A Tale Of Four Kings Series

INTRODUCTION

Romans, 5:12-21 is a pretty complex, complicated passage of scripture. In fact, it is one of the deepest theological teachings in all of the book of Romans, and Romans gets pretty deep. Some people even disagree about the punctuation of the Greek text, because you have to remember there are no punctuation marks in many of the Greek manuscripts. You have to supply your own. Sometimes, a change of punctuation can completely change the meaning.

If you don’t believe that, I remember what happened when I was in college in my psychology class. On the first day of class our professor wrote “woman without her man is a savage” up on the board these words with no punctuation. He said, “I want everybody in the class to write those words down and punctuate that sentence. Well, as you can imagine, most women punctuated it this way, “Woman. Without her man is a savage.” But all the guys punctuated it totally different, changing the meaning. We punctuated it this way. “Woman without her man is a savage.” Women without men are savages, so, the meaning was totally opposite according to the way it was punctuated. The same is true about this passage of scripture. It’s deep, but I want us to find where the word “reign” appears four times because I am going to talk about four kings in this passage of scripture. Just as I was walking in a few moments ago somebody said, “Well, you have a full house out there.” I said, “That’s great. Four kings beats a full house any day!” The word “reign” appears four times.

Let’s begin reading in verse 12.

Therefore, just a sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned — for before the law was given, sin was in the world. But sin is not taken into account when there is no law. 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 was a pattern of the one to come. But the gift [meaning the gift of grace] is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, [Adam] 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! Again, the gift of God is not like the result of the one man’s sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness [meaning the death of Jesus] was justification that brings life for all men. For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous. The law was added so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Paul is comparing Adam and the mess he created for us when he sinned. He’s comparing and contrasting Adam to Jesus and the wonderful mission and message he brought when he died. Remember, we found the word “reign” referring to four different words. It talked about death reigning, it talked about sin reigning; it talked about grace reigning, and it talked about life reigning. So those are the four kings we are going to talk about. But any time you talk about kings, you have to understand the meaning of the word “dynasty.” Do you remember when you were in school, some of you are still in school, and you had to repeat all the kings of France, or the kings of England. Each new family started a new dynasty. In this passage of scripture we have two dynasties, each with two kings.

I. ADAM'S DYNASTY–OUR RUIN

1. King Sin ruled

First of all, let’s talk about Adam’s dynasty, or his family, and it speaks about our ruin. We were ruined as a human race because of Adam’s dynasty. Within Adam’s dynasty there are two kings. First, there is king Sin. King Sin ruled for a long time. In fact, in some peoples’ lives king Sin still rules and reigns. Let’s go back a bit in time by thousands of years. We find Adam and Eve in a perfect environment, in a garden. They have all of these wonderful things to enjoy, the beautiful water, the beautiful plants, the fruit, the animals, and God said, “Enjoy them all, but Adam, just so that you can remember that I am transcendent from you and I am separate from you, I am reserving for myself an area of my holiness that I don’t want you to violate. I don’t want you to trespass, or cross over the line.” Do you know what the line was? It was the boundary around what the Bible calls the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Only God has the right to determine what is right and what is wrong.