A Story of Comparisons - Romans 5:12-21
SERMON TRANSCRIPT
Paul here is gonna tell us this story of comparisons. And I don't know about you, but there are a lot of comparisons in life. Or maybe, maybe put it this way, that there are a lot of different camps that we like to find ourselves in, different spheres. Maybe it's this place where you're, okay, so I'm gonna do this and I normally don't. As Pastor Tips have been told to me in public speaking, you don't ask people to raise their hands, Okay, I'm gonna ask people to raise some hands this morning. Okay, and when I'm talking about this I'm talking about coke versus Pepsi All right So we're gonna we're gonna have some relationships here put on put on watch But our cake team coke, let me see it. Let me see it. Oh, yeah All right. All right. How about team Pepsi? Oh Okay, okay. I see some relationships. They're looking at each other going, "I thought I knew who you were." All right? That would be the only one I'll make you raise your hands. But we have comparisons. We have Chevy versus Ford. We have Mac versus PC, my fight with all my tech people here. We have Apple, Android, or Google when it comes to our phones. We have, I love going to the beach. We were at Santa Cruz a couple of weeks ago. I love the beach. It fills my soul. But maybe you're a but maybe you're a beach person or you're a mountain person. My wife and I booked an anniversary trip to Lake Tahoe. I'm a both and when it comes to beach or the mountains. How about living in the city versus living in the country? We have David versus Goliath. We're gonna get spiritual here. Get really spiritual, we have Backstreet Boys versus NSYNC. All right? We got Day versus Night. How many night owls do we have? Yes, early risers? Okay. He should be preaching every single Sunday. We have a hot versus cold. Some people love summer. Some people love winter. It's a perfect balance right now. I love it. It's perfect. Absolutely perfect. We have sweet versus sour. And the most important game number four today, kings versus some other team that lives closer to the water. Okay. Yeah. We don't even We don't even want to mention their name in church. All right? But it's kings versus the world. All right? That's what it is right now.
But in all seriousness, Paul here is talking about these contrasting worlds. And we have to answer the question of where do we find ourselves. And Paul here in chapter 5 now, the second half of chapter 5, is bringing this conversation about sin and sickness to this kind of this point, okay? So he's bringing to this point where he has been talking about for the last two chapters, he's been talking about justification, he's been talking about righteousness, he's been talking about faithfulness, he's talking about law versus grace, he's been talking about humanity versus God's perfection. And we've been coming to this point. And so Paul here says, "Therefore," Pastor Andre talked about that last week. And you see "therefore" in the Bible, pause and say, "Hey, what's that there for?" All right? Very theological, deep nuggets I'm giving you this morning. But Paul here basically is saying everything that I've said up to this point applies in this letter. You gotta remember that this is a letter that was written that would have been read in its entirety. We've taken a couple months now and we're through chapter 5. But the listener of the church in Rome would have heard this letter read in its entirety. So they, just a few minutes ago, heard about what Paul had been talking about on this topic. And so he says, "Therefore," so we peek up and we listen.
Start, okay, starting in verse 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 sin." Really light topic this morning for church. Thanks for joining me here. Verse 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. Nevertheless, death reigned from this time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is the pattern of one to come." So Paul here in this beginning paragraph is basically saying that he's reminding us of everything he's written. He's reminding us of what he's already stated in this letter and that is that all have sinned. There's nobody perfect in the room. That includes me. Nobody here in this space is perfect. That's just the reality of where we're at. What we are trying to do is we're trying to figure out this calling that God has on our heart and for our life and how do we get in line with his perfect, perfect plan? So Paul here is reminding us that no one is perfect. Everybody has sinned. And he's pointing us to when this specific moment where it all started, and it started with Adam. If you were to flip in your Bibles all the way to basically page one, Genesis 1, God begins and creates the world and creates everything in the world and the animals and all the and all the stuff and all the fish and all the trees and the ocean and the sun and the moon and stars and the universe, all this stuff. And then he creates man, he creates Adam. This all dates back to that dude who messed up for all of humanity. And Paul here is reminding us that Adam, if we were to read the account in Genesis, talks about that Adam technically becomes this representative for all of humanity. So when Adam fell, unfortunately, everybody fell and everybody became struck with this sickness or disease called sin that entered into our lives. And we were stuck with this sickness.
You might say, "Hey, hey, Pastor Chris, that's not fair. That's not fair that some dude all the way back then messed up. I don't even know who this bro is." Like, don't even don't even try to associate him with his no belly button self that I don't even want to deal with this dude. Some of you are getting it. It's slowly creeping through the room. But don't associate me with that person. But what Paul here is articulating that Adam who is all of humanity's representative who himself brought sin to the world brought it to all of us. And all of us are sinned and we're not perfect. I heard a pastor once say this, I thought it was brilliant. It wasn't me, so I can't take credit for it. Adam brought sin in the world, but we have kept it in the world. That's the reality of what we're facing. Paul talks about in Romans 3:10, as it is written, no one is righteous, not even one. Or Romans 3:23, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Sin was first brought with Adam, but it has continued with all of us. You see, the results of that sin and the sickness, as hard as it is to talk about, is death. Paul here is saying in Romans 5:12, "Death came to all people because all sinned." The reality is of the sin sickness that we have, we know that we have that. Why? Because we see the results of that and the results of that is death. The results of that is we see conflict in society. The results of that we see is war. The results of that we see is hurt and pain and suffering. The results of that is we see people try to lord over other people. The results of that, of sin in this world, is the way that we can't interact with one another without yelling at each other. That's where we find ourselves. And Paul here is saying that it all started with Adam. That everyone since Adam, minus a few miraculous moments that we can read through the Bible, that all humanity has experienced is death and because of that, we are all affected by this sin. And that even Jesus suffered death as a result of sin. Not his, but ours. But he was still affected by it. Paul points out that this death has reigned from Adam to Moses.
Why is that important? Why is he talking about that there? Well, it's important because there was this time in the world between Adam and Moses that sin existed in the world because of Adam's choices and conflict and pain and suffering in this world. But there was no law yet. the one who Mount Sinai came down, the Ten Commandments, "Thou shalt not." You probably heard that before in the church. We have a lot of "thou shalt not"s in the church. But the law came through Moses. So there's this time before then where scholars would try to make an argument to go, "Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, Paul. There was no law then, so therefore there's no sin, death, punishment," because they didn't even know what they were doing. And Paul here goes on to say, "Hold on, time out. He's like, "They might have not had the definition of what they were doing, but they still had instilled in them the way that God created humanity with an understanding of right versus wrong." Let me explain this a little bit. You find yourself driving through a neighborhood. You're going 80, 85. You're flying past people's houses. Kids are outside playing basketball. You're just flying through the neighborhood. There's something deep down inside of you that says, "I "I should not be driving this fast," right? Whether there's a posted speed limit or not, there's an understanding of, "Hmm, maybe this isn't right." That's what Paul here is saying. That even before the speed limit was posted, there's kind of a basic understanding of how to live our lives, and yet people still live the lives in the way that they wanted to based upon their plans and their selfishness, all about me. And Paul here is saying, so you can't even talk about this situation because when God gives us the law, we're able to further understand the specifics of our sin. Paul mentioned that some did not sin in some way like Adam did. Adam's sin was a specific moment, a specific choice against a specific command, If you know the story of the Old Testament, Adam was told specifically not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That was basically the one rule that God gave Adam in the garden, said, "Do not do this. "Do anything else, but do not do this." And yet, Adam chose wrong. And there are so many that have lived after Adam, but before Moses, when the law was given, They sinned but didn't break a specific law, but there was still an understanding that they knew what was going on. Because the reality was too, that they were too sick with this sin and rejected God's rule in their life to reign over them. He says in Romans 5:13-14, "Sin is not charged against anyone's account where there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses." So that means, as a whole here, that death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, that sin was present, even when the specifics of the sin were not yet fully understood or detailed by the law. I got a little lawyer legal jargon speak there, and I started to lose some of you in the room. I'm coming back around, okay?
So here, Paul is ultimately saying, summarizing his, all of his argument, it is in this that we are made aware of our sin and the sickness that has been present in our lives even before we understood what we had broken. Right? Mom says, "Do not take a cookie from the cookie jar." We sneak in, what do we do? Take the cookie. We knew what we were doing. We knew deep down inside whether that was a big warning sign for us or a tiny little, "Hey, maybe." There's something deep down inside that we understand that when we make a choice, we know what we're doing. So Paul here is saying, "This is what I'm talking about." And then he gets real deep, okay? You ready for this? He gets real deep, and we're gonna jump into 15 to 21 here. But he begins to have more of these contrasts. He's gonna highlight two specific contrasts here. It's not gonna be kings versus warriors, say. That's for 1230 today, tip off. Beam team, let's go. But he's talking about these two different contrasts, the first of which being this idea of this trespass and this gift. So verse 15, "But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of one man, how much more did God grace and the gift that came by the grace of one man, Jesus Christ, overflowed to the many. Nor can the gift of God be compared with the result of one man's sin. The judgment followed one sin and brought commendation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification." Big word, "just if I had never sinned." That's what that word justification means. For if by the trespass of the one man death reigned through the one man, how much more will those who receive God's abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in the life through one man, Jesus Christ. Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteousness act resulted in justification and life for all people. For just as through the disobedience of the one man, the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of one man, the many will be made righteous. The law was brought in so that the trespass might increase, but where sin increased, grace increased all the more. Remember that. So that just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Whoo. Okay.
That was a heavy section. You guys hang in there. That was great. Paul here is talking about these two contrasts. He's talking about this contrast of the trespass versus the gift. See, the trespass is breaking God's law. That's what that word trespass means there. That means sin. That means this selfish act act is allowing the sickness to rule our lives. That's this trespass. But then also this gift. What's this gift? Well, this gift is what Paul is talking about is the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. Remember just a few short weeks ago, celebrated Easter. He is risen. He is risen indeed. Like Jesus conquered death. That is the gift, the forgiveness of our sins. And so let's talk about this trespass a little more. This idea of this trespass was brought on by Adam. Adam messed up right there in the garden, right at the beginning. God had this perfect plan and Adam just throws it off the rails. Adam messes up. And in that moment when Adam trespasses, breaking God's law, the one rule, death comes as a result of that trespass. And that him and Eve then are kicked out of the garden because of that. And humanity starts on this downward slope and slide for a really long time. All the way into the moment that Jesus shows up here on earth. So for thousands upon thousands upon thousands upon thousands of years, humanity is just going down in the garbage, essentially, what's happening. And there's nothing they can do about it. God gives them the law, God gives them instructions, God gives them rituals and moments to pause life, to try to celebrate who God is. He gives them that Jesus, or God in their present, in the moment, in like, in the tabernacle. Like, God tries to do everything that he can to say, "Wake up, I love you, I have a better life for you, "this is how you live it." And yet time and time again, failure after failure after failure, trespass. And that all of humanity is affected because we all come from Adam because of that initial trespass. Let's talk about the second one. Let's talk about this gift. What does this gift mean? This gift is Jesus' sacrifice on the cross. I talked about that moment earlier. Talking about how Jesus went to the cross with our sin, but yet He was perfect. He becomes this moment that is completely different than this trespass. This downward slope of humanity all to this point is finally chopped off and stopped in this moment that Jesus goes to the cross, not for Himself, but for us. To this point where He on the cross takes all of the junk and the garbage and the sickness and the sin and all the stuff in life that just pulls us down. He takes that on and says, "I am going to take care of this." And He gives Himself for us. See, as mankind brought the trespass, the gift is brought from God through Jesus Christ. And Paul here is talking about these two polar opposite camps. Whereas the trespass brings death, the gift brings life. Whereas in the trespass, God gave Adam life initially, but then Adam broke it and brought death. And in the gift where the son of God has to give his life in death, actually through that comes life. And so we find this place in this moment where this one sin of one dude, Adam, breaks the plan for everybody and it leads to sickness of generation after generation of trespass, after trespass, after trespass, comes to this point where the righteousness of one man, Jesus, breaks this cycle and the single act of a sacrifice covers every single one of these trespasses in a moment. Paul here is saying that the world is flipped upside down in this moment, that never before this single place, since the beginning of time before Adam's bad choice, the world has never had the opportunity to live in this new life, like God first set up in the garden. And God here is telling us that death reign through the trespass, but life here reigns through the gift. That's what's going on. See, the trespass is terribly widespread and terribly dangerous. And it's taken humanity and put them in the pit forever.
However, Paul here is reminding the church in Rome that however this gift is wonderfully being made available to all who decide to receive it. And sometimes we have to understand where we came from and where we were in order to truly understand and receive the gift. We don't fully comprehend where we are or what has happened in our life unless we truly begin to understand and define the trespass of where we are. And Paul here is saying, no matter how far gone, no matter how far lost, no matter how far deep or buried or stuck, Cheryl's talking about carrying burdens, no matter how heavy that burden is on your back, Paul here is reminding us that Jesus reigns and that in Jesus reign, there's life. Paul says in 520, "Where sin increased, grace increased all the more." I love this translation here. It says, "Where sin multiplied, grace multiplied even more." So wherever you find yourself walking into this space in this moment, in this time, maybe in life, maybe you're going through it right now. God's grace can multiply even more. And we have to look at where we've been to understand how God is moving us to something new. That sin, yes, is powerful, but grace is more powerful. And no matter how ever deep in sin that Israel, God's people, the Jewish nation, had sunk, that God's grace was deeper yet. That's true for us. He is always there waiting for you with open arms. If you want to hear something this morning, I want you to rewind this. He is ready and wants to overwhelm you with His love and kindness. To show up in your life and blow your mind with His love. They're always welcoming you home. The gift is way better than the trespass every single time. The second contrast that Paul talks about here is this idea of the disobedient one and the obedient one. And Paul contrasts this idea of, even back to verse 14 that he sets up before this section, he says this, that Adam, who is the pattern of the one to come. What does that mean? Well, Adam here, in theological terms, is the representative of all of humanity. He was the first, he was the beginning, he was given that responsibility and that role in the garden and has that. So He represents all of us. Well, in this story, there's also somebody else who represents us, right? That's Jesus.
That Jesus on the cross is the one who represents us before God. So that when we get to that point, when we get to heaven and we have to account for what happened in our lives and the choices we made and the way that we treated people, good or bad or ugly or awesome, wherever that is, Jesus comes alongside of us and puts his arm around us and says, "Hey, God, he's with me. I already took care of his stuff." So just as Adam in the garden, representative of all humanity, failed, Christ in his sacrifice on the cross represents us and all of humanity that says, "You have had righteousness put on put on you. You have not failed. You have not sinned. You have not broken the rules. You have lived a perfect life. Jesus puts that covering over us. Romans 5:17 that says, "By the trespass of the one man Adam, death reigned through that one man. But God's abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. See, the act of the disobedient of Adam, of this one disobedient person, yes, is powerful because it affected all of humanity. However, the act of the one obedient man, Jesus Christ, is more powerful over all the earth. And that in this, in verse 19, it says, "For just as through the disobedient of one man, the many were made sinners. So also through the obedience of the one man, Jesus Christ, the many will be made righteous." The disobedient one brought the reign of death. But Jesus, the obedient one, brings the reign of life. That's what Paul here is saying. Taking all this information, all this stuff, putting it all together, and he basically says that the disobedient one brought this death, but the obedient one brings life.
And this gift of Jesus Christ is so much more powerful. I heard it said that there is dynamite power in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Maybe we should change our subtitle here where it says, "The Power of the Gospel." I just want to say it like, "The Dynamite TNT Power of the Gospel." That is how powerful this gift of life that Jesus brought for us. So the bottom line here, one takeaway this morning, is that yes, sin is powerful, but grace is more powerful. Sin is powerful, but grace is more powerful. Sin is and will always be a reality for us here on earth. But grace can be a greater reality for us for those who trust in Jesus Christ as their Lord. Jesus is lightning years better than Adam and this gift exponentially greater than the trespass. that grace and love is better than sin and sickness. So the question becomes for us today, what camp are we in? Where do we find ourselves today? The reign of sin and death, or the reign of grace through righteousness in Jesus Christ. There's no cost to join this camp. It's already been paid for you. It's already taken care of. Jesus took care of it 2,000 something years ago on that cross that very first Easter and said, "Your sin is defeated. "Life is yours." Or did we find ourselves over in this place, just caught up in what we want to do in our pity party, in our choices, in our control, in our rule, which is sin, which leads to death.
Who's leading my life, death or life? That's a question for us today. If I give you one takeaway or thought, A little application here for you to take away this morning. Then we're gonna move in time of communion together today. This question is, what do I need to change in my life this week to live more in the power of Jesus? Jesus's power isn't the problem. The problem is us limiting Jesus's power in our lives of having wrong priorities, of making wrong choices, of as Pastor Andre was here talking about being too busy in life, too busy to take a moment to talk to God every day or to step into His word. How can you allow the power of Christ, of this life, of this gift, to fill you up even more this week. Jesus is more powerful, life is more powerful, grace is more powerful, love is more powerful, peace is more powerful, forgiveness is more powerful, joy is more powerful, grace is more powerful, this gift of life is more powerful, Jesus is more powerful. That's what we gotta figure out this week. That's perfect. Jesus, we thank you for today. God, we thank you for your servant Paul and his reminder for us of this two polar opposite places that we might find ourselves in, either death or life. And so God, as we prepare to go into communion this morning, Jesus, I thank you for this I thank you for this, the salvation that you provided for us, the forgiveness of sins, there are justification, our initial sanctification into you, God, that you gave that very first Easter. Thanks for listening. And if you would, please take a moment to subscribe and leave an encouraging review to help others find our podcasts on whatever platform you are listening on. We hope you have a wonderful day. We'll catch you next week