At the beginning of our Christian life we are concerned with our doing, not our being; we are distressed rather by what we have done than by what we are. We think that if only we could rectify certain things we should be good Christians, and we set out therefore to change our actions. But the result is not what we expected. We discover to our dismay that it is something more than just a case of trouble on the outside - that there is in fact more serious trouble on the inside. We try and please the Lord, but find something within that does not want to please the Him. We try to be humble, but there is something in our very being that refuses to be humble. We try to be loving, but inside we feel most unloving. The more we try to rectify matters on the outside the more we realise how deep-seated the trouble is. We say:"Lord, I see it now! Not only what I have done is wrong, I am wrong."
The conclusion of Roman 5.19 is beginning to dawn on us. We are sinners. We are members of a race of people who are constitutionally other than what God intended them to be. By the Fall, a fundamental change took place in the character of Adam whereby he became a sinner, and constitutionally unable to please God; and the family likeness which we all share is no merely superficial one but extends to our inward character also. How did this come about? "By the disobedience of the one", says the Apostle Paul.

Do we see the oneness of human life? Our life comes from Adam. If your great-grand father had died at the age of three, where would you be? You would have died with him. Your experience is bound up with him. and in just the same way, the experience of every one of us is bound up with that of Adam. So we are all involved in Adam's sin, and by being born "in Adam" we receive from him all that he became as a result of his sin - that is to say, the Adam-nature - which is the nature of a sinner. So, as we have said, the trouble is in our heredity, not in our behaviour. Unless we can change our parentage there is no deliverance for us.

But it is in this very direction that we shall find the solution to our problem; for that is exactly how God dealt with it. As we are in Adam so are we in Christ. In Romans 5.12-21 we are not only told something about Adam, we are told also something about the Lord Jesus. "As through one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the One man the many will made righteous." In Adam we receive everything that is of Adam; in Christ we receive everything that is in Christ.

So we are presented with a new possibility. In Adam all was lost. Through the disobedience of the one man we were all constituted sinners. By him sin entered and death through sin, and throughout the race, sin has reigned unto death from that day on. But now a ray of light is cast upon the scene. Through the obedience of Another we may be constituted righteous. Where sin abounded grace did much more abound, and as sin reigned unto death, so also may grace reign through the righteousness into eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord. Our despair is in Adam; our hope is in Christ. (by Watchman Nee)