Romans 5:12--21

The Ruler Shapes the Realm

Before I start preaching this morning, I need to give you a warning… the passage this morning deals with some pretty deep theology that’s pretty hard to fully wrap your mind around…

In fact, the theological truth Romans 5 verses 12 to 21 is teaching is so mind-bendingly profound… so incredibly important to the Christian faith… that for us to understand it, we need to understand the entire history of creation… so that’s what we’re going to try to do… as a preacher I’m going to ask quite a lot of you as a congregation this morning… so try to stay with me if you can… but if you can’t, that’s ok… we’ll still land somewhere helpful by the end…

But let me pray for us before we dig into it…

Father, as we grapple with some big theological ideas this morning, help us to engage our hearts and mind with your word. Fill us with wonder at your majesty and the glory of Jesus that we see in Romans 5 verse 12 to 21.

Amen.

The big lesson in Romans 5 verses 12 to 21 is that The Ruler Shapes the Realm…

Whoever is in charge, shapes the people and place they are in charge of…

People are not just autonomous individuals with completely free will… no person is truly independant…

The character of a people and a place is shaped by those who rule them… the decisions a ruler makes shapes the environment in which their people live… both in a physical sense… and in a cultural sense…

Now in the realms we are part of… this doesn’t happen instantly or in the same way to everyone… there is lag and variation… but the paradigm is still true…

The people and place take on the character of those who rule them… if you want to know what kind of people and place Aussies are, have a look at their leaders and you’ll get a pretty good idea…

Because the Ruler Shapes the Realm.

But actually, that’s not a good enough explanation of what Paul is teaching in Romans chapter 5… because to Paul, Rulers don’t just shape the character of their realm… they also shape the moral status of their realm before God…

Rulers represent their people… they make decisions on behalf of their people… when a leader acts, he doesn’t act as an individual… he acts bearing the collective will of his entire realm…

And what this means is that when a leader makes a decision, their people are not just affected by the outcome of that decision… they theselves are responsible for that decision… they are complicit in that decision…

So when a ruler makes a good decision… the realm shares the glory of that decision… it’s not just that they share in the benefits of that decision… in some way, they get the credit… it is as though the people themselves made that good decision…

And when a ruler makes a bad decision… everyone under their rule shares the guilt and the shame of that decision… it’s not just that they have to deal with the negative outcomes… in some way, they are actually guilty of it themselves… it is as though the people themselves made that bad decision…

Theologicans call this idea imputation.

Its the idea that when God judges the world, the moral status of a leader is applied, counted, charged, attributed… imputed to everyone and everything in their realm…

When a leader sins… their guilt and shame is imputed to their people…

And when a leader does good… their glory is imputed to their people…

In a democracy, this is pretty intuitive… the idea of imputation makes sense… the people collectively make a decision on who their leaders will be, and so they bear the responsibility and moral implications for what that leader does because they chose them… voting is a moral act… when you vote for a candidate… to at least some extent, you take on a certain amount of moral responsibility for what they do with your vote… so when a nation elects a leader, the nation itself is morally complicit in everything that leader does with the power they gave them…

But imputation in the way Paul is describing it in Romans 5 doesn’t seem to make as much sense… because the leaders Paul is talking about are not political leaders elected by us… they’re family leaders given their position by God… so unlike democraticly elected leaders, it’s much harder to understand why God hold us morally accountable for what they did…

And yet Romans 5 verses 12 to 21 present this kind of imputation as the most fundamental reality in the moral landscape of creation…

These 10 short verses tell the story of humanity and the universe… from the very beginning… all the way to eternity in the future…

And driving the plot forward is this idea of imputation… from creation to eternity, the character and moral status of mankind and the rest of creation is determined by the one who rules us…

So with that in mind, let’s have a look at the first Act in this story… Creation’s first ruler… Adam…

Act 1: This World under Adam (vv. 12–14a)

Have a look at verses 12 to 14…

Romans 5:12–14 ESV

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— for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. 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.

There’s a lot to digest there…

But the first thing we need to see is that Paul is taking us back right to the very start of history… and he’s saying that the reason every person dies is not because of their own sin, but because of Adam’s sin…

But to understand his thinking here, we need to understand the world under Adam in Genesis 1 to 6…

So we’re going to spend about 8 minutes back in Genesis so we have the ground work to understand what Paul is saying here in Romans 5…

Now… another warning… I love this part of the bible… and I’d love to read it all and talk about every detail… but since we can’t be here all day, let me give you the overview as quickly as I can…

So turn with me to Genesis 1 and try to stay with me as we trace the narrative to Genesis 6…

In Genesis 1, God creates everything in six days and looks at it and calls it good… on day 1, he creates light… day 2, God separates the sky from the ocean… day 3, he creates dry land… day 4, he creates the sun, moon and all the stars… to reign over the day and the night…

see even here the ruler shapes the realm…

then day 5, God creates sea creatures and birds and tells them to be fruitful and multiply and fill the sea and the land… then day 6, he creates land animals… and finally, at the end of day six, he creates Adam… and he makes Adam ‘in his image’ and he just like he told the fish and the birds, he tells Adam to be fruitful and multiply… but he also tells Adam to ‘subdue’ the earth and ‘rule’ over the rest of creation…

Now if you’ve you’ve got Genesis 1 open right now, you might be thinking ‘hang on a minute, it says man or mankind in Genesis 1, not Adam’… and your right… in most English translations, it does… but in Hebrew it says Adam… but we translate it mankind because of the way God talks about this Adam… look at verse 26...

Genesis 1:26–28 ESV

Then God said, “Let us make Adam in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion… ”

Then again in verses 27 and 28…

Genesis 1:26–28 ESV

So God created Adam in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them,

See, if God was just talking about one guy here, it wouldn’t make sense to say them… and it definitly wouldn’t make sense to say that he was both male and female…

So we translate it man or mankind, because God really is talking about creating Adam-kind as a category, not just one man…

But notice the exception in verse 27… in the image of God he created him… singular…

So it’s both Adam and Adam-kind… God created the one man, Adam, from that one man, he created all of Adam-kind… both male and female… and so collectively, all of humanity are represented in and by that one original man… Adam… in a very real sense… all of humanity were there in the garden in Adam…

What is true of Adam is also true of Adam-kind…

So right here in Genesis 1, we have the groundwork for the idea of imputation…

God is the supreme ruler because he is the creator… and the creation is good because he is good… the ruler shapes the realm…

Then he makes Adam the ruler of creation under him… and because Adam is made in the image of God, he can mediate God’s rule to the rest of creation… and because he is part of creation, he can represent creation to God… and that’s especially true for the rest of mankind who also bear God’s image because they come from the body of Adam… Eve from his side… and the rest of mankind through reproduction…

So the order set up by Genesis 1 is this: God rules everything, Adam rules under him, and the rest of humanity rules under Adam… its a beautiful and perfect situation… Adam brings God’s rule to Adam-kind, and together, they bring God’s rule and blessing to the rest of creation…

Then Genesis 2 tells this same story again, but focuses in on Adam… God makes the one man Adam first, puts him in the Garden of Eden where the goodness and blessing of God’s rule is just overflowing from every tree… and in this little paradise of God’s blessing there are two special trees, the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil… and God gives Adam a single law to obey in Genesis 2 verse 17… don’t eat from the tree of knowledge or you will surely die…

And with that, Adam begins to rule… God brings him the animals and Adam gives them names… and that is significant because naming things is what God did as he created in Genesis 1… he called the light day and darkness night… he called the expanse Heaven… the dry land Earth… and the waters he called seas… naming things is something God does as part of his rule over creation…

But now God brings the animals to Adam for him to name them… by naming them, Adam is imaging God… This is Adam’s first act as ruler under God…

Then we see how the second image bearer is made… God puts Adam to sleep and forms Eve from his side… it’s just like Genesis 1… Adam comes first and bears the image of God… then Eve is also made in God’s image because she is created from Adam’s side… and there’s a beautiful poetry here… because even though Adam comes first and Eve comes from Adam, she is not from his feet as though she was less than him… shes from his side… equal in value and completely equal in bearing God’s image… and yet Eve takes Adam’s name… together they are Adam-kind… and they rule together with the authority given through Adam…

Everything is going so well… all Adam has to do is keep doing what he’s doing and not eat that forbidden fruit… and if he can just do that, this beautiful, glorious creation will flourish from blessing to blessing to blessing as Adam and Adam-kind spread God’s good rule forever… always with access to the tree of life… no corruption and no death…

But then comes Genesis 3… Eve eats the fruit… then Adam eats the fruit… God kicks them out of the garden and away from the tree of life… and just as Paul tells us in Romans 5 verse 12, sin enters the world… and death through sin…

In Genesis 4, Adam’s first son murders his 2nd son… and the sin and death keep spreading from there… Genesis 5 is not just a genalogy… it’s Adam’s family graveyard… every generation punctuated with the same three words…

And. He. Died.

And God gives us his assessment of what Adam has done in Genesis 6 verse 5 and 6…

Genesis 6:5–6 ESV

The Lord saw that the wickedness of Adam-kind was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.

This is the World under Adam… this is humanity under Adam…

And this is what Paul is talking about in Romans chapter 5… turn back to Romans chapter 5 with me… look at verse 12 again…

Romans 5:12–14 ESV

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

and I want to stop there because of the word because… because English makes this sentence tricky… what it’s not saying is that death spreads to all mankind just like it spread to Adam… the reason Adam died was because Adam sinned… if Adam didn’t sin, then he wouldn’t have died…

But after Adam’s sin, death is unavoidable for Adam-kind… it’s not like every person born since Adam starts life theoretically immoral until they they do their first sin… tragically, we know that’s not true… not evey child that’s conceived makes it to full term… for everyone since Adam, death comes before sin… look at verses 13 and 14…

Romans 5:13–14 ESV

for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam

See Paul anticipates the difficulty people might have with what he’s saying in verse 12… because his readers know that death is the penalty for being guilty of sin, and the way you become guilty of sin is by breaking a law… and so it follows then that only those who break laws can be judged as deserving of death…

But that’s a problem because back in Adam’s day… before the Law of Moses, there was only one Law… don’t eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge… and only one man broke that Law… Adam himself…

And yet we know that everyone after Adam were counted guilty of sin because… verse 14… death reigned from Adam to Moses even though only Adam was guilty of disobeying that Law…

Somehow… all mankind are counted guilty because of Adam’s sin… because the ruler shapes the realm…

Adam’s sin is imputed to all Adam-kind…

So whenever one of Adam-kind sinned… it wasn’t like that made them guilty… and they weren’t adding any extra guilt on top of Adam’s guilt… whenever one of Adam-kind sins… we prove ourselves complicit in Adam’s sin and are shown to be worthy of the judgement of death that we already inherited from Adam our father… when a child does his or her first sin… they don’t go from innocent to guilty… that first sin is just the first visible evidence of what they already were to their core as a descendant of Adam… in our very very nature, we are all sinners and we always have been because we are Adam-kind…

And that is this World under Adam… Every human being justly sentenced to death from the moment of conception… because the ruler shapes the realm… and Adam’s sin is imputed to us…

Act 2: This World under Christ (vv. 14b–16, 18–20)

An that’s the first Act of the history of the world… and it’s the first half of the doctrine of imputation… the first half of the Christian gospel… and it’s terrible news… the worst possible news…

But the gospel is good news… and we find that good news in the second act of this grand story starting in the second half of verse 14… have a look at verse 14 again...

Romans 5:14 ESV

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.

And this word type just means pattern… This world under Adam was not God’s end game… Adam establishes this moral paradigm of imputation as a pattern for a new Adam to come…

And this New Adam is Jesus… and Jesus takes the terrible news of the reality of imputation and turns it into the most joyful wonderful news… the best possible news…

Because what Jesus imputes to use is nothing like what Adam does… look at verses 15 and 16…

Romans 5:15–16 ESV

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. 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.

And Paul is so excited about this that he says it all over again in verses 18 and 19…

Romans 5:18–19 ESV

Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. 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.

This is the good news of imputation… Adam’s rule over this world ended when Jesus Christ died on the cross and rose to life again…

Adam’s sinned and gave us death… because his sin made us all sinners…

But Jesus died and gave us life… because his righteous death makes us righteous…

This is why the gospel is good news… this is what it means to be a Christian…

A Christian is someone who has been transferred from Adam’s rule to Jesus’ rule…

Just like we got Adam’s guilt and sinfulness imputed to our account… and so came under his punishment of death… under Christ, we get his righteousness imputed to our account as a free gift… and so we share in the glory of his life…

And Christ’s rule even changes how the Law affects us… look at verse 20…

Romans 5:20 ESV

Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more,

See under the rule of Adam… the came in alongside the sinfulness of Adam-kind and because there were more than one law now… our sinful hearts just jumped at the opportunity to break them… and so under Adam, the only thing the Law could do was increase sin… it could never make a person righteous…

But under Christ… there is more grace and mercy than any number of sins… Jesus grace and mercy is greater than our sins… and Jesus’ righteousness is greater than Adam’s sinfulness and guilt…

That is this world under Christ… that is the gospel that Jesus preached and that Paul is preaching in Romans… Adam’s rule is ending… and Christ’s rule has begun… and while this world still stands, he invites us to come under his rule by faith and have his righteousness imputed to our moral account…

Act 3: Eternity under Christ (vv. 17, 20–21)

But that offer won’t last forever… and thats where the final Act of Paul’s retelling of history comes in… have a look at verse 17…

Romans 5:17 ESV

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.

And again, Paul repeats himself in verse 20 to 21…

Romans 5:20–21 ESV

Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

See, we are living in Act 2… while this world still exists… sin and death are still a reality… but under Christ, grace covers over our sins…

But we look forward to Act 3… a future where Adam’s rule is ended once and for all… and when that comes, each member of Adam-kind will go one of two ways…

If you remain in Adam and under Adam’s rule and part of Adam’s realm… you will be swept away along with that realm under God’s wrath and judgement…

But if you belong to Christ’s realm by faith… then you will rise to eternal life and rule creation under God through Christ… just as Adam was meant to in the first place… but because we’re in Christ and not in Adam, there is not chance that sin and death can come back…

That’s the great beauty of the doctrine of imputation… it’s a guarantee of an eternity free of sin and death, finally fulfilling the very purpose Adam was created for…

Living in Adam’s World under Christ’s Rule

And that’s Paul’s 10 verse story of the history of creation… but what do we do with that today?

How do we live in Act 2…

How do we live in a world still affected by Adam’s sin… even though Jesus has begun to rule his eternal realm…

Well that’s kind of what we’ll be looking at over the next few weeks in Romans…

But I’ll give you four points anyway…

Firstly… Repent… if you have not put your faith in Jesus, you are still in Adam… Repent and believe the gospel! Jesus is offering you his righteousness as a free gift… repent and put your faith in Jesus…

Secondly… Remember… Remember whose rule you are shaped by… If you are a Christian, you don’t belong to Adam’s realm anymore… so soak yourself in that truth and pray that God would keep shaping you to be like Jesus…

Thirdly... Rejoice!… there is not more wonderful news than the gospel of the imputation of Christ’s righteousness… let the joy of that truth fill you up to overflowing…

And lastly… Reload… we are in a regime change war right now… Adam’s rule is ending and Jesus rule has begun and Jesus is fighting a war in this world… and his army is the church and our weapon is the truth of the gospel in the word of God… so reload you heart and mind with the vision of Eternity under Christ and go to war preaching the good news of the gospel…

Let me pray…

Father,

As we’ve walked through the history of creation this morning, we can’t help but stop and marvel at what you have done for us.

It is more wonderful than we can even comprehend that even though we were dead in Adam, you sent Jesus your Son to die and rise again to offer us his own righteousness as a free gift.

Father, for those of us here that have not accepted that free gift already by trusting in Jesus… please awaken that faith in their hearts by your Spirit and lead them to repentance.

For those of us who already belong to Jesus, help us remember, rejoice and reload knowing that Christ has guaranteed our eternity.

Amen.