Read: Romans 5:12-21 - STEP Bible, Bible Gateway
In case any of St Paul’s readers should have thought that Jesus’ death sorts out only the problem of Israel’s relationship with God – rather than the whole world’s – Paul goes on to show (again) how the problem of human sin is not really one unique to the Jewish people at all, but a universal one. The Jewish people were uniquely well placed to understand sin – yes; after all, the Jewish people alone had the Law to tell them what was sinful and what wasn’t. But remember chapter 1 of Paul’s letter! The Gentiles have sinned, too; they just didn’t have the statute-book to tell them how exactly they were sinning.
And just as the problem of sin is a universal one, so too God’s answer to that problem is a universal one. Yes, Jesus of Nazareth was a Jew, and yes, the sacrifice of his life makes full sense only when you understand it against the backdrop of the Jewish system of sacrifices. But who was the first sinner? Adam, the very first human being! And he was not a Jew – he lived far earlier than any people who could call themselves ‘Jews’.
So, says Paul, sin came into the world at the hands of this one person – Adam – who stands for all humanity, and not just for Jews. Well, so too, the solution to the problem of sin came into the world through the death of one person– Jesus (who happened to be a Jew, living out his days and his death in a Jewish framework). By his sacrifice of himself, Christ won not just salvation for the Jews, who were his people by bloodline, but salvation for all of us who are his people by faith, whether Jew or Gentile. It is only faith that matters now!
Of course, that fact raises a critically important question. Do we really have faith in Jesus? That is the question that the self-examination process of Lent should pose us.
These devotions were originally written for the parish of All Saints, Ascot and we are grateful for permission to republish them on Fulcrum.
Patrick is curate of All Saints’, Ascot in Berkshire. A musicologist by training, he is married to Lydia, a university lecturer, and dad to Madeleine. He writes (sporadically) at benedixisti.wordpress.com and tweets (even more sporadically) as @patrickgilday.