All Because of One Man
By Pastor Jim May
There is a sense of justice and fairness built into the human race. We often ignore it, and sometimes we abuse it, but we all have it. In the beginning, about 6000 years ago, God created the very first man and called him Adam. Adam was created in the very image of God with an eternal existence, or soul, a living body and a spirit. Just as God is a threefold being with a body, that of the Lord Jesus Christ, an eternal existence which is the Father, and a Spirit, which is the Holy Spirit, so is man, who is created in God’s image.
Genesis 1:26-27, "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them."
Just as man’s spirit, body and soul cannot operate independent of one another, so is our God. And just as man cannot exist without all three parts of his creation, neither does God. Our body, soul and spirit always act as one, agree as one and exist as one and ever shall be. If the body breaks the law, the body, soul and spirit are all cast into the jail cell together. If the spirit rejects God, then the soul and body will suffer the consequences right along with it. If the soul is lost, so is the spirit and the body. All are one and are inseparable.
Over in Matthew chapter 10 Jesus is speaking of the days when his disciples would be persecuted and even executed for the cause of Christ. Listen to what he had to say in Matthew 10:28, "And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell."
When this body dies, it is laid to rest. The body is held in the grave but the soul and spirit go to face God and are immediately sent to their holding place until the resurrection. For those who have put their faith in Jesus and lived in obedience to the Word of God, that place is called Heaven, and we are there with Jesus until the day comes for us to be reunited with the body that lies in the dust in the earth. For those who die without Christ, their holding place is called Hell. There they will begin their orientation in the flames, where God will allow them to feel the pains of death in their soul and spirit until they too are brought forth and then condemned at the Great White Throne Judgment to an eternity in Hell. They will not be given a new body and will not rise again in the same sense as Christians will.
Revelation 20:12-15, "And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire."
The indication here is that those who will spend forever in Hell will have no body, but will be condemned to live in a state of death, or separation from their body. They will still feel the heat, the flames, the loneliness and all of the emotions, for those are not just a part of the body but of the spirit as well. Their spirit and soul will be eternally dying, forever having lost their identity in God. They are no longer “in His image” and are separated from God’s existence and forgotten. Their body has been forever lost because it went back to the dust and then God created a whole new earth for the old earth, with all its effects of sin, have been destroyed. There will be no stains of death, pain or suffering in the New Earth. It will be as perfect as the first, or even better, for sin will never enter there to bring death once again as it did in the beginning.
Many have said to me, “I don’t care if I go to Hell. That’s where all of my friends will be anyway.” Those are foolish words from foolish people who have no understanding of what Hell really is. It’s not a party place. It’s nothing like this world. There will be no joy, no happiness, no friends, nothing at all. You won’t have a body, only a spirit and soul that still carry all of the senses of the body with them. No one will know you and you won’t know anyone else. It will be a place of absolute pain, suffering, loneliness and separation. You don’t want to go there!
Christians will be eternally identified as the Children of God by their existence as a soul and spirit that are united in a glorified body just like Jesus. The lost souls of hell will be eternally separated and have no part of God’s inheritance except their eternal spirit and soul, with all the memories of the past, which will be in the flames forever.
We have a hard time thinking of what forever really means. We sing the song that says, “When we’ve been there 10,000 years, bright shining as the sun. We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise than when we’ve first begun.” Those are beautiful words but they are not quite scriptural because in eternity there are no years, nor sun and there is only one day because time is no more. That’s great news for the saved but terrible news if you’re lost, because in hell it will be just one long, never ending, painful, lonely, horrible night.
Now, as we think of these things, we are often struck with the idea that somehow, God sending an eternal soul to hell forever just seems so unfair. How can we justify a loving God allowing such a thing to happen to any man who was created in His own image?
That’s the same problem that most of the world has with Jesus right now. They can’t understand how it could be justice for there to be only one way of salvation. They think that it’s unfair that anyone could say, “It’s my way or the highway to hell”. Mankind tries to find any other way than the right way.
What we have to realize is that our sense of justice, given to us by a just and holy God, is warped by the effects of sin.
It takes only a glance at the sense of justice that this world has to realize that it’s off balance. This world gives rights to criminals and prosecutes victims for abusing the criminal’s rights. Our courts let criminals go free on a technicality, knowing that they are guilty, and in so doing allow those same criminals to commit the same crimes over and over.
We hear the words of Isaiah 5:20-23 ringing loudly in our ears, "Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight! Woe unto them that are mighty to drink wine, and men of strength to mingle strong drink: Which justify the wicked for reward, and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him!"
God created us with a perfect sense of justice, but there was no sin to judge. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to live in world where there were no courts, where police officers would be looking for other work because no one was committing a crime? That’s the way it was in the beginning and will be again in God’s Kingdom. But for now, we have to contend with the unjust justice coming from the mind of sinful man, who lives in defiance of the only source of real justice, Almighty God.
How did we get so warped in our thinking? How could the truth and justice of a Just God become so misunderstood and misinterpreted?
It all came because of the sin of just one man. His name was Adam.
Romans 5:12-14, "Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have 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 to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come."
Adam was the father of the human race. He was the first born, or first created of all human beings and thus, we all inherit his nature.
As you can see with your own children, every one of them carries a part of your identity with them. They resemble you in appearance. They pick up many of your habits, especially the bad ones. They repeat your words, especially those you don’t want them to repeat. And most importantly, they carry the same marks of God’s image that you do, with a body, soul and spirit. They are eternal beings, born of God and of the flesh, and are meant to live forever.
But the effects of sin that were birthed in Adam’s heart, also came down to us the same way. We managed to get some of his intelligence, although it has been very limited by sin. We inherited many things from him but somehow we managed to take the bad right along with the good and then allowed the worst to effect us even more. With each passing generation, the power of sin to degenerate the character and the heart only gets worse while the knowledge and identity of God grows weaker.
That’s why God destroyed the world with the flood, to stem the tide of evil that grew in the hearts of men. In those days they lived to be nearly 1000 years old in some cases, and with each new generation they only got worse. Finally God had to limit the number of years that a man could live, death entered the picture, and men began to die quicker. In that manner evil could not grow as fast. I cannot begin to imagine how evil mankind would be if everyone lived to be a 1000 and generation after generation had only a mindset of rebellion against God as it still does today. Death, the wages of sin, was the only way to limit the growth of evil in the earth because man chose to sin against God.
And we all have sinned. There is none good, no not even one. There isn’t one person walking on the face of the earth, no matter how much good that they might do, who can say that they are without sin. We all inherited that from Adam, and from our ancestors, and then we passed that sin right along to our children and we can see those seeds germinating and growing in them every day.
Had it not been for the Love of God for lost humanity, and for his perfect sense of justice, we would be without hope and destined to destroy ourselves from the face of the earth. Death would reign forever supreme because of sin except for the One other Man.
Just as a side note here. Let me speak about evolution and creation for a moment. Some day we may get into this a little deeper.
In every generation until the late 19th Century it was generally accepted that all the fossils in the rocks were laid down by Noah’s world wide flood and that the universe was about 6000 years old. Since that time, science has created a theory that life evolved over billions of years and that the fossils are a result of this evolutionary process. If you accept the Bible as your authority you cannot accept the theory of evolution in any form. Firstly, the biblical chronology restricts the age of the universe to about 6000 years. Secondly, in order to get fossils, animals must die. This verse tells us that sin, not evolution, is the cause of death. Death and suffering did not exist until after Adam sinned. Hence before Adam sinned, no animal died and it would be impossible for any fossils to form. Before the fall, all animals ate plants, not other animals. Paul tells us in Rom_8:20 that Adam’s sin subjected all of creation to the curse, not just mankind.
What about that part of verse that says, “For until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law.”
Does that mean that God did not hold men accountable for the Law of Moses before it was given on Mt. Sinai? Yes it does. But don’t think that man could claim ignorance or that he had not broken the law of God. Man was sinning before the Law was given and had already received the sentence of death for that sin because he broke another law that he did know.
There was a law before the Law of Moses. It was given to Adam at the moment of his creation when God said in Genesis 2:16-17, "And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."
When Adam rebelled and broke God’s law, then he became guilty of breaking every law, even those he had not heard yet. Ignorance is no excuse. You hear that in the courtroom all the time. Just because you didn’t know that a new traffic light camera or a stop sign had been installed doesn’t make you innocent if you run it.
The power of death, as payment for sin, entered the creation all because of one man. But thank God it doesn’t end there.
Because of one man, salvation would also come to mankind.
Romans 5:15-16, "But not as the offence, so also is the free gift. For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many. And not as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift: for the judgment was by one to condemnation, but the free gift is of many offences unto justification."
God sent his only begotten Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to take on the body of a man and become the only possible sacrifice to pay the debt of sin that all men owed and no man could pay.
We were born in sin and we could add our sin to that list, only driving us deeper into sin and death. That we inherited from Adam.
But when we are born again of the Spirit into Jesus Christ by his blood, we are cleansed from all sin and made righteous. But unlike the idea of adding our sin to Adam’s sin, we cannot add our “righteousness” to “his righteousness”. We have none to add, nothing to give. Jesus paid it all and he gives it all to us. By his grace Jesus forgives all sin, of all men, of all time, if they will only accept Him.
Romans 5:20-21, "Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound: That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord."
If man was already guilty and condemned to death eternal, then why did God even give us the ceremonial law as found in the Law of Moses? What purpose could it serve other than condemn us even more?
It was given to prove to us just how impossible it is for a man to be found righteous in the sight of God unless he is covered by the blood of the sacrifice that God requires. It is given to show us that there is no limit to sin, and no power that can overcome it. It is also given to show us that the law has no power to justify us before God. It only brings more condemnation, for every new law is just another nail in the coffin when we break it. It was given to show us the hopelessness of our situation and the need for God to reach out and make the first move to save us.
It is given to help us understand just how much the Grace of God does for us! Just as there is no limit to the sin that man can do, there is no limit to the Grace that God can and will give to a repentant heart that accepts Jesus.
Do you know Jesus as your Savior this morning? Have you asked him into your heart? Thank God that Grace abounds and that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin! Where would we be without Jesus and who else is there that we can turn to?
There is only one way to Heaven – through Jesus Christ alone. He is the second Adam that gives us hope. All because of one man, the whole human race is condemned to eternal death. But all because of one man, Jesus Christ, the whole human race is given hope to live, through the Grace of God .
