Did all mankind fall in that first transgression?
The covenant being made with Adam as a public person, not for himself only, but for his posterity, all mankind descending from him by ordinary generation, sinned in him, and fell with him in that first transgression.
That’s not fair! This is doubtlessly the objection most frequently appearing in our minds as we consider Adam’s fall and its effects on us, his posterity. We’re welcome to grovel and wallow in our miserable objection, even stomp our feet and wag our fists, but it will do no good in remedying our condition. It will simply be a futility that reflects the rest of our existence – we hate God and we hate anything He has to offer – that is until He moves to change our condition.
At some point we might be brought to consider that the inverse redemptive process works similarly in that the good and meritorious work of another Adam (a second)will work similarly. The last Adam, the Christ who is Jesus will also act (obey) for His own. Those for whom the last Adam secures redemption will no longer cry “unfair”, instead, we drop to our knees in humble contrition and repentance and realize that fair is never what we want. When we are in the condition of sin and corruption, fair is not our friend nor should it be our cry. Grace instead becomes our very heart’s cry. Please Lord, be gracious, for if You are fair I get what I deserve – the death I am already experiencing and justly deserve.
Our hearts cry in faith is what is being discussed in this passage from Dr. Ridderbos. He uses a ten dollar word – pleonastic. To save you from looking it up, which I had to do, I will provide you with the insight I gained in my search. A pleonastic phrase is a phrase of redundancy, like saying “black darkness” or “burning fire”. Both of these examples are used to stress an idea, doubly so, of the qualities of darkness or fire. Similarly he uses this idea when addressing faith here in Romans 1:17…
Romans 1:17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “But the righteous man shall live by faith.”
“This finds its most pregnant expression in the seemingly pleonastic phrase “from faith unto faith” in Romans 1:17, that is, from A to Z a matter of faith and nothing else, righteousness sola fide {only faith}. The purpose of all these expressions, which nowhere make faith itself the ground or cause of justification, but only ascribe to it a mediating or instrumental significance, is none other than to designate the object of faith as the ground of justification.
Faith does not justify because of that which it is in itself, but because of that to which it is directed, in which it rests.
For this reason the exclusive emphasis with which faith is here placed over against works has a negative significance insofar as it speaks of man and his share in justification. Man is justified not on the ground of what he is himself or has or achieves, but precisely on the ground of that which he does not possess and which he in himself does not have at his disposal, but which he must receive, obtain, by faith.”
Herman Ridderbos, Paul: An outline of his Theology
In summary, if Paul intended to convey that justification was to be accomplished by mixing together some form of works, even the minutest on our part, he would not have said faith to faith – which is like saying from east to west, from top to bottom, from start to finish, it is all of faith. There is no mixture of faith and works.
The idea that we inherit our fallen and corrupted nature from Adam is seen in passages like:
Acts 17:26 “…He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation.”
1 Corinthians 15:21–22 “For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.”
The tell tale sign of our corruption under sin is the 100% death rate. The equation runs this way – all who sin, die. All who die, are sinners. Death is what remains, the end result, the condition of humanity, after the fall. In general terms it can be summarized in this way: “being in Adam” means mankind is subject to the curse and death on account of Adam, “being in Christ” means mankind is subject to blessing and life on account of Christ. We see this delineated in Romans 5.
Romans 5:12–20 – “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned… But the free gift is not like the transgression. For if by the transgression of the one the many died, much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abound to the many.”
Dr Ridderbos explains this federal headship idea further,
“It is also in this unity of the “Christ-for-us” and the “we-in-him” that the theme of the revelation of the righteousness of God by faith exhibits in a clear fashion the basic eschatological-christological structure of Paul’s preaching. For Christ’s death was the demonstration of the judging and justifying judgment of God in the eschatological sense of the word because the old aeon and the old man were judged in him, and justification unto life and the new creation came to light in him as the second Adam.”
Herman Ridderbos, Paul: an outline of his theology.
There is much more that we will delve into on this topic in the next several questions but for now we end with this important caution…
“For there is need of caution, lest we attend only to the natural ills of man, and thereby seem to ascribe them to the Author of nature; impiety deeming it a sufficient defense if it can pretend that everything vicious in it proceeded in some sense from God, and not hesitating, when accused, to plead against God, and throw the blame of its guilt upon Him.
Seeing, therefore, that the flesh is continually on the alert for subterfuges, by which it imagines it can remove the blame of its own wickedness from itself to some other quarter, we must diligently guard against this depraved procedure, and accordingly treat of the calamity of the human race in such a way as may cut off every evasion, and vindicate the justice of God against all who would impugn it.
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Chapter 15
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