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ROMANS 5:19

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Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 18, 1880

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 6, No. 11.

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ROMANS 5:19.

By J. H. Waggoner

SOME in this age are so afraid of legalism, as they call it, that they cannot endure the idea of commandments in the gospel dispensation. They profess that love supersedes obedience, whereas obedience is the test and proof of love. More than this; it is the embodiment of love. They will have it—"Love is a substitution for the law." But the word of the Lord has it—"Love is the fulfilling of the law."
Let us trace the terms used in Rom. 5:19, and see what relation is there brought to view of the work of Christ and our obedience to the law. The verse speaks of "obedience," "disobedience," "sinners," and the "righteous." Remembering that the whole connection is a dissertation on the law and its relations, we examine the definitions. Unrighteousness is the same as sin. "All unrighteousness is sin." 1 John 5:17. And, "Sin is the transgression of the law." 1 John 3:4. Righteousness is the opposite of unrighteousness; but unrighteousness is sin, or the transgression of the law; therefore righteousness is the opposite of the transgression of the law; which is to say that righteousness is obedience to the law.
These definitions or synonyms are "by authority," being given in the Scriptures. We may properly read them in the text, Rom. 5:19, as follows: For as by the disobedience, or sin, of one, many were made disobedient; so by the obedience of one, shall many be made obedient.
Obedient to what? As sin is the transgression of the law, their reversed condition makes them obedient to the law, which is here the subject of the apostle's discourse. If sin is disobedience to the law, the remedy must of course be effected by obedience to the law. I say, of course, for how shall disobedience be cured except in obedience? Can any one tell? How shall our sins or transgressions of the law cease, except by our ceasing to transgress it? The truth on this subject is so plain that nothing but prejudice can prevent any one seeing it.
J. H. WAGGONER.