5. It will of course be noticed that the drift of St. Paul's argument in this passage is directly towards universal salvation, for 'the many' means 'the whole mass.' This is the case in other places where he is considering what we may call the natural tendency and scope of the gospel, 'As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.' But there are passages of a different tendency in St. Paul's epistles, where he is considering the human attitude towards the purpose of God; and there he appears to emphasize strongly the power of the human will to refuse the light and turn God's blessing into a curse. If the 'savour' of the apostle's preaching is to 'those who are being saved a savour proceeding from life and tending to life,' even eternal life, it is for the wilful who are perishing in their wilfulness 'a savour as from death and tending to death': for they shall 'suffer punishment, even eternal destruction from the face of the Lord, and from the glory of his might[[22]].' What this eternal destruction means, and how it is to be harmonized with the vision of unity, we cannot precisely tell. Verily, 'we know' but 'in part.' But at least we must recognize that St. Paul asserts both sides of the picture: and that the 'terror' and the hope are not dissociable.
6. We must also notice, before we leave the passage, that the application of the word justification receives a certain extension. As the 'grace' of God is associated with a 'gift of righteousness[[23]],' that is to say, of real fellowship in the life of God, so the preliminary 'justification of sinners,' in which the divine grace first of all conspicuously shows itself, is to pass into a 'justification of life' (or 'a justification taking effect in life'); that is to say, the actual life is to become acceptable. God begins with accepting sinners and dealing with them as if they were righteous if only they will believe. But it is in view of a moral process which is to produce a new life, and is to end in making acceptable not themselves only, in spite of their lives, but their life itself. The object of the justifying faith is, and must be, as we saw, a living person. It is Christ who was 'raised again for our justification.' And the living Christ can be satisfied with nothing short of a living fellowship between us and Himself in His own life and spirit.
[[1]] An a fortiori argument means an argument with a 'still more' in it:—If something is so then still more something else.
[[2]] The words in brackets are the suppressed premise in the argument—suppressed, but none the less evident.
[[3]] Acts xvii. 26.
[[4]] ver. 20.
[[5]] ver. 13, 14, 19.
[[6]] 1 Cor. xi. 3; 1 Tim. ii. 13-15.
[[7]] Rom. iv. 15; v. 13.
[[8]] Much more (the argument implies) after the law had been given and sin could be 'imputed' as sin again.