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In last section we saw the blessed state into which the justified believer comes - a state of peace, of gracious acceptance, of glorious hope, of joy in God. The apostle in the present section expounds the relation in which mankind stands to the two great representatives, Adam and Christ. We cannot do better than consider these two representatives in the order named, and how they are related to the race.

I. THE FIRST ADAM AS REPRESENTATIVE OF THE RACE. Now, the apostle distinctly declares in this passage that death entered into our world through one man's sin. The one man in his sin must, therefore, have been acting for the race; and it is for us to get a clear view of his representative position. Now, the usual mistake made in this subject is in supposing that representatives must be voluntarily selected by those they represent. This is not always the case. A representative may occupy his position of necessity. This was the case with our first parent. The human race is not made up of a number of independent units, but of a series of dependent generations. Consequently, as first parent, Adam was in the very nature of the case representative of the race. "The unreasoning flippancy," says an able writer, "with which some object to their responsibility for the act of Adam, because they had no part in choosing him as their representative, shows singular want of thought and of discriminating observation of the settled order of God's providence. It is evident that when God himself directly institutes a social organization, he always appoints, either by special act or by an invariable natural order, the ruling and representative head... The unity of the human race is his own immediate institution, and he appointed Adam its ancestor to be its representative and federal head. And in this case also he rendered an elective appointment by man impossible, by the constitution which brought man into being in successive generations. Not having from the beginning contemporaneous existence, consentaneous action was impossible. Their unity, therefore, was made to depend upon a common head and upon his representative action .... The constitution of nature and the course of providence render it a matter of social justice that one generation shall bind the succeeding, however remote, for good or evil. All legislation and all government proceeds upon this principle, and cannot avoid it. The evil entailed upon the race has come upon us by the selfsame principle, and its repudiation is impossible without the violation of the moral order upon which the stability of society depends. Our responsible relation to the first sin of Adam in no way depends upon our consent to his appointment as our covenant head, any more than our responsible relation to the national debt of Great Britain is affected by the fact that it was contracted without our personal consent, and before we were born." It will be found also that Adam's parental authority carries with it the idea of kingship; he was in a regal as well as representative position; he had dominion not only over the creatures, but also over his own posterity. His acts were consequently of a regal and representative character. Carrying these necessary principles with us, we can see how his sin in eating the forbidden fruit was a representative act. In this the race was represented, by it the race was bound; he was acting in his representative capacity, and there is no good gained by repudiating it. But, further, we can understand in some measure how a sin like Adam's affected his constitution, so that he became with his wife tainted, and so transmitted the sin to succeeding generations. The death of infants is the positive proof that the race has been treated as an organic unity, and that the taint of sin has been transmitted by ordinary generation. The whole subject of "heredity," as now scientifically treated, bears upon this relation of Adam to his posterity. It is evident that the generations have been linked each to each. Representative responsibility has been in operation from the first. Instead of quarrelling with the arrangement, our duty is to recognize it, and to see how out of the same principle we may receive blessing as a glorious set-off to the curse which has been transmitted to us.

II. THE SECOND ADAM AS REPRESENTATIVE OF THE JUSTIFIED. We have seen how the first Adam was constituted the representative of the race, and by his sin involved the whole race in trespass and condemnation. Death passed unto all men, for that all in him have sinned. But now the apostle shows us the glorious set-off to this inheritance of guilt and death. God has given a new Representative to the race, even Jesus Christ his Son. By his obedience the representative principle is transmuted into an organ of grace instead of an organ of condemnation. But let us carefully note the nature of the relation set up between us and Christ. And here let us observe:

1. While we are united to the first Adam by ordinary generation, we get united to the second Adam by regeneration. The first union is involuntary; we cannot determine who our parents shall be. But union to Christ partakes of a voluntary character. When the Spirit is received and regenerates us, he makes us willing in the day of his power. Freedom of the will has its place in the relation into which we enter towards the second Adam. We may reject the union or close with it. Hence the whole race is not necessarily embraced in Christ's vicarious work, simply because the whole race will not be. All will not come to Jesus that they may have life (John 5:40).

2. Jesus proposes to quench the fire, not only of original sin, but also of actual sin, in those who receive his grace. This is the apostolic idea in this passage. The arrangement might have been to checkmate merely the original sin; that is, to put the race upon as good a platform as our first parent occupied before the Fall. Christ's obedience might thus have been the mere equivalent for Adam's disobedience. But the free gift of justification through Christ embraces our actual sins as well as our original sin. Grace is thus seen to abound. All sin in which we have been involved gets cancelled and put away through the obedience of our Representative. And:

3. Jesus proposes not only to counteract the sin, but also to secure a reign of grace unto eternal life. The abounding grace of the second Adam raises its recipients into an eternal life in the favour and society of God. Thus is it that the representative principle provides the most magnificent compensation for all that it entails through our first parent's fall. If we by faith are united to the second Adam, then we get the benefit of his obedience; his endurance of the penalty we deserved is accepted as ours; his perfect obedience to the requirements of the Divine Law is imputed to us; and his gracious Spirit comes to abide within us. The result is that the grace so abounds as to overmaster the sin and to raise us into that fellowship with God which is life eternal. The second Adam thus more than redeems us from our relation to the first Adam.

III. THE ADMINISTRATION OF GRACE THROUGH JESUS CHRIST MAKES AMPLE COMPENSATION FOR ALL APPARENT ANOMALIES IN THE PREVIOUS COVENANT. Now, one of the facts referred to by the apostle in this passage is, on the admission of almost all the commentators, the death of infants in consequence of their relation to Adam. It may, of course, be said that these infants were in the loins of Adam when he sinned, as Levi was in the loins of Abraham when he paid tithes to Melchizedek. Still, the fate of infants would seem an anomaly in the government of God if they are to receive no compensation through relation to the second Adam. But if it is scriptural to believe that all infants who die because of their relation to the first Adam inherit everlasting life because of their relation to the second Adam, then all harshness disappears and the anomaly is overborne. Now, this is, as we believe, the proper doctrine. All who die in infancy are, through the all-abounding grace of the second Adam, saved. We need have no fears for them, wherever they have passed away. Their suffering unto death is a cheap price to pay for exemption from the temptations of the present world; and each of them in the glory will accept the painful passage to it as, after all, a merciful arrangement, seeing that glory lay beyond it. - R.M.E.

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KJV: Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:

WEB: Therefore, as sin entered into the world through one man, and death through sin; and so death passed to all men, because all sinned.