2/10/08 - Lent 1 - Romans 5:12-18

THROUGH ONE MAN
- Death reigns over us
- We will reign in life

The Garden of Eden must have been an incredible place to be. In fact, the whole world must have been magnificent in the beginning because when the Lord created this earth, he originally intended for Adam and Eve and all of their descendants to live here forever. This was their heaven, so to speak. God didn’t plan on taking Adam and Eve or anyone else to his heaven where he and the angels lived because this is the place he made for humans. This earth was supposed to be our permanent home for eternity. And so the world at that time must have been spectacular beyond description. The sun wouldn’t burn the skin. No one would get too hot or too cold. People would get older, but they wouldn’t suffer any of the effects that we normally attribute to age: wrinkles, osteoporosis, arthritis, loss of hearing, loss of vision, loss of energy, loss of life. Nothing died at that time. Death did not exist in that original Garden. Trees, plants, animals, fish, birds, human beings - nothing died. God had planned that there would be nothing but life forever in the world he created.
Until Adam sinned, of course. Until Adam ate from the only tree in the world from which he was not supposed to eat. And when he did sin, that is when death began its reign. Animals that had been living side by side turned on each other. I’m sure many animals and birds and fish died by the claws and teeth of others immediately after Adam sinned. Beautiful plants and trees that were once vibrant and healthy suddenly withered from too much sun or not enough water. And Adam and Eve immediately began to feel the effects too. Every second they lived from that point on was another second closer to their deaths. Although they were still living, they began to die. And the worst part about this whole episode, is not that this earth ceased to be perfect, but that because of that one sin of one man, death reigns over all of us as well.
Yes, we sin ourselves. Yes, we deserve death because of what we have done against the Lord. But even if we didn’t sin, even before we had a chance to sin we were sentenced to death because of what Adam did thousands of years ago! “By the sin of the one man,” Romans 5 says, “death reigned through that one man.” What that one man Adam did ruined it for us all. From his very first child up to the last child born on this earth, everyone has been conceived in sin. That means: when you were in your mother’s womb you were already sinful. You were already guilty and you were already headed for death. Because of Adam. Because of the death that began to reign when he sinned.
I don’t like that. I don’t like to think that I have to pay for somebody else’s mistake. I don’t like the idea that I now have to take the punishment for something that wasn’t my fault. It’s not fair! It’s not fair that I have to die simply because I was sinful at the time of conception! Why do I have to pay for Adam’s sin?
And so I try to explain it away. Don’t you? Doesn’t this bother you a little bit? And if you’re like me, you tell yourself, “God wouldn’t do that, would he? He’s fair. He’s just. He wouldn’t punish me for what somebody else did! That can’t be right! It doesn’t make any sense that a loving God would condemn me for what Adam did.” But this is where we must be careful, my brothers and sisters. God clearly says today in his Word: “The result of one sin was condemnation for all mankind.” That’s very clear, isn’t it? That’s very straightforward. But that doesn’t really make sense. It is foreign to our way of thinking that God would do such a thing, that he would condemn all people because of Adam’s sin. But that’s what the Lord says. And we dare not try to explain that away! We dare not ignore a part of his Word because it doesn’t make sense to us! We dare not disagree with what the Lord says! We are in no position to disagree with him because he can do whatever he wants as true God. And if he says something very clearly in his Word as he does here, we better not disagree with it! But we do, don’t we. There are any number of things in Scripture that we just don’t like. Things that we think he should change, things that don’t make sense to us, things that we don’t think are fair - including death for everyone because of what Adam did so many years ago.
But when we start to think this way, we are no longer taking the Lord at his Word. We are raising our reason or our preferences above what God has clearly said. That is why we have to be very careful. Because that is a dangerous sin. Raising anything over God’s clear Word is harmful to our faith and the devil will use that to convince us that other things in his Word aren’t fair or right or true - just like he did with Adam and Eve. “Did God really say you must not eat from any tree in the garden” (Gen. 3:1)? “Did God really mean he holds you responsible for Adam’s sin? Does that really make sense? Is that really true? It must mean something else.” The devil is tricky. He will try to convince you of anything except God’s clear words because he isn’t just satisfied with you suffering an earthly death, he wants you to suffer an eternal death with him. And that is really what all of us deserve - and all because Adam ate a piece of fruit.
It’s a little ironic that many Christians, myself included, do not like the idea that because of one man death reigns over everyone, but at the same time we have no problem with the fact that through One Man eternal life is for everyone. It’s ironic because that Good News doesn’t make sense either! The one man, Jesus, came into this world, lived a perfect life, suffered the consequence of Adam - which is death - and then rose from the dead. And because Jesus did that, every person in the world - past, present, and future - has been given the gift of life. How does that work? How does that make any kind of sense? Jesus died so that now we can live forever? It boggles the mind to try to figure out the logistics of that exchange! But it is true nonetheless. And you know it’s true because that’s what God clearly says in his Word. He doesn’t explain himself. He doesn’t give us the nuts and bolts of how it all works. He just tells us it does. And so we take him at his Word. We simply believe that we will enjoy eternal life because of “the gift of righteousness” he has given us.
The gift of righteousness, Paul says here. That’s another thing that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Why would God ever give us a gift? We were born in sin. We sin constantly. And we will never stop sinning as long as we live on this earth - the perfect earth human beings corrupted by sin in the first place! So why should God give us a gift of righteousness? No reason really. There’s no understandable reason why the Lord would do that. He simply tells us in his Word that he gives us that gift because he loves us… for no reason. He just loves us. And that’s it. Not because of anything in us, that’s for sure! God in his grace decided to show us love. And thank the Lord for that! Whether you will ever understand his grace or not, thank the Lord for that! He has given us a gift of his righteousness. That’s his perfection. He understands that we are sinful from conception and so he cancels that sin by means of the gift. His perfection covers our sins. His perfection trumps the rule of death so that we can reign in life.
We will “reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ,” according to Romans 5. Once we pass through death, we will be in heaven reigning in eternal life. We automatically get promoted to that prestigious level of reigning with Christ. All of us will! No exceptions! We will all reign with Christ in heaven. And in all truthfulness, that doesn’t make sense either! We don’t deserve eternal life in the first place, and now God says that we will reign in life with him forever. The grace of God is staggering to me! He keeps giving us more and more and more. Not only what we don’t deserve, but also what we lost. He will give us back the Garden of Eden. He will give us the perfect place to live in once again. There will be no more wrinkles, osteoporosis, arthritis, loss of hearing, loss of vision, loss of energy, or loss of life. The Lord will restore what Adam and Eve gave up and he will not give us the chance to ruin it again. He will confirm us in holiness. It will be permanent and glorious. It will be better than anything we can imagine in this life and it will continually get better. The longer we are reigning with Jesus in heaven, the longer we’ll want to be with him. And that’s something even Adam and Eve didn’t experience in that first Garden of Eden. Because that was a separate place away from the Lord. Remember that God came down to see Adam and Eve. Not so in heaven. We will not be separated, but we will be in God’s very home and with him all the time. And he will never leave.
And I can’t make sense of that! I can’t comprehend what that will be like in my mind. But just like everything else we’ve been talking about today: it doesn’t matter if I can make sense of it. Because that is what God clearly says. And praise the Lord for his clear words in Scripture! What would we do without them? How could we believe in anything if his words were not absolutely clear? And his clear words for us today, his clear words of salvation we will end with this morning, are these: “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!” Beautiful, clear words of God, aren’t they? Words that tell us exactly what we need to hear: We sinned. We deserve death. Christ died. We receive life.
Amen.

“Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.” - Romans 11:33a,36