The radical message of Paul’s Letter to the Romans
Speaker Notes
Dorsey’s translation of Romans 5:1 – 6:4
ROMANS (RDV)
5: 1 - 6:4
A. So, now that we have been made righteous through faith, whenever we come face to face with God, we find ourselves at peace, thanks to our Master Yeisu the Anointed; by his faithfulness, and by faith in him, we have found the way in, the portal that leads to this grace in which we stand, and we are full of joy because of our hope that the glory of God will one day be ours. As if that weren’t enough, we even rejoice in our tribulation, knowing that tribulation breeds patient endurance, and endurance breeds character, and character produces hope, and hope will never prove an embarrassment to us, thanks to the love of God which has flooded our hearts in the spirit of holiness that has been given to us.
B. For just at the moment we most needed him, when we were utterly powerless, the Anointed One gave himself up to death for the sake of the ungodly. I mean, you or I would never give our own lives away for someone else— though maybe for a good man, for someone who meant the world to us, we might willingly die. But God displays the extent of his love toward us by Christ giving up his life precisely when we least deserved it, when we had passed up every opportunity to do the right thing. So, if he went so far as to make us righteous by the outpouring of his blood, would he stop before he had completely rescued us from the full consequences of wrath? Or, put another way, don’t you think that a God who reconciled us, his enemies, by the death of his Son, would finish the job by making sure that we, once reconciled, would be completely healed by means of his life? Is it any wonder, then, that we are full of the joy in God through our share in Yeisu the Anointed, by whom we now have received this reconciliation.
C. So here is our situation: through one man sin entered the created order, and death came in on its heels; and since, from that moment on all men began to sin, death spread to all like a plague. Now, sin was, of course, present in the world prior to the law, but in the absence of the commandment, who knew that they were sinning? [Without an ordinance, what charges could have been brought?] And yet death held sway, even over those whose natural tendency toward sin was categorically different from the deliberate disobedience of Adam: for them, death was more like a consequence than a penalty, though it was death nonetheless. As for Adam, even in his degraded form he remained a foreshadowing of the New Man who was about to arrive on the scene.
D. Now, the way of this gracious gift exactly reverses the way of Adam’s wandering; For if, by the bad decision of that one man, multitudes died, even more the grace of God, along with the gift that is wrapped up in that grace, have abounded for countless people through the one man Yeisu the Anointed. And this gift has nothing to do with the terrible losses that came through the fault of Adam; indeed, it is the polar opposite. For, while (on the one hand) God’s judgment of the one man Adam, in the wake of his single bad decision, resulted in a verdict of condemnation, now (on the other hand) the free grace of God brings righteousness in the wake of countless bad choices on the part of generations of humanity. For if, thanks to the fault of one man, death ruled through that one man; all the more will those now rule in life, who abound in the grace of God and in the gift of righteousness they have received through the one man Yeisu the Anointed.
E. In other words, as the fault of one man brought all men into condemnation, so now one man’s righteous deed brings all men into the righteousness of God’s own life. Just as, through one man’s refusal, countless men became naysayers, now through one man’s devoted willingness that same multitude will stand righteous before God.
F. So: law invaded the world in order to make sin all the greater. but the more sin there was in the world, the more grace has overflowed, so that just as sin ruled without limit through the death of men, grace would also rule through the righteousness of God leading us into life forever through our Master Yeisu the Anointed.
G. And what ought our response be to these things? Are we supposed to keep missing the point on the assumption that, the more we sin, the more grace will multiply? Forget about it! How can we who died to sin even think of going back there to live? Haven’t you understood that we, who were washed in Yeisu the Anointed, were washed in the waters of his death? We were drowned by baptism and buried in his death, in order that, just as the Anointed One was pulled from the pit of death by the glory of the Father, we too might walk as those who have come newly alive.
Rev. Dorsey McConnell was the Rector of The Church of the Redeemer, Chestnut Hill, MA (2004-2012) wikipedia
He became the 8th permanent Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh in 2012 announcement