Reigning in Life

Towards the end of Romans chapter 5 there is an important conclusion to what has been said in the previous chapters about grace, righteousness and obedience. In 5:15 it says: "by the grace of one man, Jesus Christ". In 5:18 it says: "by the righteousness of one", and in 5:19: "by the obedience of one". Grace and righteousness are possible. All this is within our reach through the obedience of our Lord Jesus Christ.

So these things are not in us, they are not of our making. We can exclaim like Paul, a little earlier in this epistle: "Where then is boasting? It is excluded" (3:27). Grace, righteousness and obedience are given to us in Jesus Christ because he settled the account against us. He removed the condemnation that hung over our heads, receiving in himself the wrath of God, which was due to our sin.

For us it is grace, it is righteousness, but for the Lord it was a bloody sacrifice, redemption by his blood placed on the mercy seat, after the manner of the sacrifices in the time of the law. God placed him there as a Victim on the altar of sacrifice, and then his blood placed on the ark, so that, on the other side (on our side), his death might become life for us.

Christ's obedience led him to death, and from his death came forth for us the grace and righteousness of God. All God's gifts to us pass through death. If death is experienced by the Lord, then we only receive life. And that part of his death that we experience, becomes life for others. As Paul says: "So death is at work in us, and life in you" (2 Cor. 4:12).

The Lord went everywhere experiencing death in Himself, or, in other words, carrying the cross. He lived his whole life on the principle of the cross, that is, denying himself. This path is also laid out for us.

Yet here, at the beginning of our Christian life, when we first emerge from death, it is by the grace and righteousness of one Man, Jesus Christ, that we live; it is by his obedience that we are constituted righteous, it is by his cross that we receive life. Yet now, as a gift from God, these things are in us. And furthermore, it is God's desire that these things abound in us, and that we reign in them.

This is God's purpose. That as we received grace, righteousness, and obedience by one man, Jesus Christ, so by him we may reign in life. "For if by one man's trespass death reigned by one man, Jesus Christ, much more they who receive abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one man, Jesus Christ" (5:17). There is a quiet, simple, but happy kingdom in the hearts of those who have Christ as their righteousness and their life!

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