08-08-10 The 2^nd Adam

We’ve been out of our study of Romans for several weeks

but we’re going to return to it this morning.

The last time we were in this study

we were finishing up the first 11 verses of Romans chapter 5,

a remarkable section of the letter

in which Paul shares with us

7 gifts given to every person

at the time we enter the family of God through faith in Christ.

By it’s very nature

it is an incredibly encouraging passage,

a passage designed to forever remove from us

any anxiety about our Lord’s love for us

or about our absolute security that we now have with Him through Christ.

And now this morning we’re going to move on in Paul’s comments

and move into a passage that, when we first read it,

may sound like a confusing puzzle to many of you.

But it’s a puzzle we’ll stay with long enough

so that we get all the pieces in the right place

and see the remarkable picture it reveals.

To help us with that puzzle

I want to give us some preparation

for what we will find when we get there.

The passage we will be looking at

is Romans 5:12-21.

It is a passage that provides us with an insight into the mind of our God

in a very special way.

It answers some crucial questions,

questions that have gone unanswered

since the day Adam sinned,

and it also gives us

a panoramic view of God’s plans and purposes for the human race,

a view that we can gain

from no other passage in the Bible.

The overall purpose of the passage

is to give us a comparison

between the two most important men

in all of human history.

These are the only two men who,

each in their own way,

have impacted every other human being who has ever lived.

Those two men are Adam,

and Christ.

Paul takes those two men

and stands them side-by-side in these 10 verses,

and allows us to see an amazing comparison between the two.

In our study of the book of Romans

we have just seen in Romans 5:1-11

Paul explaining to us

the personal results

of Christ’s death for each Christian

and the way in which His death

made it possible for our God to give us those seven gifts.

Through those 7 gifts Paul was saying,

‟Christian, let me help you see

just a little of what Christ has already done both in you and for you.”

But now, in verses 12-21,

Paul steps back and says to us,

‟And that’s not all!

I’ve shown you what Christ accomplished in you personally,

individually,

but now let me show you what He’s accomplished historically -

let me show you what Christ did

in and to and for the entire human race.”

He takes us back to an event

that took place at the dawn of history,

an event that had consequences

for every person from then on.

Through Adam

sin entered into the human race.

Man, the created being,

chose to disobey his Creator.

That one act of disobedience

pulled the human race

into an unending flow

of rebellion,

and isolation from God,

and unleashed an endless flood of evil into the world,

evil that saturates every one of our lives in some ways.

Paul uses two words in this passage

to describe our world condition

from Adam to Christ.

Those two words are,

‟death reigned”.

DEATH was the undisputed

ruler of the human race.

It conquered all,

it consumed all.

No one escaped its kingdom

or its absolute lordship

over the entire human race.

But in this last half of Romans 5

Paul tells us that through Christ

a new ruler has been established in human history.

Let’s read the passage

and then see if we can find some handles

to help us get a hold of it.

Rom. 5:12-21

Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so 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 until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come.

But the free gift is not like the transgression. For if by the transgression of the one the many died, much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abound to the many. The gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned; for on the one hand the judgment arose from one transgression resulting in condemnation, but on the other hand the free gift arose from many transgressions resulting in justification. For if by the transgression of the one, death reigned through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.

So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men. For as through the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous. The Law came in so that the transgression would increase; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, even so grace would reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Now, to help us begin to relate to these words,

let me 1^st show you a little comparison chart

that may help us here.

Paul takes Adam and Christ in this passage,

and then traces their choices,

and the results of those choices

on the rest of humanity.

In this comparison

he wants us to see

the extent to which the work of Christ

and the life and death of Christ

influences the entire human race.

Let me put it into a single phrase

to make it even easier.

Do you know what Paul is saying to us here?

He is saying:

One man did it wrong

and we all suffered the consequences,

but then one Man did it right

and we all reap the reward.

But there is more than just a comparison

between Adam and Christ

taking place in this passage.

There is an underlying question

that’s being dealt with.

Why would God allow the human race to continue after Adam sinned?

Do you realize that

Adam and Eve sinned

before they’d given birth to any children?

There were just the two of them.

The entire human race was right there,

both guilty of the same sin.

God knew, of course,

the consequences that their sin would have on their descendants.

He knew their one sin

would grow and multiply

into all manner of wickedness,

and evil,

and perversion,

and ugliness

in the lives of those who would follow.

He knew, too,

that He could stop it all

by simply making Eve barren.

If she had no children

all that multitude of evil

could be eliminated forever.

So why didn’t He?

I want to offer you two statements

that help me understand why.

And to help explain the 1^st statement

I first want you to picture a mother of four children,

all of them boys,

ages 6, 7, 8, and 9.

This mom is by both temperament

and by training

a person who loves neatness.

She loves to have her world orderly,

organized,

clean,

tidy.

Messiness just drives her crazy.

Now, picture this mom at 8 a.m. Monday morning.

The school bus is heading down the road,

taking her boys out of her life

for the next seven hours.

She looks around at the devastation

left over from the weekend

and gets to work.

For the next 7 hours she pours herself into restoring order and cleanliness to her world.

By 3:00 p.m. her world is once again

neat,

and clean,

and orderly.

Then she hears the bus,

sees the door fly open,

and 4 boys blast into her home.

Within 15 minutes

they have left a wake of devastation

through the kitchen,

the bathroom,

their bedrooms,

the living room,

and the hallway.

And as she stands there in shocked disbelief,

she hears one of them call out,

‟Hey guys! Let’s go play in the garage!”

Now, given this dear mom’s love for neatness,

why does she put up with them?

Life would be so much more simple,

so much cleaner,

so much more ordered and organized without them.

Why?

Because she loves them,

and working with those boys,

for those boys,

investing herself in them

is worth the cost.

Now let me give you the first statement:

God’s war on earth

is not a war against sin,

it is a war for mankind.

I think we sometimes get the mistaken idea

that God’s real goal,

what He’s really working for here on this earth

is to defeat and eliminate EVIL.

We may picture Him angry at sin,

fighting against it,

with His chief goal being that

of ultimately defeating it forever.

Now, it’s true that He hates sin

because of the consequences that sin has on us

and on our relationship with ourselves,

with one another,

and with Himself.

But His real war is not against sin.

If it was, He could easily have dealt with the whole problem

the day Adam and Eve sinned,

by simply making Eve barren.

No offspring,

no sinners,

no sin,

no problem,

just like that mom could have made her home

into the neatness palace of the community

simply by choosing not to have children.

But God didn’t do that

because God is strongly pro-people,

no matter what the cost to Himself,

and His commitment is not

a commitment to fight against sin,

it is a commitment

to fight for us.

Certainly His battle for us

has caused Him to fight sin

because of the effect sin has on us,

to us,

and in us.

But the whole purpose of the battle

is not to defeat sin,

but rather to rescue us

and to do it in a way that enables us to discover the truth about Him -

the truth about the endless depth of His love for us.

And exactly the same principle

applies in our individual relationship with God as well.

Right now some of you

are struggling with sin issues in your own life.

You know God is involved in that struggle as well.

But if you are not careful

it is easy to fall into the trap of thinking

that God’s purpose is to fight against your sin,

and that His point of focus

is on your sin,

and His great concern is to defeat that sin.

It is not.

There is only one reason why God

has chosen to involve Himself in your sin struggle right now -

because He is fighting FOR you -

for your freedom,

for your health,

for your future because He loves you.

It is not hatred of sin that motivates Him,

it is His love for you.

So, statement #1 that I come away with

as I read Romans 5:12-21 is this:

God’s war on earth

is not a war against sin,

it is a war for mankind.

And statement #2 is this:

God allowed man to go on multiplying

even after sin entered the world

because He knew that through Christ

He could still offer each human being

the same choice He originally offered Adam.

I know it is easy for us

at this point in history

to look back at Adam

and want to curse him for the choice he made.

We have seen

and suffered the consequences

of thousands of years of sin in society.

And, even more,

each of us have entered this world

with our own inborn sin nature

and the turmoil it causes us.

We have our own personal bent toward sin

that moves us down our own personal path of self-destruction.

But I want us to see something this morning

that may give us a whole new perspective on our situation.

You see,

in this passage

Paul tells us that Christ undid the damage

that Adam did in the Garden.

Through Christ

each one of us are placed in a position

where we can make exactly the same choice that Adam once made.

Look at this...

God offered Adam and Eve a choice.

He said to them,

‟You can have an eternal life of fellowship with Me

in a perfect creation

if you will trust what I say to you

about this one tree,

the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,

or you can have death

and eternal separation from Me

if you choose not to trust what I say about this tree.”

But look what happens through Christ.

Through Christ, the ‟second Adam”,

God now offers each of us

exactly the same choice.

We can have eternal life and fellowship with our God

in a perfect creation

if we trust what God says to us

about another tree,

the tree on which Christ was crucified.

Or we can have

eternal death and separation from God

if we choose not to trust what He says about that tree.

Now, it is true

that Adam made his choice

in a perfect world,

unscarred by sin.

And it is also true

that we must wait a few years

for our perfect world to be brought into being

by the recreative work of our God.

But honestly,

I think our having been able to taste

some of the fruit of our rebellion

before we make our choice

stacks the deck in our favor.

What Paul is seeking to share with us

here in Romans 5:12-21

is that, because Christ chose right,

He now has the power to correct everything

we have suffered

or would suffer

because Adam chose wrong.

God’s scales never go unbalanced.

We are not just helpless victims

of the sins of those who have come before us.

In Christ

a 2^nd Adam has come.

Whereas the 1^st Adam chose wrong,

and brought the curse of death

to all those who followed him,

the 2nd Adam chose right,

and brings the offer of life

to all who will follow Him.

Rom. 5:19 For as through the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One (Jesus Christ) the many will be made righteous.