Having developed his argument concerning the means of salvation, Paul supports his position by referring to Abraham, as he did in his letter to the Galatians. Abraham's faith was "credited to him as righteousness"; by faith, those who are his spiritual descendants can be saved. Jesus is the supreme example of faith in that he was a human being in whom the Spirit of God was manifested more completely than in any other person. In this respect, Paul thinks of Jesus as the ideal man in the same way that Adam was regarded as the symbol of the human race. Just as in Adam we all died, so in Christ are we all made alive. Adam's disobedience illustrates what happens in the lives of all human beings, and Jesus' triumph over the forces of evil illustrates what can happen when the Spirit takes possession of a person's entire nature. This point, Paul insists, is the true meaning of Christian baptism and symbolizes the death and burial of one's sinful nature and a resurrection into a new quality of living.
Paul's own experience with the Law when he was studying to become a rabbi is described at some length to demonstrate again the impotence of the Law in contrast with the power of faith to transform one's nature. Trying to achieve salvation through obedience to the Law was indeed a miserable type of existence, comparable to having a dead person strapped to one's own body. In this state of affairs, a person is a slave to sin, as Paul notes: "I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do." And again, "Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it." Under these conditions, Paul cries out in the name of humanity, "What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?" The answer is that deliverance comes through faith in Jesus Christ: "Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death."
The effects of salvation will be manifest first in the changed life of the individual and then, as this salvation takes place in increasing numbers, in society. The life of the Spirit that frees one from bondage to the Law does not give one the license to sin, nor can laws legitimately be violated just because they conflict with one's immediate desires. The Christian will be a law-abiding citizen whose freedom consists in the fact that he no longer wants to act contrary to laws. He will do what is right because he desires to act that way, not because he does it from a pure sense of duty or as a means of gaining a reward.
