Patristic Wisdom: Looking to the First Sunday in Lent

Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned—(For until the law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned according to the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come. But the free gift is not like the offense. For if by the one man’s offense many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many. And the gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned. For the judgment which came from one offense resulted in condemnation, but the free gift which came from many offenses resulted in justification. For if by the one man’s offense death reigned through the one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.) Therefore, as through one man’s offense judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation, even so through one Man’s righteous act the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life. For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man’s obedience many will be made righteous. (Romans 5:12–19)

He wants also to show that life is much stronger than death, and righteousness than sin, and by this means to teach that if sin and death were able to exercise dominion in this way in men, having received a beginning from the disobedience of the one man, how much more powerfully and deservedly will life reign through righteousness, receiving its beginning through the obedience of the one, namely Christ; Christ, I say, who came to this task not from the compulsion of his nature but moved by compassion alone. For He was “in the form of God”; and when He sees that death is exercising dominion through the people by the transgression of the one man, He is not oblivious to His own creation, nor does He “regard equality with God as something to be held fast to,” that is, He does not consider it a matter of any great importance to Himself that He is indeed equal to God and is one with the Father, but rather that death is laying waste to His own work, having gained entrance through one man’s transgression. Therefore “He empties Himself” from the equality and form of God and takes “the form of a slave” and becomes man. He who was exercising his dominion over everyone even dared to tempt Him, but he could not enter Him. Yet He accepts that common death, since He would not receive the death of sin which was ruling over everyone, in order that, just as “death came through a man, so also the resurrection of the dead might come through a man”; and just as “many died by the transgression of the one, much more surely might the grace of God and the gift in the grace of the one man Jesus Christ abound to very many.”

Origen, Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans 5.2.5