Ver. 17. This verse confirms the pre- ceding. The argument is the same in kind as in ver. 15. The effects of the Fall are indubitable: still less open to doubt are the effects of the work of Christ. With οἱ τὴν περισσείαν τῆς χάριτος καὶ [τῆς δωρεᾶς] τῆς δικαιοσύνης λαμβάνοντες we again touch experience, and an empirical condition is attached
630
νοντες ἐν ζωῇ βασιλεύσουσι διὰ τοῦ ἑνὸς ᾿Ιησοῦ Χριστοῦ.
Vv.
18. “Apa
οὖν ὡς δι ἑνὸς παραπτώµατος, εἰς πάντας ἀνθρώπους, cis κατάκριµα :
pCh. iv. 25. οὕτω καὶ Bi ἑνὸς δικαιώματος, εἰς πάντας ἀνθρώπους, εἰς } δικαίωσιν
ζωῆς.
19. ὥσπερ γὰρ διὰ τῆς παρακοῆς τοῦ ἑνὸς ἀνθρώπου ἅμαρ-
ᾳ Heb.v.& τωλοὶ κατεστάθησαν οἱ πολλοὶ, οὕτω καὶ διὰ τῆς “ ὑπακοῆς τοῦ ἑνὸς
to the abstract universality suggested by ver. 12. The abundance of the grace and of (the gift which consists in) right- eousness has to be received by faith. But when by faith a connection is formed with Christ, the consequences of that connection, as more agreeable to what we know of God’s nature, can be more surely counted upon than the conse- quences of our natural connection with Adam. Part of the contrast is marked by the change from ‘death reigned” to ‘we shall reign in life,” not ‘life shall reign in or over us”. The future in βασιλεύσουσιν is no doubt logical, but it refers nevertheless to the consumma- tion of redemption in the Messianic kingdom in the world to come. Cf. Vili £7; 21) Colvin. 37%, ο Tim: tit το.
Ver. 18. With dpa οὖν (cf. vii. 3, 25, and often in Paul) the conclusion of the argument is introduced. It is simplest to take ἑνὸς in both clauses as neuter. ‘As through one offence the result for all men was condemnation, so also through one righteous act the result for all men is justification of life.” The result in both cases is mediated; in the former, by men’s actual sin; in the latter, by their faith in Christ. It has been questioned whether δικαίωµα can mean a “righteous act,’—that which Christ achieved in His death, conceived as one thing commanding the approval of God. This sense seems to be required by the contrast with παράπτωμα, but Meyer and others argue that, as in ver. 16, the meaning must be ‘a sentence of justification”. ‘ Through one justifying sentence (pronounced over the world because of Christ’s death) the result for all men is justification of life.” But this justifying sentence im vacuo is alien to the realism of Paul’s thinking, and no strain is put upon δικαίωµα (especially when we observe its correspondence with παράπτωμα) in making it signify Christ’s work as a thing in which righteousness is, so to speak, embodied. Lightfoot (Notes on Epistles of St. Paul, p. 292) adopts this meaning, ‘‘a righteous deed,” and quotes Arist., Rhet., i., 13, τὰ ἀθδική- para πάντα καὶ τὰ δικαιώµατα, and Eth. Νίο, ν., 7 (10): καλεῖται δὲ μᾶλλον
δικαιοπράγηµα τὸ κοινόν: δικαίωµα δὲ τὸ ἐπανόρθωμα τοῦ ἀδικήματος. This sense of an act by which an injustice is rectified is exactly suitable here. Through this the result for all men is δικαίωσις ζωῆς: for the genitive, see Winer, p. 235. Simcox, Language of the N.T., 85. When God justifies the sinner, he enters into and inherits life. But Lightfoot makes it gen. appos.
Ver. το. The sense of this verse has been determined by what precedes. The yap connects it closely with the last words of verse 18: “‘ justification of life ; for, as through, etc.”. ἁμαρτωλοὶ κατε- στάθησαν: ‘were constituted sinners’. For the word κατεστ. cf. Jas. iv. 4, 2 Pet. i. 8. It has the same ambiguity as the English word “ constituted ” (S. and Η.): but we cannot say, from the word itself, whether the many constituted sinners, through the one person’s disobedience, are so constituted immediately and un- conditionally, or mediately through their own sin (to be traced back, of course, to him) ; this last, as has been argued above, is the Apostle’s meaning. οὕτως καὶ διὰ τῆς ὑπακοῆς τοῦ ἑνός : the application of τῆς ὑπακοῆς has been disputed. By some (Hofmann, Lechler) it is taken to cover the whole life and work of Jesus conceived as the carrying out of the Father’s will: cf. Phil. ii. 8. By others (Meyer) it is limited to Christ’s death as the one great act of obedience on which the possibility of justification depended : cf. chap. ili. 25, ν. 9. Both ideas are Pauline, but the last seems most con- gruous to the context and the contrast which pervades it. δίκαιοι κατασταθήσ- ονται: ‘shall be constituted righteous ”’ ; the futureshows again that Paul is deal- ing with experience, or at least with possible experience ; the logic’ which finds the key to the passage in Bengel’s formula, Omnes peccarunt Adamo fec- cante, would have written here also δίκαιοι κατεστάθησαν. It is because Paul conceives of this justification as conditioned in the case of each of the πολλοί by faith, and as in process of taking place in one after another that he uses the future. A reference to the Judgment Day (Meyer) is forced: it is