Death and the Free Gift

Introduction

Death is a powerful force, one that dominates and shapes life here in every way. Whenever something ends, whenever we feel pain, whenever we are filled with sadness we are given a reminder to death and its great power to tear down all we work for, all we dream of. In the human experience, death always has the final say.

That is, unless life overcomes it. Today we will look at how Paul approaches the topic of death and life, and see how life has overcome death in the free gift of grace given to us by faith in Jesus Christ/

Death Through the One Man

Paul begins by telling us that sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin so that death spread to all people because all sinned. Here he cuts himself off for a further explanation of what he is talking about, and indeed we need such an explanation. So let us not go through Paul’s point and see how this occurs so that we may understand fully the point the Apostle wishes to make to us in this text.

Adam’s Sin Spread to the World

How does sin come into the world through one man? How can one man’s sin spread to others?

Paul’s Answer: because all sin.

The doctrine of original sin explains to us why this happened.

Sin is universal. This is the clear teaching of Scripture. All have sinned.

This isn’t a coincidence. Its not as if all people just happened to choose sin. There is a sinful nature that all are born with.

Augustine coined the term original sin to explain this doctrine. Everyone is born with sin in their nature. This is an unobjectionable fact both biblically and realistically. We know that people are born to self-destruct humanity. It is, according to Augustine, a state of twisted and destructive self love that is counter to the love of God rather than complimentary to it. It is essentially the state of being born without trusting God, and thus seeking immediate self interest at all costs, despite the destruction that it may cause.

What is interesting is that Paul says that death spread to all men because all sinned.

It is obvious that Paul is teaching that sin results in death. We already saw in chapter 3 that the wages of sin is death, and this is hardly deniable. The irony of sin is that in pathetic and twisted self interest, we bring about our own death. The words of Christ ring true, whoever seeks his life will lose it. Seeking ourselves in a twisted and immediate self interest ultimately leads to our own demise.

What is difficult to reconcile is verse 18. It says there that one act of sin led to condemnation for all men. Yet in our text it says that death spread to all men because all sinned. So why are we condemned, because of our own sin or because of Adam’s?

The answer is both. The Puritan Anthony Burgess argued that two things happened to Adam’s posterity, his offspring and all humanity which would come from him, when he sinned. There was first a shared guilt in Adam’s Sin, and there was an inherited corruption caused by his sin.

First, we are guilty through Adam’s sin because we were all in Adam when he sinned. When he sinned, we all sinned. This is because of something called Federal Headship. If a King does something to offend another country and the two countries go to war, what that king did is attributed to the whole nation because that king represents his people. He is, in a sense, their federal head. In the same way, Adam’s sin condemned himself and all his offspring because we inherit the guilt of a broken covenant. Our text presents Adam as our representative, just as a ruler of a nation represents the nation, and he was the head of humanity when it came to the covenant with God, a covenant that he broke. This may sound strange to us who, in our age, have very little connection between the guilt of a father and the guilt of his offspring. But this was clearly the Scriptural view at that time in salvation history. John Owen wrote, “the guilt of Adam’s actual sin alone…rendered (humanity) all (liable) to death upon the first entrance of sin into the world.” Adam’s sin imputed guilt to us, resulting in death not just for Adam, otherwise his children would have been let back into the garden, but death for all mankind. This is why the text says that death reigned from Adam to Moses “even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam.”

We are also condemned because of corruption. This is why Paul says, “death spread to all men because all sinned.” Through Adam we not only inherited guilt, but corruption. This corruption is what we often call sinful nature and is expressed in total depravity. Total depravity means out wills are bound to sin. It doesn’t mean we sin as much as we could, but it means that our will is completely bound to sin. We are totally corrupted. A freshly dead corpse is totally dead, just as a hundred year old skeleton. The corruption may not be obvious yet on the first corpse, but it is totally dead, so are we totally corrupt in our nature because of Adam’s sin.

At the beginning of verse 13, Paul begins a tangent with a parenthesis that goes until the beginning of verse 18. Paul will pick up his thought there, but here he decided he wanted to make it clear what he means by sin coming into the world through the one man and the parallel between that and the free gift which balances out, as it were, the one man’s sin by making us righteous through one man’s righteousness. That is, the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

The Reign of Sin and Death

This is how death reigned from Adam to Moses, even without the law.

As we’ve seen, the law reveals sin, it exposes it as sinful and shows all to be under condemnation because it specifically reveals the corruption passed down through Adam.

Even without the law, sin reigned.

How did it reign? It reigned in death. Death reigned because all died. The effects of the tree of life wore off as generation after generation passed on.

This proved that sin continued in people before the law was given. This goes back to Paul’s point in chapter 2 that the law is written on people’s hearts and they continue to sin against nature; against God’s design by seeking their own selfish gain rather than immortality and incorruptibility.

The Free Gift

Paul now begins to speak of the free gift of grace in contrast to the corruption that was unleashed by Adam’s sin.

How is the free gift of grace through faith in Jesus Christ not like the trespass?

Before we answer that question, let us ask, how are they alike?

The free gift causes an exchange of federal headship.

Just as the one man’s sin caused all in him to have both the guilt and the corruption of sin, the free gift of grace places the innocence and righteousness of the one man Jesus Christ on those who believe upon him.

Just as the wages of sin is death, the wages of righteousness is life and immortality. So, just like sin transmitted by Adam caused death to reign in us, Jesus righteousness, his death and resurrection, and the God-given faith in him work eternal life to reign.

It is not like it because:

The free gift brings life rather than death. It literally has the opposite effect. Through one man sin is brought into the world and death through sin, but the opposite now becomes true through the free gift. Christ brings righteousness in the world and imparts that righteousness onto believers so that we may have life. There is a parallel contrast here. Adam brings sin, Jesus brings the opposite: righteousness. Sin is brought through Adam’s lineage, righteousness is brought through the free gift of grace. Sin brings death to the human race, righteousness brings life to the human race, to those who call upon the name of the Lord in faith.

The free gift is more powerful in its effect than the sin of Adam. Despite the existence of Adam’s sin and the falleness that results, a falleness that still is observable in physical death, the free gift of grace through faith in Jesus Christ overpowers the unrighteousness that brings death. While our bodies will die, our souls will be alive in him and will one day rise in imperishable bodies. Life wins in this senario and thus life is more powerful than death and the free gift more powerful than what is imparted through our decent from Adam.

This life, by necessity, includes immortality and incorruptibility, something the Church Fathers liked to focus on as the end of their faith.

Immortality means life without death. It also means life without the reminders of death, such as pain, mourning, tears, and all these things which remind us of the end of all things.

Revelation 21:4 ESV

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

While this life remains under the curse of Adam, this new life through the free gift of God is never ending. There is no sorrow here, for sorrow would be a remainder of death. There is no end to good things and no beginning for what is evil and destructive. The dwelling place of God is with man, the text in Revelations 21 says, and where God is evil is not. Death is not there, pain is not there, these are all things related to the curse brought upon us by Adam’s and our sins.

Incorruptibility. We are no longer able to be corrupted by sin or curse. This makes us different from Adam and Eve who, though they were made sinless, they were corrupted by the temptation to sin. This will be impossible in the New World. The life God gives freely by his grace is life that even we cannot spoil. We will be perfect, lacking in nothing. We will have gone through the gaunlet of this world and have passed through victorious over death and sin by the power that is given to us in Christ Jesus. This makes the gift so much greater than the curse. The curse is completely undone by the gift, and all that remains is incorruptible life.

Conclusion

Receive this gift freely through faith in Jesus Christ. Don’t let such an opportunity be lost on you as is presented through our text and through the whole of the Scriptures.

Trust in God’s merciful gift in Jesus. Don’t let works righteousness, nor the idea that you are not yet good enough, stop you from receiving this gift. It is yours freely. Trust in Christ. Believe only on Christ. Say that you are his and he is yours and put your faith in a gift freely given.

Live a life of praise for this gift. So great was its price, and so great is its effect in your life. You have the freedom of an eternity of immorality and incorruptibility. The response of faith is praise and thanksgiving, and you know what, that is also the secret to happy life here. Rejoice in faith, for you believer have a glorious inheritance through this free gift. God’s disposition to you is one of love and kindness, he listens to you, he cares for you, and he will bring you safely to that place of life which has defeated death.