Paul is referring to the first human (adam is a Hebrew word for a "man" or "human" and not a name), and then to the man Jesus. He says that if the first human's actions caused problems, Jesus' actions have set things right. And it is striking how universal Paul's words are. All humanity is caught in the problem of sin, but now Jesus' actions bring "life for all."
Now I would not want to say that Paul's entire theology is expressed in this one statement. In other places he does speak of the new life we experience "in Christ," of being joined to Christ in our baptisms. But here, and in other places, Paul does seem to speak of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus as having fundamentally altered the relationship of God with humanity. It is also worth noting that those places where Paul speaks of "faith in Jesus" might just as easily be translated "the faithfulness of Jesus."
Regardless, Paul does call all who will listen to faith. He says that by faith we experience the gift, the grace of God. But I don't hear Paul encouraging us to do what Christians often do: writing off those who don't have faith, or who don't have the right faith.
Some years ago, I and other neighborhood pastors were meeting to plan a community Easter sunrise service. A Baptist colleague arrived from a funeral, and he shared how he struggled when he had to do funeral for someone he knew was not saved and was not going to heaven. I was a bit taken aback by his comments and mumbled something about how I didn't worry too much about that. I simply proclaimed the good news of Jesus and left the sorting out of saved or not saved to God.
I wonder why we sometimes feel the need to declare "those folks" to be lost or condemned. Again, I'm not necessarily arguing for universalism, but I do wonder if Christians wouldn't be a whole lot better off if we quite worrying about where the in-or-out boundaries were, and focused more on living faithfully in ways that demonstrating the new quality of life Paul says we have when we are "in Christ."
If Jesus' life, death, and resurrection do indeed lead to "life for all;" if Jesus does say from the cross, "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing," then shouldn't the Church avoid trying to figure out who gets left out of "all," who doesn't get forgiven, and simply live out the sort of love and forgiveness that Jesus showed.
Sometimes I think that all the energy expended worrying about who's in or out is mostly about assuring ourselves that we're in. We're trying to validate the hope that we've checked off the right boxes and signed on the correct dotted line. And this seems to me more about our anxieties than about a desire to help those we deem to be on the outside. But as for our anxieties, Paul says elsewhere, "If God is for us, who is against us?"
If I am sure of nothing else, because of Jesus I know that God is for us. And what could be more wonderful than that?
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