Christ’s Triumph Over Adam’s Sin - Part 2

PRAY & INTRO: There’s a black bear that is terrorizing the trash cans in our neighborhood on a nearly nightly basis. He decided this week to also finish the job he’d previously started, and he (or she) ate every single apple on our little apple tree. To add insult to injury, he broke the tree in half with his pre-hibernation body mass.

Now the consequence of the bear’s thievery and eatery of our sad little apples is pretty much nil for the bear. As for the owners of this frail and now split little tree, the result may be the removal of said tree that was already bent over in the wind, probably rotting in the middle, and now irreversibly broken.

In sharp contrast to the insignificance of this bear tree story (for which I do not expect a great deal of sympathy), our study in God’s word in Paul’s letter to the saints in Rome presently finds us delving into the disastrous results for all humanity and all creation due to Adam eating from a tree in the garden of Eden, of which God had expressly told him not to eat. But along with Eve, the partner and bride God had created for Adam from Adam, Adam disobeyed God’s direct command, and we his descendants have been mired in sin and death ever since.

In Romans 5:12-21, Paul is developing the theological significance of the impact of Adam’s sin on all humanity, while contrasting that with the greater grace God has manifested in Christ Jesus for those who will receive him by faith as their Lord, as their new covenant representative. It is indeed difficult to mend what is broken, difficult to straighten what has been twisted and bent, and difficult to rectify the disease rotting from within. But we see today that God’s abundant grace in Christ Jesus is powerful to overcome and reverse the results of Adam’s sin.

Romans 5:12–21 ESV

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— 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. 15 But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. 16 And the free gift is not like the result of that one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. 17 For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ. 18 Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. 19 For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous. 20 Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, 21 so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Last week we explained that in Romans 5:12-21 Paul provides…

A Theological Comparison & Contrast: Christian Hope in the Triumph of Christ’s Obedience Over the Effects of Adam’s Disobedience (Romans 5:12-21)

(Douglas Moo) “The passage shows why those who have been justified and reconciled can be so certain that they will be saved from wrath and share in “the glory of God”: it is because Christ’s act of obedience ensures eternal life for all those who are “in Christ.’”

When we come to verse 15, though, where we pick up today, Paul begins explaining the typological relationship between Adam and Christ that he introduced at the end of v. 14. “The similarity between the two consists in the fact that an act of each is considered to have determinative significance for those who belong to each.” (Moo) [emphasis mine]

However, that’s where the commonality ends. Everything else is in fact a sharp contrast. The typological connection between Adam and Christ is how the act of each has determinative impact for those who belong to each. But it is also a study in contrasts between God’s abundant grace in Christ versus the result of Adam’s sin, and Paul reveals the reversal of consequences from Adam’s sin for those who belong to Christ. So even in vv. 18-19 when the language returns to that of comparison—“just as… so also”—the emphasis is still on the contrasting result from one work of Christ versus the result of Adam’s one transgression.

Right in the middle of this section is where we have this study in contrasts between two covenant heads with drastically different results for all who belong to them. The emphasis in vv. 15-17 in particular is…

God’s abundant grace in Christ surpasses and reverses the results of Adam’s sin. (vv. 15-17)

Again the comparison that began at verse 12 and then detoured briefly, starts to rebuild here, but Paul launches into contrasts of surpassing and reversing. God’s grace through Christ surpasses the disastrous effects of Adam’s sin upon us, and Christ’s work is powerful to reverse the results of sin and death upon us, and to positively provide righteousness and spiritual life leading to eternal life.

The first of these three verses emphasizes the surpassing abundance of God’s grace in Christ that overcomes humanity’s death through Adam’s sin. The second emphasizes a reversal of the verdict, and the third presses home the reversal of death reigning like a king over us. If we receive God’s abundant grace in Christ and the gracious gift of righteousness, we instead begin to reign in a spiritual life.

First…

God’s abundant grace in Christ more than overcomes the death that came to all humanity through Adam’s sin.

(15a) But not like the trespass is the gracious gift.

Paul has switched to another word for sin, paraptoma, which is a violation conceived of as going beyond or overstepping a moral boundary or limit. He has probably chosen this synonym for transgression for linguistic and rhetorical reasons, as it ends in the same “-ma” phonetic sound as charisma, the word for gracious gift. This pattern of -ma ending words only increases in v. 16, so it is clear Paul is doing so intentionally. (Take that, all you who mock writers and preachers for rhyming and alliteration! :-))

What is more important than knowing that Paul can use synonyms for sin, is what the trespass and the gracious gift each refer to. Paul is contrasting Adam’s trespass that led to the dominion of sin and death over mankind (v. 12), compared to the gift of God’s Son and his righteous work. Christ is God’s gracious gift, and his work is a gracious gift, absolutely unmerited by us (who are always proving by our sinful living that sin and death are sovereign over us).

Again, it helps us understand the rest of the details to know that the contrast is between Adam’s sin and Christ’s person and righteous work, viewed through the lens of God’s abundant grace versus what sin deserves, and with a view to the reversal of consequences from Adam’s sin for those who belong to Christ.

Paul continues to explain…

(v. 15b) For if the many died by the trespass of the one, how much more have the grace of God and the gracious gift in the one man Jesus Christ abounded for the many.

If we’re not proactively alert to contextual cues and linguistic cues, we could easily muddle and mire ourselves in confusion and wrong conclusions from Paul’s uses of “many” and “all” in these verses (referencing “all” in v. 18; so also “many” in v. 19). By “many” Paul means an entire group (a multitude, a large gathering of people), and by “all” he means all people conceived of as each person in that group.

So the many is a multitude of people directly affected by the one act of Adam, and conversely by the one act of Christ. The many—the group of people—affected by Adam’s sin is the entire human race, as is clear from v. 12 and Paul’s extensive effort to make this point in Romans 1-3. The group of people—the many—affected by God’s grace in Christ Jesus is all who receive him and his work by faith as the only basis for righteousness and life. In v. 17 “those who receive” qualifies who this group entails, and Paul has been abundantly clear in chapters 3-5 (already) that justification and reconciliation comes through Christ Jesus for those who respond in faith alone and do not think they can achieve righteousness on their own.

Obviously, the same cancels out a blatantly erroneous interpretation of universalism in v. 18—that all are people will automatically be saved because of what Jesus did. Not only has Paul been clear that only those who have faith in Christ will be saved, but this context itself reveals that “all” is meant to be all people who are now represented by Christ as their covenant head instead of remaining in the condition Adam landed humanity in as our covenant head. (Recall that in the case of every other covenant, which applies to many more people than just the one, there is yet a central individual who serves as the representative for the group: Not only Adam, but Noah, Abraham, Moses, David… and the seal and fulfillment of all of these, the Lord Jesus Christ.)

Back in v. 15, then, the many in this first case is the entire group represented by Adam—all of humanity. To set up the contrast, Paul says many died through one man’s (Adam’s) trespass, when he directly disobeyed God’s command in Gen 3. This fall resulted in all of Adam’s posterity being subject to death. Death has three manifestations revealed in the Bible: 1. Physical death, which was not the original condition of Adam and Eve but which began for them and all humanity because of Adam’s sin. 2. Spiritual death, which is a separation from right fellowship with God, and which can only be restored through repentance and faith in God’s promise and power to make provision for forgiveness and reconciliation. And 3. Eternal death (called the second death in Revelation… bc we will all be resurrected, both the just and the unjust). This eternal death will be an ongoing separation from God in everlasting torment in the lake of fire—“anyone whose name is not written in the book of life.” (Rev 20:14-15)

But what was hopeless apart from the Messiah is exchanged for hope in Him, which is why Paul has heaped up references to God’s grace. In that vein he continues…

God’s abundant grace in Christ reverses the verdict against us.

(16a) And [the result of] the one who sinned and [the result of] the gracious gift are also not alike.

Although the word “result” is not in the Greek text, we insert it here to assist our clarity toward the point Paul is proving in what follows.

So he is saying that the results from the one who sinned (Adam) and from the free gift in Christ are also dissimilar, in fact are drastically different. Specifically…

(16b) For the legal decision (judgment) from the one trespass led to a guilty verdict (condemnation), but the gracious gift following many trespasses led to righteousness [a declaration of righteousness = justification].

I’ve retranslated this with legal language more common to us to make sure we understand the logic of the contrast. [reread the translation above]

Now it makes sense that even a single trespass results in a judgment of guilty. Were you driving over the speed limit? Yes. (Or) Did you hit your brother? Yes. (Or) Did you eat from the tree of which I told you not to eat? Yes. Ok. Really, guilty as charged there makes sense.

What makes grace so lavish and miraculous is that it comes to us in a situation where we have compounded Adam’s sin thousands of times over (nearly countless times over). And not only does God in his grace not give the justly deserved judgment, but he graciously gifts us with a verdict of righteous, based upon the imputed righteousness of Christ.

This is abundant grace indeed. And with this emphasis in this middle section on God’s abounding grace in Christ, verse 17 has a final contrasting reversal of the consequence of Adam’s sin.

So God’s grace in Christ reverses the reign of death, for those who receive him as God’s abundant grace, making them to reign in spiritual life.

(17) For if through the trespass of one man death reigned through that one, how much more will those receiving the abundance of grace and the gracious gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.

The contrast here is the reign of death versus reigning in life. This verb to reign, basileuo, means to rule a kingdom, to reign as king. Through Adam’s trespass, death is reigning as king over the human race. But, for those who will receive God’s gracious gift of righteousness, which only comes through Jesus Christ and his righteousness, we will reign in a new spiritual life that isn’t controlled by sin and spiritual death anymore. In what comes shortly after this (in ch. 6), we see that our new union with Christ means that we must learn to live out this new life, where sin and death no longer have dominion over us.

Note then, Paul is also saying…

God’s abundant grace in Christ positively provides righteousness and spiritual life… leading to eternal life.

Again, God’s abundant grace in Christ doesn’t stop at halting the consequences of Adam’s sin, but it goes beyond to positively provide righteousness and spiritual life leading to eternal life.

That emphasis will pick up steam in the subsequent summary and conclusion in Paul’s comparison between the results of Adam’s disobedience verses the results of Christ’s obedience.

But as a part of our conclusion for today, I think we should put on our theological hard hats and consider the theological implications of this section of verses from Paul, and then let that lead us to some final application for our hearts and hands.

Theological Implications, & Application for Our Hearts and Our Hands

Biblical scholars and theologians debate whether Adam’s sin here directly or indirectly results in our spiritual death and condemnation and therefore our eternal death. But first we should be aware that there was (and which undoubtedly still resurfaces) a heretical view known as Pelagianism, named after Pelagius, a monk who lived in the later 300s to early 400s. He taught a view that humans are born innocent, without original (or inherited) sin. While Pelagius also emphasized free will over sovereign grace, the part that was deemed heretical by church councils and resulted in his excommunication was this belief in humans beginning innocent.

This section from Paul in Romans contradicts the idea of humans starting out life innocent. We should also compare Psalm 51:5 in the context of King David’s psalm of confessing his sin after being confronted by the prophet Nathan regarding his adultery with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband, Uriah. There David directly contradicts any notion of us beginning in innocence. Psalm 51:5 “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.” Don’t let the literal translation of the second half confuse you into some weird interpretation that David was born out of wedlock. No, the second half serves to repeat and confirm the first half: The NIV ‘dynamic equivalence’ translation rightly has this as, “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.” Similarly, the New Living Translation gets it right: “For I was born a sinner— yes, from the moment my mother conceived me.”

The point is that we are not born as a blank slate, but born with a propensity to sin in our spiritual DNA. The former is a false notion from humanistic ideology that wishes we were naturally good before we get corrupted, but the Biblical truth is that we are already corrupted, condemned, and heading for eternal damnation without faith in the reversing intervention of God’s surpassing grace through Jesus Christ. We sin because we are sinners.

But again, in our collegial debates we might still be trying to figure out which of these additional consequences results directly from Adam’s sin, and which indirectly.

To explain what I think I’m learning in Romans, let me offer this summary (and I’ll go chronologically in Paul’s argument so far): God’s righteous wrath burns against all our sin—whether unrighteousness due to indifference toward God, or obvious transgression of his law (Rom 1:18-3:20). Rescue from this wrath comes only through Christ, and only through faith, not by any works of our own. That is the only way to be justified and reconciled to God—declared righteous to be right with God (Rom 3:21-5:11). Here in Rom 5:12-21 Paul indicates that our sin nature is due to Adam’s transgression against God’s command. Both our physical and spiritual death also seems to have resulted from Adam as our covenant head (the representative of humanity). Even the guilty verdict, which is certainly due to our own sin, results also from Adam’s sin because we are spiritually dead sinners who go on sinning, and the end of this will be eternal death. The only remedy is the reversal of all of these things, which has come through God’s abundant grace in Jesus Christ, a reality which we have now realized if we belong in Christ through faith, who has become our new representative head (Rom 5:12-21).

So which is it? Perhaps for Paul it isn’t either/or but both/and. Just as the death itself is not only physical or only spiritual, but both, so also the consequences resulting from sin can be due to both Adam’s sin (making us sinners) and our actual sinning as well. Paul seems to give a both/and answer where we might make it either/or.

Let me suggest that you study and compare these themes here with the similarities and emphases found in 1 Cor 15:20-24 (where physical death and resurrection are the theme) and Eph 2:1-10 (where spiritual death and life are the themes).

The difficulty of this nuanced theological discussion leads me to my first point of application: Should we not be a bit more gracious toward one another, as we try to explain things that are truly difficult to understand? Even as much as we might recognize disagreement on details, should we not also admit and express key features where we find commonality and thereby approach greater unity?

Further Application: The impact of God’s abundant grace in Christ on our Identity, Worship, and Mission

Have you received God’s abundant grace? “All people, Paul teaches, stand in relationship to one of two men, whose actions determine the eternal destiny of all who belong to them. […] The actions of Adam and Christ, then, are similar in having epochal significance. But they are not equal in power, for Christ’s act is able completely to overcome the effects of Adam’s. Anyone who “receives the gift” that God offers in Christ finds security and joy in knowing that the reign of death has been completely and finally overcome by the reign of grace, righteousness, and eternal life (vv. 17, 21).” (Moo)

Do you marvel and revel in God’s abundant grace to you in Christ Jesus, so that wells up in you and spills out in praise to God AND in proclamation of God? Will you tell of his works in the congregation (Psalm 22:22 “I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will praise you:”), and to the next generation (Psalm 78:4 “We will not hide them from their children, but tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord, and his might, and the wonders that he has done.”), and to the nations (Psalm 96:3 “Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all the peoples!”)?

PRAY

———