Romans 5:17, commentary and pictures

By one man's disobedience death gained dominion, and judgment and condemnation passed upon all because of Adam's sin. Far greater is the provision on the other side, for those who receive abundant grace and the free gift of righteousness shall rule in life through one, Jesus Christ. Christ came as the second Adam where the first fell, standing in Adam's place and enduring the test Adam failed, and by a life of perfect obedience He redeemed Adam's failure and broke the power of death. That grace and righteousness are not earned but received through Christ, pardoning the guilty, counting them innocent, and imparting power to keep God's holy law. To reign in life is therefore to lay hold of the divine nature by faith, overcome as Christ overcame, and live in obedience unto immortal inheritance and eternal home restored.

Verse Contrast and Terms

The verse sets one man's offense with death reigning by one against a much greater reversal, that those who receive abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ. Righteousness and life are gifts received through Christ, joining the law and the gospel in a perfect whole. Grace is Christ's character and does not abolish God's law, for the law is the knowledge of sin and the transcript of God's character, presenting His righteousness in contrast with unrighteousness and making sin appear exceeding sinful. The law can condemn the transgressor but has no power to save, restore, or pardon, and pardon comes only through Christ who lived the law in humanity, man's only hope being the substitute God provided in giving His Son to reconcile the world, making Him who knew no sin to be sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. Adam's fall brought misery and death, while Christ through His humiliation and death brings life and immortality, so that Christ's work answers the death that came through Adam. Adam's offense brought suffering and death, while Christ as the second Adam redeemed humanity from the results of that fall and overcame the enemy, so that those who receive God's abundant grace and righteousness can through Christ's strength overcome and receive eternal life.

By one man's offense death reigned, and death was pronounced upon all because of Adam's sin, while life is imparted because of Christ's righteousness. Those who have the Son have eternal life now because of Christ's righteousness received and lived by faith, becoming partakers of the divine nature, and this life is a definite wholehearted experience through the daily operation of the Spirit abiding in the heart, which quickens, revives, strengthens and supports the soul, fills thoughts and affections with Jesus, His love and purity, centers all hope on Him and His appearing, with the promise that believers shall never become extinct. Adam's offense brought the reign of death without God giving human beings a new order of energies and passions or implanting sinful propensities in the race. That disobedience broke God's law, dishonored His government, and made the penalty for transgression due. The human race stands fallen under the sentence of God's transgressed law, helpless, degraded, ignorant, hopeless and ready to perish with death reigning by one man's offense, and Jesus contemplated this peril, left the royal courts of heaven and clothed His divinity with humanity to give a revelation adapted to human necessity, bringing a message and way of deliverance by which every soul may have eternal life and reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.

As soon as man sinned Christ took up the work of redemption to save the race from eternal ruin, taking man's guilt upon Himself as substitute and surety and giving mankind another trial, another probation in which all now live. Reigning in life by Jesus Christ began as soon as man transgressed, as Christ began His work of conversion so that through obedience to God's law and faith in Christ they might regain the lost image of God. Every son and daughter of Adam is tested in this probation, that God may prove whether they will receive abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness and return to allegiance to reign in life by one, Jesus Christ. Receiving abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness means cultivating righteous principles to gain victory over the bias to evil, so that by obedience the senses are no longer warped and the faculties no longer perverted and wasted on what leads away from God, and in and through heaven-bestowed grace words, thoughts and energies are purified, a new character is formed, and the debasement of sin is overcome.

Abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness are free gifts received through Christ, and the righteousness of Christ is a free gift presented to the sinner to be received by accepting it. Man has nothing of his own to bring to God, for all is tainted and corrupted, polluted with sin and utterly repulsive to a pure and holy God, and only through the righteous character of Jesus Christ can man come near to God. Jesus Christ is a whole Saviour whose perfect sacrifice on Calvary for the fallen race gives sufficient grace and power to work away from natural defects and tendencies and to advance in the divine life, so that Adam's sin and fall and inborn tendencies give no excuse for failing God's requirements and no ground for casting reproach upon God. Justification by faith is an inspiring all-important subject, and young men and women as well as older people need more of this grace to bring the principles of Christianity into daily life. The blessings of Jesus Christ are free gifts received by grace, and those who received the gospel message were moved by this presentation while those who resisted refused the blessing and grieved the Spirit.

To reign in life by one, Jesus Christ means that because God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, Christ in His humanity laid hold of divinity, and human nature through faith is able to lay hold of the divine nature and overcome. Jesus Christ clothed His divinity with humanity and came in human form to associate with the fallen race and stand at its head, because man can accomplish nothing without God. Through His own merits He elevates those who receive grace to reign in life as partakers of the divine nature.

Adam's Disobedience and Death

Adam began in purity and holiness, connected with God and beloved by Him, possessing a holy, sinless, pure and undefiled nature with abundant provision in Eden where everything in nature was pure and undefiled, and he was required to render perfect obedience to God not only in his own behalf but in behalf of his posterity. God promised that if Adam stood the test of temptation and preserved his allegiance to the Creator during the great trial, his obedience would insure his acceptance and favor with God, establishing him forever in holiness and happiness, with these blessings extending to all his posterity. Because Adam failed to bear the test and revolted against God's law, all his descendants have become sinners.

Adam was in every way more favorably situated than Christ, facing temptation in perfect strength and the unfallen setting of Eden, yet by listening to Satan's insinuated doubts of God's wisdom and accusation of selfishness over the prohibition of the fruit of the tree of knowledge given to test loyalty, Eve fell under temptation and Adam accepted the forbidden fruit from his wife's hand and fell under the smallest test of obedience. Sin is not measured by the greatness of the act but by being at variance with God's expressed will in the least particular. Such disobedience shows that sin reigns in the heart, keeping communion with the enemy and cherishing his attributes, with a divided heart in virtual denial of the Holy Spirit and rebellion against God's law.

Through that one man's disobedience many were made sinners, his posterity became depraved, and the floodgates of woe were opened upon the world. That one offence brought just judgment and lost Eden for Adam and Eve, with death reigning through that transgression. It broke God's law, dishonored His government, and made the penalty for transgression due, forfeiting man's right to heaven and separating man from God.

Adam's disobedience to God's express law lost divine favor, destroyed human happiness, and plunged the whole race into hopeless misery and despair with death reigning by his offence. The sin of Adam and Eve in listening to the enemy brought guilt and sorrow upon the world, with transgression bringing wretchedness and death, loss of the divine image and former estate, and calamities and diseases. Their transgression brought them under bondage to the law under sentence to suffer death as the penalty of sin, leaving the race fallen, helpless, degraded, ignorant, hopeless and ready to perish. Recovery from that fall comes only through Christ and requires a thorough transformation of soul, body and spirit.

By Adam's offence death reigned without God giving human beings a new order of energies and passions or implanting sinful propensities in the race. Children receive from Adam an inheritance of disobedience, guilt and death, and through Adam humanity inherits guilt and the sentence of death. His posterity perpetuated his sin while finding fault with their first parents. Adam's yielding to temptation brought him and his dominion under Satan's power. Satan claimed the whole human family through that transgression, declaring that no man after Adam could keep the law of God, holding men under his control to follow Adam's example, with the prevailing belief that God's law could not be kept.

That one disobedience carried infinite expense, for the depth to which man fell required great means to procure a ransom, since man could never rescue and restore himself. Only by an immeasurable sacrifice, the gift of God's beloved Son with the guiltless suffering for the guilty, could the ransom be obtained. This led the Son of God to leave the royal courts of heaven, take a humble place on earth, and suffer insult, rejection and crucifixion by the very ones He came to bless, with the Majesty of heaven sacrificed to save man from the penalty of the crime.

Christ's Obedience and Victory

Christ is the second Adam who willingly entered the ground where the first Adam fell, stood in Adam's place, and passed over the same ground where Adam stumbled to bear the test Adam failed to endure. He bore the sins and infirmities of the fallen race with its weaknesses, facing Satan's temptations where humanity is assailed and prevailing for the race. Satan came to Him as an angel of light to induce Him if possible to commit sin and thus place the race entirely under evil's dominion, but He was victorious, Satan was defeated, and the race was placed on vantage ground with God. By taking humanity upon Himself with divinity and humanity combined, He reaches the race with His human arm while His divine arm grasps the Infinite, and His name is the link uniting man to God and God to man.

Both Adams were free moral agents responsible for conduct, and the first abused freedom, yielded to appetite, lost innocence and by his own choice became a sinner separated from God's favor. The second, though free with real possibility of yielding, failing and swerving from uprightness, resisted every temptation and remained ever sinless. Adam's self-rule brought discord, unhappiness and separation from God, while Christ's perfect obedience provides the example of obedience. Temptation is no temptation unless yielding is possible, and Christ was tempted in all points like man is tempted.

Christ was placed in a much less favorable situation than Adam, surrounded by intensely subtle misleading influences in the midst of sinners. He faced Satan in the weakness of humanity with the effects of long decline after four thousand years, taking weakened degenerate human nature with its infirmities. Adam faced temptation in perfect strength and the unfallen setting of Eden, while Christ took the infirmities of humanity after its decline so that He could reach fallen people, rescue them from degradation and raise them from sin's degradation. He stood in Adam's place and overcame temptation on behalf of sinners, bearing its sins and infirmities.

He clothed His divinity with humanity, combining the human and the divine, taking the nature of man in his fallen condition without taking the taint or sinfulness of man, with humanity joined to divinity. In Him was no guile or sinfulness but ever pure and undefiled, yet He took upon Him sinful human nature to associate with fallen humanity and come down to the level of those He wished to save. In His own character He manifested the character of God to the world, pleasing not Himself but going about doing good, with a history of more than thirty years that was one of pure, disinterested benevolence. In the fullness of time He was to be revealed in human form to assume the position of head of humanity by taking the nature of man but not the sinfulness of man.

He had no evil propensity and never yielded to temptation, yet was tempted in all points as man is tempted, powerfully influenced to do wrong while knowing He could do it, resisting by faith with firm hold on divine power. Through His victory He is the source of life, holding fast to God and not sinning where the first Adam's fall brought sin into his descendants. His humanity was joined with divinity, and His incarnation remains a mystery not to be explained beyond what God has revealed. He passed over the three leading temptations whereby man is beset, bore the test especially in the long fast and single-handed conflict in the wilderness with the prince of darkness over appetite, met Satan even when he came as an angel of light, and came off conqueror with man's salvation at stake.

Unlike the first Adam who was deceived and became the enemy's bondslave, Christ remained loyal to God, did not swerve from allegiance, and on not a single point did the enemy overcome Him. He endured every test and met every temptation that any person will ever meet, traveling Himself the path He calls believers to walk in self-denial and daily cross-bearing. His victory was won by full, entire dependence upon Deity, and those who will at last be crowned conquerors must depend upon God as He did and endure as He endured. Had He transgressed in one particular He would have been a sinner and His offering a failure.

His trial included bearing the sins of the whole world and enduring the punishment for transgression, the wrath of God against sin, torture of soul under horror of great darkness and the fierce temptation of thinking He was forsaken. In His closing hours on the cross He experienced to the fullest what man experiences striving against sin when the iniquity of the whole world was upon Him, realizing how bad man becomes by yielding to sin and the terrible consequence of breaking God's law. As substitute and surety He took man's guilt upon Himself, bore human guilt and the wrath disobedience would otherwise bring. He understood the seriousness of sin and suffered anguish proportionate to His purity and the magnitude of the offense, with His whole life from the manger glorifying God, and as Elder Brother of the race He has intense interest in human beings with keen feeling for the sinfulness and shame of sin.

Only the Son of God who created man could make atonement: even the life of an angel could not be accepted as sacrifice for breaking God's law, an angel could not remove sin or extend probation. The Son alone could bear the punishment of disobedience, satisfy justice and restore what humanity forfeited. Only through His death is Satan's kingdom overthrown, man redeemed and God glorified. He was both the offering and the Offerer; because He was sinless and united humanity with divinity He could offer His life and take it up again, fulfilling the conditions for the free gift of grace and opening its fullness to the guilty.

By a life of perfect obedience He redeemed Adam's disgraceful failure and fall, broke death's power and opened the way to immortal life. He regained for man what Adam lost for himself and the world and manifested God's character in more than thirty years of pure disinterested benevolence. As humanity's substitute He bears the guilt and punishment brought by sin and answers the death that came through Adam's sin to make life possible through Christ. After the Fall He took the place of Adam as head of humanity, became Adam's instructor and acted in God's stead toward humanity, saving the race from immediate death by taking the office of mediator until in the fullness of time He was revealed in human form.

Grace Righteousness and Law

Grace is Christ's own character, and it does not abolish God's law. The law is the knowledge of sin and the transcript of God's character, setting His righteousness over against unrighteousness and making sin appear exceedingly sinful. It can condemn the transgressor but has no power to save, restore, or pardon him, so pardon comes only through Christ, who lived the law in humanity. Man's only hope is in the substitute God provided, giving His Son to reconcile the world to Himself, making Him who knew no sin to be sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.

God's law is the foundation of His government in heaven as well as on earth, so sacred and unchangeable that not one precept nor even the smallest part of it could be set aside, changed, or altered to meet man in his fallen condition. Christ came not to destroy the law but to honor it and give dignity to it, opening His bosom to suffer for transgression and to bring man back to His law. Man comes to God through Christ by doing the commandments, while Christ pays the debt for past transgressions as man's accepted sacrifice. This provision of grace does not abolish God's law and does not give unconditional pardon, for the Father does not show benevolence at the expense of justice nor set aside the principles of righteousness, which would exalt the impenitent sinner in his sin and encourage transgression rather than abate it. The blood of Christ avails only for those who return to allegiance to God and obey the law they have violated, for Christ never becomes a party to sin.

By imparting His righteousness to man He makes it possible for man to keep God's holy law and reign in life by Him. His coming to the very ground where Adam fell answers Satan's claim that no man after Adam could keep God's law, revealing to the world that men can keep God's law and showing in His own life how man can keep it, so that through abundance of grace received in Him fallen man can be an overcomer. Righteousness is a free gift presented to the sinner to be received by accepting it, for man has nothing of his own to bring to God, since all he has is tainted and corrupted, polluted with sin and utterly repulsive to a pure and holy God, and only through the righteous character of Jesus Christ can man come near to God. Grace is God's gift to the undeserving, not a reward for worthiness, with human need as the qualification for receiving it, and humanity's disobedience bringing condemnation and death is what makes that grace necessary.

Through faith in Him the guilty are pardoned, counted innocent, enabled to keep God's law and stand accepted before God, brought by the merits of the crucified and risen Saviour into right standing with God and made able to overcome. The law and the gospel are bound together in a perfect whole as part of the testimony about Christ that must go throughout the length and breadth of the world, so that all may discern the light and walk in the light. That truth gives light and understanding to every opened, contrite heart that receives Christ by living faith and appropriates the richest gifts of grace. It is to be received not with mere nominal faith, theory of truth, or legal religion, but with faith that appropriates to itself the richest gifts of God, giving power to become sons of God, receiving of His fullness grace for grace, and pleading for the gift in order to give to others.

Receiving Grace and Reigning

Reigning in life began as soon as man transgressed, when Christ began His work of conversion so that through obedience to God's law and faith in Christ the lost image of God might be regained. That recovery requires a thorough transformation of soul, body, and spirit from the fall that lost the divine image and former estate. When man sinned Christ offered to stand as substitute and surety to provide a way of escape whereby the guilty race might return to loyalty. Taking humanity and passing over the ground where Adam stumbled and fell, He met without swerving from allegiance the temptations wherewith man is beset, overcoming every temptation with distinctly apparent righteousness, to live the example humanity must live to secure the heavenly reward.

By taking man's guilt as substitute and surety He gave mankind another trial, another probation in which all now live. He stood in Adam's place and took the penalty of sin upon Himself, securing another trial and probation with the privileges and opportunities of a free man to exercise God-given power of choice. That gift postponed the day of arraignment, so that man is bound over to appear at the bar of God in the judgment while every son and daughter of Adam is tested whether they will receive abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness and return to allegiance to reign in life by one, Jesus Christ. Through His obedience in becoming human and entering conflict with Satan to redeem fallen humanity, the way to life is opened to regain what was lost through Adam's failure.

All are given a second trial after Adam's fall and placed on vantage ground with God. Christ redeemed Adam's disgraceful failure and fall by withstanding every temptation of the wily foe where the first Adam failed, taking human nature and living without spot or stain of sin, so grace is for all and all who believe may be saved through Him. When the Father gave His Son to live and die for man He placed all the treasures of heaven at disposal, giving every possible advantage for strength to withstand the enemy, with angels having charge as with Christ to soothe and sustain, so there is no excuse for sin. His sacrifice gives sufficient grace and power to work away from natural defects and tendencies and to advance in the divine life, so Adam's sin and fall and inborn tendencies give no excuse for failing God's requirements and no ground for casting reproach upon God. Had man followed Christ's example he would have given his children and his children's children an example of steadfast purity and righteousness, the race would have improved instead of deteriorating, and the earth would have remained as Eden instead of a desert of sin.

Those who have the Son have eternal life now because of Christ's righteousness received and lived by faith in the Son of God. Made sin for sinners that they may be made the righteousness of God in Him, they become partakers of the divine nature through the daily operation of the Spirit of Jesus abiding in the heart, which quickens, revives, strengthens, and supports the soul. That life fills thoughts and affections with Jesus, His love and purity, centers all hope on Him and His appearing, with promise that believers shall never become extinct, since life is imparted because of Christ's righteousness though death was pronounced upon all because of Adam's sin. Receiving abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness means cultivating righteous principles to gain victory over the bias to evil. By obedience the senses are no longer warped and twisted and the faculties no longer perverted and wasted on what leads away from God, and in and through heaven-bestowed grace words, thoughts, and energies are purified, a new character is formed, and the debasement of sin is overcome.

This reign is walking in implicit obedience close to the Redeemer with a converted body and a soul in harmony with the laws of God, daily receiving renovating grace. Because believers are bought with a price and redeemed from the enemy's power and placed on vantage ground, they are to glorify God in body and spirit with His peace dwelling in thankful hearts, winning back through obedience what Adam lost through disobedience. It gives riches by title to an immortal inheritance and imperishable wealth, a title that stands the test of law, and through the righteousness of Christ a claim to the priceless gift of eternal life. The heart rests on the promise of full and free salvation and a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory in the path of the overcomer.

His victory was gained by full, entire dependence upon God, traveling Himself the path He calls believers to walk in self-denial and daily cross-bearing. He endured every test and met every temptation that any person will ever meet, and had He transgressed in one particular He would have been a sinner and His offering a failure, but the enemy overcame Him on not a single point. Because He overcame, every son and daughter of Adam can be safe by taking hold of the crucified and risen Saviour, can overcome as Christ overcame and come off more than conquerors, overcoming the world as He overcame. Those who overcome as He overcame shall at last be crowned conquerors to sit with Him in His throne, depending upon Deity as He did and enduring as He endured.

People can overcome by cooperating with divine influence and acting in Christ's name. They are to look to Him for counsel and wisdom and salvation rather than to any finite human agent as supreme and unerring, and His consent to agony and sacrifice proves that human beings can through the power of God live sinless lives. Being lifted up again into the Father's favor comes only through the merits of Christ's blood, and this elevation depends on accepting Him as substitute, for without accepting Christ it would be impossible to be lifted up, while those who receive Christ are saved through Him. Adam's fall cut the race off from God and left it with no hope, but Christ took up the work of restoration and gave Himself to bring it back, passing over the ground where Adam fell and redeeming the failure.

Christ's sacrifice not only redeems from sin but restores what the first Adam lost, the dominion over the earth. Adam's yielding brought him and his dominion under Satan's power, but through Jesus Christ the second Adam the lost dominion will be recovered and God's purpose fulfilled, the renewed earth free from sin, sorrow, and curse becoming the eternal home of the redeemed. The great cost of this redemption shows the value of the human soul, and people belong to God because bought at a price and placed in a second probation to find freedom from sin. Justification by faith is an inspiring, all-important subject, and young and old need more of this grace of Christ and His righteousness offered as a free gift to bring Christianity into daily life.

The gospel is precious, glorious good news of glad tidings to go to all nations, kindreds, tongues, and peoples as mercy for the sinner, truth and grace with Christ's righteousness as a free gift to all who will receive it. Those moved by this presentation of Christ's gifts receive blessing, while those who resist refuse blessing and grieve the Spirit, and to resist so great love by unbelief is great sin. Those ministered to need true conversion, for man by nature fallen stands under just condemnation of a holy God, and where there is little show of true conversion it proves the methods are out of the way and not after gospel order. At Jordan the Father's declaration over the Son opened heaven to man and united heaven and earth again. Jesus contemplated man's peril as fallen, helpless, degraded, ignorant, hopeless, ready to perish under death reigning by one man's offence, left the royal courts and clothed divinity with humanity to give a revelation adapted to human necessity, bringing a message and way of deliverance by which every soul may have eternal life and reign in life by one, Jesus Christ, reconciling man to the Father and honoring the law while paying the debt for past transgressions as man's accepted sacrifice.

By sin mankind sold itself to the enemy of all righteousness and of itself can do no good thing and cannot redeem itself, raising the question whether man is by nature totally and wholly depraved and hopelessly ruined. The depth of the fall that opened the floodgates of woe required great means to procure a ransom, for man could never rescue and restore himself. God's love with infinite compassion exceeding an earthly father's moved to rescue fallen man and restore His moral homage by the immeasurable sacrifice of His beloved Son, the guiltless suffering for the guilty. Man by nature fallen stands under just condemnation, so true conversion is needed, for man cannot set aside God's commands with impunity, partial observance is not accepted, and any disobedience must be avoided, since that one disobedience carried infinite expense leading the Majesty of heaven to leave the royal courts, take a humble place, and suffer insult, rejection, and crucifixion to save man from the penalty.