[69] The writer ventures to refer to his Commentary on Ephesians in _The Cambridge Bible_. [70] Observe the aorist form of the participle. [71] Ὑπὲρ is literally "_over_," and in itself imports simply "_concern with_"; as when we say that a man is busy "over" an important matter; as it were stooping over it, attending to it. Its special references depend altogether upon context and usage. _In itself_ it neither teaches nor denies the doctrine of a vicarious and substitutionary work; ἀητὶ is the preposition which guarantees as true that great aspect of the Lord's death. But ὑπὲρ of course amply allows for such an _application_ of its meaning, where the context suggests the idea. [72] We incline more than formerly, though still with some doubt, to see a rising climax here, as indicated in the paraphrase, from δίκαιος to ὁ ἀγαθός. [73] On the meaning of καταλλαγή see detached note, p. 141. [74] Ἐλάβομεν: but the English perfect best represents the idea. CHAPTER XIII _CHRIST AND ADAM_ ROMANS v. 12-21 We approach a paragraph of the Epistle pregnant with mystery. It leads us back to Primal Man, to the Adam of the first brief pages of the Scripture record, to his encounter with the suggestion to follow himself rather than his Maker, to his sin, and then to the results of that sin in his race. We shall find those results given in terms which certainly we should not have devised _a priori_. We shall find the Apostle teaching, or rather stating, for he writes as to those who know, that mankind inherits from primal Man, tried and fallen, not only taint but guilt, not only moral hurt but legal fault. This is "a thing heard in the darkness." It has been said that Holy Scripture "is not a sun, but a lamp." The words may be grievously misused, by undue emphasis on the negative clause; but they convey a sure truth, used aright. Nowhere does the divine Book undertake to tell us all about everything it contains. It undertakes to tell us truth, and to tell it from God. It undertakes to give us pure light, yea, "to bring life and immortality out into the light," (2 Tim. i. 10). But it reminds us that we know "in part," and that even prophecy, even the inspired message, is "in part" (1 Cor. xiii. 9). It illuminates immensely much, but it leaves yet more to be seen hereafter. It does not yet kindle the whole firmament and the whole landscape like an oriental sun. It sheds its glory upon our Guide, and upon our path. A passage like this calls for such recollections. It tells us, with the voice of the Apostle's Lord, great facts about our own race, and its relations to its primeval Head, such that every individual man has a profound moral and also judicial _nexus_ with the first Man. It does not tell us how those inscrutable but solid facts fit into the whole plan of God's creative wisdom and moral government. The lamp shines _there_, upon the edges of a deep ravine beside the road; it does not shine sunlike over the whole mountain-land.