fore rendered either useless or uncertain ; for, as from Adam we receive a corrupt nature, so from Christ we receive a holy and divine nature : and as all our personal disobedience aggra- vates the guilt and condemnation which we derived from Adam; so our personal obedience, after we have been justified in Christ Jesus, enhances the degrees of glory to which we are entitled at the instant of our justification. Now all this is plainly affirmed in our text : {Read the text :) nay, it is, in the verses preceding our text, affirmed, that we receive more from Christ than ever we lost in Adam: (Read ver. 15 — 17.) And this is a striking, and very important, truth. For,
First, we are placed in a safer state than that which we lost in Adam. Adam was placed in a state of probation, to stand or fall by his own obedience ; and, notwithstanding all his ad- vantages, he fell, and ruined both himself and all his posterity. But we, when justified in Christ's righteousness, are given to him, that we may be kept by his power unto everlasting sal- vation : and he has expressly declared, that " none shall ever pluck us out of his hands."
Next, we are made to possess a better righteousness than any which we could ever have inherited from Adam : for if he had stood, and we had stood in him, and partaken of his righteous- ness for ever, we should still have had only the righteousness of a creature : but now we have, and shall have to all eternity, the righteousness of the Creator : yes, " Jehovah himself is our righteousness :" and whereas, with a creature's righteous- ness, we could have claimed nothing, being only unprofitable servants, with the Creator's righteousness we may claim on the footing of justice as well as of mercy, all the glory of heaven.
Once more : Our happiness is infinitely enhanced beyond any thing it could ever have been, if we had stood in Adam. The felicity of heaven would doubtless have been inconceivably great under any circumstances : but who can conceive what an addition it will receive from the consideration of its being the purchase of the Redeemer's blood, and the fruit of those eternal counsels by which the whole work of redemption was both planned and executed ?
Thus then is the comparison between the first and second Adam shewn to be strictly just ; except indeed that the scale preponderates beyond all expression or conception in favour of the Lord Jesus, who has done " much more" for us than ever we lost in Adam ; or than Adam, though he had con- tinued sinless, ever could have done, either for himself or us.]
But that this subject may produce a suitable im- pression on our minds, we will,
II. Suggest one or two reflections upon it —