Author: jetbrane

I am a Pastor of a small Church in Mid-Michigan who delights in my family, my congregation and my calling. I am postmillennial in my eschatology. Paedo-Calvinist Covenantal in my Christianity Reformed in my Soteriology Presuppositional in my apologetics Familialist in my family theology Agrarian in my regional community social order belief Christianity creates culture and so Christendom in my national social order belief Mythic-Poetic / Grammatical Historical in my Hermeneutic Pre-modern, Medieval, & Feudal before Enlightenment, modernity, & postmodern Reconstructionist / Theonomic in my Worldview One part paleo-conservative / one part micro Libertarian in my politics Systematic and Biblical theology need one another but Systematics has pride of place Some of my favorite authors, Augustine, Turretin, Calvin, Tolkien, Chesterton, Nock, Tozer, Dabney, Bavinck, Wodehouse, Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Schaeffer, C. Van Til, H. Van Til, G. H. Clark, C. Dawson, H. Berman, R. Nash, C. G. Singer, R. Kipling, G. North, J. Edwards, S. Foote, F. Hayek, O. Guiness, J. Witte, M. Rothbard, Clyde Wilson, Mencken, Lasch, Postman, Gatto, T. Boston, Thomas Brooks, Terry Brooks, C. Hodge, J. Calhoun, Llyod-Jones, T. Sowell, A. McClaren, M. Muggeridge, C. F. H. Henry, F. Swarz, M. Henry, G. Marten, P. Schaff, T. S. Elliott, K. Van Hoozer, K. Gentry, etc. My passion is to write in such a way that the Lord Christ might be pleased. It is my hope that people will be challenged to reconsider what are considered the givens of the current culture. Your biggest help to me dear reader will be to often remind me that God is Sovereign and that all that is, is because it pleases him.

Caleb’s Baptism — Heidelberg Catechism Q. 16

Question 16. Why must he be very man, and also perfectly righteous?

Answer: Because the justice of God requires that the same human nature which has sinned, should likewise make satisfaction for sin; (a) and one, who is himself a sinner, cannot satisfy for others. (b)

We have established if we are to be rescued from the just wrath of God we need someone else to do the rescuing since we only increase God’s anger with us daily because of our sin nature and our sins. We have established that the rescuer is also called a “mediator” since He represents both God to us and us to God. We have seen that the mediator we need must be more then a mere creature since a mere creature could not endure the just penalty of God for sin. In other words were our mediator only a mere creature there would be more penalty left to endure after the mere creature had expired and so our rescue would fail. We have seen that the mediator must be man without sin, yet also God. Now we are looking at why the mediator, who will be our rescuer from God’s wrath, must have those qualities.

The catechism, following Scripture, teaches us that our rescuer mediator must be very man (i.e. – thoroughly man) because as it is man who sinned the representative for man (mediator) must be man as well. Scripture teaches that God is just and in being just God requires skin for skin. Man has done the sinning. Man must pay the penalty. Scripture teaches that as all mankind fell in Adam so all of God’s new mankind is restored in the second Adam who reversed Adam’s fall by withstanding the death penalty for sin (Romans 5:12-21).

Scripture is repeatedly clear on this point,

“Hebrews.2:14– Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; 15 And deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. 16 For verily he took not on him the nature of angels; but he took on him the seed of Abraham.

Note here that we are clearly taught that Jesus Christ was thoroughly man and that as our mediator, and in our place, he bore the penalty of death for our deliverance.

1 Pet.3:18 For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit:

Note again the clarity of Scripture. Christ, as very man, was the one who stood in our place and received upon Himself, as our representative, our punishment.

Isa.53:3 He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Isa.53:4 Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. Isa.53:5 But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. Isa.53:10 Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand. Isa.53:11 He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities.

Clearly the Catechism is correct in telling us that our mediator must be thoroughly man. Of course the implication of this is that Jesus Christ had all the characteristics associated with man. He grew tired. He wept. He was attracted to women. He developed blisters. As a baby he had to be diapered. He grew frustrated. He knew anger. He was thoroughly man.

However, the Catechism gives a qualifier. Our mediator must not only be thoroughly and completely man, sharing our human nature, but He must also be man without sin. If we are to be rescued from God’s just wrath the man doing the rescuing must neither have a sin nature nor must he have ever sinned. As the Catechism says, our rescuer mediator must be completely righteous. The reason is straightforward. Since sin requires the death penalty (“the soul that sinneth shall surely die”) the one who pays for other men’s penalty must not have any sin of His own since if he had His own sin, He would have to die to pay for His sin and could not be a substitute death for others.

The reality that Christ had no sin is taught in Hebrews,

4:15 For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin.

And again a few chapters later,

Heb.7:26 For such an high priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens; Heb.7:27 Who needeth not daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifice, first for his own sins, and then for the people’s: for this he did once, when he offered up himself.

We should probably point out here that another word for “mediator,” is “Priest.” In the Old Testament the Priests were those who represented God to the people and the people to God. They were the mediators, who by their work in the Sacrificial system rescued God’s people from God’s just wrath. The Hebrews 7 passage reveals Christ’s perfection in as much as He had no need to offer up sacrifice for His own sins. He had no sins that against which God could ever be angry.

As we end here, let us emphasize again the legal nature of Christianity. The rescue Christ brings to His people is a rescue concerned with satisfying God’s justice against sin. The Father had a writ against sin and if He did not punish sin He would have been unjust and so could not have been God. The reason we take some time to point this out is that modern Christianity wants to talk of the Christian faith in terms of “relationship,” and there is some truth to that (though far less than what it is given in the current church). Before we can talk about “having a relationship with God” (whatever that means in the concrete) we must first talk about the issue of justice. Christianity is a religion that is concerned about justice and God’s grace, that creates a relationship between God and man, only comes to us because God’s justice has been satisfied. Christians who can not talk about the Christian faith in terms of judicial categories are, at best, very weak Christians.

God’s justice demanded that sinners pay for sin. God’s justice demanded that if we were going to have a mediator He must be perfect man and very God. God’s justice accepted Christ’s death as our own. God’s justice, having been satisfied God can pardon (another term from the courtroom) man and free him from his condemnation (another courtroom term).

Ask The Pastor — Isn’t Postmillennialism Naive?

Brother Bret McAtee,

If the Calvinist System of thought has been around a few hundred years why aren’t things improving if it is the anwser, and why have the proponents of Calvinist thought, ie the presbyterians,fallen into liberalism as fast or faster than those of other systems? I think it is kind of strange to hear a Calvinist think that man is going to bring back Christ by providing Him a Christian world. Seems things are going the other way. I would be really discouraged if I thought it was because I wasn’t trying hard enough. Which leads to the question can we live the Christian life or are we sinners until death?

Steve,

Thanks for your questions. I hope I can give an answer that does justice to the seriousness behind their intent.

‎1.) Are you really arguing Steve that the last 100 years have not seen vast improvements? Why I’m old enough to remember my Grandmothers house with no running water and no indoor bathroom. We have had advances in medicine, technology, and science. Our quality and duration of life has increased markedly. So, I would say there clearly have been improvements and those improvements can be traced directly or indirectly to Biblical Christianity and a Biblical worldview.

2.) Presbyterians have fallen into Liberalism because they are sinners. Of course the problem isn’t with the faith itself. Our sin, as Presbyterians, doesn’t prove the inadequacy of our undoubted Catholic Christian Faith. Rather our sin as Presbyterians proves that we seldom live up to all we know to be true. Secondly, on this point, Biblical eschatology does not argue that the advance of the Kingdom is always evenly steadily upwards. We understand, that in God’s economy there are tides of prosperity that advance and decline, but like the tide that goes in and out we always see the tide coming in further up with each new high tide.

Here I paraphrase Robert E. Lee who summarizes nicely the Postmillennial understanding,

“The truth is this: The march of Providence is so slow, and our desires so impatient; the work of progress is so immense and our means of aiding it so feeble; the life of humanity is so long, that of the individual so brief, that we often see only the ebb of the advancing wave and are thus discouraged. It is Christ’s Sovereignty in and over history that teaches us to hope.”

3.) Of course no Calvinist (Biblical Christian) thinks that he is, by his efforts, going to bring back Christ. No man who knows himself would ever think that. No, it is the work of the Holy Spirit in His people, often despite His people, who will do the work of conversion and will ready the world for Christ’s return. Remember I Cor. 15 “He must reign until He puts all things under His feet.” It is only after all things are under His feet (the world’s rebellion put down) that will find our benevolent and great Warrior King, the Lord Christ returning.

I look forward to that day. Even if it should not happen in my lifetime I look forward to doing my part to aid in the hastening of that day.

4.) Finally, the answer to your last question is, “yes.” We remain, throughout our lives, at the same time sinner and saint. We are not what we once were but we are not yet what we will one day be. Our obedience, by the Spirit’s sanctifying work is greater than it was, but not as great as it will be, and yet even when it is greater we will have to say “we are unprofitable servants, we have only done what we ought.”

Unity In Diversity In The Postmillennial Kingdom

There is a movement afoot in some “Christian” quarters to suggest that the Postmillenialism requires us to see that God builds His Kingdom by the elimination of ethnic and national distinctions. Personally, I see such “thinking” as a kind of Baptized Cultural Marxism, since it is likewise the goal of the Cultural Marxists to eliminate the idea of distinct ethnicity and / or national identity. This can be seen by examining just a few of the words from the Cultural Marxists and their ideological forebears,

“Princes and nations will disappear without violence from the earth, the human race will become one family and the world the abode of reasonable men.”

-Adam Weishaupt, quoted in Paul Johnson, Intellectuals (London: Orion Books Limited, 1993), p. 32.

Capitalism developed the ever more inhuman polarization of the sexes. The cult of making distinctions, which serves only for oppression, is now being swept away by awareness of resemblance and identity.

M. Walser
Uber die neusten Stimmungen im Westen
In: Kursbuch, Bd. 20, 1970, S. 19-41.

”What will be the attitude of communism to existing nationalities?

The nationalities of the peoples associating themselves in accordance with the principle of community will be compelled to mingle with each other as a result of this association and hereby to dissolve themselves, just as the various estate and class distinctions must disappear through the abolition of their basis, private property.”

~ Frederick Engels in “The Principles of Communism”, 1847

“The equality of races and nations is one of the most important elements of the moral strength and might of the Soviet state. Soviet anthropology develops the one correct concept, that all the races of mankind are biologically equal. The genuinely materialist conception of the origin of man and of races serves the struggle against racism, against all idealist, mystic conceptions of man, his past, present and future.”

—Mikhail Nesturkh, Soviet anthropologist, 1959
“The Origin of Man” (Moscow)Mikhail Nesturkh, Soviet anthropologist, 1959:

This from Igor Shafareivich’s “Socialist Phenomenon”

“But with almost perverse consistency, most of the projections of Marxism have been proven incorrect. A better percentage of correct predictions could probably have by making random guesses…. we limit ourselves to three (examples) in order to underscore the typical and in most cases fundamental nature of the errors: the truth proved to be not merely different but in fact the opposite to that which had been predicted.

a.) The national question: ‘National differences and antagonistic interests among various peoples are already vanishing more and more and more thanks to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world market, to uniformity in the mode of production and in the corresponding conditions of life. The supremacy of the proletariat will accelerate the disappearances of differences.’

However, the Biblical view of race, ethnicity, and national identity is far different than what is offered by the Cultural Marxists and those Christians who are trying to Baptize the elimination of ethnic markers by embracing the Marxist anthropology “that the genuinely materialist conception of the origin of man and of races is that all the races of mankind are biologically equal.” And of course, in the Marxist world and life view “biologically equal” means mere component parts that can be used interchangeably in the great machine culture that Marxists always turn society into. “Biologically equal,” for these people means that there is no God ordained differences between the families of men.

In the quotes below we see a different vision than that given by the Alienists in our midst.

“Now the predicates of the covenant are applied in Isa. 19 to the Gentiles of the future, — “Egypt my people, and Assyria, the work of my hands, and Israel, mine inheritance,” Egypt, the people of “Jehovah of hosts,” (Isa. 19:25) is therefore also expected to live up to the covenant obligations, implied for Jehovah’s people. And Assyria comes under similar obligations and privileges. These nations are representative of the great Gentile world, to which the covenant privileges will therefore be extended.”

Martin J. Wyngaarden, The Future of the Kingdom in Prophecy and Fulfillment: A Study of the Scope of “Spiritualization” in Scripture (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2011), p. 94.

“More than a dozen excellent commentaries could be mentioned that all interpret Israel as thus inclusive of Jew and Gentile, in this verse, — the Gentile adherents thus being merged with the covenant people of Israel, though each nationality remains distinct.”

“This abiding distinction of the nationalities is also clearly implied by Isaiah. For, though Israel is frequently called Jehovah’s People, the work of his hands, his inheritance, yet these three epithets severally are applied not only to Israel, but also to Assyria and to Egypt: “Blessed be Egypt, my people, and Assyria, the work of my hands, and Israel, mine inheritance.” 19:25.

Thus the highest description of Jehovah’s covenant people is applied to Egypt, — “my people,” — showing that the Gentiles will share the covenant blessings, not less than Israel. Yet the several nationalities are here kept distinct, even when Gentiles share, in the covenant blessing, on a level of equality with Israel. Egypt, Assyria and Israel are not nationally merged. And the same principles, that nationalities are not obliterated, by membership in the covenant, applies, of course, also in the New Testament dispensation.”

Wyngaarden, pp. 101-102.

What the Alienist Christians are missing in their lurch towards amalgamation is that they are in bed with some strange bedfellows. Here is another person they with whom they are sleeping,

“National and racial chauvinism is a vestige of the misanthropic customs characteristic of the period of cannibalism.”

Papa Joe Stalin

Hostility towards the validity of national and ethnic identity tend to rise at various times when it is useful to those in power or as part of political strategy. Such was the straitjacket imposed on thought by Soviet socialism that nationality was understood as “a social construct” that could easily be de-constructed. As Solzhenitsyn observes in his frank way:

“Before the camps, I regarded the existence of nationality as something that shouldn’t be noticed—nationality did not really exist, only humanity. But in the camps one learns: if you belong to a successful nation you are protected and you survive. If you are part of universal humanity—too bad for you.”

Many of the Christian Alienists are living in Solzhenitsyn’s pre-camp reality. Like the pre-Gulag Solzhenitsyn the Alienist Christians, invoking Christianity as their proof, have embraced universal humanity. They do not yet realize that what they are invoking in their advocacy of the erosion of nations for the sake of Christ, in the words of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, “will sooner lead to the entropy of the soul… not the unification of humanity.”

9th Word

Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness

The appeal to objective truth

In a world that locks out God there is no objective truth and if there is no objective truth then the whole conversation about bearing either true or false witness is a non-sequitur.

So before we can talk about commandment #9 we have to presuppose that God is.

However, our culture with its evolution in biology its existentialism in philosophy and its deconstructionism in literature we have denied God as the creator, God as the giver of meaning, and God as the author and as such we have denied that true truth exists.

“Today not only in philosophy but in politics, government, and individual morality, our generation sees solutions in terms of synthesis and not absolutes. When this happens, truth, as people have always thought of truth, has died.”

Francis Schaeffer

C. S. Lewis gets at our problem regarding bearing true witness without God when he notes,

“Suppose there was no intelligence behind the universe, …. In that case, nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking. … When the atoms inside my skull happen for physical or chemical reasons to arrange themselves in a certain way, this gives me, as a by-product, the sensation I call ‘thought’. But if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true? It’s like upsetting a glass of milk and hoping that the way the splash arranges itself will give you a map of London. But if I can’t trust my own thinking, of course I can’t trust the arguments leading to atheism; therefore I have no reason to be an atheist, or anything else. Unless I believe in God, I can’t believe in thought, so I can never use thought to disbelieve in God”

– C.S. Lewis in The Case for Christianity

If there is no God, then talking about the bearing of either false or true witness is gibberish. If God does not exist and all we are is matter in motion then all I can say in terms of witnessing is whatever bio-chemical charges that occur in my head allow me to say.

It is true that despite the wide scale denial of God there remains an expectation of bearing true witness among modern Western man, but how modern man justifies that idea is impossible to gauge. We clamor for the bearing of proper witness and yet by our denial of the God of the Bible we render such an ethic impossible.

The expectation among modern men that the truth be told is a hangover from the Christian moral tradition that built the Western world. The expectation of proper witnessing is inconsistent with a time plus chance plus circumstance world. What the modern pagan West has done is to wrench the flower of a Christian ethic — an ethic that includes forbidding false witnessing — from the theological soil that makes such an ethic possible, and have then transplanted that Christian ethic into the non-Christian theological gravel that is the theology that now informs the West.

Or to put it another way, we have cut the flower of truth telling from the theological soil where it grows and yet we still expect the flower to remain full of life. To paraphrase Lewis,

We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We scorn the notion of God and are shocked to find false witnesses in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.

So our first point this morning is if we are to be a people who care about truth telling, and if we are to put off false witnessing and put on true witnessing we must have a vibrant belief in the God of the Bible who is Himself the God of Truth (John 16:13).

Our second point as we consider the 9th commandment is to remember that the prohibition against bearing false witness should be thought of vertically before it is considered horizontally.

We are a Christian people. We are called not to bear false witness. Our primary concern, given that commandment then should be that we not bear false witness concerning the triune God. Our passion should be to be found to be faithful witnesses regarding the character of God.

There is a great need for God’s people to not give False witness concerning God today.

There are many ways that this is done. We bear false witness of God when we talk about God’s unconditional love outside the context of faith in Christ.

“Unconditional love separates God’s love from His Law. The love of God is never lawless or unprincipled, never separate from His holiness, justice, and righteousness. Unconditional love is love with no strings attached; no requirements for change, no recognition of evil or acknowledgment of right and wrong. Unconditional love is a more revolutionary concept than any other doctrine of revolution. Unconditional love means the end of discrimination between good and evil, right and wrong, better and worse, friend and enemy, and all things else. Whenever anyone asks you to love unconditionally, they are asking you to surrender unconditionally to the enemy.

R.J. Rushdoony

Ministers and laymen alike are causing tremendous confusion and damage in the modern church by bearing false witness concerning the character and nature of God. It is true for those in Christ that nothing can separate us from the Love of God, but it is also true that the Love of God makes us a people who are zealous for good works. We have no business telling those who are unconcerned with flagrantly violating God’s standard that God’s love is unconditional as if in making a claim on God is the same as revealing that God has a claim on us.

That God’s love anticipates fruit in keeping with repentance among His people is seen in passages like,

Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints. For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ (Jude 3,4).

Note here that we here strains of the false witness against God that his love does not expect a certain walk. These people that Jude writes about had turned the grace of God into lasciviousness.

Lasciviousness” is translated from the Greek word aselgeia, which means “unbridled lust, excess, wantonness, outrageousness, shamelessness, insolence.”

So, the false witness against God’s character (gracious = promiscuous) is no new thing and yet that danger is something we need to keep before us.

Likewise false witness concerning God is born when Christians deny His exhaustive sovereignty.

When Christians deny, as many do, Grace Alone Through Faith Alone in Christ Alone as our rescue from sin, when we deny the doctrines of Grace that teaches that redeemed man contributes nothing to His right standing before God, when we deny the exhaustive providence of God of the kind taught in our Catechism, or when we deny the necessity to esteem the use of God’s law as a guide for life for Christians, in both the private realm and the public square, we bear false witness concerning God’s sovereignty and so violate the 9th commandment most egregiously.

When Scripture’s teach, “The Lord God Omnipotent Reigns,” it means that God is all powerful — is Sovereign.

There are other ways that we can bear false witness concerning God. We can question God’s word as being inerrant and infallible. We can divide God’s word up so that the Old Testament has an expiration date that no longer requires us to take it seriously. We can bear false witness concerning who God’s people are mistakenly teaching that God’s people are still the Jews when Scripture teaches that the Church is the people of God.

So, when we consider the necessity to not bear false witness perhaps what should go through our minds of utmost importance is pray that God would grant us grace not to bear false witness against Him.

Our third point this morning is to consider the 9th commandment as a requisite for justice in courts of law.

The ninth commandment, as it applies to a horizontal level (man with man) involves, first of all, judicial or courtroom matters. That is not its only sphere, in man’s relationship to his fellow man but it is its primary one.

The ruling chieftains of a set place exercised justice in ancient Israel. The system that was organized for the pursuit of justice was based upon witnessing. If God’s justice was to be had in this system then it required truth telling in the courtroom setting.There was no fingerprinting. No genetic testing. What was required and what was relied upon were truth telling witnesses.

Dt. 17:6 On the evidence of two witnesses or three witnesses, he who is to die shall be put to death; he shall not be put to death on the]evidence of one witness.

Dt. 19:15 “ A single witness shall not rise up against a man on account of any iniquity or any sin [a]which he has committed; on the [b]evidence of two or three witnesses a matter shall be confirmed.

We see then with the 9th commandment how serious God was about the issue of justice among men. What established justice among men was the testimony of two witnesses. If witnesses were false the gravest of consequences could occur and the pursuit of justice would lead to injustice.

I Kings 21:13 Then the two worthless men came in and sat before him; and the worthless men testified against him, even against Naboth, before the people, saying, “Naboth cursed God and the king.” So they took him outside the city and stoned him to death with stones.

In this incident we see why Proverbs says,

8 Like a club and a sword and a sharp arrow
Is a man who bears false witness against his neighbor.

So, given how serious this witnessing was we can readily understand why God gave, as one of the 10 words, the prohibition of false witnessing. God also put teeth in this prohibition against false witnessing. If one were caught giving false witness that person would receive in themselves the penalty that was designated for the person who they were trying to convict with their false witness.

Dt. 19:16 If a malicious witness rises up against a man to [a]accuse him of [b]wrongdoing, 17 then both the men who have the dispute shall stand before the Lord, before the priests and the judges who will be in office in those days. 18 The judges shall investigate thoroughly, and if the witness is a false witness and he has [c]accused his brother falsely, 19 then you shall do to him just as he had intended to do to his brother. Thus you shall purge the evil from among you.

So the prohibition against false witnessing was aimed at insuring justice and justice is something that God loves.

So, the 9th word reinforces the 6th, 7th, and 8th word. In order to protect life, marriage, and property you need legal institutions that can bring justice to bear but in order to bring justice to bear you need a prohibition against false witnessing since witnesses are instrumental in arriving at justice.

The ninth commandment involves a crucial issue — the safeguarding of honor, life, marriage and property. Where there is no justice because false witnessing abounds liberty vanishes and fear and injustice (Remember Naboth) reign.

72 Give the king your justice, O God,
and your righteousness to the royal son!
2 May he judge your people with righteousness,
and your poor with justice!
3 Let the mountains bear prosperity for the people,
and the hills, in righteousness!

Of course we still see the importance of the 9th commandment in our perjury laws. Being found guilty of perjury can land a person in a boatload of trouble. The reason for this today is the same as it was when the 9th commandment was given. If a court can not get at the truth, there will be no justice and where there is no justice every man will do what is right in his own eyes.

“All” in Romans 5:18

Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life. For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man’s obedience many will be made righteous.

Now were we to take this as some would we would have to embrace a Universalist doctrine. We would be forced to say that as the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life therefore all men are justified. This of course proves too much. Orthodox Christians understand that other Scriptures clearly don’t allow for Universalism and therefore by comparing Scripture with Scripture we don’t believe this text is teaching universalism although some might think that is the face value of the text.

Neither can we get a Hypothetical universalism out of this text. There is nothing in Romans 5:12-21 that would indicate to us that Jesus only made Justification hypothetical or only possible. For example vs. 16 says the free gift resulted in justification. Vs. 16 does not say that the free gift resulted in possible justification. What Christ accomplished on the Cross was justification for His people, not a hypothetical justification for a hypothetical people.

We would note that Rm. 5:18-19 is a conclusionary statement summing up what the Apostle has set out in vs. 12-17. That which the Apostle has set out in those verses is the relationship between Adam as a Federal Head and all those in Him and the relationship between Christ as a Federal head and all those in Him.

Note vs. 16 — Judgment from one offense resulted in condemnation. To whom does this Condemnation apply? Well to all who are Federally united to the First Adam (cmp. vs. 12) Meanwhile the Free gift results in Justification. To whom does this Justification apply? Well for all who were and are Federally united to the Second Adam.

Now we turn to the word “all” in Romans 5:18

Therefore as by the offense of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation;

I would say given the way the Apostle’s argument has developed in 12f that the first “all” is inclusive of all those who ever were Federally united to Adam. (Which means everybody since, “In Adam’s fall we sinned all”)

continuing in Romans 5:18

“even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life.”

Similarly I would say given the way the Apostles argument has developed in 12f that this second “all” is an all that is just as inclusive as the first all, with the understanding that it is referring to the “all” that are Federally united to the Second Adam.

So, the word “all” is the first instance is referring to the all who have been united to the First Adam. While the second all is speaking of a different all, to wit, all those united to the Second Adam.

So, the word all here does not apply to the same grouping of people but still is appropriate given that it applies to the total that is related to each Federal Head (Adam and Christ respectively). All of this is supported by the main thrust of the Apostle’s analogy. To wit, that there is a parallel between Adam and Christ in that condemnation and justification are the direct fruit of their disobedience and obedience. To say that all bore the fruit of condemnation from their Federal relation to Adam and that all might only possibly bear the fruit of justification by their possible relation to the Second Adam completely deconstructs the Apostles analogy. Being Federally united to Christ had consequences that were never merely possible just as being in Adam had consequences that were never merely possible.