Introduction

Many people consider Romans 5:12-21 to be the most difficult passage to understand in the book of Romans.  We are the kind of church that does not shy away from difficult passages.  If a passage is hard to understand at first glance, then it is time to look at it more carefully.  I hear a well- known pastor (Dr. John Piper) say that if you rake the surface of scripture, you just get leaves, but when you begin to dig deep into scripture, that’s when you discover gold.  SO…instead of thinking about the passage as difficult, we could think of it as compressed.

It’s like a zip file.  On a computer, sometimes people created zip files so the file is so tightly compacted that a great deal of data can be given in a very small package.  In this text, a great deal of theological meat is given in a very small space.  One theologian said it like this (John Stott) “all students of 12-21 have found it extremely condensed.  …Most have…admired it’s craftsmanship.  It may be likened to a well-chiseled carving or a carefully constructed musical composition.”

Some of the truths contained in this passage are so simple a child could easily grasp them.  Others are very difficult to comprehend.  Just because you and I struggle to understand something does not make it invalid.  For example, I do not really understand the law of gravity.  However, I AM able to live with gravity although I struggle to understand it.  AND… you and I don’t have to fully understand something in order to receive it’s benefits.  In the case of salvation, we don’t have to fully understand entirely how salvation works in the mind of God to be able to reach out and receive it by faith.

Over the next three weeks, I’m planning to unpack three facets of this compressed and complex passage that I think you and I can understand and apply to our lives:

• This week, we’ll be talking about how Adam was our representative.  We were in Adam before we were in Christ.  Adam’s sin brought about death and a fallen nature to all mankind.  The fall of man destroyed our peace with God
• Next week, we’ll be celebrating the fact that through Jesus Christ, we have been delivered out of Adam’s sin and out of our fallen nature and given new life!
• It is all leading up to Christmas.  The Sunday before Christmas we will be unwrapping the gift of super-abounding grace that we were given in Jesus Christ.  It will be a great time to invite unsaved friends, neighbors and family to join us here at church.

All three weeks will be leading up to this conclusion:  What we gain in Jesus is far greater than anything we give up in the world.

Review

So far in our study of the book of Romans, Paul has explained to us the extent of mankind’s sin.  In verse after verse, he has illustrated to us that mankind is totally unworthy of fellowship with God.  Without Jesus there is absolutely no way that we could ever be right with God.  Trying to do enough good works to get to heaven only ends in exhaustion, but not in salvation.

By way of comparison, God’s grace is totally sufficient.  The grace and forgiveness available through the person of Jesus Christ is so totally adequate (so super-abounding) that it more than covers all of our inadequacies.  To show us both our sin and God’s grace, Paul has led us down a road that revealed both the depths of our corruption and the heights of God’s incredible mercy.  He has shown us our guilt before God and God’s grace that is sufficient to cover our guilt through the person of Jesus Christ.

In chapter 3, Paul helped us to understand that sin is a corrupting force that destroys peace with God in both Jews and Gentiles.

• Jews do not get special treatment because of their heritage but are still held fully accountable for their sins.
• Gentiles are not excused for their sins because their worldly, cultural influences, but are held totally accountable for their actions.
• All men (Jews and Gentiles) are found lacking before a holy and righteous God.

Paul indicated that the answer to our sin problem was a change in allegiances.  It means dying to our self, our flesh and our sin and trusting in fully in Jesus Christ alone.  Romans 4:16 says, “…it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring—not only to the adherent of the law but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all.”

He gave the example of Abraham.  A faith like Abraham’s is a saving faith.  Romans 4:3 says “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.” Paul defined what “faith” really is in Romans 4:21.  He says that faith is being “fully convinced that God 

In Romans 5:12, Paul is continuing to build on his previous statements.  In verse 12, he introduces a new comparison.  He says that all those who are still enslaved to the things of the world are “in Adam,” and those who are living in the freedom of faith are “in Christ.”  Let’s first consider verse 12 together: ^“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…”

Benjamin Franklin had a famous saying that said, “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”  In order to understand the real value of the gift of super-abounding grace that we have in Jesus Christ, Paul leads us to first consider the obvious truth that death is universal.  Death is inevitable.  That fact leads us to ask this question: how did universal death come about?  For the best answer to that question, we need to turn back to the beginning – back to Genesis.

Canyon Bible Church believes that Jesus was a real historical person.  I covered the overwhelming evidence for that belief last week.  We also believe that Adam was a real historical person. One reason why these beliefs are important is because God’s Word says that through one real, historical man sin entered the world, but, more importantly, it says that through one real, historical man, our sins were forgiven.

Genesis was written to be literal history.  It was not written to be an allegory, a story, a fable, a myth, a poem or a parable.  The language and tone and content of Genesis is that of literal history and not that of a poem or a parable or anything else.

From the perspective of the literal history of Genesis, God created a perfect world.

When God created the world, it was very good

Genesis 1:31 say’s, “³¹ And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.”

“Very good” is quite an endorsement from an all-knowing God who is Himself, perfect.  Before creation was tainted with man’s sin, it was very good.  Imagine with me what an unspoiled creation would be like.  A “very good” earth would be one where there is no:

• Disease
• Sickness
• Fighting
• War
• Divorce

Mankind would be

• Perfectly productive in work
• Perfectly happy in marriage
• Perfectly satisfied in its relationship with God

The weather would be moderate, the ground would be fertile, bodies would not age and death would be unknown.

The Bible clearly teaches that the earth was created personally and directly by God through His supernatural power.  It was created completely mature and fully functioning.  No evolution was needed. The Bible’s account of how the earth came into being is very different from what is often taught in schools right now.

Unfortunately, it is also different from what they are teaching in some Bible Colleges and seminaries.  A very popular Old Testament professor at my college believed that Genesis was a parable and not literal history.  To the College’s credit, that professor was let go shortly after his belief system was revealed.  How do we know that the Bible is right?  How do we know that Genesis was real?

We know it’s right because:

1. God was there.  He was its creator and the only eye-witness
2. God cannot lie. He would not tell us that He created the world supernaturally if the truth was that it actually created itself through natural means.
3. Creation is clearly taught all throughout the Bible and God’s word is the most reliable book ever written.

The Bible does not teach that millions of years of death, disease and adaptation in a ruthless, uncaring world eventually gave birth to a super-evolved creature we know as mankind.  The Bible teaches that God created man.  Every line in Genesis chapter 1 indicates that the world was created complete and mature.  Genesis 2:7 says that “the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.”  Man was created personally and intimately by God.

Adam was the very first man

Before God created Adam, there was no mankind.  There is absolutely nothing in this text that indicates that God chose an already existing, pre-historic caveman to have fellowship with Him.  God created Adam from scratch (literally).  He was the first man.  He was so literal and God interacted with him so personally, that God, Himself, placed the man in a garden.  This tells us that Adam was a real, historical person.

Adam was a historical person

God created a place for this real man in history to live.  Genesis 2:10-14 tells us exactly where his home was located.  Verse 8-9, the Bible says, “⁸ And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. [Do you hear the intimate and personal connections here?] ⁹ And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” When Adam was created, he had no knowledge of evil because Adam was created without sin.

Adam was created without sin

What was Adam created to do?  Verse 15 clearly states that Adam was tasked with working the ground and maintaining the garden that God had made for him.  It was farming with no weeds and no thorns in perfectly fertile soil, a never aging body and with flawless irrigation.  It was work that was perfectly satisfying and productive.  Look at verse 15, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.”

The only thing that was not good about the whole situation was that Adam was created to live in relationship with a family and God had not yet created a woman.  Adam didn’t ask God for a helper.  He probably could not even imagine a woman – he’s never seen one before.  God identified that Adam was created to exist in the context of human relationships.  God determined to make a helper for Adam.  In verse 18 says, “Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.’”

The creation account is so intentional.  God intentionally made man to live in the context of relationships.  Adam knew that there was no friend or helper suitable for him.  Verse 20 says, “…for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.”  He seemed to be different from everything else in creation so far.  God created the desire for a woman within Adam.  Then God formed the woman from Adam’s rib in an act of supernatural surgery.  God handcrafted Eve and brought her to Adam.  Eve was the first woman.  It was all done according to God’s design.

God designed Adam and Eve and He designed them to be representative of all of mankind to come after them.  God was deliberate in what He was unfolding in creation.

I don’t see any indication in God’s Word of how long Adam and Eve lived in the Garden.  Eve is created at the end of chapter 2 and right away at the beginning of chapter 3, she is being tempted.  I’ll let you draw your own conclusions as to how long paradise lasted.

Regardless of how much time had passed, everything changed in Genesis chapter 3.  God had given Adam and Eve exactly one law and He asked them to trust Him by obeying it.  God was withholding evil and death from them.  He knew that the knowledge of evil and the knowledge of death would only hurt them.

You would think that two people living in an unbroken and unfallen world could bring themselves to keep one rule.  They were free to do anything they pleased, but they could not eat of the fruit of one tree.  So what did they do?  They questioned God.  They didn’t trust that God had their best interest in mind.  They thought God was withholding something from them that they needed (or that was good) so they ate the fruit.  In doing so, they got to experience the knowledge of good and evil for themselves.

They only knew good up to this point.  Now along with good, they gained a personal knowledge of evil.  The evil they came to know led to death because sin always leads to death. That act of rebellion on Adam’s part began a pattern of death that affects all mankind and all of creation.

Adam’s sin impacted all of creation and all of mankind

The apostle Paul clearly tells us that death is the penalty for sin.  In our passage today, Paul says in verse 12, “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…”  Skip over one page to chapter 6 and verse 23 says, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Adam’s sin began the cycle of death.  The origin of sin and death is foundational to our understanding of the gospel of Christ.  Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:21-22, “²¹ For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. ²² For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.”

The sinless creation that God personally formed and called “very good,” was devastated by the rebellion and faithlessness of our great grandfather, Adam.  Just as God had warned (Gen 2:17) Adam’s sin brought an intruder into the world – that intruder was death.

As a result, we are living in a world that is constantly dying.  What we observe is a world that is de-evolved (and is de-evolving).  It’s getting worse here all the time – not better.  As we watch men grow deeper and deeper in sinfulness, that sinfulness results in more and more death.  There has been so much death in the last century.  Considering two world wars, Vietnam war, Korean war, multiple civil wars in Africa and two wars in the Middle East.  The wartime death toll alone is over 200 million in the last century – and that’s before we consider untimely deaths due to disease, poverty, government oppression, famine, disasters as well as over 45 million martyrs during that time.

We are given a taste of what life is like without God – it is a world that wears out and dies.  (It does not evolve and become better) Death and sin are always travelling together.  The more sin is present in the world, the more death runs rampant.  The result is that our world groans.  Paul says in Romans 8:20-22,

“²⁰ For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope ²¹ that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. ²² For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.”

God subjected his “very good” creation to the process or decay and death as a consequence of one man’s sin.

Adam’s sin resulted in death for all people

Look back at Romans 5:13-14.  It says, “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.”

Until Moses, only one law had been given to mankind.  God told Adam not to eat of the tree of good and evil.  Adam needed to trust God and obey this one command.  Adam was to have the faith to trust that God had his best interest in mind and resist the tree temptation.  If God told him not to eat of the tree, Adam needed to trust that it was for his own good.

The main point of verse 13 -14 was to show that Adam’s violation of that one law brought with it death to all mankind.  A person did not need to sin in order to suffer the consequences of Adam’s sin.  It says, “Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses.”  Why did it reign?  Because Adam’s sin was passed on to every one of his descendants – even before the law was given.  Paul makes the assertion in verse 12 that, “sin came into the world through one man.”

Paul does not speak of sins (plural) but sin (singular).  Paul is not trying to point out one unrighteous act, but he is pointing to an inclination to unrighteousness that we all now carry.  Adams sin passed on to us a sin nature.

• It was not a sinful act that made us sinners.  We weren’t perfect people who made a mistake and are now being punished for that mistake
• We were born sinful.  We were born with a sinful nature.  Our sinful nature naturally results in sinful acts.  We sin because we are sinners

For westerners, Romans 5:12-14 is offensive.  It carries with it a two-fold offense:

1. First, we don’t like the idea of someone standing in for us.  We say, “It’s not fair that I should be judged for what someone else did.  I should have had the opportunity to make up my own mind.  God should have put me in the garden.  Certainly I would not have given into the same temptation that Adam gave in to.
2. Second, even if we agree to have someone represent us, western people insist that they should be able to choose who that person is for themselves.  We would want to choose someone just like us, but who is especially gifted to represent us well. (lawyer or senator)

God did choose someone like us.  God chose Adam.  In fact, Adam was perfectly gifted to represent us as a race.  Here’s why:

1. Who would be able to choose a representative for us better than the very God who made us in the first place?!  The all wise, all knowing God determined in His perfection that Adam was the right man to represent us as a race
2. God did not simply choose Adam for the task.  When God created Adam, He knew that Adam was going to be our representative.  He created Adam for the task.  If any of us would have been a better representative for mankind in the garden, then God would have chosen us instead.  But Adam was the perfect representative

We are represented by Adam.  1 Corinthians 15:22a says, “²² For as in Adam all die…”We inherited sin from him and were born with a sinful nature.  In Adam, we die.  The sin of our representative leads to our spiritual, physical and eternal death.  Death reigned in Adam and because of Adam’s sin, all of humanity inherited a sinful nature.  So we need a new representative.

The fact that God deals with us through a representative does not just lead to our judgment, but it also creates a way for God to make a way of redemption.  1 Corinthians 15:22 doesn’t just say we die in Adam.  It goes on to show us our hope in Jesus.  “²² For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.”

Here is the logic:  If Adam’s faithless disobedience was our faithlessness disobedience as well, then:

• What if there was a man who was perfect?
• What if there was a man who was perfectly obedient?
• What if there was a man who could represent us perfectly before God?

God provided that man for us in His Son Jesus Christ. “In Christ shall all be made alive.”Jesus was able to offer to us eternal life when we were dangling by a thread over eternal death.  Verse 14 says that Adam “was a type of the one who was to come.”

• Adam was one kind of representative – a man who represented death.
• But God sent a new representative – a SECOND ADAM – a man who would represent grace and life and the mercy of God.

Paul says in Romans 5:11, “we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”  Jesus, our new representative, made a way for us to change allegiances.  We no longer needed to be represented by the rebellion of Adam, but by receiving Jesus as our new Lord and new Head and new representative, we could find peace with God.

Application:  God is trustworthy

It all comes down to a matter of faith.  Adam didn’t trust God.  He didn’t trust that withholding the knowledge of good and evil was a good thing, so he stepped out on his own and rebelled against God’s law.

You and I do the exact same thing every time we don’t trust that God’s way is for our good and we try to do things our way.  The Bible is totally trustworthy and our God can be totally trusted.  Being a person of faith means that we fully depend on God’s promises and then live in a way that demonstrates that faith every day.

 Teaching Outline

When God created the world, it was very good – Genesis 1:31

Adam was the very first man – Genesis 2:7

Adam was a historical person – Genesis 2:8-14

Adam was created without sin – Genesis 2:9

Adam’s sin impacted all of creation and all of mankind – Romans 5:12, 6:23, 8:20-22, 1 Corinthians 5:21-22, Genesis 2:17

Adam’s sin resulted in death for all people – Romans 5:11-14, 1 Corinthians 5:22

Application:  God is trustworthy