Verse 17 makes no mention of "the many". V.19 does:
Rom 5:18 Consequently, then, as it was through one offense for ALL MANKIND for condemnation, thus also it is through one just act for ALL MANKIND for life's justifying."
Rom 5:19 For even as, through the disobedience of the one man, THE MANY were constituted sinners, thus also, through the obedience of the One, THE MANY shall be constituted just."
Paul makes a parallel between "the many" who were condemned & sinners and those who will be justified & constituted just.
“In Romans 5, the justification is co-extensive with the condemnation. Since all share in one, all share in the other. If only a certain portion of the human race had partaken of the sin of Adam, only a certain portion would partake of the justification of Christ. But St. Paul affirms all to have been involved in one, and all to be included in the other.”
Therefore there is salvation after death. And corrective punishment.
Jesus shall see of the travail of His soul & be satisfied. Not satisfied a little bit, but the vast majority fried alive forever.
"He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities." (Isa.53:11).
For how "many" (not few) did He "bear their iniquities"? All.
"As a good illustration, consider more closely a single text, namely Romans 5:18,1 and consider first its parallel structure:
Therefore just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all [humans],
so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for [them] all.
"The whole point of such a parallel structure, so typical of Paul, is to identify a single group of individuals and to make two parallel statements about that single group of individuals, and the practical effect is therefore to eliminate any possibility of ambiguity. The very ones who came under condemnation, as a result of the first Adam’s act of disobedience, will eventually be brought to justification and life, as a result of the second Adam’s act of obedience. Or, as Paul put it in verse 19: the very ones who were constituted sinners, as a result of the first Adam’s act of disobedience, will eventually be constituted righteous, as a result of the second Adam’s act of obedience. I do not know how Paul could have expressed himself any more clearly than that."
Regarding the verb "to receive" (lambano) in Romans 5:17:
Consider "..those contexts in which Paul obviously used the verb “to receive” (lambanō) in a passive sense...Paul declared, “Five times I have received [active voice] … the forty lashes minus one” (2 Cor. 11:24), we understand that he received these 39 lashes in the same passive way that a boxer might receive severe blows to the head...Similarly, in Romans 5:18 and 19 Paul was comparing the effect of Christ’s one act of righteousness on the whole mass of humanity with the effect of Adam’s disobedience, pointing out in verses 15 and 17 that the latter is far greater, and far more extensive, than the former. So even though the Reformed New Testament scholar John Murray rejected altogether the universalist interpretation of our text, he nonetheless pointed out that the “word ‘receiving’ [in 5:17] … does not refer to our believing acceptance of the free gift but to our being made the recipients, and we are regarded as the passive beneficiaries of both the grace and the free gift in their overflowing fullness.”4 According to Paul, in other words, we no more choose to experience the beneficial effects of Christ’s one act of righteousness than we chose to experience the destructive effects of Adam’s disobedience."
"...Moo has attributed to Paul a fallacious argument of the following form:
(1) Only those sinners receiving the abundance of grace will “derive the benefits of Christ’s act of righteousness” and thus be saved.
Therefore,
(2) Not all sinners will “derive the benefits of Christ’s act of righteousness” and thus be saved.
"The premise sets forth a necessary condition of salvation, namely that a sinner must receive “the abundance of grace” in order to be saved, and the conclusion draws the inference that, therefore, some sinners will never meet that necessary condition. But the inference is obviously fallacious—as is the following inference of exactly the same form: only those believers who remain faithful to the end will be sanctified; therefore, not all believers will be sanctified. So even if Paul were not using lambanō in a passive sense, as he surely was, Moo’s appeal to 5:17 in an effort to explain away 5:18 would merely attribute to Paul the same fallacious inference that Moo brings to the text. For unless Paul himself had drawn a similar fallacious inference, neither “the deliberately worded v. 17” nor the “persistent stress on faith as the means of achieving righteousness” carries any implication that Paul intended the second “all” in 5:18 to be more restrictive than the first. Much less would it justify Moo’s conclusion that, according to Paul, “only certain people [that is, only some sinners and not all of them] derive the benefits from Christ’s act of righteousness.” Quite the contrary. Paul’s explicit affirmation in 5:18 that Christ brings “justification and life” to all humans already entails that all of the necessary conditions of such justification and life will eventually be met. So you can hardly challenge the universal scope of the second “all” in 5:18 merely by pointed out, as Moo does correctly, that the right kind of faith is one of these necessary conditions."
How to Read the Bible from a Universalist Perspective
