Have you ever heard the phrase “a few bad apples spoiled it for everybody?” You know the story. You’re in a situation where you have some freedom but somebody abuses their liberty and the result is that everyone loses out. Maybe it’s like being at summer camp, and even though there is a curfew, it is loosely enforced and everyone is allowed to stay up having a good time. Until somebody decides to pull a prank that causes damage or somebody gets hurt, and then after that the curfew is strictly enforced. I’m pretty sure we’ve all experienced something like this in our own lives. And when this happens, we tend to think of it as unfair and to be upset with the culprits. But ultimately we know it’s not unfair because we knew the rules all along. Today’s message is about a situation just like this but with cosmic consequences. It concerns the story of Adam and Eve.
Let us recall what happened to Adam and Eve. God created Adam first, and then created Eve to be his helper. Adam and Eve were created in an immortal state, had an intimate relationship with God, and lived in a perfect environment. They were allowed to do whatever they wanted except for one thing: they were forbidden to eat of the fruit of the tree in the middle of the Garden of Eden. God told both Adam and Eve, and they were well aware, that eating the fruit of that tree would bring death. Eve was tempted by the fruit and deceived by the serpent, who told her that eating it fruit would not result in death, into eating it. Then Adam also willingly ate.
The Bible tells us in Chapter three of the Book of Genesis that as soon as Adam and Eve ate the fruit they were changed. As soon as they disobeyed God, they were instantly corrupted, weighed down by guilt about things they had felt no guilt or shame about before. The intimate relationship they had enjoyed with God was shattered. They tried to hide from God, not so much because they had disobeyed him, but because of this sudden corruption in their nature that had come from their disobedience. Then in we read about how God found them in this corrupted state, and drove them out of the Garden into the world of sin and death. Let us notice that in none of this did God choose death. That choice was willfully made by Adam and Eve. And from their disobedience all of the creation became corrupted. Mankind was cut off from the perfection Adam and Eve had experienced in the Garden.
In today’s section of the letter to the Romans Paul is going to consider the story of Adam and Eve and its long term consequences. Because that story is central to our human story. All of history is the motion of God’s overwhelming grace in rescuing his children from that long ago disobedience.
12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned—
13 To be sure, sin was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not charged against anyone’s account where there is no law. 14 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 is a pattern of the one to come.
15 But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! 16 Nor can the gift of God be compared with the result of one man’s sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. 17 For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ!
18 Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people. 19 For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.
20 The law was brought in so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, 21 so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Ro. 5:12-21)
The event of Adam and Eve’s rebellion happened so long ago in history we can’t even guess as to an approximate date. But since Adam and Eve every human and indeed every creature who has ever lived with the exception one: Jesus, has had to experience death. Death is so pervasive that some have suggested that it is natural. But the funny thing about it is that every culture denies that death is natural. Every culture imagines that physical death is somehow not the end of existence. Every culture has imagined what we call an “afterlife” in some form, whether it be Heaven and Hell, Sheol, Hades, Valhalla, Nirvana, or whatever. This I think ought to give us a clue that death is not natural, that deep down inside us all is the idea that death is a terrible corruption of what ought to be.
Paul tells us that “the wages of sin is death” (Ro. 6:23 NIV) and we have already explored in the first three chapters of Paul’s letter to the Romans how everyone is trapped in sin. So we might conclude that people die because of their own sin. But in the passage we just read Paul tells us that this is not the case. He tells us, in keeping with the long standing tradition of the Jews, that our death and all death can be directly attributed to the actions of Adam and Eve. So here is where we come to the situation I brought to mind at the beginning of today’s message, how a couple of bad apples seem to have spoiled it for everybody.
Now, even though we know that God is just, and he gave fair warning to Adam and Eve, there is something about all this that just seems a little unfair. Or maybe a lot unfair. After all, why should we suffer for what these two people did so long ago we can’t even place them accurately in history? And never mind that we know that we too are sinners, and that our own sins merit the same consequence as that of Adam and Eve, why should we suffer the consequence for their disobedience? That’s exactly what Paul is saying is the case. But he is also saying something else, and that is that the remedy that God has come up with more than compensates for the seeming injustice, because through the work of Jesus Christ we who are “in Christ” are raised to greater estate than Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
We want to look at three main points this morning: how are Adam and Christ alike, how do we obtain the character of Adam and Christ, and how is being “in Christ” so much better than being “in Adam?”
Covenants of Grace and Works – The parallel paths of Adam and Christ
One of the things I have been emphasizing, and will continue to emphasize, is that our relationship to God “in Christ” is based on what’s known as a “covenant of grace.” This kind of a covenant is contrasted with what we might call a “covenant of works.” An example of a covenant of works would be God’s covenant with Adam in the book of Genesis. God placed Adam in the Garden and promised eternal life in exchange for Adam’s obedience in not eating from the fruit of the tree. The continued force of the promise was based on Adam’s continued obedience. As soon as the covenant was broken, the promise was no longer in effect.
An example of a covenant of Grace is God’s promise to Abram in chapter 15 of Genesis. God had promised to give the land we now know as Palestine to Abram and make him the father of a great nation, but Abram had become extremely old and his wife remained childless, and Abram had doubts. When he expressed these doubts to God, we read that the following happened:
7 [God spoke to Abram], “I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it.”
8 But Abram said, “Sovereign Lord, how can I know that I will gain possession of it?”
9 So the Lord said to him, “Bring me a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon.”
10 Abram brought all these to him, cut them in two and arranged the halves opposite each other; the birds, however, he did not cut in half. 11 Then birds of prey came down on the carcasses, but Abram drove them away.
17 When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. 18 On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, “To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates—19 the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, 20 Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, 21 Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites.” (Ge. 15:7-11, 17-21 NIV)
Now this might not make sense to us but this is the meaning of this episode. In the ancient Near East the way that two people would make a deal – a “covenant” – was to take animals and cut them in two and lay them on the ground. Then the two who were making the covenant would walk in between the cut pieces of the animal in an act that symbolically said, “If I break this covenant, I will become like these animals: cut in two and dead.” Both of the parties walked in between the animals. That is, by the way, where we get the phrase “to cut a deal.”
But in the text we just read, only one party takes part in the ceremony. Verse 17: “When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces.” (Ge. 15:17 NIV) Abram was sleeping. Only God, represented by the smoking firepot with a blazing torch, made the promise. So this means that God’s promise to Abram is entirely by God’s grace. It doesn’t depend on any action on the part of Abram.
In the same way, God’s covenant with the Israelites led by Moses after the Exodus from Egypt was a covenant of works. God promised to prosper the Israelites if they obeyed the law. But God’s covenant with the new Israel, the Church of Jesus Christ, is a covenant of grace, based entirely on the work of Christ.
Now the interesting thing about all this in the context of what we read in Romans today is that God’s covenant with Adam and with Christ were both covenants of works. Both of these covenants were dependent on obedience. In the case of Adam, it was based on Adam obeying God’s command not to eat of the fruit. In the case of Christ, it was based on God’s command for Christ to give himself up to death. In the case of Adam, the covenant I think ought to have been difficult to keep. But in the case of Christ, we know it was difficult. We read about Jesus’ agony in the Garden of Gethsemane in Matthew:
36 Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” 37 He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. 38 Then he said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.”
39 Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” (Mt. 26:36-39 NIV).
The point that Paul is making in his letter to the Romans is that no matter how easy it may have been and should have been for Adam to obey, he did not. And no matter how agonizing it may have been for Christ to obey, he did. So at the central point of history, the crucifixion, the corruption and death that was brought about by Adam’s failure to obey was completely, totally, and finally reversed by Jesus’ obedience on the cross.
The two states of existence: “In Adam” and “In Christ”
We may wonder why we can inherit both the sin of Adam and the obedience of Christ. The answer to this is to be found in an idea that is fundamental to understanding the New Testament message, and that is everything has to be considered in the context of two opposing realities. One is the reality of God’s perfect love, and the other is the reality of man’s rebellion. God and Satan, Light and dark, Good and Evil, Life and Death, Spirit and Flesh, Redemption and Sin, Christ and Adam; we are all familiar with these great opposing realities. And, according to the New Testament writers, we are all in one or the other of these realms.
We have already asked how it was possible for us to suffer the consequence of the sin of Adam; I think the best way to answer it is to say that we are born “in Adam.” Adam was the progenitor of the human race. He stood for all mankind. His actions have eternal consequence on all who come after. Because he is the progenitor, whatever he did, he did for all who would follow. So, when he fell, he brought down all of creation with him. Again, our sense of justice might tell us this is not fair. But it is real, whether it is fair or not. If we lived in the time before Jesus we might have really had cause to complain, because we would have inherited the sin of Adam with no recourse.
But let us consider things after the obedience of Christ. Like Adam, Jesus stands for all mankind. Jesus also had a “covenant of works” with the Father. But Jesus is more than Adam, because while he was a man, he is also God. And unlike Adam, Jesus obeyed. And so, because he stood for all mankind, we also inherit the consequence of his obedience, which is eternal life and being raised to glory as the King of Heaven. Because we are “in Christ,” all that comes to Christ also comes to us, as long as we remain “in Christ.”
Now it is interesting I think that we are loud in complaining about the curse of being “in Adam” but we don’t squawk about the blessing of being “in Christ.” But indeed we cannot have one without the other. If we were not dead in Adam, we could not have been brought to life “in Christ.”
The Consequences of Grace
But now here’s something really interesting. For all of the brokenness we have to experience as a result of the fall of Adam, without it we would be worse off than we are now. Because if Adam had not disobeyed, we would be in the same estate as Adam, at the pinnacle of God’s creation. But because we are now “in Christ,” we have been raised to the level of God. None of us can say “I am God,” but because we are “in Christ,” we are in the life of God, and God’s life is in us.
We have to remember that central to the things we have been learning from Paul in his letter to the Romans is that the work of Jesus Christ was an exchange. It consisted of two parts. The atoning sacrifice of Christ on the cross paid the penalty for the disobedience of Adam and Eve. So the result of the cross is that the curse of Adam is reversed. But the resurrection exchanges Christ’s righteousness for ours. In the legal imagery that Paul uses, we “in Adam” stand before the judge rightly condemned for the crime of Adam, but before the sentence is carried out our redeemer Jesus pays the penalty for us. This action puts us in the state of being “not guilty.” But going further, Jesus tells the judge, I want you to give them all of the reward that I deserve from my act of obedience.
When we start thinking about how unfair it is that we should be judged and condemned for the sin of Adam, we have to also consider how unfair it is that we are being blessed with the righteousness of Christ. Even if we weren’t condemned for the sin of Adam, we would deserve to be condemned for our own. Paul has clearly demonstrated that people cannot attain rightness with God on their own. And yet God has graciously heaped mercy on us.
When Paul writes in verse 20 “But where sin increased, grace increased all the more” (Romans 5:20 NIV) he uses two different Greek words for increase. When he writes that sin “increased” he uses a word that just means “increase,” but when he writes that grace increased, he uses a word that means something like “super increase.” So it should read something like where sin increased, grace overflowed. Where sin was a trickle, grace was a river. This is love so extravagant it just doesn’t make sense. It is prodigal love from a prodigal God.
So let me make just a few closing remarks about grace. Because grace is a free gift, we can’t earn it by not sinning. But at the same time we can’t lose it by sinning. Because the “super-abundance” of grace that Paul wrote to the Romans about, which also comes to us, goes to erase the curse of Adam’s sin, not ours. We are not being judged for our own sins, we are being judged for the sin of Adam. So whether we sin or not makes no difference in regards to our salvation. And God’s grace is more than enough. If I sin more, God’s grace is no less. That’s one of the reasons why it’s so mind-boggling, so amazing.
Let me just close a pretty dangerous loophole here. Because we’re human, probably the first thing that pops into our heads when we learn about the free gift of grace, and how it is not affected by our sin, is that we might just as well go on sinning. If we’re not going to be punished, why not have at it? But of course this is a complete misunderstanding of sin.
I think because our minds are wired for law, we tend to think that sins are things that we would really like to do, that would bring us forbidden pleasures, but that we’d better not do because if we do we’ll get punished. The pain of punishment is greater than the pleasure of sin. So we don’t do it. Or we don’t do as much of it as we would like. And if we suddenly learn that the greatest consequence of sin has been removed, we might as well just do it. Just do it.
But there is nothing pleasurable about sin. The heartbreaking world we live in, the world of death and corruption and poverty and disease and violence and broken relationships and fear and hunger and neglect and frustration and anxiety and futility is the real consequence of sin, not a hypothetical supernatural hand slap from some petty schoolmaster. God is not doing these things to punish us; he is not doing them at all. We are doing these things to ourselves, and God’s wrath, as we have already learned, is that he lets us. As Paul has so eloquently made clear, even if the law did not convict us of sin, we would convict ourselves. To think that grace makes it ok to sin is just silly. Just because I know there is a cure for poisoning doesn’t mean I should run out and drink gasoline. Even if I am cured, I’m still going to get sick, and not just because someone told me not to drink gasoline.
As we will find out in the weeks to come, the answer to this argument that we should sin more because of the abundance of God’s grace is going to be that the blessing of letting Christ live his life through us far outweighs any fleeting pleasure that might come from selfishly living our lives for ourselves. But again, that is the subject of another day. For now let us agree that the amazing grace Paul announces in today’s reading is not an invitation to sin.
So what should our response to this abundance of grace be? Joy. We ought to be filled with joy. Think about how you would feel if you were the one facing the death penalty and you suddenly, unexpectedly got the news of your pardon. Not only pardon, but complete release. And an everlasting pension plan to go with it. You would be giddy. You would become the number one fan of the one who set you free. You would beam with joy, so much so that the people you came into contact with would not be able to keep themselves from asking you why you were so happy. And when they asked you would announce to them joyfully how much your savior had done for you. And you would enthusiastically encourage others to follow him.
If we are truly saved, this is what our response will look like. So I’m going to give you an assignment for this week. It is the same assignment Paul wrote from prison to the Christians in Philippi, “4 Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!” (Phil. 4:4 NIV). Let your light shine. You don’t have to preach to people about Jesus; let your joy be your preaching. In the words attributed to St. Francis of Assisi, “Always preach the gospel. Use words if necessary.” If we take seriously the joy of being free in Christ, and allow that realization to shine in our lives, few words will be necessary.
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