The Death Giving Sin Vs. The Life Giving Gift Series

The Death-Giving Sin Vs. The Life-Giving Gift

Text: Rom. 5:12-21

Introduction

1. What is original sin?

2. Picture your ancestors as plantation farmers in the South. They have many acres of farmland and need to manage those crops. To help them accomplish this task, they go to the docks and buy a family of slaves to do the work around the farm, thus becoming the first slave owners in your family. Generations pass and you are now operating that farm and as it is, the original family your ancestors bought, have descendants that still work for you as slaves. One day, you and one of those slaves have a conversation about the fact that you have wronged them by making them slaves. You indicate it wasn’t you that made them slaves you just inherited the situation and therefore can’t be blamed. However, the fact is you have still wronged them by continuing in the custom of maintaining the slaves. It is similar with us and original sin. Adam was the first man who committed the first sin. We are guilty of the same sin because we continue in the custom of sinning that Adam started. Therefore, we are guilty of original sin, not because we committed the original sin but because we continue to sin confirming we have a sin nature.

3. Original sin is that thing about man which makes him capable of conceiving of his own perfection and incapable of achieving it. Reinhold Niebuhr

4. Proposition: In our text today, Paul brings up this concept of original sin, because Adam and Eve chose to sin, all people are born in sin and have the tendency to sin. However, he also shows how Jesus sacrificial death reverses the curse of original sin.

5. Paul shows us…

a. Results Of Adam’s Sin

b. Results Of Christ’s Gift

c. Results Of Grace

6. Let’s all stand as we read Rom. 5:12-21.

Transition: First, Paul talks about…

I. Results Of Adam’s Sin (12-14).

A. Adam’s Sin Brought Death

1. In his letter, Paul moves from justification to why justification was necessary.

2. The reason was Adam’s sin. In v. 12 he writes, “When Adam sinned, sin entered the world. Adam’s sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned.”

a. Paul wants us to understand how sin was wiped out through Christ.

b. So, he begins this section by saying that sin came into the world though one man...Of course that one man is Adam, and the world is all humanity.

c. Just as salvation came through Christ, sin came into the world through Adam.

d. Likewise, as sin came because of Adam, death came because of sin.

e. Adam sinned against God causing a domino effect: sin entered the entire human race, then sin brought death. Because everyone sinned, then everyone also died.

f. Death is the consequence of being under the power of sin.

g. It was not in God’s original plan for human beings to die, but it was the result when sin entered the world. (Barton, 598).

h. However, this isn't referring only to physical death, but also to spiritual death, the separation from God that was the natural result of sin, and if it hadn't of been for Christ would have led to eternal death.

i. The gift of life we give to our children includes with it the sting of death.

j. 1 Corinthians 15:56 (ESV)

56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.

3. People might say this seems a bit unfair, Adam sinned, and we pay the price for it.

a. But we also have a part to play in this story. While we did inherit this tendency to sin from Adam, we also participated in it personally.

b. Notice what Paul says at the end of the verse, all sinned! If we sinned, and we all have, then we are just as guilty as Adam.

c. This is the difference between Christianity and all the religions of the world, the nature of total corruption and the universal guilt of all people under sin.

d. In other religions, people can work their way into heaven through good works, but in Christianity the work is done for us by Christ. And this is a good thing because nothing we could ever do is good enough to wipe away our sin.

4. Now look at what Paul writes in vv. 13-14, “Yes, people sinned even before the law was given. But it was not counted as sin because there was not yet any law to break. 14 Still, everyone died—from the time of Adam to the time of Moses—even those who did not disobey an explicit commandment of God, as Adam did. Now Adam is a symbol, a representation of Christ, who was yet to come.”