Death through Adam - Life through Christ {Romans 5}
12:00 AM
How
can it be? It’s tough for so many to
believe. Why do we have free will
then? I’ve tried to explain this to
someone – a very important person in my life, yet they are just not sold out
yet. I hope after today’s post, I may
make a bit more sense to them. I
apologize for this long post, but I believe it’s worth taking the time to read
it through to the end.
The
idea that sin entered the world through one man – Adam is a difficult concept
to accept.
The entire message of the book of Romans is that access to God and forgiveness of sin is not something which you or I make a contribution at all, it is something that is provided by one person for all.
Maybe
we should ask this question – who are the two most influential people in the
world? Who would you say? Adam and Christ. Why?
Because Adam brought death and Christ brought life.
Sin entered the world through one man (vs. 12-14). Sin entered the world through that one
man. It wasn’t invented by that one may,
it wasn’t originated by that one man.
Remember, Jesus said the devil sinned from the beginning. There was sin prior to Adam. Lucifer, the great son of the morning, that
great archangel who fell because of his pride, was the first and original
sinner. But sin entered the world, into
human existence – creation – through one man.
Adam became the vehicle of the devil (Genesis 3). Adam sunk from his original creative identity
and became different. Unholiness became part
of the fabric of his soul.
Understand this, it says through one man’s
sin – it’s singular, not sins. Not all
the acts of sin came through Adam. He
didn’t invent all the acts of sin, but the principle
came, the nature, and once the sin principle came to dwell in him, he would
then pass it on to all his procreation.
That’s you and me. Just as all
the offspring of Adam have human characteristics like eyes and ears and hands
and feet, a nose and a mouth, and internal organs, so we have the sin principle
as well. It was in his loins, the seed
of humanity that would bring forth every human life, and when he was polluted,
so was everyone that he produced.
Because Adam sinned, death came. Death is not natural to how God created man
in His image. Death is an invader, an
intruder. Death is the penal consequence
of sin. Sin destroys. (Ezekiel 18:4; Romans 6:23)
Death
became the penalty for sin. We are not
made sinners because we sin, we sin because we were made sinners. I am not a sinner because I sin. I sin because I was born a sinner. And because I was born a sinner, the death
principle operates in me. I will die
physically. I am dead spiritually, cut off
from God, and someday, I may die eternally.
Paul
says in verse 12 that death spread to all men.
Nobody gets off the hook! There
is none righteous (Romans 3). Paul is
emphasizing that the sinfulness of all is due to the sin of one man. Imagine that!
One man! One time, does one sin
and we all pay, all of human history! We
won’t die because we do deeds of
sin; we die because sin is in us working death.
Death shows our sinfulness.
Paul
says we’re born dead in trespasses and sins.
Death, then is universal. All
die. Infants die, children die, good
people die, evil people die, everybody dies.
So there you have it – a universal effect then that there is a universal
cause. The universal cause is the total
depravity of the human race because we all sinned in Adam. Our depravity, then, is not the result of our
sins; it is the result of Adam’s sin.
From the very word go, from conception on,
I was shaped in iniquity. Psalm 58:3; Jeremiah 17:9; Job 14:4.
I
know you are asking, how is it that I can sin in Adam when I wasn’t even alive
and then become guilty for what I supposedly did there when I wasn’t really
there and have to pay the consequences for what I supposedly did when I wasn’t
there? Listen to what Paul says – how
could you die in Christ and rise in Christ and be given eternal life in Christ
when you weren’t there?
You
didn’t die on the cross, you didn’t rise from the dead. So how can the death of Jesus Christ include
you and the resurrection of Jesus include you and impute to you eternal
righteousness and give you eternal life if you weren’t there? How can I be held responsible for something
somebody else did? See - you have to ask
the same question about Christ. How can
I be blessed by something somebody else did?
You know the answer? I don’t. That’s just the way God did it and He hasn’t
told me nor anyone else. That’s just the
way he did it.
Nevertheless, death reigned
from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by
breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come. (Romans 5:12)
How do we know that everybody was victimized by
Adam’s sin? Because death reigned. It reigned from Adam until Moses. There wasn’t any law until Moses. Sure you can’t charge people with a crime
unless there’s a law that says what they did is a crime, right? But scripture says that sin was in the
world. Why? Because everybody died. The wages of sin is death. They died because they were sinners and if
they were sinners, they sinned. Just
remember what Jesus said to the Pharisees about if you look at a woman in your
heart and lust after her, you’ve committed adultery in your heart.
So what history proves is that sin and death was
passed on to everybody because everybody died, even before there was the law,
which meant that sin doesn’t need the law to exist and where there is sin there
is death. Besides, not everyone heard or
had the written law from God. But death
still reigned. Why? Because it was the sin principle, the corrupt
nature in man that was killing him. We
receive our sinful nature at birth, which is the proof that it was being passed
down from the original sinner, Adam.
Paul’s whole point is this – all of human history, from Adam on, before
the law and after the law, all of human history, whether you sin in direct
violation of a command of God, or whether you’re an ignorant pagan who doesn’t
have any idea what God said, all of human history will reveal the fact that man
is a sinner at the very deepest level of his nature because everybody
dies. Everybody.
So through one man, Adam, and his one act, the
whole human race was plunged into sin and death. Adam, “is a type of Him who was to come” –
this is such a wonderful statement. You’re
a Christian not because of anything you did.
I am a sinner – not because of anything I did. I was just born. And I had nothing to do with that! Let alone Adam, or whoever in the process of
people finally got to me, I had nothing to do with any of them. And I have passed on the same corrupt legacy
to my children.
That makes me a victim of the whole thing and
everybody that comes from me, my grandchildren and great-grandchildren, are a
victim of it. That’s precisely what Paul
wants you and me to understand. That
while you are no more responsible for that act which produced your death, you
are no more responsible for the act which produces your salvation and
life! That’s a gift! A GIFT!
But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died
by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by
the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! (v.15)
It was Adam’s disobedience that cursed everybody; it is
Christ’s obedience that brings salvation.
One man, one act has an immense impact.
Listen to Paul, you can do nothing to earn your salvation. It is the work of Jesus Christ, who has
accomplished salvation, which is granted to you by grace through faith. You have no more to do with that by way of
deserving it than you have to do with your sinfulness by way of deserving
that. It’s just perfect – God’s plan.
Still wondering? You
say, I don’t deserve to be a sinner. And
you don’t deserve to be a saint either.
You were made a sinner in Adam.
You were made a saint in Christ.
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