Sermon Tone Analysis

In Adam all Die (14-17)

Through one man sin entered the world.

Death entered the world through sin.

Because all sinned, death spread to all.

The inference is that the entrance of sin into the world through one man and death through sin is that sin spread to all men and we can see this because death is the product of sin and all men die.

All men die because all men sin.

All men sin because all men are now sinners.

All men are sinners because sin entered the world through the federal head of all men.

Sin was in the world before the law

Ro

We immediately feel the heresy of Pelagius lurking in the background here with its denial of original sin.

But sin was not counted where there is no law.

You cannot convict someone of violating the prohibition against adultery when the prohibition has not been set down yet.

The Law of Moses was not the catalyst for man’s sin.

Man’s sin was the catalyst for the law of Moses.

Others from Adam to Moses did not violate a specific command.

Adam did.

People after the law did.

What was charged against the account of Adam?

That he had violated a specific law given by God directly to him.

What was charged against the Jews after Moses?

That they had violated specific laws issued by God through Moses.

Others sinned between Adam and Moses, but not like Adam.

They sinned against the works of the law written in their conscience.

But they could not be charged with breaking a law for there was no law.

They were charged with violating the image of God imprinted in their conscience.

According to , this is enough for moral culpability.

In Rom.

5:13–14, then, we see that the power of death is so great that it exercises its dominion over people even if no law exists.

In addition, violating a commandment revealed by God increases the seriousness of sin in the sense that the sin is now more defiant and rebellious in character (Calvin 1960: 119; Westerholm 1988: 183–84).

This point accords with the Pauline conception that sin increases (5:20) and takes on a sharper profile (7:7–11) through the law.

St. Paul would not say that the absence of written law did away with all responsibility.

He has already laid down most distinctly that Gentiles, though without such written law, have law enough to be judged by (2:12–16); and Jews before the time of Moses were only in the position of Gentiles.

But the degree of their guilt could not be the same either as that of Adam, or as that of the Jews after the Mosaic legislation

Accepting the likelihood of such an antithetical grammatical patterning in 5:13–14, we suggest that these two verses should be read as follows:

1. Paul justifies his statement at the end of 5:12 that “all have sinned [in the course of history]” by pointing out that “before the [Mosaic] law was given, sin was in the world.”

2.

An objection that he knows could be raised against his justifying comment is given: “But sin is not (δὲ οὐκ) taken into account when there is no law.”

3. The apostle rebuts this objection: “Nevertheless (ἀλλά), death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who did not sin in the same way by breaking a command as did Adam.”

This rebuttal draws attention to the fact that people died before the Mosaic law was given, and so implies that since death, which came into the world because of sin, was a reality for everyone prior to the time of Moses, the sin of all people was also a reality throughout all of human history.

In chapter 4 Paul argues that righteousness came by faith and before the law.

Now he argues that sin came before the law.

So righteousness nor sin are the result of the Torah.

Paul’s point is that their sins, though still punishable by death, were not technically counted against them in the same way as sin was counted against Adam.

In Rom.

5:12–14 Paul considers both the sin of Adam and the sin of those who lived between the time of Adam and Moses.

In both cases sin led to death, but Adam played a fundamental and typological role that those who followed him did not play, and hence Adam’s sin and death are the fountainhead for the sin and death that ensued.

As A. Hultgren (2011: 226; cf. also 227) says, Adam is “positioned as the head of humanity.”

Adam and Christ are the typological heads, and their fundamental role is explicated in the following verses.

Death Reigned from Adam to Moses

Even over those who had not sinned like Adam

The Heresy of Pelagianism

entirely rejects the doctrine of original sin and confines sin to separate acts of the will, which retains the power to choose sinlessly as much as sinfully.

Arminianism* is semi-Pelagian* in its position on original sin.

It agrees with Pelagians that sin consists in separate acts of the will, and that the guilt of Adam’s first sin is not transmitted to his descendants.

It disagrees with Pelagians in that it holds that fallen man is depraved, though not totally, and that the pollution of Adam’s first sin is transmitted to his descendants.

Pealgian was condemned as heresy at the Council of Ephesus in 431.

Semi-Pelagianism was condemned at the Council of Orange in 529.

The Free Gift (15-17)

Is the free gift like the transgression?

How is the free gift different from the transgression?

The transgression brought condemnation while the free gift brought justification.

Death reigns through one man’s trespass while those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.

How is this different from the Roman Catholic view on justification?

It isn’t exactly a free gift.

Justification and Life for all Men (18-21)

One trespass led to death.

One act of righteousness leads to justification.

What was the one act of righteousness that leads to life?

Why did the law enter?

Is this text teaching universalism?

But according to the Popish doctrine, faith justifies, not by uniting the sinner to Christ, and making him a partaker of Christ’s righteousness, but by ‘working’ in him, and ‘sanctifying’ him, by being, in its own essential nature as one of the ‘fruits of the Spirit,’ and by producing, in its actual operation as a vital principle which ‘worketh by love,’ a real inherent righteousness, which is, on its own account, acceptable to God, and which constitutes the immediate ground of his acceptance; in short, by making him righteous, subjectively, so that thereby, and on that account, he may be reputed righteous, and obtain at once the pardon of sin, and a title to eternal life.

[James Buchanan, The Doctrine of Justification, 133]

Prov

The Law came to increase the trespass

Just as Adam’s sin was imputed to us, so Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us.

Christs obedience makes us righteous

Phil

Christ’s act of obedience leads to both righteousness for us and life.

The law slipped in

34.30 παρεισέρχομαι; παρεισδύω: to join surreptitiously with evil intent—‘to slip into a group unnoticed, to join unnoticed.’

to come in beside, slip in, come in as a side issue, of the law, as having no primary place in the divine plan Ro 5:20.

Biblical Sense Lexicon: to appear alongside as an unessential or foreign element, whether figuratively or physically.

https://ref.ly/logos4/Senses?KeyId=ws.come+alongside.v.01

The Removal of Guilt

Though some traditional translations render ἱλαστήριον as ‘propitiation,’ this involves a wrong interpretation of the term in question.

Propitiation is essentially a process by which one does a favor to a person in order to make him or her favorably disposed, but in the NT God is never the object of propitiation since he is already on the side of people.

ἱλασμός and ἱλαστήριονa denote the means of forgiveness and not propitiation.

The Declaration of Righteousness

Alien Righteousness

In the Protestant understanding of justification, God’s action by which the righteousness of Jesus Christ is reckoned to or bestowed on the sinner (Rom.

5:17–18).

This is an “alien righteousness” given as an act of God’s grace apart from works and received by faith alone.

Actual Righteousness

It is opposed to the Catholic doctrine that justification “is not remission [forgiveness] of sins merely, but also the sanctification and renewal of the inward man.”

This Catholic idea blends justification with regeneration and sanctification and makes it something that is not in accordance with Scripture.

[Gregg R. Allison, 50 Core Truths of the Christian Faith, 244]

Errors to Avoid

Do not confuse progressive sanctification with any idea of progressiveness in justification.

Justification is a once for all act.

It is not iterative nor progressive.

It is one and done.