The School of Obedience

Through the obedience of the One shall all the many be made righteous.... Know ye not that ye are servants of obedience unto righteousness?' -Rom. 5:19; 6:16. 'Through the obedience of the One shall the many be made righteous.' These words tell us what we owe to Christ. As in Adam we were made sinners, in Christ we are made righteous. The words tell us, too, to what in Christ it is we owe our righteousness. As Adam's disobedience made us sinners, the obedience of Christ makes us righteous. To the obedience of Christ we owe everything. Among, the treasures of our inheritance in Christ this is one of the richest. How many have never studied it, so as to love it and delight in it, and get the full blessing of it! May God, by His Holy Spirit, reveal its glory, and make us partakers of its power. You are familiar with the blessed truth of justification by faith. In the section of the Epistle to the Romans preceding our passage (3:21-5:11) Paul had taught what its ever-blessed foundation was-the atonement of the blood of Christ; what its way and condition-faith in the free grace of a God who justifies the ungodly; and what its blessed fruits-the bestowment of the righteousness of Christ, with an immediate access into the favor of God, and the hope of glory. In our passage he now proceeds to unfold the deeper truth of the union with Christ by faith, in which justification has its root, and which makes it possible and right for God to accept us for His sake.