Before we look at these verses 12 through 21, let’s pray together. Please pray with me. Our Father in heaven, we give you thanks for this beautiful day in which the creation is revealing your glory and power. We give you thanks for this beautiful day in which there is grace in this place for these people. We give you thanks that this is your Holy word which you gave to our fathers, that we might pass it to our children, that we might know you and worship you in spirit and in truth. Bless now the reading and especially the preaching of your word to the saving of our souls, the working of faith in our hearts, the working out of righteousness in our lives. We ask this blessing, oh God, in Jesus name and for his glory. Amen. Let me double check. Yes, okay. I have a green light. Loving But hear now the word of the Lord. Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, so death spread to all men because all sinned. So sin indeed was in the world before the law was given. But sin is not counted where there is no law.
Yet death reined 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 reined through that one man, 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. Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification in life for all men. For as by the one man’s disobedience, the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience, the many will be made righteous. Now, the law came in to increase the trespass. But where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that as sin reined in death, grace also might reign through righteousness, leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Amen and Amen. This is the word of the Lord. Please be seated. On the childhood farm I grew up on, there were fields and forests through which I love to roam and have fun. Every summer, wandering over the creeks and the ponds, playing in every corner of the farm, full of joy and childhood delight. But in addition to fields and forests of fun, there was poison ivy. And I spent a large portion of my summer clawing my skin off my arms and legs. I came up with many horrible inventions to relieve my agony. And once sitting in the dining room, clawing away at my arm, my mother came by and said, Have you tried the anti-itch ointment that I got you and left on the sink in the bathroom? And I sat there in childish confusion. Oh, do you mean that anti-inch ointment relieves my itch? That had not occurred to me. Oh, do you mean that that was for me who’s constantly itching all the time? That had not occurred to me. And yet this childishness in which we miss such an obvious reality is common among us all. Then we come to something like the Book of Romans, Romans 5, and we suddenly realize grace is the animating principle of our lives.
But is it? Is it actually what’s governing our love and relation with one another? You see, the good news for us this morning from Romans 5 is that Jesus gives grace. There’s grace for us in Christ. But the command for us this morning is that we would apply that grace to our lives. We would apply that grace to our relations with one another. Now, I want to think about that a little bit this morning and develop it through the text. If you look first at verses 12 through 14, we’re introduced to a problem with which many of us are familiar. It says beginning in verse 12, that sin has come into the world through one man and death through sin. We’re familiar with sin and death, are we not? How many have sinned? How many have buried the dead? We know sin and death. It is a familiar thing with us. Ben Franklin compared it to taxes. The reality is that it is part of the reality. And when sin and death has come into the world through that one man, that Adam, it has come to all men. You see, that obvious little reality that we, like little children, often overlook is that all humans sin.
You are a human, therefore, you sin. The little obvious reality that we so often overlook is that all humans die. You are a human. You will die. Even the really adorable little tiny ones. This is the problem. This is the problem that we face in in this world that through one man, sin and death has come into the world. Paul further says that God, in his grace, gave us a tool, an instrument by which to awaken ourselves to this obvious reality that we would prefer to ignore, that we would prefer to overlook. Through Moses, God gave us a law. It wasn’t that sin didn’t exist before the law. It wasn’t that death didn’t exist before the law. They both were the reality, the warp and wolf of the world. But the law came that we might understand the relationship between sin and death. Let me illustrate that for a moment. Husbands, when you very quietly bury yourself in your work endlessly and ignore the feelings, thoughts, hopes, and ambitions of your wives, you are bringing death into your marriage. Your sin is quietly killing her trust, her affection. Wives, when cruel and unkind words come out of your lips and you cut into the heart and well-being of your husband, you slowly kill his confidence.
Death comes from sin. Death has come into the world through that one sin, Adam. But death comes into our worlds through our sin. Parents, when your discipline is festering with the aroma of selfish rage and not loving grace, you bring death to the heart of your little child. That sin brings death into the world. Now, as grim as that picture is, there’s good news. In my Bible, I have to turn the page. We turn the page. And in verses 15, 19 through 19, we are introduced to the provision that God has made for that problem. That through our sin, death is at work among us, and we have to look around our lives and look around our world and recognize There are sins I’m introducing to my relationships. And so death is visiting that relationship. And I am slowly killing one another. But Jesus is the antidote. Jesus is the provision for that problem. Beginning in verse 15, Paul says that there is a series of contrasts that we can make. He, in fact, calls, he uses this technical theological term, Adam is a type of Christ. It means that we can make a comparison between the two of them.
We can contrast them. And that’s what Paul does here in this paragraph. There’s something that Adam and Jesus have in common, a relationship between the one and the many. That there was one guy, Adam, and from him, consequences for the many. There was one man, Jesus, and from him, consequences for the many. But the consequences could not be more opposite. Three consequences Paul gives us. First, the free gift It’s not like the trespass, for if many died through the 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 to many. You see the first contrast. We have in our humanity a death, a sin-induced death. It is part of our reality. But there’s another reality. There’s another humanity, a new humanity in this new human, this new Adam, Jesus. It is a principle of grace, not just any grace. Abounding grace, abundant grace, grace that is constantly increasing toward others. This becomes a principle we should experience in our relationship with God. Have you ever done business with your conscience? I mean, we just sang about it. The more sin you confess, the more grace you discover in God.
As the great Puritan observed, there is more grace in Christ than sin in you. You cannot exhaust the grace of God with your sin. And this is the gospel principle for our relationships with one another. Have you ever looked at your kids or your spouse and said, You can’t send me out of my love for you. Because that’s what God did to you. He looked at you and said, You can’t send me out of my love for you. It is grace that governs our relationship. Sovereign grace, abounding grace. And the more you hurt, the more I love. That is how God treats us, and it becomes the governing principle of how we treat one another. But secondly, Jesus brings this change in 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 traspasses brought justification. Again, great theological words coming from the apostle Paul. Condemnation, we understand. It’s something we’ve experienced. We wrong someone and they hold us in contempt. In Boston, that sounds like a really long, honking horn. You cut me off, and I condemn you with the roar of my horn.
It’s different here, I assume. And yet, The condemnation is universal. That we sin against one another and our desire, our temptation, is to condemn each other for our sins. We sang about that in the last hym as well. But Jesus is different. He introduces a new principle. He says, No, it is justification that will be the result of my grace working in the relationship you have with me. I will bring you into a right standing with me. I will treat you as if this sin wasn’t between us. And this, too, needs to become an important part of our relationships with each other, is it not? I need to feed my children no matter how much they treated me poorly today. Dinner is an act of grace. It’s an act of justification. I will feed you not according to what you deserve, but according to my love for you. And this is the principle we work out in our lives, in our jobs, in our neighborhoods. I will treat you not according to how you act, but according to how Christ acts toward me. He doesn’t treat me as I deserve. I had a friend in college where every time you shook his hand and said, How are you doing?
He would say, Better than I deserve. That becomes the governing principle for our love for one another. The third thing that Jesus changes about our relationships so that it is no longer sin and death that runs our lives. It is grace, it is justification, He says, thirdly, for if by one man’s trespass, death reined through that one man, 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. Paul is saying to us that there is a change in power. No longer is it death that overshadows us some pretended sovereignty, governing our relationships and dictating our outcomes. When you wed, many of you actually stood up and took vows that acknowledge that death overshadows your marriage. Till death, do us part. Many of us recognize that it is an important part of our relationship to our children, that we prepare them for living in a world in which we don’t dwell with them anymore. Whether that’s they grow up and leave the house or whether they have put us in the ground. The reality is that death rains over this earth, this humanity.
It cast a shadow on all that we do. But Paul says there’s another way to do it. That those who have received the abundance of grace, those who have experienced the abounding love of God that is greater than any sin, and those who have been justified, have had the free gift of righteousness given to them, those who live with their hands, one full of love and one full of righteousness, gifts of God in Christ, they live as kings, unafraid of death, not submitting to the power of the grave, but living with a different hope in their hearts, life. Life eternal. Hold that thought. It comes at the end of the chapter. Paul then summarizes this principle, verses 18 and 19. Therefore, is one trespass led to condemnation for all men? One act of righteousness leads to justification in life for all men. This is a summary of that progression. That in Adam, we have a humanity, a world, a reality governed by sin and death. But in Christ, there is a humanity, a world governed by other things, grace, righteousness, and life. For as by one man’s disobedience, the many were made sinners. Paul now Which is to this language of identity.
That in Adam, I have an identity. That identity is sinner. Our culture is super excited about changing their identity. But my friends, this is the best identity change they can make. For those who are in Adam are sinners. They are under the law of sin and death governed by that power. But they don’t have to be. They can have in Christ a new identity for as one man’s obedience, the many will be made righteous. Righteous. That can be your identity. That can be who you are, the beloved child of God who has received from him the righteousness of Christ and is giving it to others. With this procedure, with this model or vision of life and mind, Paul brings it together in verses 20 and 21. Now, the law came in to increase the trespass. That is to say that God in his grace, has given us his word, certainly the law of Moses, but indeed all the books of the Bible, so that as we read each and every one of these pages, we are exposed to the myriad of ways in which we sin. It is not that the word of God increases the trespass in the sense that, Hey, I read my Bible, so I sin more.
But rather, the idea is that as I read my Bible, I become more aware of my sin. One of the saintliest men I’ve ever known, a retired pastor in his 80s, came to me and said, Noah, I know I sin less, but I feel it more. His guilt increased, his awareness of sin increased, even as his sin decreased. He recognized that the more he knew the character of God, the more he knew the will of God for his life in the word, the more his sense of sin increased. But don’t ever divorce it from the next part of the sentence. But where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. That when we read our Bibles, God alerts us to how sinful our thoughts are, how sinful our words are, how sinful our works are. But he also alerts us to how much grace there is for those sins. Abounding grace, grace all the more so that as sin reined in death, so that death should have a shadow over us, shackling us and binding us through sin. So there is a new principle, a comparison we can make that grace also might reign through righteousness, that we might now live as a new humanity.
Citizens of a new heaven and a new Earth in which grace is what governs our relationships, in which righteousness is what we give to one another through obedience to Christ, leading to eternal life. Now, there’s two possible ways, at least, to understand this connecting phrase leading to eternal life. One is that we go through this process that I’ve just described, in which we receive from God salvation. And then he, through his spirit and his word, works that salvation out into our lives. But then it ends in eternal life. It just simply leads in a chronological and historical way to eternal life. The other way to understand this is to recognize that the more we apply the of God to our lives and expose our sins, fearlessly facing the reality of our sin and our death, so that we might be drawn into the grace and righteousness of God in Christ, the more we taste eternal life now. When was the last time you said to someone you love, I’m sorry. Please forgive It hurt, didn’t it? But was there not also a taste of glory in it? The one that sticks in my mind is parents Have you ever apologized to your kid because you just totally messed up?
You were wrong. You got down on your knees and you looked your kid in the eye and said, I’m sorry, please forgive me. And those little arms go around your neck and they just squeeze and say, I forgive you, Daddy. And you’re like, Man, I wish I forgive you half as fast as you forgive me. And they become a little picture of our Father in heaven who beat us to forgiveness even before we came to repentance. I love it. Jesus gives grace, abounding grace, righteousness making grace, righteousness giving grace. Jesus gives life giving, eternal life making grace. Give it to each other. Apply it to your lives. Please pray with me. Our Father in heaven, we thank you for these beautiful words. We thank you for the wisdom that you, through your spirit, gave to your servant. That he, through the power of that spirit, should write down words that speak to our hearts and our minds, that we might know the person and work of Jesus Christ, and then we might, through faith, receive him and rest upon him alone and be reconciled to you. We pray, Father, that these gospel truths, which we today have heard, would linger long in our hearts and in our minds and show up in our conversations and in our jobs and in our homes.
Father, bless us today that we would work out that salvation which you have worked in us. For this we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Discaimer: This sermon text was generated by an automated transcription service.