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Edwards Answers Dr. T on Romans 5:12 | Jonathan Edwards · Reformed Thinking

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  Welcome to Reformed thinking, the place where we take on some
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  of the weightiest theological questions by going straight to
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  the sources. Today we're doing a deep dive
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  into some notes from Jonathan Edwards, specifically his
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  critique of a figure called Doctor T on one of the most
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  debated chapters in the Bible. That's right.
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  Romans chapter 5. Yeah.
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  And the core questions we're grappling with today are huge.
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  How did sin and death actually enter the world?
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  And maybe the bigger question for you listening is, how does a
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  sin committed thousands of years ago by Adam have anything to do
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  with your life, your condemnation, or your
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  justification in Christ? It's a critical line of inquiry
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  because you know, how you answer that question about original sin
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  really shapes how you understand God's justice.
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  It does. It also shapes how you see the
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  work of Christ. If Adam's sin doesn't relate to
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  us in a very specific way, then the work of Christ, which is the
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  great reversal, loses its symmetry.
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  So our mission today is to use these notes from Edwards to
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  really understand the difference between 2 views.
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  On the one hand, you have the idea that Adam's fall was just a
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  historical event. He was the first one to sin,
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  period. And on the other hand, you have
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  the view that Adam's fall was a federal causal reality, that
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  what he did established a legal status for all of mankind.
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  That distinction, causal versus chronological, that's really the
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  whole battlefield here. It is if you miss that causal
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  connection, that legal mechanism, then Paul's whole
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  argument in Romans 5 where he's constantly setting up Adam in
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  Christ as parallels, it just it's sort of unraveled.
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  So we're really looking for an answer to that universal human
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  experience. Why do we see suffering,
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  affliction and death everywhere, across all cultures and all
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  time, if sin is just a series of individual isolated choices,
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  right? Where did this universal
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  condition come from? OK, so let's get into it, and
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  let's start where Edwards and Doctor T actually find some
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  common ground. It's a shared textual point that
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  Edwards then very cleverly uses as a lever against Doctor TS
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  whole system. Yes, and that starting point is
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  the doctrine of typology. Adam is a type of Christ.
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  Exactly. Doctor T himself agrees with
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  this. He has to.
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  It's right there in Romans 5.14 that Adam is the figure of
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  Christ, or the type of hymn that was to come.
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  All sides concede this point. But this is where Edwards starts
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  to build his counter argument. He takes this shared idea that
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  Adam is the figure of Christ, and he uses it to argue against
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  Doctor T's very narrow reading of the phrase by one man.
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  He does. Edwards's focus on the details
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  here is just incredible. He points out that the apostle
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  Paul puts enormous stress on the one man on Adam.
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  Which is strange if you think about it chronologically.
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  It's very strange because factually, if you go back to
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  Genesis, Eve was the one who began the physical act of
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  transgression. She ate first.
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  So Paul was just trying to to identify who sinned first.
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  He should have said by one woman he.
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  Should have. And Edwards's argument is that
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  Paul's stress on Adam is only justified because Adam is the
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  type, the designated federal head, the representative.
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  That status as a representative is what makes him the focus, not
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  his position on a timeline. Precisely if Adam was just the
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  first person in a sequence of sinners, the intense focus on
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  him over Eve makes very little sense as a theological argument.
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  It becomes a question of what Paul is trying to do.
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  Is he just recording history or is he explaining a legal and
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  theological reality? Right.
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  And for Edwards, it's clear Paul isn't being factually sloppy by
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  ignoring Eve. He's being theologically
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  precise. He bypasses Eve not because she
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  was less guilty, but because her act was a personal
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  transgression. Adam's act, on the other hand,
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  was a representative one. He was the head of the Covenant.
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  Yes, that's why he and he alone is set up as the figure or the
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  type that corresponds to the second Adam to Christ.
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  Doctor Key wants to flatten that status down to just chronology,
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  and Edwards says that's a disservice to the text itself.
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  So if that representative status is off the table for Doctor T,
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  how does he define the entry of sin into the world?
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  What does Romans 5.1 mean to him?
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  For Doctor T, the phrase sin entered into the world, and
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  death by sin means something very simple.
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  It just means Adam began transgression.
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  So sin entered in the sense that it made its first appearance on
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  the historical state through him.
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  That's it. That sounds, you know, plausible
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  in the surface, but when you start to unpack the
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  implications, it really seems to empty the verse of its power.
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  It does. Doctor TS view ends up
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  restricting the verse into really significant ways first.
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  He sees it as just a statement of priority.
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  Meaning it's only identifying who happened to sin first.
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  Exactly. It's putting Adam at the top of
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  the list of sinners. And crucially, Dr. T argues that
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  the verse is not trying to explain the origin of evil's
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  pervasive influence. It's not describing how this,
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  this general malady, this sinful disposition came upon the whole
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  world. So it turns one of the most
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  profound theological statements in the Bible into a kind of
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  trivial historical note. It does, and that leads to his
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  second restriction, which is that it describes a single
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  restricted instance. Dr. T implies that sin entered
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  only in that one act of Adam's transgression.
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  So it was present in the world only in Adam at that moment.
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  Yes, he explicitly denies that the phrase describes a wide
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  extent of wickedness, or a continued series that flows from
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  that act to the rest of the world.
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  In his view, sin was in the world with Adam, and then after
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  that everyone else gets a fresh start, morally speaking and just
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  happens to repeat Adam's choice on their own.
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  Which brings us to Edwards's counterattack.
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  He really lays out the logical flaws of reducing everything to
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  mere chronology. We already touched on the
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  problem of Eve. Right, that the phrase by one
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  man just doesn't work if it's just about who was first.
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  But Edwards takes it a step further with this really
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  powerful illustration. The shipwreck analogy.
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  Yes, it's famous for a reason. It perfectly captures the
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  difference between simple chronology and originating
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  causality. So walk us through it, OK?
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  Edwards asks you to imagine a scenario.
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  A single Phoenician sailor is the very first human being in
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  history to reach the American continent.
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  His shipwrecks, he's driven ashore and he dies right there
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  on the. Beach.
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  OK, so he is without a doubt the first person to get there.
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  Unquestionably. But Edwards says it would be
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  completely absurd to then make the statement mankind came into
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  America by that one man. Right, because his arrival
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  didn't cause the population of the continent, he was just the
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  first data point on a timeline. Exactly.
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  His single isolated act had no generative power.
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  It didn't lead to anything. And this is the core of the
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  analogy drive. He is essentially defining Adam
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  as that shipwrecked sailor. The first one is sin, sure, but
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  his act has no causal influence on the billions of sinners who
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  come after him. That is the heart of Edwards's
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  critique. For Edwards, Adam isn't the
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  shipwrecked sailor. He's The Fountainhead, the
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  progenitor, the legal representative from whom the
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  entire stream of sin and death flows to the rest of the world.
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  So Adam's act must have a powerful causal effect on
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  everyone else, otherwise the language Paul uses in Romans 5
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  is just overblown and misleading.
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  Which moves us right into the core of the disagreement, Dr.
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  T's systematic denial of any causal connection between Adam's
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  offense and the consequences that mankind faces.
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  Edward's charge is that Doctor T denies any real dependence or
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  influence of any sort whatsoever between what Adam did and what
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  we experience Death, affliction, suffering.
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  And this denial is total. It covers every possible
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  category of connection that theologians use.
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  We kind of have to understand these categories because by
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  taking them apart one by one, Doctor T is trying to isolate
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  every individual from Adam's guilt.
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  Which has massive implications for how you understand
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  salvation. Huge.
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  OK, so let's break down the four types of causal dependence that
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  Doctor T rejects, which Edward says are absolutely essential to
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  the doctrine. What's the first one he gets rid
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  of? The first is natural dependence.
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  This is probably the easiest 1 to get your head around.
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  OK, Doctor T says there is no connection by any natural
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  influence of that one act to make all mankind mortal.
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  In other words, Adam didn't like biologically poison the human
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  race. His sin didn't flip a switch in
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  his DNA that then passed down mortality to all his kids like a
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  genetic disease. Exactly.
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  He denies any kind of physical, biological mechanism for the
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  transmission of mortality. And if he denies that natural
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  influence, then our death has to be a completely separate, almost
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  arbitrary act of God. Right.
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  That's the consequence. If the connection isn't natural,
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  then when we die, we're not dying because of Adam's sin in a
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  causal sense. We're just dying after Adam's
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  sin because God decided for some other reason to impose mortality
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  on us. It cuts the cord between the
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  physical consequence and the moral transgression.
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  OK, so if the human stream wasn't naturally poisoned, what
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  about the moral side of it? That must be the second denial,
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  moral dependence. Yes, and this is where Doctor
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  T's argument really connects with a more modern way of
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  thinking. He strongly rejects the idea
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  that we are exposed to any negative consequences on any
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  moral account because of Adam's sin.
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  He's saying we don't deserve to be punished for something he
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  did. Precisely.
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  Dr. T believes that we, Adam's posterity, are not exposed to
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  the slightest degree of evil. Not even a headache, not even
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  stubbing your toe as a punishment for what Adam did.
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  From an intuitive standpoint, I can see the appeal of that, the
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  idea that you shouldn't be blamed for a choice someone else
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  made thousands of years ago. That sounds fair on the surface.
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  How does Edwards push back against that?
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  Well, Edwards doesn't appeal to our modern intuitions about
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  fairness. He appeals to the character of
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  God, specifically his justice and holiness.
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  Edwards's point is that a just God does not punish the
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  innocent. So the fact that we are punished
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  is proof that we're not innocent.
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  That's the logic. The universal experience of
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  death, sorrow and affliction, which Edwards sees as clearly
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  penal consequences, not blessings, is itself the proof
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  that mankind is not morally innocent in this matter.
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  If we receive the punishment, we must somehow share in the guilt.
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  So for Edwards, Doctor T system ends up making God look unjust
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  because it has him imposing misery and death on billions of
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  innocent people. Correct.
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  The reformed answer which Edwards is defending is
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  imputation. Adam's guilt is legally counted
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  to his descendants, which makes them morally culpable and
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  therefore justly liable for the penal consequences.
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  That's a vital clarification. OK, so no natural link, no moral
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  culpability flowing from Adam. That just leaves the
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  institutional link, the governmental 1 legal dependence.
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  And this is the absolute centerpiece of the entire
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  conflict, the denial of legal dependence.
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  Dr. T has to reject any connection based on an
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  antecedent constitution or what the Reformed tradition calls the
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  Covenant of Works. He has to get rid of the idea
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  that God made a formal arrangement with Adam as a
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  representative. He does, and to do that he
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  argues that the original threat, in the day that you eat of it
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  you shall surely die, didn't mention Adam's posterity at all.
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  It was only for Adam himself. But he goes even further than
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  that to try and get rid of the legal link right.
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  He makes a very specific claim about the timeline.
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  A very specific and very radical claim.
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  Doctor T argues that the sentence of death was passed
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  after that original constitution, the Covenant of
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  Works was supposedly abolished or annulled.
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  So God cancels the contract before he passes sentence.
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  That's the idea. It's a difficult argument to
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  prove from Scripture, but for Doctor T it's a necessary move.
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  If the covenant was already null and void before the sentence
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  came down, then there's no legal basis for that sentence to apply
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  to any of Adam's descendants. The legal framework is gone.
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  Which means the entire concept of federal headship, where Adam
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  acts as the legal representative for everyone who would descend
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  from him, is just completely destroyed by this argument.
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  It is. Let's just take a moment to
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  really spell out what Federal Headship is for anyone
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  listening, because it's such a core mechanism here.
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  Sure. Federal headship is the specific
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  concept that Edwards is defending.
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  A covenant head, or a federal head is a legally appointed
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  representative. The idea is that God appointed
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  Adam to represent all of humanity in that initial
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  covenant. The Covenant of works.
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  Right. If Adam had obeyed, he would
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  have secured eternal life, not just for himself, but for all
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  his descendants. Because he disobeyed, he secured
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  condemnation for himself and all his descendants.
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  And the key thing here is that we didn't vote for Adam to be a
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  representative. God sovereignly appointed him.
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  Exactly, and his choice binds his posterity not because they
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  personally send in the garden, but because their designated
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  representative failed the test. The connection isn't biological
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  and it isn't voluntary. It's judicial.
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  It's legal. So that framework is what allows
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  God to be perfectly just in imputing Adam's guilt to us,
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  because legally we were in him when he transgressed.
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  And if Doctor T removes that legal framework, he turns
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  universal condemnation into what looks like an arbitrary act of
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  God, rather than the just consequence of a broken
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  covenant. OK, so no natural link, no moral
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  link, and no legal link connecting us to Adam.
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  That means Doctor T also has to deny that Adam's sin was the
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  active cause of the consequences.
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  This brings us to the 4th denial, the efficient or
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  procuring 'cause. Right.
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  And this denial is really strange because it stems from
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  Doctor T's truly bizarre interpretation of the
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  consequence itself. He can't say that Adam's sin
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  cause death and affliction because he argues that death and
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  affliction aren't punishments. Wait, what?
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  He argues that they're actually benefits and special favors from
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  God. That's astonishing.
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  How on earth can death, sorrow and pain be defined as benefits?
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  Well, Doctor T tries to interpret them based on their
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  supposed purpose. He might argue that death is a
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  benefit because it puts a limit on how much evil a person can do
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  in their lifetime. Or maybe affliction is a benefit
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  because it's a form of spiritual discipline that teaches us
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  humility and stops us from getting too attached to this
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  world. So if the outcome is actually a
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  blessing, then sin can't possibly be what caused it.
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  That's his logic. Sin has no natural or moral
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  tendency to produce benefits and divine favors.
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  It just doesn't make sense. I have to imagine Edwards's
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  rebuttal here is pretty forceful.
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  Oh, it is. Yeah.
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  He points out how forced this redefinition is.
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  The whole context of Romans 5 is about judgement, trespass,
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  condemnation and the reign of death.
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  To suddenly redefine death as a special favor makes Paul's
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  language sound frankly ridiculous.
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  You can't just swap in the word benefit through the
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  transgression of the one benefit came to all men.
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  It doesn't work. It makes no sense, and Edwards
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  also presses the logical point. God grants special favors out of
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  his own benevolence, not because someone committed a sin.
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  In Doctor TS scenario, the sin becomes purely incidental.
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  The real cause of the benefit is just God's good pleasure.
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  So this systematic reduction is now complete.
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  Doctor T has gotten rid of all four kinds of dependence,
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  natural, moral, legal, and efficient, and the logical
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  endpoint of his whole argument is that we are theologically
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  isolated from Adam. Completely the only relationship
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  left between Adam's sin and our condition is a simple relation
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  as to time. Meaning our suffering and death
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  happened after his sin, not because of it.
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  It's a total severing of the causal chain.
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  And Edwards says this move effectively destroys the
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  doctrine of original sin. It makes Adam's offense no more
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  relevant to us than, as he puts it, the sin of the king of Pegu
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  or the emperor of China. Just some crime committed by a
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  stranger long ago. And this is where it becomes
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  really relevant to you listening.
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  If Adam's sin doesn't causally affect you, then your own
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  experience of brokenness, that sense of inherited corruption we
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  all feel, has no explanation in Romans 5.
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  Your sin is just a series of isolated choices and it denies
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  the solidarity of the human race under condemnation.
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  Which is why Edwards then zooms in on the grammar of the
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  passage. He says that reducing the
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  connection to time only destroys the meaning of the very words
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  Paul uses. These little words, the causal
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  particles, become meaningless. Yes, particles like by and
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  through. They demand a causal connection,
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  not just a temporal sequence. Think about the phrases that
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  Doctor T's view just trivializes.
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  Like Death by Thin in verse 12. Or if through the offense of one
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  many be dead in verse 15, or judgment was by 1 to
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  condemnation in verse 16, Edwards says that Doctor T
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  system forces you to read all those powerful pausal words by
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  and through as meaning nothing more than death happened after
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  sin. It sounds like a really forced
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  reading of the text, an attempt to make it fit a preconceived
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  idea about human freedom and individual responsibility.
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  It's absolutely necessary for his system.
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  If he admitted that by one man meant caused by one man, his
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  whole denial of legal and moral dependence would just fall
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  apart. Edward's point is that if the
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  only relationship was time, Paul would have just written first
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  sin happened and then later death happened.
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  To a lot of people, the powerful language of connection,
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  dependence and influence is just lost.
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  OK, so leaving causality aside for a moment, the whole
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  definition of the consequence itself, what Paul calls death,
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  is another huge point of conflict.
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  And this is where Edwards catches Dr. T in A major self
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  contradiction. Yes, this is a classic case of
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  an interpreter's own rules coming back to bite them.
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  Doctor T starts out by making this very bold, sweeping claim.
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  He says that in Romans 5 and verses 12/14/15 and 17, the word
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  death means one thing and one thing only, and that it's
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  strictly physical mortality, the extinction of our present life,
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  the body returning to dust. And he says this has to be the
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  case because the Apostle Paul is talking about one single subject
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  throughout the whole paragraph. So his rule of interpretation is
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  consistency. In a continuous argument, a key
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  term should keep the same meaning.
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  That's his rule. But then, as Edwards points out,
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  Doctor T breaks his own rule when he looks at a verse just a
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  little later in Romans. Romans 6.23.
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  Romans 6.23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is
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  eternal life. Now when Doctor T analyzes that
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  verse, he agrees that death there manifestly signifies
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  eternal death, the second death. Why?
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  Because it's placed in direct opposition to eternal life.
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  He even admits that this definition of death is widely
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  different from the death we now die.
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  Which sets up the logical collision perfectly.
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  If death opposed to eternal life means eternal death in chapter
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  6, we have to look at how chapter 5 ends.
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  And Edwards brings the hammer down.
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  He points out that the paragraph in Romans 5 concludes in verse
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  21 by opposing death to eternal life in exactly the same way.
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  That as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through
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  righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
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  It's the same construction. Death on one side, eternal life
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  on the other. So by Doctor T's own rule, the
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  death mentioned at the end of the Romans 5 argument has to be
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  eternal death, which includes the ruin of the soul.
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  Which directly contradicts his infallible claim that in Romans
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  5 it only means physical death. It's a complete self
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  contradiction. He insists.
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  Paul is talking about one subject, but his own rules force
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  the meaning of death to flip from physical to eternal within
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  the same continuous argument. Edwards little phrase for it
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  sums it up perfectly. This is manifest proof against
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  infallible evidence. So to fix this inconsistency,
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  Edwards offers his own definition.
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  He argues that death isn't two different things, but one whole
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  containing several parts. This is his tripartite doctrine
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  of death. It's a cohesive solution that
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  keeps the consequence as a punishment.
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  He argues that the death Scripture speaks of as the
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  punishment for sin is a single composite sentence with three
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  interconnected parts. The first part is the one Doctor
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  T focused on temporal death, the death in the body.
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  This is the part of the punishment we can see in this
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  world. Right.
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  It's the universal event that affects everyone.
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  The second part is spiritual death.
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  This isn't about the body. It's the death of the soul's
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  relationship with God. It's alienation, moral
• 19:43
  corruption, that state of enmity against our Creator.
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  It's the immediate moral result of the fall.
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  And then the third part, the ultimate part, is eternal death
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  or the second death. Yes, Edwards calls this the
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  eternal, sensible, perfect destruction and misery of both
• 19:59
  soul and body. He is crystal clear that this is
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  the principle and infinitely the most dreadful part of the
• 20:06
  punishment. So this three-part definition is
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  key. When Paul uses the word death,
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  he's referring to the whole package, the entire sentence,
• 20:13
  even if he sometimes highlights 1 aspect of it, like universal
• 20:16
  physical death, to make a specific point.
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  Edwards uses a great analogy to make this clear.
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  Think about the word man. A man includes both a body and a
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  soul. If we say a man is handsome,
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  we're focused on his body. If we say he is wise, we're
• 20:29
  focused on his soul. But using the word that way
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  doesn't change its fundamental meaning.
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  Man still refers to the whole person, body and soul.
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  Precisely so. The focus on temporal death
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  early in Romans 5 doesn't change the words comprehensive
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  definition, which is locked in by its opposition to eternal
• 20:46
  life at the end of the chapter. Temporal death is just the
• 20:49
  visible image of the whole. It's the physical evidence of a
• 20:52
  much larger legal and spiritual reality.
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  Yes, and because that visible temporal death happens to
• 20:58
  everyone, Edwards argues that it proves that all of mankind is
• 21:02
  exposed to the whole of that death, which includes eternal
• 21:05
  ruin. This keeps the consequence as a
• 21:07
  punishment and it rejects Dr. TS idea of death as a benefit.
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  If death was just a physical benefit, then Christ's work to
• 21:15
  give us eternal life would seem like a massive overreaction to a
• 21:18
  divine favor. OK, so that comprehensive
• 21:20
  definition of death brings us back to the synthesis of the
• 21:23
  whole argument. It comes back to the necessity
• 21:25
  of legal dependence for this universal judgment to make
• 21:27
  sense. It has to for death the full
• 21:30
  three-part punishment, including eternal ruin, to pass upon all
• 21:33
  men. There has to be a real,
• 21:35
  substantive causal link to Adam's first sin.
• 21:38
  The universal scope of the consequence demands a universal
• 21:41
  cause. It demands an explanation rooted
• 21:43
  in that antecedent constitution, that covenant where Adam acted
• 21:47
  as our representative. That legal framework is the one
• 21:50
  thing Doctor T has to reject, but it's the one thing the
• 21:53
  reformed framework needs to explain how guilt and corruption
• 21:56
  are transmitted from one to all. The condemnation itself, that
• 22:00
  judicial ruling against all humanity, it flows from this
• 22:03
  legal dependence. Adam's one act was counted as
• 22:06
  the act of the representative head.
• 22:08
  For Edwards, that's the only way to make sense of God's justice
• 22:11
  and universal judgment. And that really is the core
• 22:14
  distinction between the two systems.
• 22:15
  Doctor T boils Adam's influence down to just physical mortality,
• 22:19
  which he then tries to rebrand as a divine favor.
• 22:22
  His system leaves us morally disconnected from the first
• 22:25
  transgression, and it really flattens the concept of our
• 22:27
  inherited depravity. Whereas Edwards maintains that
• 22:30
  Adam's sin caused a true penal consequence, that comprehensive
• 22:34
  threefold death, which all humanity is exposed to because
• 22:37
  of that precise legal and moral connection.
• 22:40
  And Edwards argues that this is the only structure that
• 22:43
  adequately answers the big question.
• 22:45
  How did moral and natural evil get into the world and achieve
• 22:48
  such total dominion? It's not enough to just say who
• 22:52
  sinned first. His analysis really does secure
• 22:55
  the biblical explanation for why all are condemned.
• 22:57
  It shows that original sin isn't just an ancient story, it's
• 23:01
  about how God administers his justice through representative
• 23:04
  government. Yes, and by restoring the proper
• 23:06
  meaning to those little causal words by and through, and by
• 23:11
  defining death as the comprehensive sentence it is,
• 23:14
  Edwards preserves the beautiful symmetry of Paul's argument in
• 23:17
  Romans 5. And that symmetry is the real
• 23:20
  linchpin, isn't it? The whole comparison between the
• 23:22
  one man Adam, through whom sin entered, and the one man Christ,
• 23:26
  through whom righteousness it's entirely dependent on Adam
• 23:30
  having that representative causal role.
• 23:32
  Absolutely. If Adam was just a chronological
• 23:34
  predecessor, as Doctor T claims, then Christ is just the first
• 23:37
  person to offer a path to salvation.
• 23:39
  The whole structure of corporate condemnation and corporate
• 23:42
  justification just collapses into a series of individual
• 23:45
  disconnected acts. The power of the typology.
• 23:48
  The comparison relies on the parallel structure.
• 23:51
  The way we were condemned by one man has to mirror the way we are
• 23:55
  justified by one man. Exactly.
• 23:57
  If Adam Sin only affected himself, then there's no
• 24:00
  proportional reason for the text to frame our salvation as the
• 24:04
  dramatic reversal of a federal causal chain.
• 24:07
  The scope of the solution has to match the scope of the problem.
• 24:11
  So to sum up, we've seen how Edwards completely dismantled
• 24:14
  the view that Adam Sin was just a chronological event.
• 24:17
  He insisted on a necessary causal representative and legal
• 24:20
  connection. We also saw the critical
• 24:22
  difference between seeing death as just physical extinction
• 24:25
  versus seeing it as a composite eternal punishment, which is the
• 24:29
  only thing that makes sense of Paul's contrast between death
• 24:31
  and eternal life. And this whole discussion really
• 24:33
  forces us to ask a final question.
• 24:35
  What about the integrity of God's whole plan of redemption?
• 24:38
  Yes, if Doctor T was right, if the consequences of Adam's sin
• 24:42
  were actually intended as benefits or special favors from
• 24:45
  God designed to make us more pious or evil, then why is the
• 24:49
  coming of Christ, the second Adam, framed as a rescue from
• 24:52
  that consequence? You don't need to be rescued
• 24:54
  from a benefit. The idea is absurd.
• 24:56
  It is the necessity of the cross.
• 24:58
  The sheer depth of the remedy speaks volumes about the
• 25:02
  severity of the disease Adam introduced.
• 25:05
  If you diminish Adam's legal status and the terrible
• 25:08
  consequence of his act, you automatically diminish the glory
• 25:11
  of Christ's work as the one who reverses it all.
• 25:13
  He doesn't just reverse mortality, he reverses eternal
• 25:16
  condemnation. That's the point.
• 25:19
  The vast scope of the condemnation, spiritual,
• 25:21
  temporal and eternal death is precisely what defines the
• 25:24
  incredible graciousness of our justification, which gives us
• 25:28
  spiritual life now, resurrection later, and eternal life forever.
• 25:32
  That profound contrast is only possible if Adam's original sin
• 25:36
  was the devastating federal transgression Edwards argues it
• 25:39
  was. That is a compelling thought to
• 25:41
  sit with as you consider the full scope of condemnation and
• 25:44
  justification in Romans 5. We'd encourage you to study
• 25:47
  those passages again with fresh eyes and look closely for the
• 25:50
  meaning behind those crucial causal words that Paul chose.
• 25:54
  Thank you for joining us for this deep dive.