Romans 5:18

With ἄρα οὖν (cf. Romans 7:3; Romans 7:25, and often in Paul) the conclusion of the argument is introduced. It is simplest to take ἑνὸς in both clauses as neuter. “As through one offence the result for all men was condemnation, so also through one righteous act the result for all men is justification of life.” The result in both cases is mediated; in the former, by men's actual sin; in the latter, by their faith in Christ. It has been questioned whether δικαίωμα can mean a “righteous act,” that which Christ achieved in His death, conceived as one thing commanding the approval of God. This sense seems to be required by the contrast with παράπτωμα, but Meyer and others argue that, as in Romans 5:16, the meaning must be “a sentence of justification”. “Through one justifying sentence (pronounced over the world because of Christ's death) the result for all men is justification of life.” But this justifying sentence in vacuo is alien to the realism of Paul's thinking, and no strain is put upon δικαίωμα (especially when we observe its correspondence with παράπτωμα) in making it signify Christ's work as a thing in which righteousness is, so to speak, embodied. Lightfoot (Notes on Epistles of St. Paul, p. 292) adopts this meaning, “a righteous deed,” and quotes Arist., Rhet., i., 13, τὰ ἀδικήματα πάντα καὶ τὰ δικαιώματα, and Etk. Nic., v., 7 (10): καλεῖται δὲ μᾶλλον δικαιοπράγημα τὸ κοινόν : δικαίωμα δὲ τὸ ἐπανόρθωμα τοῦ ἀδικήματος. This sense of an act by which an injustice is rectified is exactly suitable here. Through this the result for all men is δικαίωσις ζωῆς : for the genitive, see Winer, p. 235. Simcox, Language of the N.T., 85. When God justifies the sinner, he enters into and inherits life. But Lightfoot makes it gen appos.