left to obey or disobey. In the former case their righteousness would be sealed to them forever; but in the latter they must forfeit it forever. In this way the probation of angels was accomplished: and that of Adam and Eve.
2. The other mode is that of souls originally depraved, but furnished with adequate means of self-recovery through grace. And this is the method adopted in regard to all the posterity of Adam and Eve; and it is with reference to it that they are all born under the imputation of the first great transgression.
III. Compare these two alternatives, that you may see how much more desirable that one is, in which we find ourselves concerned. We see what our probation now is, and how easy it is for us, through God’s grace in Christ, to escape perdition, to triumph over our native depravity, and to lay hold on eternal life. But suppose the opposite method had been adopted, do you think that your eternal safety would have been more likely or certain than it is now? Is it not probable that the great majority of mankind would act as Adam and Eve did?
IV. The immense preponderance of good which accrues to the saved, through the economy of grace in Christ. There is a mighty superiority in the Saviour’s headship above that of Adam. The ultimate benefits of our salvation will infinitely exceed the little temporary sufferings of our loss and ruin through the fall. Conclusion:
1. Let us tremble at the thought of sin, when we survey its terrible results in the ravages of death.
2. Be convinced of sin, and stirred up to seek salvation from it.
3. Let us confidently accept and embrace the salvation of the gospel.
4. Here is an argument for submission and patience under the ills of life. Our subjection to affliction and sorrow is not meant to be our permanent and everlasting state. (T. G. Horton.)
The educating power of mortality
Dr. Bushnell, in his “Moral Uses of Dark Things,” shows how man can never be at his best without the influences of alarm and threatening, for these enable him to appreciate critical situations, and develop in him the grand qualities of caution and prudence. Surely God knew what was needed to bring the royal elements of our nature to full account when He put death into the world, hiding a mercy under a curse. It is a schoolmaster we should be thankful for, since without it we should lack expression for most that is finest and tenderest in ourselves. We cannot afford to miss the educating power of mortality and its sorrows--the suggestions of the burial scene and the last farewell, the lessons of sick room duty, the privilege of dying bed consolation and grace. We need the discipline of suffering and decay, the culture of fear and danger, the wakenings of latent virtue in fatal emergency and accident. Something must reveal to us the fittest ways of pity and kindness, the dearest facilities of affection, the noblest means of philanthropy, the purest offices of patience, the holiest opportunities of sympathy, the sweetest uses of hope, and the highest service of piety. And in a world where death is we have them all.
Who is the figure of Him that was to come.--
The figure of Him that was to come
If we see great streams of people journeying from every direction towards one common destination, we infer that this spot must be the centre of some unusual attraction. It is a pretty sight to stand some summer Sabbath morning upon a rising ground, and see the lanes dotted with pilgrims wending their way towards the church of God. Suppose a wayfarer encounters groups of travellers, and the nearer he draws to the adjacent town, finds the crowds increasing, and the interest heightening on every face. He asks the object of this unusual excitement, and learns that the foundation stone of a great temple is to be laid by a great man; that there is to be a procession and a gala day of banners, music, and rejoicing. So does a survey of the landscape of past history disclose the lives of many men tending towards one point; and, standing as we do upon our gospel vantage ground, we can see a long procession of lives tending in their acts and history to one point; we can hear the music of many a deed celebrating beforehand one greater deed than all. There was a divinity shaping the ends of many of the lives of the Old Testament worthies, to the purpose that they might be typical of that life which is our life, and by which our stifled souls might breathe again with their destined immortality. A mark had been impressed upon the lives of men in earlier times, and a map had been sketched upon the page of history, whose lines converged towards the one great central fact, that Jesus Christ should come into the world. If we look amongst the men whose lives were eminently typical of the Redeemer, we shall not find one in whose case it will be a more easy task to trace the parallel than that of Adam. But just in proportion as the similarity is striking, so will the points of difference be prominent.
I. Points of correspondence.
1. Both were formed by and came directly from God. Here, of course, we speak of Jesus in His humanity. In the method of his birth the first man differed from all the rest of his posterity, and the only parallel we find to it is in the miraculous conception of the Child of Bethlehem. Of course, even in this, the points of difference are greater than those of likeness. But it was the breath of the Lord which breathed into Adam’s nostrils the breath of life; it was the Spirit of the Lord which overshadowed the Virgin.
2. Both were formed in the same glorious likeness, designed as the mirrors to reflect the life and image of the Author of all life. And as in Adam, ere he fell, the unblushing cheek, where shame had been “ashamed to sit,” formed the mirror which reflected the likeness of the Father, so was that same likeness printed on the form and feature of the spiritual life of Jesus Christ, so that He could claim His heavenly pedigree, and declare, “He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.”
3. The fatherhood of both over a numerous race.
(1) The tawny slave who hoes the rice field in the burning sun; the dark-eyed denizens of China and of India; the fiery Afghan; the tall Circassian; the dwarfish Hottentot; the fur-clad dweller amidst northern ice; and the naked panter in the tropic heat; the homeless Jew and clannish Gentile; the readers of the Koran, of the Shasters, of the Bible; the worshipper of the sun, of Juggernaut, and of Jesus; each creature who bears the form and likeness of a man, dates his paternity to Adam.
(2) The seed of the Second Adam shall be also numerous. All souls are His, purchased by Him, that they may be born again through Him. And though the work of regeneration by no means keeps pace with the increase of the race, He shall yet “see His seed,” and that seed shall outnumber sand or stars for multitude, and be gathered out of all lands. And they shall bear the family feature clear in life and lineament. As by nature they once “bore the image of the earthly,” so by the redundant grace of this new birth shall they bear impressed upon them the “image of the heavenly.”
4. The lordship and dominion with which each was invested.
(1) Man was made only “a little lower than the angels,” and has been “crowned with glory and honour.” He holds dominion over the very work of God’s own hand; he wounds the earth that it may give him food. All things are put beneath his feet; the beasts range plain and mountainside, but they cannot range so widely as the thought of man; the birds soar high, but they cannot cleave their way to such fair altitudes as man’s ambition may attain; the fishes dive down into the ocean gorge, but they cannot pierce to such a deep profound as that intelligence which marks mankind and sets the human over the brute creation.
(2) And if a man is thus large in lordship and dominion, how much more the Son of Man, who came to reassert the creature’s claim after it had been flung away, by sharing His own dominion with that creature. The dominion of Jesus is illimitable. While man is made a little lower, He is made “so much better than the angels, as He hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they.” For when the power of Omnipotence showed forth its mightiest sinew, it was when it “wrought in Christ, and raised Him from the dead,” etc. (Eph_1:20-23).
5. The conjugal union ordained by God respecting them. Paradise was inadequate to appease the need of the first man, and bring him to rest, till woman was created. And so the Maker hushed him into a deep sleep, and from his side He took the comrade meet for him, and made his happiness complete. Now this is one of the most striking types of Christ’s union with His Church. He is the Bridegroom, and that Church is “the bride, the Lamb’s wife.” Adam and Eve were not more intimately and emphatically one flesh than Christ and the Christian are one spirit. “This is a great mystery; but I speak concerning Christ and the Church.”
II. Points of contrast.
1. “The first Adam was of the earth, earthy; the Second Adam was the Lord from heaven.”
2. The first Adam possessed the Divine image, and effaced it; the Second Adam put on the human image, that He might restore in us the Divine. The serpent hissed its evil breath, and filmed the brightness which God had spread over His creature’s brow; and, just as the foul vapour on a looking glass blurs the reflections on its disc, so did the image stamped by the Creator there become distorted and disturbed. But Christ rubbed off the taint of the tempter’s breath, and wrote the name of God upon the creature in His own blood.
3. The spirit of apostate Adam was proud, unbelieving, discontented, and rebellious; that of the Second Adam was humble, submissive, obedient, and faithful.
4. The first Adam was the medium of death, while the Second brought salvation and life.
5. By the first Adam paradise was lost; by the Second that paradise is regained. (A. Mursell.)
Adam a type of Christ
I.As the federal head of mankind.
II. As the source of life--natural--redeemed.
III. As the cause of universal but widely opposite experiences--sin, death--life, righteousness.
IV. As the prototype of human nature--earthly--heavenly.
V. As the ruler of the world--natural--Divine. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
Adam a type of Christ
This is the earliest and deepest of all the types; God the Spirit grasps the first fact of man’s history, and therewith prints the lesson of man’s redemption. Note--
I. The agreement between the type and the Antitype.
1. Adam and Christ were the true sources or heads of their respective families.
(1) There are two conceivable methods of constituting humanity; one, to make each man independent of all; the other, to make the first man the head and source of humanity. This latter method our Maker has adopted, and it is useless to question whether the other would have been better. When the bird is shut up in a cage, it is better that it should not dash itself against the bars. It was in an attempt to be as God that our first parents fell. If we would escape their fate, we should abandon speculations and address ourselves to facts. In point of fact we all come into the world with darkened minds and wayward hearts, which the Scriptures explain by the fall. Some complain of the difficulties they find there on this subject; but the difficulty lies, not in the Scriptures, but in the fact. Creatures manifestly the head of creation, under the government of an omnipotent and beneficent Being, lie in sin and suffering, and have done so from age to age, without intermission or mitigation. This is the difficulty; all Bible difficulties are small when compared with this.
(2) The first man stood as head and representative of the race. His fall brought all down. At the head he stands, and at first the line of march is narrow: on the apex one; and behind him two or three walk abreast: broader and broader grows the stream, until, in our day, the file of march is a million of millions deep. On the other side stands He that was to come. Alone He stands at the head; already a multitude, which no man can number, tread the pilgrim’s path; and now we look forward to that time when the stream of the Second Adam’s children shall be co-extensive and coincident with that of the first.
2. These two representatives stood side by side from the first, and redemption began to flow from Christ as soon as sin was brought in by Adam. The promise sprang at the gate of Eden, an echo of the curse. Christ began to act as the Head of the redeemed the moment that the first man became the head of a fallen race. Under the earlier economies many felt the drawing of the unseen Christ, and in the days of His personal ministry, although He manifested Himself only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, He had compassion on the surrounding heathen, and hastened forward to the day of their redemption.
3. On both sides it is by birth that the members are united to their head and his destiny. We have been born to this inheritance of sin and suffering; we cannot shake it off. But be of good cheer, prisoner of hope: if by a corresponding new birth you are one with the Second Adam, you have no cause to weep. You cannot, indeed, escape from being a man; but if you are a new creature in Christ Jesus, the second birthright is as irrevocable as the first. It is a fixed principle of natural science that species do not change. But that which is impossible with man is possible with God. He has undertaken in the gospel to make a new creature.
II. The difference. The chief point lies in this, that whereas Adam’s seed derive from their head sin and death, Christ’s seed derive from their Head righteousness and life. One of the strangest facts in history is that multitudes are proud of their first birth, and do not give themselves any concern about a second. Under this, however, there are many specific points of difference.
1. While Adam’s seed possess the moral nature of their head complete, Christ’s possess His moral nature only in part. When we derive a sinful nature from the first man, we have previously no better nature, that may mingle with it and mitigate its evil. In me, that is in my flesh--in all that I derive from man my father--there dwelleth no good thing. But on the other hand, the regeneration is the getting of a new nature, indeed, through union in spirit with Christ; but it is gotten by one who previously possessed an evil nature, and that evil nature is cast down from the throne, but not cast forth from the territory. The two contend against each other; and there is not peace, but a sword (see Rom_7:1-25). The union with Christ in the regeneration is likened to the grafting of a fruit tree. The tree at the first, which springs from seed, is wholly evil. When it is grafted it is made good; but not so completely as it was originally made evil. In some way, however, the remnants of the old will be filtered out; and nothing shall enter heaven that would defile its golden streets or be a jar in its new song.
2. The two bands are not equally numerous. Adam’s company includes absolutely the whole of the human race; Christ’s company is contained within it, and is therefore necessarily smaller. Adam’s company consists of all the born, and Christ’s of all the born again. God’s creatures of the old and new creation seem to envelop each other, after the manner of a sphere within a sphere, the most precious being embedded in the heart. Humanity, comparatively small in bulk, is surrounded by the mightier mass of beasts that perish. In the heart of humanity lie the regenerate--the true, vital seed of the kingdom; and the crust that surrounds them will crumble and be cast away. When the earth and all that it contained have passed away, Christ and Christians will remain, inheritors together and alone of the eternal life.
3. Although we inherit this corruption from the first man, we personally have no relation to him; we received it from the last that stood before us in the line. But from Christ our life flows as its fountain, and each generation of believing men continue to draw their spiritual life and justifying righteousness immediately from Him. The new creature does not propagate its kind. If the first Adam were annihilated, man would still be born in sin; but if Christ were no more Christ, there could be no more for any man a new, a holy life. The difference is somewhat like that between a tree propagating its kind by seed and one sustaining its branches. When once the seed is ripened and cast, the progenitor tree may be burned. But even when the branch has been put forth by the tree, the branch is ever directly dependent on the tree. If the tree should die, all the branches would die too. Adam might say, I was the tree, and ye grew from the seed which I shed; but Christ says, “I am the vine, ye are the branches.” And as Christians hold directly of Christ, Christ holds individually by Christians. The Head endures pain when the members are injured. How safe is that life which is hid with Christ in God?
4. The gain by the second Adam is greater than the loss by the first (verse 15). He pays our debt, and makes us rich besides. He sets free the slave, and makes him a son. “Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.” (W. Arnot, D. D.)
