Romans 5:1-11 • Nothing Between
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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)
We keep coming back in this book of Romans that we are studying to what Martin Luther said was the point on which everything turns, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, but are made right with God through a free gift that is in the redemption, the provision of Jesus Christ." A free gift makes us right with God. Yeah, but who's the gift for? What if you're not from the right family? Well that was Romans 4 as Paul answered the question to say it's by faith that you're made right with God not because of your family background, but what if your background is really bad? That's Romans 5 and that's where we are today. Let me ask that you would look in your Bible's Romans 5 as we'll be considering verses 12 through 17 and the Apostle Paul is answering the question, "What if you don't measure up and not your family and not the family before? What if your background is just a mess? Then is the gift for you." Let's see his answer. We'll stand as we honor God's Word and look at Romans 5 verses 12 through 17. The Apostle writes, "Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned. For sin indeed was in the world before the law was given. But sin is not counted where there is no law, yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come. But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man's trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for many. And the free gift is not like the result of that one man's sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation. But the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. For if because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more. Well those who received the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reigned in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, though the words are difficult for us, the one speaking under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to us says that there was this reign of death that came into the world as sin entered, and it touches absolutely everything. But then this wonderful truth where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. And we who know we are not perfect, where sin seems to increase in our life may already be so present there in background that we think you can't possibly care for us. The gospel still comes and grace is greater. Teach us that truth again we pray that we might be encouraged and be strong for those who need your word. Grant us the grace of the gospel. This day strong in our midst we pray in Jesus name. Amen. Please be seated. I hesitate even to go through the litany that so many pastors in this nation will be going through this very day. 59 killed, almost 500 wounded, and it's just the latest of the mass shootings to which we could add the names of Sandy Hook, the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Columbine High School in Colorado, the Century Theater in Aurora, Colorado, Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, Umpqua Community College in Oregon. And God forgive us, dozens more we can't even remember. And these tragedies, as tragic as they are, are small in magnitude compared to the horrors of religious persecution in Myanmar, the Syrian slaughter that has gone for the last half decade, the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo, the killing fields of Cambodia, the genocide of Rwanda and Sudan, the Holocaust, Stalin's forced famine, Mao's cultural revolution, World Wars, 9-11,
ISIS, terrorism that will not stop. And all of that, able to be eclipsed by a nuclear weapon from a little country like North Korea or worse from Iran or Russia or China or nations simply upset with one another in the Middle East. And if the global crises seem so remote and unable to touch you, then we simply talk about racism in another generation, in our own community, and an opioid epidemic in hometown America, and pastors and churches imploding and marriages of dear and long friends coming undone. And we just want that to stop. You want me to stop talking about it. Come on, we get it. I know, you get it. We want to scream.
No, I don't want to think about this. I don't want to deal with this. And then comes the Apostle Paul. And he's simply with an unblinking eye and a clear voice says, "This is the vortex of sin, lawlessness and death, and it has been in the world since the very beginning." And if you feel it sucking on you and pulling you and pulling our culture, you have to recognize that is just the background of us all. Like some gigantic unending Bermuda triangle, there is this powerful vortex of sin and lawlessness of death. But as much as the Apostle will say that, he will stand right on the brink of that vortex and say two things at once. Number one,
everything in this world is touched by sin, lawlessness and death. Absolutely everything. It's powerful and it's pervasive. And at the same moment as he stands on the ledge above this vortex of sin, lawlessness and death, he will say, "As the tornadic winds of crisis and horror are bristling past him, the grace of God is greater." Greater than all of this. So that if you feel that that vortex of sin and lawlessness and death is part of your background, part of your life, therefore you have no future with God. The Apostle Paul is going to say, "No, you must understand something as bad as you think your background is. It is no different than anyone else in the whole world." Shooter and Saint, you have the same background of having in you the blood and the grain of someone called Adam. And that's meant to explain a lot as we question why we don't even live up to our own expectations, much less the expectations of our God. We wonder why we are as we are, why the world is as it is. And Paul's answer is, verse 12, "Sin entered the world through Adam." The opening words, "Just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin." So death spread to all men because all sin. The Apostle is taking us all the way back to the opening chapters of the Bible where God spoke to Adam and Eve and said to Adam, "You shall not eat of the tree of the knowledge of the good and evil because in the day you eat of it," our King James echoing ears say, "You shall surely die." The Hebrew actually saying, "Because if you break my law, dying you will die." You have perfect world, perfect life, but if you mess it up, the dying will begin of all that God has intended and it will result in death not just for you, but the death that spreads to all men because all sinned. We look across our world and the pervasiveness and the constancy of the evil and the sin and the tragedies and the horrors, it has some explanation beyond somebody just messed up yesterday.
No, this goes all the way back to the way in which our world was affected. Sin entered the world through Adam and sin's consequences spread through the world because of Adam. How did the spread occur? One answer is just by repetition. It's the end of verse 12, "Death spread to all men because all sinned as father became an example." The child is life, touched life, is generation past a generation and the habits and the practices and the example of sin became ingrained. We copied, we continued. By repetition, the sin of humanity began to spread, but the Apostle doesn't just talk about the repetition, but sin spreading because of a representation that is hard, hard for our culture to hear these days.
Look at verse 13, "Having just said all sinned," the Apostle adds, "for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law." Now the law is that reference to Moses giving of the Ten Commandments and the law for his people. But that law did not come until many generations after Adam.
And the Apostle says, "Now wait, if there's no law, then sin is not counted. If there's no speed limit, then you can't get traffic tickets. So how can it be if there is no law that sin was being accounted and its effects?" Verse 14, "Yet
death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam." Well, at least Adam had one law, you remember that? "You shall not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil." But once he's out of the garden, that law doesn't apply, it didn't apply to other people.
And even though there was not a law, sin reigned. Death began to corrupt, the evil began to spread. It is this understanding of the Apostle that Adam in his sinning became representative, that his nature began to touch the rest of us. We can't hardly even think of that in an individualistic, democratic society like we live, and that someone can make a decision that would touch other people. And yet it's common in our lives that if a spouse assumes a debt, it's for the family. If a president declares a war, it's for the nation. If a father or a company decide to move, it affects everyone. We recognize the principle of representative action, and we are being told that that's what happened with Adam, and it began to spread. And the proof of that is even when there was no law, sin and death are spreading into humanity. Now for those of you who are kind of long-schooled in the church, you know this teaching has a name in the history of the church. This is known as what? This is known as the doctrine of original sin, that Adam did something that began to affect other people. And you don't understand not only your world, but the gospel, if you don't begin to understand how that works, and even some verses in Scripture won't make sense to you. You take a verse like Psalm 51 and verse 5. We often repeat Psalm 51 in times of confession where the great King David was acknowledging horrible sin in his life. But as part of that confession he said this, "I was sinful at birth. In sin did my mother conceive me." Now nobody is claiming that a newborn commits sin, not the point. I mean I recognize that some moms may think soon after birth that this little monster just came out of me, you know, but you know that that newborn doesn't commit sin, doesn't know enough to or not to. And yet David says, "I was a sinner from birth. In sin did my mother conceive me." The way that people in the church have expressed it for generations to help us understand is this, we are not sinners simply because we sin. We sin because we are sinners. That's in our nature. You don't have to train a child to resist nap time or race to the front of the line. There's something in us. We're always pushing back against it by law and by nature and by church and by religion, but there is something that just continues and what continues is the evidence of our broken nature of this corruption, this dying, this corrosiveness, this cancer, this rust in our souls that just keeps working its way through the generations. And if you ever begin to argue, say, "Oh no, that doesn't exist. We're all just basically good." We just look at a week like the one we just had as a nation and say, "This is basically good." What headlines are you reading that says we are just basically good? Everything is saying there is deep, ingrained corruption in our world. And as one of our staff members so beautifully prayed during our staff meeting this week, the problem is not out there. It's not out there. It's the problem is not out there. The problem is in us because we all share the same background. All of us have the roots in Adam that make us sinners that's evident in the sin that we do. All right. That's the party line. Now what does our culture say to that? We are sinners because of Adam that we inherit a sin nature. What does our culture say? That's not fair. Now the Apostle Paul is smart enough to know there may be some people who would have some questions. And so he begins to answer as we need to be able to answer. If this is the reality that we face, then how do we deal with the fact that all of us have a background that's shared and we don't like it?
The gospel's response to this triangle of death and lawlessness and sin that characterizes all of humanity is first to say, "Even if you don't like the root of our sin, you cannot deny its fruit." Not just in the headlines. In your own life.
The end of verse 12 again, "Death spread to all because all sinned." I don't like the notion that my nature is established by Adam. Oh, I get it. Okay. So you're not connected to Adam, so you're holy. Well, no, I'm not perfect. And that's the point.
We are not saying that everyone is equally evil. What we are saying is there is none righteous, no, not one. That is what the Apostle was making clear. There is this separation of sin between humanity and our Creator. And that situation has to be solved by God Himself. And the reason that God is making that clear is not just so that you will feel unfairness or you will have some answer to a weekly tragedy. Ultimately, God is making clear to all of us our common background so that we will not run away from Jesus. Why would I run away from Jesus? Listen, if you can put yourself back, many of you, when you walked into this church or a church like this, at some point in your past when you think, "Man, I shouldn't be here." All these put together people, all these people who seem to know about this faith stuff, I don't have a place here. If you knew my background, you would know I don't have a place here. And what the Apostle Paul is saying is, we all have the same background. And that's why every single person who would come to Jesus Christ has a place here, has a place in his own heart. Because your background is not disqualifying you, it's your common background that actually makes you part of the family. To make clear the implications, why the Apostle would keep saying with such strength, "Listen, we're all the same, shooter and saint. We're the same in degree of need. We're the same in our sinful nature background." Why would he say that? I began a tale last week of
a friend of mine in high school, I need to tell you more. Beautiful young woman, a friend of mine in high school, with an abusive and then an absent father. I understand so much more now than I did when I was young of why she then acted as she did, though beautiful, throwing her beauty and her body at young men. All finding some approval, somebody who will value me, somebody who will give me the love that I have not received in my own home. There was a wonderful result from all that. She was the one who said to me, "God can't love me. God shouldn't love me if He knew what I had done." But through the ministry, I actually can't remember if it was young life or youth for Christ. And I think of the wonderful ministries that are done here by people like Dan Learned and Jeff Ringenberg and Katrina Forseth and Marlene List who just ministered to children from some of the most awful backgrounds. And I look at the people I've known in my own life who've been forever changed by that. And I could simply say, "She came to faith in Jesus Christ and it'd be just a wonderful, neat package all tied up and lovely." But that's not the end of the story. I mean, there were great things that happened. She began to trust in the Lord. And people in the church came around and began to support her, where her own family would not. So she, actually people give her tuition to go to a Christian college to continue to grow in her faith. But as I was visiting my brother at that Christian college a few years later, I found out that she was dating, getting very close to marrying a young man who was as verbally and physically abusive as her father had been. And as I spoke to her and her friend spoke to her and said, "Why are you doing this? This is not your future. This is not what you have to do." And her response to me was, "Brian, this is just my background. I know what I'm supposed to get. This is just my background. I know what I'm like." What she was doing was she had continued to accept that old mythology that there are the good people with the good backgrounds and there are the bad people with the bad backgrounds and the people with the bad backgrounds, they just expect one kind of life and the people with the good backgrounds expect another kind of life. And the Apostle Paul is saying, "No! If you think your background is miserable and awful and there is no place for you in this church, then you're in the family." Because every single one of us is a child of Adam. Every single one of us has a broken, corrupted, sinful nature. And the reason you and I have to know that is so that we will not run away from Christ and say, "There's no place for me here. My background is too bad." And God's purpose is not just to keep us from running away from Christ, it's to keep us running to Christ. Because what happens even to people in the church who do not recognize their common humanity, their sinful nature, their sinful background, is they then do things that shock themselves. And they now shut out the Savior because they say, "Listen, I had no idea I'm as bad as I really am. I must not be a believer. I must not be worthy of Jesus. Look what I have done.
You need to hear me, that the reason we are being told about our common humanity is that we will not be shocked by our own sin. There's no temptation taken you but such as is common to man," says the apostle. There was a time in my life when I thought that meant was whatever I'm struggling with inside, ambition, anger, lust, greed, whatever it is, you know, somebody out there probably experiences that too. It's not what that verse means. There's no temptation taken you but such as is common to man, which means there is nothing out there, the seeds of which are not already in here. That's what James, the brother of Jesus, says, "If you've committed one transgression of the law of God, how many laws of God have you actually broken?" All of them. They're all connected to the glory and the goodness of God, and in some measure, if you break just one, you have broken all the rest.
And for that reason, we get united in our humanity with fallen, broken creatures, and the apostle wants us to know that as much as we disdain to think about it. But you have to. You have to know that your sin, as awful as it may be, as much as it may shock you, does not shock God enough to turn away from you so that you will still run to Him.
Sufan Stevens is an indie pop musician who wrote a decade ago an uncomfortable
lyric about John Wayne Gacy. Remember him? The mass murderer in the Chicago suburbs?
I don't know that Sufan Stevens is a Christian, but like many artists, he sees into the depths of humanity with clear eyes. And he writes these words, "The neighbors, they adored him," John Wayne Gacy, "for his humor and conversations,
but twenty-seven people, even more. He put a cloth to their lips, quiet hands, quiet kiss, and in my best behavior, I'm really like him. Look beneath the floorboards for the secrets I have hid."
We look so good here. We got it all put together. If not here on Facebook, it's all put together.
We don't want people to look beneath the floorboards at the anger, at the lust, at the bitterness, at the unforgiveness, at the failures. We don't want them to look because we know what they will find. The disappointment we have in ourselves, much less the wrath of God that's poured out against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. Listen, I'm not just disappointed in me. I know God has every reason to be disappointed in me, and I don't want other people to know that. And so we don't want them looking beneath the floorboards because we won't just despair if they do. We actually believe we'll have no place with Christ if they see what's real there.
God does not want us shocked by our own sin so that we will recognize He is not shocked by it so we can keep going to Him. I think of the famous sermon by Bishop Festo Kibengere of the Anglican Church of Uganda after the tyranny of Idi Amin that resulted in the slaughter of so many Ugandans and the terrors we can't even talk about in polite company.
And here is the Anglican Church bishop Kibengere speaking to the soldiers who have committed these awful deeds and says to them, "Remember you don't shock Christ. You can sit in His presence
as you are and take heart." The renewal is for you. Christ is the great renewer.
He is the one making things right. He is the one renewing things. He is the one who has taken what is wrong and is making it right. And how does He do it? Verse 15, "The free gift is not like the trespass,
for if many died, how many is many? All died," says the apostle. They're dying by the sin that is in them. "If the many died through one man's trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus abounded for many." The great sin of many is there, and yet what can we rest it? Here is this gift that's not because we're balancing the scales,
but because God said, "I will make things right. I will do it by the provision of my Son in His perfectness and His righteousness as the one who is outweighing all the evil."
That is what is being required. Is that fair that Christ goodness would outweigh all of humanity's evil? No, that's not fair, but it's free, which is the counterbalance, the great offset to the apparent unfairness of Adam's sin touching the rest of us. I recognize that part of the answer to the apparent unfairness of Adam's sin touching everyone is that you just can't deny the fruit. You just can't deny it in your own heart. You cannot deny it in a world of sin, horror, and tragedy.
But the other thing that the apostle is saying to us, listen, if that's not enough of an answer to you about the unfairness, is you just can't deny the reality, then even if you do not like the original,
you should love the sequel. What is the original? What would originally cause things to go bad?
Well, that was right there at the end of verse 14, right? Just almost in passing I read,
"Those who were sinning, theirs was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come." From the very beginning, God promised one who would come, who would crush the influence of Satan, that when we couldn't do it, that he would do it in our behalf, just as Adam had caused sin and its corruption to influence us in our behalf. So there would come one who would be a reflection in reverse of what Adam had done. Not just like Adam, he's the same in that his actions affect many people, but he's different in that Adam's sin led to death,
but the one who was to come would crush death and crush sin and crush its influence for far more than himself.
For those of you long schooled in the Bible, that's saying Adam was not just a type of Christ.
In essence, he's an anti-type. He's the one who's in reverse. He's the one who's reversing the great unfairness. Christ is not just an anti-type, he's the antidote to all that Adam did and the world that he infected. Verse 16, "The free gift is not like the result of that one man's sin, for the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation,
but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification." In one verse, it's world history being described. What happened? "The free gift is not like the result of one man's sin,
for judgment following one trespass brought condemnation." There was just one person who upset the balance of a perfect world, and when he did, it affected everything. The balance is undone, and dying you shall die. The dying begins. The corruption begins to work its way through fiber and nerve and plant and climate, and everything is being affected as the world's balance is being upset. But that wasn't the end of the story. The judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses. Wait, wait. It wasn't just one trespass. Yes, Adam sinned, and then what happened? And all sinned.
They continued in the path, one after another after another after another, generation upon generation upon generation upon generation. The sin continues. The trespass piles up as we continue in the path by repetition as well as by representation.
Even if you don't like the fact that Adam was your representative, you have to say, "But wait a second.
Do I even live up to my own standards, much less God's standards? I recognize the imperfection. I recognize I simply line myself up with the background of the rest of humanity in recognizing I'm not right with a holy God because I'm not holy. That's my background. But what else happened? What is the great counter to the unfairness? That unfairness is offset by a greater unfairness, the free gift following many trespasses that brought justification. By what? By one man whose act upon a cross as the perfect Son of God would offset all the other trespasses so that our background is being offset by the provision of the grace of God in Christ Jesus. It is that great undoing, that great unfairness, that Christ alone would be the basis for my hope and your hope and the hope of the world that all the trespasses of the past, all the trespasses of the sin, the shootings, the wars, the betrayals, the famines, all of that is being offset in its guilt and hurt ultimately by the work of Jesus Christ. And you say, "That's not fair." No, it's not. It's better than fair. It is profound, abundant grace.
So the apostle can say, even by the end of this verse 20, "But where sin increased, grace abounded all the more." And the way in which that grace is abounding is just incredible to our minds and hearts because it's not just guilt that's being offset. Verse 17 says something amazing, "For if because of one man's trespass, death reigned." Hear that again? The dying has begun. Death is reigning. All the influence of corruption, all the infection is spreading, spreading, spreading. By one man, death reigned through that one man. Much more though will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness, same word now, reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.
Yes, death reigns in this world. The corruption continuing. Everyone dies at some point, but our dying is already happening from the day you were born, the dying is going to be happening. But what's the counter? That we would reign in life. That's not just heaven, pie in the sky, by and by. It's the understanding that this wonderful power of Jesus Christ by His Holy Spirit is entering our world now, entering our lives now. We look at our background. We look at the faults and the frailties of our present and we say there is no way that God could love me. There's no way that He can help me. Here's the promise of the gospel. The reign of Christ begins in life. Begins now. People say, "My marriage can't be helped. My addiction can't be stopped. My frustrations cannot be removed." And the gospel is saying, "No, there can be substantial progress in this life." Yes, glory still awaits us. Yes, perfection is out there. Yes, I know that. But Christ's reign, His power, His influence is starting right now. For you and me, what does that mean? Tomorrow does not have to be like yesterday.
Real change is possible. Real hope is possible. Christ, by His Spirit, is entering the lives of His people to turn back the reign of darkness. Here the dawn is already coming.
And that gives me hope. It means when I'm shocked by my sin, I don't turn away from a God who's not shocked by my sin. But I run to Him and I say, "God, not only forgive my guilt, but help me. Give me strength I don't have. Overcome my weakness. Overcome my doubt. Father, You be working. Turn back the darkness." And His promise is that He will. But for whom?
How do you receive the free gift of grace? Well, it was right there in the very middle of verse 17. Right, right just center in the middle.
Having described Adam and the counter of Jesus, what are we told? "Much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ."
We recognize all that Christ has done. I'm going to center Him. And recognizing all that He has done, we begin to recognize this Jesus is not just putting away my guilt. He is working,
interceding for me at God's right hand, sending His Holy Spirit to give me not just a conscience, but strength.
I have hope again, even when I have lost confidence in myself because of the free gift that I receive by faith. Most of the world is out there trying to balance scales, right? I'm not perfect, but the good works outweigh the bad. I'm sorry, you're on the wrong side of the scale. Unless Jesus balanced in your behalf. We are lost. But He has done that. And we say, "Jesus, I receive this truth. I receive that I am a sinner by action as well as by birth. I need help, but I don't just receive that truth by confessing my need. I profess my Savior. He made the way. He makes me right. He has provided His righteousness in the place of my sin and beyond that His strength where I've been so weak."
If not for their own needs, for the needs of others. And we were just dealing with some hard things this past week, even as a staff. And one of the things that we began to recognize was, you know, some people just can't come forward and talk to other people. They feel on the spot. They feel embarrassed.
So I'm just going to remind you of something. In the pew seat in front of you, every single one of you, this is responding to Grace Card, right? In your own private lap seat, you can just indicate things. I want to learn more about a new life in Christ. You check that box. And if you give us any way to contact you, we'll talk more.
The second box is, I have questions and would like to speak with a pastor. How could you listen to a sermon like this one today about original sin and not have some questions?
If you'll let, we'll talk to you and just talk about where's this path go? What does life hold?
Or maybe you know enough about yourself already and what Jesus has done that you say, "I'm committing myself to Jesus." I want to make that reign of life start today.
If it's better for you just to mark the card and put it on the box by the door, do that. If you want to pray for somebody and come forward and help us, we'll pray with you. We'll do that.
But for right now, I want you to know something. If you think your background is too terrible for you to have a place here, it's not.
You're just like the rest of us. You're just a child of Adam in need of a Savior. And if you'll receive him, he will be your Savior.
Father, I pray that you would enable every heart here to be honest about need as well as about Savior.
We disappoint even ourselves, much less you. We are not holy. We are not perfect. We do not have things straightened out by what we ourselves do.
But Jesus made it right. He countered everything in humanity's wrong, including the humanity that's in my own heart.
I confess that need. I confess, Father, more people need to confess.
I'm not the person I want to be. I'm not the person God wants me to be.
But if that's your prayer, receive Jesus. God, I believe Jesus can make it right. He paid the debt of my sin on the cross. And he can fill my life now with new hope.
Jesus, be my Savior. If you confess your need and receive Jesus, his blessings are yours from this day forth.
Seek him. Father, we seek you and praise you for Christ. So we pray in Jesus name. Amen.