Romans 5:20-21 Moreover the law entered, that the offense might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound:… 1. "The law entered that the offence might abound." The sin was already there. Deep in the constitution of humanity the poison was already working, and God would have it developed in full manifestation. The driving of evil out to the surface, where all can see it in the broad daylight, is, as in some deadly forms of fever, the first step towards the cure. But Paul had not ventured to entertain the thought unless he had known, as no man, save perhaps Luther, has ever known, the superabounding, the overmastering power of grace. 2. The problem of problems is, how can a righteous and loving God endure and perpetuate a world like this while a breath would abolish its sin and misery forever. But it lives on. The life of a human spirit is an awful endowment. By no act of ours it comes to us. And the influences which mould it are but partially under our control. There is a man who was educated to be a jail bird from his infancy. He never had his eye upon the form of a nobler life. You cannot say that there are no seeds of great thoughts and virtues in him. He would be torn limb from limb before he would betray his comrade. But his chance in life has been a poor one. His whole life is a battle with society. Society masters him, chains him, and will infallibly crush him at last. And yet that man must drag on his burden; and passionately as he may long to die, it is God's will that he shall bear the burden of that life through eternity. He may mend his life; God's mercy puts that within his reach; but if he will not mend it, he shall bear it forever. 3. How many myriads are there who, were the choice offered to them, would answer, "Let me die and have done with it forever." Annihilation has been the supreme hope of many a creed. And why? Because "Sin reigneth unto death" everywhere. Life is good: the world is fair. The storms, deserts, and earthquakes, would have no terror for man if there were not wilder storms and barer deserts within. But self haunts him as a spectre. "The things that I would, those I do not; the things that I would not, those I do"; and the doing these things is death. Here, then, are men by millions, living by no will of their own, fighting a losing battle through life; or refusing to fight it, and giving it up in despair, grovelling with the beasts, cursing with the fiends, filling the world with woe. Doubtless there are lights as well as shadows in the picture. But looking at the broad world, the shadow masters the sunlight. Take one day's honest service with a city missionary, and judge for yourselves. There is the "struggle for life" everywhere; but Death, if want, disease, and misery are his lictors, everywhere wins. Death is the broad term which covers the whole work of sin. Death is but the culmination of a process. The sinner carries his torment with him — a life poisoned at the springs, a life which God will not suffer him to lay down. 4. And Paul has the daring sentence, "The law, sent of God, entered that the offence might abound." Many, startled, try to soften the words. "God hath sent the law to correct, but its result was the increase of sin," is the sense to which they would modify it. But the words will not bear it, and the argument refuses to adopt it. God sent the law that the offence might abound. Not sin — that is, the sinful thought and purpose — but the offence, the act and manifestation of sin. The poison there, it should not lurk there; it should be pressed into full development. "The Mosaic law," say cautious commentators, "with all its minute regulations, difficult and impossible to fulfil, which made men despair of legal obedience, and prepared them to receive the righteousness which is by faith." I think the larger view the true one. All law, in a sin-loving, God-hating world, has for its first fruit the insurrection of human passion and self-will. Every declaration of the character and the will of God to sinners seems at first but to madden the spirit and blacken the tone of their transgression. "Sin by the commandment becomes exceeding sinful." It is true of all dispensations, even the highest. When men saw the Father in the Son they hated Him; and the hatred of the generation to which the revelation was made, broke out in the most damning crime in the history of the universe. The revelation reproved, and by reproving maddened the sinner. Only when the grace with which the revelation was charged penetrated the hard crust of their natures could men begin to understand the counsel developed in our text. Every manifestation of light at first seems but to reveal darkness. Every manifestation of God at first seems but to deepen and darken sin. The great revelation developed the great transgression, and through that, "grace has reigned, through righteousness, unto eternal life, by Jesus Christ our Lord." Let us consider as follows: — I. GRACE. Grace is love in a certain relation — the love of a Redeemer working to its ends. It represents the whole sum of the forces by which the love that would redeem aims at the accomplishment of its hope. Its incarnation is Christ. Christ is the gift of grace. Grace is the manifestation and action of that fatherly love which could not rest in its native glory and blessedness, while one prodigal was wandering, while one tear was wept, one groan uttered in the universe, which its suffering and sacrifice might spare. "Ye know the grace of the Lord Jesus," but the measure of it One only knows. That grace is the reigning conqueror of sin. That triumphs where law fails. II. THE RELATION BETWEEN GRACE AND SIN. 1. Sin is the condition of its manifestation. No sin, no grace. Through a lost world Christ is to win His most glorious Crown. Grace and sin are the twin antagonists; opposed as light and darkness. If one reigns the other is destroyed; and God suffers sin to be born because He knows that grace can conquer it. 2. There is a glory which no fiat of Omnipotence even can create, which grace, by the conquest of sin, can win and wear through eternity. No sin, no grace, and, in the highest sense, no glory. The joy of the prodigal come home, the joy of the father in his return; these are the glorious joys of earth, of heaven. III. THE RELATION BETWEEN GRACE AND RIGHTEOUSNESS. Grace must reign through righteousness, if it reign at all. Imputed righteousness, some cry; inherent righteousness, others. Neither the one nor the other, I venture to think. The apostle has a broader meaning, which covers both. Inherent righteousness is a vain show, if it be not rooted in the perfect righteousness; while imputed righteousness is a mere fiction, if no image of itself be generated in the soul. The broad principle here may be thus expressed: — 1. The righteous soul alone is blessed. To some, grace may suggest a kindly remission of penalty. That were feasible enough if a man's worse torment and curse were not himself. The problem to be solved is within; there the fountain of bitter waters has to be healed. And it is there that grace reigns through righteousness. An inward harmony, healing, quickening is its promise; it presents to him a righteousness which is a man's righteousness, and yet is God's; a righteousness not awfully, hopelessly above him; a righteousness which, while his sad worn heart drinks in, the love which streams from Calvary enters and enshrines itself in his heart. 2. The righteousness which is by grace has a glory and blessedness all its own. Grace reigns through righteousness; it is a joyous, glorious reign. The work of grace is to shrine righteousness in man's heart of hearts; to teach him not to obey it only, not to honour it only, but to love it. Loving Christ, it is God's own righteousness which man loves and holds. Through love, he has a joy in all righteous thoughts and righteous deeds, which is part of his joy in Christ his Saviour. IV. THE COMPLETE AND FINAL END OF GOD. "Unto eternal life." Death is simply isolation. The cutting the body off from free communion with its world. And what is life? The opposite of isolation. It is the faculty of communion with all things. The soul's death is the paralysis of its faculty to all that a soul was made to commune with, till it becomes without truth, righteousness, and holiness, without God and without hope, because without life. The soul's quickening is the rekindling of the energy of its powers, the reoccupation of the glorious range of its faculty to commune with, to possess, and to enjoy all that God has made a soul to live for, all whereby a soul may live eternally. The work of grace is as the baptism of a new life for man. Conclusion: "Lord, are there few that be saved?" The Lord gives no answer but the text. This we know, that the end which God foresees shall repair all the waste, and repay all the sorrow with which sin has filled the world. How wide, how vast, how glorious this work of overabounding grace, which of us may dare to guess? "But strive thou to enter in at the straight gate." The end for which the Redeemer is waiting, the issue for which heaven is hoping, depend in their measure upon you. You can frustrate, you can forward the great consummation. (J. Baldwin Brown, B. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound: |
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