Romans 5, Summary
Aug 11th, 2009 by Micah Tillman | Start the Discussion |
[ Romans 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5: Intro, 1-11, 12, 12-14, 15, 16-21, Summary ]
After arguing with his listeners that they should see each other as belonging to the same family since they’re all children of Abraham, Paul argues in Romans 5 that his listeners should see each other as belonging to the same family since they’re all children of Adam.
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Paul based his argument that all his listeners — both Jews and Gentiles — were children of Abraham on the claim that faith is prior to the Law. Abraham became righteous through faith before the Law had been given.
To be a child of Abraham is not to be an inheritor of the Law, therefore, but to be someone who, like Abraham, becomes righteous through faith.
Paul takes it as a given that all his listeners are children of Adam, and then argues that this places them all — both Jews and Gentiles – on a level (an unfortunate, deathly level) with each other.
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But, just as being a child of Abraham was not based on the Law, the predicament of being a child of Adam is not based on the Law.
We are not all going to die because God uses the Law to “impute” sin to us, Paul argues. We are all going to die because sin is deadly, whether or not there is a Law.
Sin is deadly not because God kills people as punishment, but because sin cuts us off from God, who is the source of life. Sin’s consequences are first and foremost ontological, not legal.
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Therefore, since we all have sinned, and all are descended from a sinner, we have all cut ourselves off from God, and are cut off from God.
That is true no matter our ethnicity, Paul is arguing, no matter whether we are or are not inheritors of the Law.
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With regard to the question of Total Depravity, therefore, we see that Paul does believe that Adam’s sin had an ontological effect on all his descendants. Paul does not say how this happened. He just seems to believe it did.
But the effect Paul describes is death, not the damaging of faculties (and it is the claim that all our faculties are fundamentally damaged that is the heart of the Doctrine of Total Depravity).
And Paul is talking about that effect for the purpose of helping his listeners see each other as being the same — as being family.
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[ Romans 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5: Intro, 1-11, 12, 12-14, 15, 16-21, Summary ]
