Dear Friends,
Many think everything revolves around them; they got lost when they sinned the first time and they got saved when they repented and believed. Is that the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Not according to the Bible passage in today’s devotion which will enlarge your vision. God bless you.

Because of Calvary,
John Janney

• Romans 5:12-21 (ESV)

  12 Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned— 13 for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. 14 Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.

  15 But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. 16 And the free gift is not like the result of that one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. 17 For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.

  18 Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. 19 For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous. 20 Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, 21 so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

“There are some who cavil at the justice of this representative arrangement, but there are many others who believe in it, and rejoice over it; always contend that it is a happy circumstance for us that we did fa11 and were condemned in the bulk in our representative; because, had we, each one of us, been individually, put upon the like probation, we should, to a certainty, all of us have fallen. We are none of us better than our first parent was; and if the experiment had been repeated in the case of each one of us, it would have ended in the same sorrowful way. But then it must have ended finally and fatally; — at least, so we believe; for when the angels fell sinning individually, there was no hope of restoration for them. Whether infinite wisdom might not have devised a plan, consistent with justice, by which the angels who had apostatized might have been restored, is more than we can tell. We know that the Lord did not devise any such plan. They individually sinned, and, sinning, fell past all hope of recovery; and now they are ‘reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.’ No gospel was ever preached to them, — no atonement was ever made for them; but they were left to abide in their sinful condition, willingly to persevere in perpetual rebellion against the Most High.

“But we, happily, had fallen through a representative; and, therefore, we could be restored by another Representative; so, in the infinite wisdom and mercy Of God, there came into the world the second Adam, — man, really man, though much more than man, for he was also God, and he offered an atonement for the offense committed against the law, — such an atonement that whosoever believeth in him hath his sins for ever put away. Thus, we rise in the same manner as we fell, only in a very different Person. We fell in the first Adam; we rise in the second Adam; we fell, in the first Adam, through no fault of our own; we, rise, in the second Adam, through no merit of our own; it is of the free grace of God that we are received back into his favor.” [Charles Haddon Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit XLVII, (London: Passmore and Alabaster, 1901), p. 434-435]