The absolute dependence of our justification upon the Atoning Act of our Head, and the relation of our Head to us accordingly as our Centre and our Root of blessing, this is the main message of the passage we are tracing. The mystery of our congenital guilt is there, though it is only incidentally there. And after all what is that mystery? It is assuredly a fact. The statement of this paragraph, that the many were "constituted sinners by the disobedience of the one," what is it? It is the Scripture expression, and in some guarded sense the Scripture explanation, of a consciousness deep as the awakened soul of man; that I, a member of this homogeneous race, made in God's image, not only have sinned, but have been a sinful being from my first personal beginning; and that I ought not to be so, and ought never to have been so. It is my calamity, but it is also my accusation. This I cannot explain; but this I know. And to know this, with a knowledge that is not merely speculative but moral, is to be "shut up unto Christ," in a self-despair which can go nowhere else than to Him for acceptance, for peace, for holiness, for power. Let us translate, as they stand, the closing sentences before us: [Sidenote: Ver. 18.] =Accordingly therefore, as through one transgression= there came a result =to all men, to condemnation,= to sentence of death, =so through one deed of righteousness[83] there came a result to all men,= (to "_all_" in the sense we have indicated, so that whoever of mankind receives the acceptance owes it always and wholly to the Act of Christ,) =to justification of life,= to an acceptance which not only bids the guilty "not die," but opens to the accepted the secret, in Him who is their Sacrifice, of powers which live in Him for them as He is their Life. [Sidenote: Ver. 19.] =For as, by the disobedience of the one man, the many,= the many of that case, =were constituted sinners,= constituted guilty of the fall of their nature from God, so that their being sinful is not only their calamity but their sin, =so too by the obedience of the One,= "not according to their works," that is, to their conduct, past, present, or to come, but "_by the obedience of the One_," =the many,= His "many brethren," His Father's children through faith in Him, =shall be,= as each comes to Him in all time, and then by the final open proclamation of eternity, =constituted righteous,= qualified for the acceptance of the holy Judge. * * * * *