II. How grace has much more abounded —
God determined that his grace should be victorious, and that it should establish its throne on the ruins of the empire which sin had erected. For this purpose he gave us his Son to be a second Adamk. He laid on him the curse due to our iniquities : he enabled him to " bring in an everlasting righteousness :" he accepted us in him as our new Covenant-Head : he restores us through him to eternal life. Thus the superabundance of his grace is manifest,
1. In the object attained —
[The destruction of man for sin was certainly tremendous : yet was it no more than what was to be expected. The fallen angels had already been banished from heaven. No wonder then if man was made a partaker of their misery. But how beyond all expectation was the recovery of man ! How won- derful that he should be restored, whilst a superior order of beings were left to perish; and be exalted to a throne of glory from whence they had been cast down ! This was indeed a manifestation of most abundant grace.]
2. In the method of attaining it —
[Sin had reigned unto death by means of Adam, and cer- tainly the destruction of the whole world for one sin argued a dreadful malignity in sin. Yet was there nothing in this unjust or unreasonable1. But who could have thought that God should send us his own Son? That he should constitute him our new Covenant-Head and representative ? That he should remove the curse of sin by his death ? That he should accept sinners through his righteousness ? That he should remedy by a second Adam what had been brought upon us by the first?
k Rom. v. 14. 1 Cor. xv. 22, 45.
1 If, instead of being represented by Adam, we had all undergone the same probation for ourselves, we have no reason to think that we should not have fallen, like him : if we had possessed exactly the same grace as he, and been subjected to the same temptation, we should have acted as he did. The constituting of him our representative was a great advantage to us, because he had much stronger inducements to fidelity than we could have : we should have been concerned only about ourselves ; whereas he had the interests of all his posterity de- pending on him. Besides, he met his temptation when all his powers were in a state of maturity, and when there was no evil example be- fore him ; whereas we should be tempted from our earliest infancy, and with the additional influence of bad examples.