Well, as we all well know, we have reached 2022. And we’ve had a couple tough years as a human race. I remember well in 2020 how many were claiming that was the worst year in recent memory—the worldwide pandemic had shut down much of the world, there was tremendous social unrest in the U.S. and other places. And of course, we were expecting much better by now. But the Pandemic rages on despite vaccines and all our best efforts, hospitals are overwhelmed, great political debates rage about vaccine and mask mandates. And more than that, there are some similarities to another famously bad year, 1939, when there was the fear that war was imminent in eastern Europe and it was already happening in the Asian Pacific. Back then it was Hitler’s Germany threatening to invade Poland, and there was also great diplomacy engaged in to attempt to prevent that possibility, and Japan’s Imperial ambitions were also already wreaking havoc in China and Southeast Asia. Today, Russia is threatening to invade the Ukraine, and China is engaged in a huge military build-up as they make it clear they have set their sights on Taiwan. And you wonder if we’ll ever learn the lessons from or past, or if we’ll just keep repeating the tragic errors that bring great suffering upon the human race again and again. More than that, you’re inclined to wonder how we got in this predicament, and how we might escape.
And that’s what we discuss this morning in Romans 5:12-21. It is essentially a tale of two men. You’re familiar with Dicken’s novel, A Tale of Two Cities. The predicament that the human race finds itself in is essentially a tale of two men—Adam and Christ. How did the human race end up in this continuing and never-ending state of affairs? Well, it all began with the actions, the choice of one single person, Adam, our common ancestor at the dawn of Creation. And how can we escape the consequences of his actions? Well, it all depends on whether we turn to and choose to follow one who in another context is called the Second Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ.
That’s the story and summary that we encounter in Romans 5:12-21. The Apostle Paul provides for us this answer to these most basic questions about our human existence. Our problem is that we follow Adam and his sin unto destruction and death. The solution is rather to follow Christ unto righteousness and life. And the message of this passage would be, of course, to follow Christ and gain life rather than Adam and the death that he offers.
Now, I want to warn you this morning. What the Bible teaches in this passage is not common knowledge. You will likely learn some things you didn’t know if you listen carefully this morning. The lessons contained in this passage are surprising, and for some of us, they might be disturbing. They are not what we would expect. However, I assure you, that this is the Word of God, and it is a section of Scripture that is often deliberately avoided by Christian teachers who are otherwise biblical. In fact, as I tried to look up a teaching on it on our Right Now Media website, I found that there were videos of teachings on every section of Romans with the exception of this one. Apparently, the teachings of this passage are a hot potato that expositors of the Word of God often want to avoid. So keep your ears open, because you will hear some things that even biblical Christian churches would avoid teaching as though it were the plague.
And the first surprising truth found in verse 12 is this: When Adam sinned, know that we all sinned and we all die because of Adam’s sin. When Adam sinned, we all sinned when Adam sinned, and death came upon all men, because we sinned when Adam sinned.
Now some of you may be wondering if you heard me right. Yes, this is the startling truth clearly and unmistakably taught by this passage. When Adam sinned, God counts it as though you sinned. We don’t die because of our sins alone. We first of all die because of Adam’s sin, and God holds each of us accountable for Adam’s sin.
Yep, I know you’ve got questions. Paul, beginning in verse 12, is now summarizing and giving an overview of everything he has taught about salvation and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Now he tells us of the radical difference Christ has made regarding the destiny of the human race. And toward that end, he tells us how things have been, how we got to where we are, and why sin and death characterize the lives of the whole human race. It’s because Adam sinned, and Adam’s sin is reckoned or imputed to each of us, and on account of his sin, we experience the consequence of both physical and spiritual death.
“Therefore (in other words, based on everything I have just said throughout this letter), just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned.”
Paul here is addressing the universal law and experience of all men from the time of Adam—a law which he calls the Law of Sin and Death. As he will later say in Romans 6:23, “The wages of sin is death.” When we sin, the consequence is both physical and spiritual death.
And he tells us what most of us already know. That this Law of Sin and Death began to absolutely dominate human life and creation from the point that Adam sinned. And when most of us read Romans 5:12, we read it this way: Because Adam sinned, death came upon all men, because sin came upon all men. Because then all men inherited Adam’s sin nature and then sinned in the likeness of Adam, they also experience death like Adam did.
But that is not what it says. What it actually says is this. When Adam sinned, you sinned. When Adam sinned, we all sinned. Adam’s sin has been imputed or reckoned to our account. And the first and foremost reason we experience physical and spiritual death is because we sinned when Adam sinned.
Now I know many of you have all kinds of objections and questions to what I have just said. So just here me out. The first question and most important question to answer is this: Is this really what the Word of God here is saying? And my answer is yes. And I will demonstrate that to you.
The key phrase in verse 12 is the little one at the end of the verse: “Because all sinned.” It is translated correctly. It’s in the past tense, an historical past tense. It is a reference to an action that occurred once upon a time. It is not an on-going action; it is not a present tense. It’s not something that is happening again and again through history. It happened once in history. And it is telling us this: that when Adam sinned in the Garden and the human race fell at the dawn of Creation, God imputed that sin to each of us and to the whole human race. This is the conclusion of nearly every scholar from every theological persuasion who studies this passage in the original language. And it is supported by the argument of the whole rest of the chapter. The entire argument of the chapter consists of a parallel between the lives and impact of Adam and Christ on the whole human race. It’s a parallel marked by stark contrasts. The parallel as we shall see is this: That what Adam did when he sinned had an impact on the future of the whole human race, and his sin was imputed to the whole human race as though the human race actually committed that sin. The result was that sin and death came upon the whole human race. The parallel to Christ is that His one act of righteousness, His death on the cross to pay for our sins after living a perfect life, is a gift of righteousness imputed to all who receive it resulting in righteousness and life for all who will believe. So Adam and Christ each had a huge impact, but their impact on the human race and its character and destiny are polar opposites. Adam’s sin resulted in death. Christ’s righteousness resulted in life.
So your next question is likely this: How is it fair to blame me, or us, for Adam’s sin? Isn’t it true that all of us have inherited Adam’s sin nature and sinned actually and personally and that it is just to condemn us for those sins, but not for Adam’s sin. Well, first of all, while it is true that we all inherited our sin nature from Adam and we all sin as a result, and those sins are enough to result in our death, it is also true from this passage that Adam’s sin was reckoned to our account. Apparently, Adam, as the first man, was our representative. Apparently, as that representative, he was tested with regard to what he would do when confronted with the option of breaking God’s command not to taste of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And apparently what He did is representative of what any of us would have done in the same circumstance—we also would have experimented; we would also have taken a taste.
Now this is difficult for us to accept in our individualistic American culture. We don’t want anyone treating us as though we’re part of a larger group, a class or a race. We all want to be treated as individuals. But the fact is, in other cultures, as well as ours, there is a sense of community, and what one part of that community does often has a huge impact on what happens to the rest of that community.
This teaching is often called the Federal headship of Adam. Federal has the sense of an agreement between states in the union of the nation of the United States of America coming together collectively to be governed by a federal government. Though to some degree, each state governs itself, each state is subject to the laws and actions of the larger federal government. What the federal government does for good or for ill has an impact on each of its individual states, for good or for ill. The state of Nevada may not have declared war on Japan in WWII, but it was at war with Japan in WWII because the United States of American was at war. And so it is with us and Adam. Adam was the federal head; we are like the states. Since God views us in the same class and as part of the human race which Adam represented, we experience the consequences of his actions.
And this sort of thing happens all the time. Many of you watched the College National Championship Football game on Monday night. When a single player on one team committed a pass interference penalty against a receiver on the other team, the entire team was penalized, though just one member of the team committed the penalty. When one member of a team scored a touchdown, the entire team was awarded points, not just that one member. So this collective sense of reward and punishment is more present and prevalent in our lives than we tend to think. The conclusion, therefore, of this verse and as you will see, this entire passage is that when Adam sinned, God imputed his sin to the whole human race, with the consequence that because of Adam’s single sin, death spread to all men, because all sinned when Adam sinned.
Paul now seeks to prove his point in verses 13-14. How do we know that Adam’s sin was imputed to the whole human race? We know because men died even before the Law of Moses was given. Adam’s sin is imputed or reckoned to all men. The proof is that all men died even before the Law was given.
Now, this, I’m sure to most of you does not yet make sense. But it will in a moment. Let’s read verses 13 and 14: “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.”
Now the crucial point to understand here to make sense of these verses is the idea presented in verse 13: “Sin is not imputed when there is no law.” In other words, God does not reckon sin to a human being’s account when that human being has not been told that his actions are sin. God only reckons or imputes sin to a man’s account when it has been revealed by divine revelation that his actions are sin. In other words, God doesn’t punish a four-year-old for spilling his milk when the four-year-old hasn’t yet been told that spilling his milk is wrong. And so what God is saying here is this: Though sin was certainly in the world between the time of Adam and Moses, God did not count that sin against the men who committed those sins, because God had not revealed that those actions were sin.
Then in verse 14 Paul makes the point that despite this, death reigned from Adam until Moses. People still died. We know that people die because of sin. But this is saying that these people who lived between Adam and Moses, when the Law was given, did not die because of their own sins, because their own sins weren’t imputed to them. Nevertheless they died. Why did they die? Because Adam’s sin was imputed to them, or reckoned to their account.
Now he makes it clear in verse 14 that those who died between Adam and Moses “had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam.” So what was the difference between their sin and Adam’s sin? The difference between their sin and Adam’s sin is that Adam violated a specific revealed command of God that partaking of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil was forbidden, and that it would result in death. He knowingly violated a revealed command of God—he sinned with the full-knowledge that he was disobeying a command of God. Those who died between Adam and Moses sinned without that knowledge, and therefore, their sin was not imputed to them, because the revealed Law of God did not come until it was given to Moses.
So then the question is, if sin was not imputed to those between Adam and Moses, why then did they die? The answer is inescapable. They sinned in Adam. Adam’s sin was imputed to their acco0unt. And so they died on account of Adam’s sin, which was reckoned or imputed to their account.
Now I know, for some of you this sounds really bad. But it’s no different from the idea that you have inherited Adam’s sin nature from birth. You didn’t have any choice in that. But you admit that you are a sinner by nature and by choice.
And we haven’t gotten to the good part yet--and that is the imputation, the gift of righteousness, that comes to each of us through Christ, though we aren’t responsible for His righteousness.
So to summarize. When Adam sinned, we all sinned and die. Adam’s sin is imputed or reckoned to each of us, because men died because of Adam’s sin even before the Law of God was given.
Now for the good newsz’ Christ’s gift reverses Adam’s curse & imputes righteousness to those who receive it. Christ’s gift of righteousness reverses Adam’s curse & imputes righteousness to those of us who receive it.
There is both a parallel between Christ’s impact on the human race and Adam’s and a stark contrast. The contrast is emphasized in verses 15-17:
“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 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 on transgression (Adam’s sin) 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, as verse 14 puts it, Adam was a type of Christ. He was an anti-type in a sense. His one transgression resulted in a sentence of death and condemnation upon all men. But Christ’s one act of righteousness resulted in the gift, and the imputation of life and righteousness to all who receive it. So the parallel, the similarity, is this: Both, in a sense, are the head of their race. What they did had and has an incredibly far-reaching impact on all humans who follow them. Those who follow Adam experience the consequences of his transgression, his knowingly stepping over the line that God had set. That’s the idea of transgression. So they experience the sentence of death and condemnation upon themselves. But all who follow Christ, who trust in His death as payment for their sins, will have imputed to their account, not the sin of Adam, but the righteousness of Christ, and will reign in Christ in life as a result.
This is then Paul’s conclusion in verses 18-19: Follow Christ & receive life, not Adam and the death he brings. Follow Christ and receive life. Believe in Christ and receive life, not Adam and the death he brings.
Verse 18: “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.”
Now here is the full conclusion of the matter of the Good News of Jesus Christ. You and all mankind were condemned to spiritual and eternal death through the sin of Adam, imputed to our account. Of course, now that the Law has come, we are all responsible for and die for our actual personal sins. You and I, when we trust in Christ, change teams, so to speak. We get on the winning team. Christ’s righteousness, which we do not deserve either, is imputed to our account, resulting in eternal life.
Paul, being aware that many Jews are reading, then answers a question they would very naturally ask. When then did God give the Law? Since the Law doesn’t save, and no righteousness can be gained by attempting to keep the Law, why in the world would God have given it?
Verse 20: “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.”
The idea being, as revealed in other letters by Paul, that the Law revealed our sin to us, and made sin utterly sinful even in our own consciences and ultimately has the effect of driving us to the grace of God provided by Christ’s death to pay for our sins. It was a tutor, to lead us on to Christ. The moral of the story is this: Choose to trust Jesus for life, not Adam and the death he brings.
Now an analogy from sports world once again. Georgia won the college national championship by beating Alabama Monday 33-18. It is no coincidence that the two top football college football teams in the nation have been number one and number two in recruiting for the last five years. As Georgia coach Kirby Smart said recently, it doesn’t matter how good a coach you are, if you don’t have the best players to coach. And we are now in a situation where all the best players know which teams are going to be the winning team. So they simply choose to be on the winning team.
We are wise if we follow in their footsteps. We now know which team is the winning team. It’s Christ’s. Not Adam’s. And Christ interestingly, doesn’t recruit just the best players. He recruits some of the worst—Christ Jesus came to save sinners—and he makes them the best. They win when they sign up with him, and reign in righteousness and life forever.
Choose Christ! Be on the winning team!
