The illustration of justification continued.
Consequently, just as condemnation for all people came through one transgression, so too through the one righteous act came righteousness leading to life for all people.”
Romans 5:18, NET. The Greek text also reads that just as one transgression that applied to all people came condemnation of all people came through one man. Similarly, the one righteous act by one towards all people came justification of all people. The righteousness that God credited to Abraham was from a legal and ethical perspective. The Bible students have debated endlessly concerning the theological terms ‘Imparted’ and ‘Imputed.’ This crutch in logic implies that our righteousness is something God had in his store, so he granted or gave it to those who believe in him. Also, that guilt or responsibility for an act was transferred to someone else. In legal terms, it also means that someone is falsely accused and punished. There is only one righteousness from God, not two. God is one.
However, Jesus represents the new humankind that God created at the incarnation. Jesus, when he knew enough, was baptized and led to the desert to be tempted. He conquered temptation; therefore, the new humankind’s life in Jesus became perfect and indestructible. Jesus lived three- and one-half years of a perfect life on behalf of the new humanity. On the cross, Jesus set aside the perfect life. He separated it from his sanctified body. God, then, put on Jesus the sinful human life, the human sin, and the inclinations to sin. Therefore, the life of old humankind that sinned in the garden of Eden was on Jesus’s body on the cross at Golgotha. Jesus’s perfect life, the life of the new humankind, did not die on the cross at Golgotha. Jesus’s body did not begin to decay because it was the sanctified body of the new humankind. After the sinful humankind died on the cross, Jesus’s body lay in the grave without having a life in it. However, because it did not decay, it was not dead, technically speaking. Death of the physical body could not save us. The sinful spirit, life, had to die because God said so.
Therefore, we were justified by God removing from us the sin and sinful life which made us unrighteous. In replacement, God gave us the perfect and eternal life of Jesus Crist, the representative of the new humankind. Only through the creation of new humankind in Jesus Christ could humankind be justified and saved from guilt and punishment for sin. The old sinful humankind could not be made legally righteous by transferring guilt and responsibility onto someone else. The Bible states clearly that the soul which sins must die. There was no substitution. Only by dying Jesus on the cross and raising with him into the new life do we stand justified, sanctified, and glorified in the eyes of God. It is all in Jesus Christ and through him. The life or spirit that sinned in the garden has died the second death in the body of Jesus on the cross at Golgotha.
Did all people sin in Adam or like Adam? Read the next blog.
