Dual Panel1SINCE then it is by faith that we are justified, let us grasp the fact that we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
2Through him we have confidently entered into this new relationship of grace, and here we take our stand, in happy certainty of the glorious things he has for us in the future.
3This doesn't mean, of course, that we have only a hope of future joyswe can be full of joy here and now even in our trials and troubles.
4These very things will give us patient endurance; this in turn will develop a mature character, and a character of this sort produces a steady hope,
5a hope that will never disappoint us. Already we have the love of God flooding through our hearts by the Holy Spirit given to us.
6And we can see that it was at the very time that we were powerless to help ourselves that Christ died for sinful men.
7In human experience it is a rare thing for one man to give his life for another, even if the latter be a good man, though there have been a few who have had the courage to do it.
8Yet the proof of God's amazing love is this: that it was while we were sinners that Christ died for us.
9Moreover, if he did that for us while we were sinners, now that we are men justified by the shedding of his blood, what reason have we to fear the wrath of God?
10If, while we were his enemies, Christ reconciled us to God by dying for us, surely now that we are reconciled we may be perfectly certain of our salvation through his living in us.
11Nor, I am sure, is this a matter of bare salvationwe may hold our heads high in the light of God's love because of the reconciliation which Christ has made.
12This, then, is what has happened. Sin made its entry into the world through one man, and through sin, death. The entail of sin and death passed on to the whole human race, and no one could break it for no one was himself free from sin.
13Sin, you see, was in the world long before the Law, though I suppose, technically speaking, it was not "sin" where there was no law to define it.
14Nevertheless death, the complement of sin, held sway over mankind from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sin was quite unlike Adam's. Adam, the first man, foreshadows in some degree the man who has to come.
15But the gift of God through Christ is a very different matter from the "account rendered" through the sin of Adam. For while as a result of one man's sin death by natural consequence became the common lot of men, it was by the generosity of God, the free giving of the grace of the one man Jesus Christ, that the love of God overflowed for the benefit of all men.
16Nor is the effect of God's gift the same as the effect of that one man's sin. For in the one case one man's sin brought its inevitable judgment, and the result was condemnation. But, in the other, countless men's sins are met with the free gift of grace, and the result is justification before God.
17For if one man's offence meant that men should be slaves to death all their lives, it is a far greater thing that through another man, Jesus Christ, men by their acceptance of his more than sufficient grace and righteousness, should live their lives victoriously.
18We see, then, that as one act of sin exposed the whole race of men to God's judgment and condemnation, so one act of perfect righteousness presents all men freely acquitted in the sight of God.
19One man's disobedience placed all men under the threat of condemnation, but one man's obedience has the power to present all men righteous before God.
20Now we find that the Law keeps slipping into the picture to point the vast extent of sin. Yet, though sin is shown to be wide and deep, thank God his grace is wider and deeper still!
21The whole outlook changessin used to be the master of men and in the and handed them over to death; now grace is the ruling factor, with its purpose making men right with God and its end the bringing of them to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.