“So then, as through one trespass there is condemnation for everyone, so also through one righteous act there is justification leading to life for everyone. For just as through one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so also through the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Every major event of world history hinges on a single decision. We may not be able to pin down exactly when that decision was made, much less who made it, but there is always a point at which history gets set on a particular path. Paul here is talking about the two most important hinge points in human history. One resulted in everything’s being broken, the other opened the doors to their being set right again. Let’s talk about it.

Adam’s decision broke everything. Even if you want to settle on Adam as a metaphor using a mythological figure, at one point in the ancient past a first decision was made to violate God’s authority and sovereignty, and the world has never been the same since.

And let’s dispense with the silliness that there’s no such thing as sin. What an utterly absurd notion rank with intellectual dishonesty. There are things you know to be wrong. What’s more, you don’t think those things are merely personal preferences. You judge others for violating those things you deem to be norms. And indeed, there are things that all human cultures have known to be wrong.

Yet the existence of these obvious moral norms necessarily implies some external-to-humanity standard that put them in place; a standard to which we appeal when we feel they have been violated. Philosophically speaking, there’s not a more rational way of arguing for their existence than this super-natural standard. And let’s dispense with the silliness of arguing that evolution somehow gave us these things. Random small changes over time cannot provide a moral ought.

People do not do what is right. And they do what is not right with remarkable consistency. Small children start willfully doing what is not right at an exceedingly early age. Every parent knows this because every parent has experienced this. The first time your child looked at you and emphatically (and small children can be remarkably emphatic) said, “No!” while you may have laughed in the moment at the cuteness of the child, you also knew that way the beginning of a season that was going to involve a whole lot of correcting with gentle firmness a pattern of behavior that was not learned but was natural, but, more importantly, was wrong.

That’s sin manifesting itself.

The fact that we all intuitively recognize such behavior in whatever form it happens to take as wrong points insistently to our equally intuitive recognition that this is not how things should be. Yet the only way we could know this is not how things should be implies an intuitive awareness that this is not how things always were as well as at least a vague awareness of how they should.

All of this is perfectly consistent with what we find in the Scriptures. At some point in the past, things were not broken. Then they were. What Moses explains and Paul seconds here is that the first man, Adam, is how this situation came to be. “Through one trespass there is condemnation for everyone. . .through one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners.”

Thankfully, this was not how God planned to leave things. He loved and loves us far too much for that. And so, at just the right time, He introduced a second hinge point on which everything could swing back to the right. This was Jesus. And just as Adam’s sin all are made sinners, “so also through one righteous act there is justification leading to life for everyone. . .so also through the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.”

How? By trust in Him and His righteousness. By receiving what He did on our behalf as applying to us. By accepting Him for who He is – the Lord of all creation – and demonstrating our acceptance of this deep and rich reality by living according to His word. And what was His word? What was His command? To love one another as He loved us. By loving them with a self-sacrificing, graciousness. By loving them with kindness and generosity and compassion and faithfulness.

Praise the Lord for His indescribable gift!