ife, as Adam transmitted the
penalty of death. His life was one summary obedience: one perfectly
acceptable object to the eyes of God. And there flows from it an
abundant river of the good favour of God--which is also the good favour
of the man Jesus Christ--and of the gift by which that good favour
shows itself, the gift of righteousness extending on into an eternal
life. Therefore we may argue {188} _a fortiori_[1] from the influence
of Adam to the influence of Christ--[_a fortiori_, because, though God
has been, so to speak, constrained to punish us, His whole desire is to
do us good; and the method of diffusion which He has allowed to operate
for evil, we can be much more sure He will set to work for good][2].
We see the trespass of the one generating universal death, and we are
sure that the counter influence of Christ is as universally diffusive
and incomparably more powerful. We see the one man's offence appealing
to God for judgement and producing a condemned race; but we see, on the
other hand, a multitude of sins appealing to the divine compassion to
let loose the free gift which shall make for acquittal. If the
consequence of the transgression was inevitable, and a reign of death
followed, so much more certainly must the divine gift, abundant as it
is, bring about the triumph of eternal life. If the one fault diffused
itself in universal condemnation, so the one act which meets the divine
approval must diffuse itself to produce {189} universally an accepted
life. One disobedience made the whole race sinners: one obedience
shall make the whole race righteous. The law came in parenthetically
to the world of sin and death to let actual sin, like Adam's, have its
full and fatal scope. But the greatness of the sin only magnifies
still more the greatness of the remedy which divine goodness supplies,
that the sovereignty of sin in a world of death might be swallowed up
in the sovereignty of divine goodwill working through righteousness
unto life eternal through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Therefore, as through one man sin entered into the world, and death
through sin; and so death passed unto all men, for that all
sinned:--for until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed
when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until
Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the likeness of Adam's
transgression, who is a figure of him that was to come. But not as the
trespass, so also _