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Faith

Understanding justification

Adam seems to shoulder a lot of blame in chapter 5 of Paul’s letter to the Romans, when Paul says: “Sin entered the world through one man, and death followed sin, so that death was passed on to all people because all have sinned.” Not everyone has sinned in the same way as Adam, but according to the Genesis account Adam and Eve were the first people to sin, and everyone who has lived since them, apart from Jesus, has chosen to follow the same path.

The penalty for sin that Adam received was death, and since Adam everyone has had to pay the same penalty. However, Paul says, the cycle of sin and death has been broken by the free gift of Jesus Christ, overflowing to many people. We have still sinned, but Jesus has offered to pay the penalty for us, by dying on the cross. As the result of his death in our place, the record of our sins is wiped away and, if we choose to accept it, we can have eternal life.

Paul says: “Because we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” We are not justified by our own merits or by our good deeds outweighing our bad deeds; our justification comes only if we choose to place our trust in Jesus’s offer to pay the penalty for our sin by dying in our place. It seems immoral to let an innocent man die instead of a guilty person, but it is only through agreeing to this arrangement that we can have peace with God.