[Grateful Appreciation to Skip Heitzig of Calvary Church Albuquerque. His teaching on Romans 5 really impacted my own.]
Good morning! Please turn in your Bibles to Romans 5.
If you’ve spent any time around Glynwood, you’ve noticed that we always start a sermon with “Please you’re your Bibles to…”
There’s a reason we do that. If we aren’t talking about God’s word, we have nothing to talk about as a church. If I am not talking about God’s Word, I literally have no other area of expertise. So when we gather on Sunday mornings, we are going to base all of our conversations on this book.
I also want you to know that when I am preparing to preach on a Sunday morning, there are a lot of commentaries and studies I use to help me present what a particular passage is saying. And so, if I’ve drawn extensively from one work or sermon or commentary, I want to let you know that.
And today, I want to let you know that I’ve really benefitted from the work of a Bible teacher named Skip Heitzig with this particular sermon. Skip is the teaching pastor at Calvary Church Albuquerque. He is a verse by verse expositional preacher, and if you are ever just looking for a sermon series to listen to on a long road trip, you should bookmark Skip’s YouTube channel.
So I want to be clear that I am borrowing a lot from Skip’s outline of this passage this morning.
Now, let me begin by asking you a very simple question:
How much good can be accomplished by one person?
In his lifetime, Thomas Edison patented over one thousand inventions. He invented the first record player, the incandescent light bulb, and an early version of a motion-picture camera.
One person really can change the world. There’s an African proverb that says, “If you don’t think one person can make a difference, think of the difference one person makes to a hungry mosquito.”
Of course, it goes the other way, too. One person can do a lot of good, but one person can also do a lot of evil.
How many of you know the name Mary Mallon? Probably none of you. But you may know her by her nickname: Typhoid Mary. Mary Mallon worked as a cook for eight different wealthy families in New York in the early 1900’s. But unbeknownst at the time, Mary was a carrier of the bacteria that causes typhus, or typhoid fever. By the time she was identified as the source, over 3,000 New Yorkers had contracted typhoid fever from Mary herself or from people she had infected.
Remember the African proverb? If you think one person can’t make a difference, imagine the difference one man makes to a hungry mosquito. But imagine the difference one hungry mosquito carrying malaria can make on an entire village!
So one person can invent things and help people. But another person can destroy what they have invented. One person can light a match, cause a fire to burn, destroy homes, ruin lives. Another person can put out the fire, save homes, rescue lives. And that is the thrust of the passage we're about to read.
In Romans 5, Paul talks about the difference two men made on the entire human race. One man was Adam. Like Typhoid Mary, the actions Adam took infected the entire human race.
The other man was Jesus, and the actions He took are able to redeem the entire human race.
You should know that this passage is considered one of the most difficult passages to understand of all of Paul’s writings. So this morning I want to do my best to put the cookies on the bottom shelf and make this as simple as possible.
I want to give you some signposts that are going to help you understand the point of the passage. Here they are:
In verses 12-21, the word "one" appears 11 times. One man, one sin, one trespass, one wrong choice. And that opened the door for corruption.
But then we have one man, one sacrifice, one right choice that opened the door to salvation. So both Adam and Christ represent one man that did something that impacted the entire human race.
Second signpost: There is another word, "reign," That word appears five times.
Paul acknowledges these two men, Adam and Christ, both reign over a kingdom-- Adam reigning over the kingdom of death, Jesus reigning over the kingdom of life. Condemnation flows from the stream of Adam. Salvation, justification flows from the stream of Christ.
One more signpost: It’s the phrase "much more." Much more is used five times. So if you lose track of everything else, remember that the point of the passage is that we have gained much more in Christ than we ever lost from Adam.
So we're going to look at what one person can do. How one person—Adam, already has changed your life, and how one person, Jesus, can change your life."
And I’m about to tell you the entire sermon. If you get this down, then you’re dismissed, and you can beat the Methodists to lunch.
Here’s the sermon: One man's failure brought mankind's fall, and one man's fix bought mankind's favor.
Let's begin with Adam, Chapter 5, verses 12-14:
12 Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned— 13 for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. 14 Yet death reigned 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.
Bottom line is this-- What Adam did affected every single person.
Adam was given an incredible power: the power of choice, volition. He was given a simple directive, a simple instruction, one easy rule, one restriction. Adam, dude, you can do this. Just stay away from that tree.
You know, if I ever get a chance to meet Adam, I think I’d like to punch him in the nose. Man—he and Eve just ruined it for all of us! But then I started thinking about it.
And then I realized, I would have done the same thing if I had been in the Garden. In fact, I have done the same thing. Again, and again, and again. And so have you. Every single time we choose to go our own way instead of trusting God, we make the same choice Adam and Eve did in the Garden. The Bible says, all have sinned, and we've fallen short of the glory of God.
This is what theologians call the federal headship doctrine of sin. The word federal comes from the Latin word federes, which means covenant. Adam was our covenant representative before God. He was our federal representative. So when Adam sinned, we sin.
Now, we understand the federal doctrine of headship better than we think we do.
In the United States, we have a federal government. That means we elect people that are going to represent us in Washington. The covenant (federes) we make with them is that if we elect them, they will what we would have done if we were in their place. We trust them to represent us. And if they vote to increase spending, then guess what? We have decided to increase spending. If they vote to go to war, then guess what? We are at war.
No matter how good it might make us feel, in the federal system, we don’t get to say, “Well, he’s not my President. I didn’t vote for him.” No. Under the federal system, he is your representative, whether you voted for him or not.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re like That's not fair. I didn’t vote for him. Why am I taking the rap for what he did? I didn't eat the fruit. Who made Adam my representative?
Do you know that the Hebrew word for mankind is? It’s adam. The truth is that Adam did just exactly what every human being would have done in the same situation. We don’t want to admit it, but Adam is our perfect federal representative. Adam voted EXACTLY the way every one of us would have voted in the same situation.
And as a result, we have inherited Adam’s sin nature. Sin is a matter of spiritual genetics. We inherit a fallen nature.
In 1926, the state of Minnesota created a commission to investigate the reasons for the rise in crime at the time. And here’s what this government-appointed commission concluded. This is a quote from the 1926 Minnesota crime commission:
"Every baby starts life as a little savage. He is completely selfish and self-centered. He wants what he wants when he wants it-- his bottle, his mother's attention, his playmate's toy, his uncle's watch. Deny these and he seethes with rage and aggressiveness, which would be murderous were he not so helpless. This means that all children, not just certain children, are born delinquent. If permitted to continue in the self-centered world of his infancy, given free reign to his impulsive actions to satisfy his wants, every child would grow up a criminal, a thief, a killer, a rapist.”
You’re like, that’s dark. Probably none of you, when your latest child or grandchild was born, said, oh, what a precious little savage! We won’t be quoting the 1926 Minnesota Crime Commission report when we do Parent Child Dedication on Mother’s Day!
But the Minnesota Crime Commission seemed to have a good biblical grasp on the doctrine of total depravity.
Total depravity doesn’t mean that your every action is as bad as it can possibly be. What it does mean is that every one of us is as bad off as we can possibly be.
You see, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Sin is our natural state. That's depravity. That's what Adam brought. Sin entered. Death entered. Death spread. Death reigned.
So that’s verses 12-14: One man’s failure brought all man’s fall. The New England Primer, the first reading textbook printed in the United States, the rhyme that went along with the letter A was “In Adam’s Fall We Sinned All.”
Now we turn a corner. So just like through one man's failure brought mankind's fall, also one man's fix bought mankind's favor. Let's look at verse 15. And I'm glad just for the first word because it's a nice change.
15 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.
Now if you just sneak back a half a verse, verse 14, notice what it says at the end. It says, "Adam, who was a-type of the one who is to come.”
Type, the Greek word tupos, means pattern-- Adam is a type of Christ.
The one similarity between Adam and Christ is that what one did affected the rest. So one choice, one act, one sin affected the many. One sacrifice, one righteous deed affected salvation for many.
The many means everybody, means all mankind.
Look at verse 18. "Therefore, as through one man's offense, judgment came to all men." Every single person, every one, all of them.
18 Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. 19 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.
But here is the great part. There's that signpost I told you about, "much more." I want you to look at a few of these.
• Verse 15. 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.
• Verse 17, " For if, because of one man's trespass, death reigned 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.”
• Verse 20, Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.
Where sin abounded, grace abounded all the more.
Remember a few minutes ago, when we were all mad that Adam was our federal representative? Well, guess what? God has given us a new representative! That’s right!
Adam has been impeached.
Here's what all this adds up to: Whatever we lost in Adam, we gained in Christ much more.
Verse 20 is really the pinnacle of the entire passage. "Where sin abounded, grace--" here's a better translation-- "super abounded." That's what one translation says, super abounded. Another translation-- overflowed, exceeded the mark.
When sin reached its high-water mark, grace completely flooded over.
Think of it like a dam. See what I did there? Adam= a dam. A dam is built to hold back the flow of a mighty river.
Beloved, I think Satan’s obsession throughout eternity has been to hold back the river of God’s grace. When Adam disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden, sin came into the world, and humans were separated from God.
And I think Satan at that point said, “I’ve done it. I’ve blocked God’s grace! I’ve built a dam that will cut off the flow of God’s love to these pathetic human beings. From now on, they’re gonna be… oh… let’s see. I need a word for it. Wait… I know!
They’re gonna be… “dammed.”
But here is what Satan wasn’t counting on. Satan didn’t read Romans 5:20—where sin abounded, grace abounded all the more!
Our Sin cannot build a dam so high that God’s grace cannot breach it.
I want you to hear that truth. Because some of you are thinking, you don't know what I've done. You don't know what I've thought. You don't know what I've said. And you don't know how often I've said it-- yeah, sort of like Adam. You’re thinking, my sin has erected a dam. It's pretty high.
But God’s grace can breach the dam. Where sin abounded, grace super abounded!
I'll go back to Adam. You know what happened when Adam sinned, right? Adam sinned with his wife. And afterwards, they're kind of standing there, and they look down. They go, we're naked. We've got to fix that.
And what do they cover themselves up with? What did they put on?
Fig leaves. Not an adequate solution for covering one’s nakedness. Fig leaves are pretty insubstantial. Not to mention uncomfortable. And they don’t last.
Fig leaves are a great representation of all the things we do to try to cover our shame. We try to cover over our shame with all sorts of things.
But God was gracious to Adam and Eve. According to Genesis 3:21,
21 And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.
So God provided animal skins to cover them up. But to get animal skins, you have to kill an animal. You have to shed that animal's innocent blood. That animal didn't do anything. God killed the animal, shed the blood, and provided a covering for Adam’s shame.
That becomes a principle that is shared in the New Testament, Hebrews 9:22,
"Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sins."
In that whole encounter, God was sharing two truths with Adam and Eve that are foundational for our understanding of sin and salvation. First of all, death came into the world because of sin, and only a life can pay for it. And number two, God is demonstrating that a substitute can be offered in the place of the one who committed the sin.
So if you look at Adam and think that it isn’t fair that we are all guilty for Adam’s sin, then you have to also conclude that it isn’t fair that Jesus should pay for your sin.
Why should I get punished for what Adam did? Well, Why should Jesus get punished for what you did?
Thank God that He didn’t ask “What’s fair?” Instead, God asked, “What does love require?”
Sometimes, our sin makes us feel worthless. But I want I want you to know God was willing to pay the highest price to enter into a relationship with you. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son-- highest price.
That’s the free gift Verse 15 is talking about. Look at it again:
15 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.
Because it's a gift, you can't brag about your accomplishments. Because it's a gift, you can't earn it. You can only receive the gift. But you have to receive the gift, or it's really not valid.
It comes down to this. What will you do with Jesus? What will you do with God's provision to fix the problem? What will you do? Will you believe and let Jesus be your federal head?
Or will you keep letting Adam be your federal head, your representative?
God has given all of us the ability to choose. You can receive the free gift that can’t be earned, or you can reject the free gift.
God will not force Himself on you. If you don’t want anything to do with God, he will let that be true forever. That is what it means to be damned. It means to keep the wall between you and God in place, and refuse to let His grace breach the dam. For all eternity.
But if we say, Lord Jesus, I believe that I can receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness that you made available through the shedding of your blood, then Jesus will break down the dam. He will adopt you as His son, His daughter. He will take you from slavery and make you royalty, simply because you said, Lord, break through. Break down the wall of separation. Breach the dam. Let your grace flow into my life. What a gift.
