Take A Good Look At Our Inheritance

Dear Christians Friends:

The death of a loved can be a confusing time for us. We are saddened by the loss. The loss of someone we love. We miss their voice, their mannerisms, and their expressions of love for us. The death of a loved one can be a very heart breaking and a sad time. It is at times like these when we start to notice our own mortality. When we are reminded that there will come a time when we will also die. But death can also be a joyous occasion. For as children of God, when we pass through this veil of tears we will enter into eternity with our Savior. We will enter into heaven and receive our inheritance from God. Our inheritance that has been prepared for us since the beginning of the world. It will be a joyous time for the children of God. So today the Apostle Paul invites us to TAKE A GOOD LOOK AT OUR INHERITANCE. Our inheritance of death from Adam and our inheritance of life from Christ.

In the Word of God before us today, Paul tells the Roman congregation and us that because of the sin Adam and Eve committed, death entered the world. That perfect world God created was no longer perfect. Death was now ruling supreme. Sin began to corrupt God’s wonderful creation. The sin that began with Adam continues right up to today. This original sin just like a cancer began eating away at our relationship with God. Without knowing it, Adam began a legacy for his descendants. Because Adam sinned against God, he left for our inheritance the stain of that sin and death.

Paul tells us in our text “Therefore, just as 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.” (Romans 5:12-14)

Adam brought sin into this world and with it came death. And this happened before Moses was given the written law at Mount Sinai. Paul tells us that people were dying and yet they were not breaking any verbal commands as Adam did. Adam and Eve disobeyed God by eating the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In direct defiance of God’s word, they sinned, and with that sin came the wages earned by it. The wages of sin is death. God told Adam “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.” (Genesis 2:16-17)

Adams legacy had begun, no longer was mankind immortal and in the perfect image of God. Death began its reign. People were dying because of original sin inherited from Adam. We only have to look at the fifth chapter of genesis to see that people were dying. The fifth chapter of Genesis could be called the death Chapter. Moses records for us the descendants of Adam and what became of them. Moses writes, “When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth. After Seth was born, Adam lived 800 years and had other sons and daughters. Altogether, Adam lived 930 years, and then he died. When Seth had lived 105 years, he became the father of Enosh. And after he became the father of Enosh, Seth lived 807 years and had other sons and daughters. Altogether, Seth lived 912 years, and then he died.” (Genesis 5:3-8)

The list continues. Enosh lived 905 years and he died. The son of Enosh, Kenan, lived 910 years and then he died. A name familiar to most of us here, Methuselah the oldest man on record, he lived 969 years and he died just like the rest. God allowed longer life spans at this time, but death came just the same. These people all lived and died before Moses was even born. Before God gave His written laws to the children of Israel, and yet they still died. This is their inheritance from Adam: An inheritance of sin, an inheritance of death.

Moses tells us that Adam had a son in his image, an image of original sin. But there are those who deny original sin. There are those church bodies that refuse to accept the truth. The truth that is so evident throughout the pages of scripture. God is very clear in His Word; we are conceived and born in sin. Paul tells us in the 3rd chapter of Romans, “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one” (Romans 3:10-12). We all are sinful. As the Psalmist David tells us, “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me” (Psalm 51:5).