The Gift of Grace vs. The Trespass of Sin

He had opened your Bibles to the Book of Romans. He got started in chapter 3, verse 12 last week, and got all the way through verse 12. So it's downhill from here on. I want to read the paragraph. This is a conclusion he's drawing to the whole chapter 1 through 4, and really chapter 5, 1 through 11 is sort of a preliminary conclusion. This is his conclusion to all that section. Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, in this way death came to all men, because all sinned. Now if you look at your Bibles, you'll usually find some kind of an indication here. This one that I'm using has a straight line. It usually has an indication that Paul has stopped in the middle of a sentence and started some kind of an explanation, sort of left his thought behind and picked up another thing. Now Paul dictated all of these things that we see here that are written. He would dictate it and someone else would write it down. So if you're writing, when you're writing, you have an opportunity to stop and erase and go back and correct it, but Paul didn't have that opportunity. And sometimes whenever you're explaining something, and you get in the middle of it, and you think, wait a minute, you know, I didn't say that quite the way, that's not showing the whole picture. You get in the middle of a sentence, go back and sort of add additional information, and sometimes you get on and on and on and on and on and on, and once in a while I'll say, Carol, where were you really going with that? Let's go back and get started at the first part of it and get that part finished, because I can't hold that in my mind while we're going to all these other places and come back here. Yeah, she is. So whenever Paul is dictating, like all of us, if he has something that happens, he sometimes just stops in the middle of a sentence and sometimes never finishes the sentence. So he gets started with an idea and never really gets to the conclusion for it. And here, at this point, he breaks, because all sin. And then he starts thinking about what he wants to explain about sin. Verse 13, for before the law was given, remember he talked about the law and how people following the law changed. Chapter 5, verse 12, 13. So he starts going back to try to explain about the relationship between sin and the law. For before the law was given, sin was in the world, but sin is not taken into account when there is no law. Now what Paul is talking about, he's talking about sin in apparently two different ways. He's talking about sin, one, as a violation of specific commandments from God, which would be true of the instructions of Moses. Moses said, you should have no other gods before me, you should obey your parents, not have idols. So there were specific concrete things that Moses gave in the Ten Commandments, as well as in all the other laws that he gave. And there, when you did those things, you knew that you'd stepped across the line. Now when he's talking about the people who were pagans, who lived in a world without any knowledge of God or the Bible, they never had any of these commandments to violate. So now he's talking about remembering, when he talked about this before, that every person is guilty of rebelling against God, because even the man in the wilderness looks around him and says, I see evidence of someone who's bigger than a human being, because I don't know anyone who can make a tree, I don't know anyone who can make a mountain. So I know that there is something bigger, but every person, instead of worshipping that God that they know is bigger, they make an idol, or they worship something in this world. So now Paul remembers this. He remembers that now he goes back and begins to address that issue. For before the law was given, that is, people outside of the law, the instruction of Moses, when he has already said about them that they were sinners, every one of them have fallen short of giving God honor, glory, and supremacy. So they sinned. There was sin in the world, he says. But it was not sin of violating specific commandments of God. It was violating what they knew to be right as opposed to people who knew what the law said and violated specific concrete laws. Now what he's talking about here is the difference between sin as a force or a power and sin as a transgression, sin as a spirit of rebellion as opposed to sin as a specific violation of a commandment or a demand from God. He's contrasting those. For before the law was given, sin was in the world. But sin is not taken into account when there is no law. In other words, he's saying sin of the violation of the law is not taken into account. For the sinful people who were sinners before the law was given, it's not counted as a transgression of the law. It's counted more in the sense of rebellion as he's described before. In verse 14, nevertheless, sin reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses. There was this spirit of rebellion even though the law was not given, even though instructions of God were not given, where people did as he said in the first three chapters. They knew that there was a God, but they did not honor God. They did not give him the respect and authority that he deserved so that they were contrary, living contrary to the acknowledgement of God, but there were not specific instructions that they were transgressing or moving apart from. So nevertheless, sin reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even though those who did not sin by breaking a command, as Adam did, who was a pattern of the one to come. Now, Adam was a sample or a pattern or a type. Sometimes that's a popular word used in biblical studies, typology, the study of types. So that Adam was a type of one who was to come, that one who would rebel against God. So Moses then gave specific instructions to people, and even though there was no instructions, people still rebelled against God, and when instructions came, they did rebel against those commands he gave. Verse 15 says, but the gift is not like the trespass. He's talking about the gift that Christ gives, the gift of salvation, and now he's thinking, he's compared Adam and Christ, through the one man sin came into the world, through the one man righteousness comes into the world. And now he's stopping in the middle of this process to say, I need to point out to you some things by which they're not alike. Adam and Christ are not alike in some ways, but the gift of God's salvation or righteousness or grace is not like a person who sins or trespasses, violates the specific commandments of God. Now, let me go back and talk about what Paul has talked about so far. Sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin. That's in verse 12, and in this way, death came to all men because all sinned. Here he's talking about, now, that sin comes into the world through Adam. Now the idea of predestination is that you are accounted guilty of sin before you're even born, and you're destined for damnation. The idea of original sin is that once Adam sins, everyone then is guilty of Adam's original sin. The guilt of Adam is passed down to us. Now he's talking about here that there is a difference between these two ways. Now whenever, in our tradition, when we think of sin as a conscious rebellion against the commandment of God, we would see sin within the context of what's happened after Moses. For us, that's true. For we know what God has asked of us, and we know what the Bible says, so it's a specific reaction to what God says, and saying, no, I refuse to do that. So we define sin in our tradition, a Baptist tradition, to say it is when you get to the age in which you can know that there is a God, and know what He tells you that you should do, and you consciously say no to that. Then that sin enters your life. So we would say that both the guilt of sin comes to us by choice. You make a choice against God, against His will, against His instructions, against His commands. And the gift of grace also comes as a result of a choice. We choose to accept Christ as our Lord. We choose to exalt Him as our Redeemer, so that there is both on the side of sin and on the side of righteousness, there is both consciousness of what you're doing and a commitment or a choice that you make that results in both sin or in righteousness. So our tradition sees the similarity between Adam and Christ, both in that one inaugurates an era, Adam of sin, Christ of righteousness, but that in both of these it is not automatic for us. There is a matter of recognition, of understanding, and of choice. But the gift is not like the trespass, for if the many died by the trespass of one man, how much more did God's grace and the gift that came by the grace of one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many? The gift of grace, he said, is not like the trespass. Here he's talking about the trespass that has come into the world by Adam's trespassing against the command of God. There is a choice that comes and a consequence from Adam's response to God that is different than our response to Christ. Now here's what he means. When Adam chooses to disobey the specific command of God, he has made a trespass. But he's also created an environment in which sin rules the lives of, influences the lives of everyone born after him. So you don't have a choice as to whether or not you live in a world where there is no sinful encouragement or temptations. Now in the Baptist tradition, original sin is not a big issue for us because we don't see the guilt of Adam as coming down to us. But what we see as original sin is being born in an environment in which every person you know is engaged in sin. Like you're born in an environment where everyone speaks Chinese. So we recognize the power of Adam's act over us because you have to choose against the grain to choose Christ. It's not necessarily the case with Christ though. You can live in an environment where many people have accepted Christ, but it does not automatically mean that you're pushed into that direction. The act of transgression on Adam's part and the act of providing righteousness on God's part is not, he's saying, exactly the same. One of them gives us an environment that is overwhelming in pushing us toward rejecting God. And the other, the righteous environment, never does overwhelm us. It is always a choice that we have to make to choose it. So there's that difference. Now in some people who read this passage where he talks about by one man righteousness entered the world, by another man sin entered the world, this is the passage that brings to them the idea that all people in the world will be saved. By one man sin entered the world, and so all people became lost. Then Christ came, He provided a means of salvation, and by the one man then all are saved. Now that's not the way Baptists interpret this passage. We see it simply as a way of saying that by one man the sinful influence of him has spread through all mankind. By the presence of Christ coming, the opportunity for righteousness has been made available to all of mankind. It's not a cause and effect, as in Adam's sin on us, as a cause and effect in Christ's plan for righteousness for us. So that's what he's talking about. The gift is not like the trespass. There is a difference between those two. Verse 16, again, the gift of God is not like the result of one man's sin. The judgment followed one man's sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. He's simply amplifying on what I was talking about a minute ago, what he said above about the difference between these two. The gift of God is not like the result that came from Adam's sin. The judgment following one sin, that is the judgment following Adam's sin, brought condemnation so that we live in a world where there is condemnation all around us. We're surrounded by that. But the gift of Christ, that is his gift of salvation or the gift of grace, followed our sinful life and this gift brought justification. So while we have this sinful world in which we live, the gift of Christ did not erase the sin of the world, but following that influence of sin in our life, our yielding to God brought justification so that we were declared innocent as a result of our faith in Christ and the gift that he gives us. For if by the trespass of one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God's abundant provision of grace and the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. Now you have to understand that when this letter was written, it was read in the churches and they didn't take one single verse at a time or a sentence at a time like I've done sometimes and so they had in a continuity what he was talking about. Here he refers back to the idea that he was referring to earlier about the gift of righteousness. Remember he spent a lot of time talking about the gift of righteousness came as a result of faith, not obedience to the law. So when he's talking about the gift of righteousness reigning and the provision of grace, he's talking about the grace and the righteousness coming as a result of faith. He doesn't mention it here, but that's his reference. Now we could see it this way, for if the trespass or the sin of Adam, when it came, death then as a result of his sin, controlled human nature and it came through Adam's act of rebellion and disobedience. Now if that act has such power to influence all the people in the world, the act of Adam had that much power to influence all the people who have been born since Adam's time, how much more will the power of God be able to influence the lives and the world of those who receive Christ? How much more will those who receive God's abundant provision and his provision was forgiveness. His provision was righteousness. His provision was that we would be reconciled. His provision was that we would be acquitted. All of these things were the provision and all of these came because God chose to give us something we had not earned. That's what grace means. So as a result of our faith, God's grace was made available to us to bring us both the provision of his justification, the announcement of our innocence or our acquittal, the reconciliation that comes between us and God. Those are all the provisions he's talked about above and they're all the result of grace. How much more will those who receive God's abundant provision of grace and the gift of righteousness reign in our lives or control us through this one man? If the power of Adam's act is so strong that it influences all the world, how much more power does the power of Christ have when we place our faith in him to set things right for us, to make things different for us? He's trying to get at the idea that the righteousness and the gift of God is more powerful than the powerful force of sin that we see all around us, all the world around us, and all the lives of people around us. Now this gift of righteousness comes through one man, Jesus Christ. He identifies that again. And in this passage in this chapter, he talks over and over again about this work of God comes through the person of Christ. Now verse 18, as a result or consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all people, and I did something here that a lot of people find offensive, whenever you hear people complain about them translating the Bible so that it's gender specific, they're talking about trying to change the language of the scriptures so that it's more descriptive of the way we see things. And when he says here, as just as a result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, I don't think there's any person that ever reads that that think it's only for the male gender. Would anybody be misled by that? So what some of the Bibles do instead of translating the literal Greek word man, which is in Greek, they translate the word person as a way of being inclusive of all genders. So they are gender inclusive translations. And there's some people that get really upset about that because they think you're changing the Bible. But what you're really trying to do is communicate the idea of the scripture rather than getting involved in the gender debate that seems to be so prevalent in our own society, in our own culture. So the result of one trespass was condemnation for all people, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all people. So he's now drawing a conclusion after that long explanation that there's some difference. He's now saying, here's what I was trying to get at. The result of Adam's sin came as a condemnation for all of us. We feel surrounded by the sin of Adam and such a powerful influence that we can never resist it. So also the act of righteousness that came in Christ was justification that brings life to everyone. Now he's already described how this life comes. It's not by good works and it's not by being born. It is by faith and trust in God. So when you take this passage and you read that sentence, you could conclude if you hadn't read any of the rest of it, that he's saying because of Adam everybody became sinners and condemned to hell and because of Jesus Christ everybody in the world now is saved. If you read that, just like it sits here without the context in which you find it, you could certainly take that, read it, and claim it as a text for universal salvation. But that's not at all what Paul is talking about as we've seen in the passage above. For justice through the disobedience of one man, the many are made sinners. So through the obedience of one man, the many are made righteous. Now we've already talked about what this idea of Adam's sin is. It is an environment, from our understanding, our Baptist understanding of this, it is an environment in which we're born, in which the powerful pressure to do, to act in rebellion against God is all around us so that we're influenced by that. But we choose to do it. It is a choice we make. It's not through the disobedience that we are all sinners and guilty of sin. And this is a text from which people who believe original sin, a child is born guilty of the sin of Adam, would find as a basis for their understanding. For justice through Adam's disobedience, then all of us were made guilty of sin and determined to go to hell because of Adam's decision. But that's not exactly what he says, but you can see how they'd read that into the passage. So also the obedience of one man, of Jesus, many will be made righteous. So that what the passage is talking about is, there's a similarity between the influence of Adam and the influence of Christ. Adam started a whole era in which men were to be surrounded by sin and the power and grip of sin. Christ started a whole new era in which people were able to claim righteousness by the gift and the death of Christ himself. So in the world of flesh that Adam had, came and had power until the day Christ came and started this new epoch by which we now by faith live in righteousness and holiness free from the grip and power of sin and of Satan. So they're alike in the sense that Adam started a whole different world in which there's rebellion and the power of it and the force of it. And Christ started a whole new world with an opportunity of the freedom from sin and it's a curse of unrighteousness and the curse that it brings of separation from God and guilt and shame. So Adam brings into the world one epoch and Christ brings another. The law was added so that the trespass might increase. Now he comes back to talk about this subject again. Well why did God bring the law into this picture? Because Jewish people looked at that and it's very important to them. Well there was a purpose for it. When God brought this into the picture, he wanted them by the law to know the specific things that God condemned so that they could now make a choice and it made the circumstances worse for the Jews because before they would have been in the grip of sin but had not been trespassing specific commandments from God. Now he's saying to his Jewish readers, the trespass, the law was added so that the trespass might increase. So that now when you make a choice to disobey your parents, you're not only acting on your own human nature, you know that you're doing something that the ruler of the universe has said do not do. So there's an increase in the guilt of one because they now have the law. So he's saying to the Jewish people who are reading this, listening to it, when you look back at the law, you say the law is a special gift to you and you always looked at it as if it was something given to you that was a wonderful gift but the fact is that it made your guilt worse because now even though you had the influence of Adam on you, you now knew specifically what you were not supposed to do. It's kind of like, you know, if you've ever gotten on a road and you didn't quite know what the speed limit was, there was no sign there, you just got on the road and you're driving along and you think, well, it's probably 70. And in your own mind, you know, well, I really might not be right but I need to hurry anyway. So you're driving and then there's a sign that says 50 miles an hour. As soon as you see the sign, even though you may know that you're speeding, you really know that you're speeding then. That's what he's talking about. The increase of responsibility. Before if someone stopped you, you said, I didn't know what it was, I thought it probably was 70 but then after you pass the sign and the police stops you, you have no recourse but to say, I knew all along exactly what I was doing. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more. Not only did the law bring the increase of sin to you and the Jewish community, but also the grace of God was extended to you. You look at all the things that God did to the Jewish people as they began to follow Him and learn about Him. They knew more about God through all the activities. So it was a trade-off. The guilt was greater but also the opportunity to know God was greater for them. So that just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through the righteousness to bring eternal life. For the third time now he says, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Not the law. Not obedience to the instructions of Moses, but through Jesus Christ and His death, His resurrection and His life forever. What Paul is concluding in this passage, remember the big picture, all of sin in the world, the people who never had the law sin and the people that had the law sin, but Christ came for them all. Don't brag about the fact that you had the law. Brag about the fact of what Jesus Christ has done. That's what you brag about. For He has done something that we could never do for ourselves. We were born in this sinful world where it overwhelmed us, but Jesus Christ came to set us free from the guilt and the shame that sin holds on our life and the power it has over us. And so now by His grace, through Him, we find this freedom. To those of you who are Jewish in the congregation, you don't look back at the law and say, this is a wonderful blessing to us. Because what the law did for you was really make clear and plain to you just how sinful you were. But what God has done is reveal through the great traditions of your faith, Jesus Christ Himself and the grace that was even greater than all of the guilt and shame that might have come to you. For it is through Him that sin and death are defeated. And that concludes this first section of Paul's writing about sin and the power of sin and the remedy that God brings through Christ Himself. Would you bow your heads for just a moment? What is this for us? Why did Paul write this and what does it mean to us? It means that every human being you know who has not yielded themselves to Jesus Christ is condemned. In our culture, they're condemned not because they didn't pay attention to the created order, but almost all of them know about Jesus. And they've chosen to say, I don't want that. And so the condemnation that he says came to the Jews is even greater for them. It's not that they just knew the Ten Commandments, they know about Jesus too. And so many in our world are living without Him and are bound for hell. But we have at our hand a power greater than the power of sin. The power of Jesus Christ to break the hold of sin in people's lives. Sinful habits, sinful pattern, shame, guilt, receiving Jesus Christ can remove all of that from a person's life. We have the best news that a human being ever found. And every problem you find people have, it traces back somewhere to sin. And through Jesus Christ, redemption comes to people. So we can boldly say to people who need something different in their lives, God has made a provision. Whatever the whole sweeping picture is, it doesn't matter who you are, if you've never heard of Jesus, if you're a Jewish person, or if you knew about Jesus and rejected Him, all of you have an opportunity through Jesus Christ to find life, forgiveness, grace. This is our message to the world. Every person whose life is controlled by sin needs what you know. Father, open our heart to the great promises you've made for us. Open our minds and our hearts to the people who are outside of your kingdom, alone, battling against forces so powerful and strong that they cannot control them. They can't stop fighting. They can't stop arguing. They can't stop their habits that are destructive and deadly. But you, alone, have the power to break that. Help us not to be shy or hesitant, to believe that your remedy of grace is greater than all sin. In Jesus' name we ask it, amen.