Sermon Tone Analysis

Welcome

Good morning!

I hope everyone has been enjoying the beautiful turn towards spring this week.

I know we’ve been busy with all that spring brings, as I’m sure you have been too.

I want to take a moment to welcome our guests and returning visitors.

We love having you with us to worship God!

There are contact cards on the hall table if you wouldn’t mind filling those out, as well as follow-up cards if there is anything you need us to stand with you through.

Quick note, we are expecting our shipment of dirt for the community garden this week, but if there are further delays, we’ll make other arrangements so that we can get the dirt and begin planting as soon as possible.

This means that the community garden ministry needs to be thinking about two things:

First, when would be a good time to call for volunteers from the local schools (and everything involved in making those arrangements)?

Second, keep your ear open for families that need help.

We want to look for people who are struggling with inflation, unemployment, or under-employment, who would benefit from our garden’s fresh food.

These contacts will also give us an outlet to distribute any surplus food that you don’t know what to do with from your own home gardens as well.

I also want to take a moment to thank everyone for your prayers this week over my surgery.

Everything went very well and, although I have the expected limitations on me from surgery, my recovery has gone much better than I expected.

Challenge

Be accessible to the community.

One of the first lessons Christians learn as followers of Christ is that he reshapes our entire life and gives purpose to even the mundane things in life.

Nothing is too small to make available for his use.

So one of the things we have to get used to doing to become effective citizens of the eternal Kingdom is to learn to re-engage the world with purpose.

I think of how little children have to learn how to dribble the basketball with their heads up; we have to learn to live our lives with purpose to be effective in God’s Kingdom.

Fruitless Christian living is often the result of purposelessness.

So our challenge in May is to make ourselves accessible to the community.

Assignments

Romans 6:1-4.

Your reading assignments this week are meant to cultivate your mind for Scripture’s message next week.

I recommend reading these verses on Monday and then again on Friday.

Meditating on them throughout the week as your read elsewhere in Scripture and pray to God.

Now let’s take out your Bibles and open to Romans 5:12-21.

Pause to go live > > >

Righteousness Reigns

Today’s message provides the necessary groundwork for the rest of Paul’s letter to Rome by drawing an important contrast between Adam and Christ.

Both stand as key representatives of the whole human race.

Adam stands as the representative of fallen humanity, in whom death reigns through sin; Christ stands as the representative of the restored human race, in whom grace reigns through righteousness for eternal life.

I believe we need this message today.

We need this message because everywhere we turn we hear voices calling our attention to focus on the reign of death, and if we listen to these voices, we find ourselves inwardly consumed by the darkness.

But, the good news that resounds from today’s message calls our faith to be fixed on the reign of grace through Jesus’ righteousness for eternal life!

And to stand courageously on the grace that is being brought to us from our Lord Jesus Christ!

Today’s message is composed of one of the most difficult arguments in Paul’s letter to Rome.

So we will benefit from making a few key observations before we dig into this text.

Exegesis

First, we want to observe the pattern of Paul’s writing.

His pattern provides an initial thesis statement, followed by arguments and illustrations that are used to draw his conclusions.

This pattern continues as Paul presents another thesis summary statement in 5:1-11, followed by arguments and illustrations in today’s lesson that will provide the basis for his conclusions in chapters six through eight.

This is very important because it suggests that we should expect Paul’s conclusions in chapters six through eight to draw on his arguments and illustrations from chapter five.

Second, we need to pay attention to the rhetorical devices Paul uses in this section.

First, Paul uses what is referred to as “the rhetoric of comparisons”, which Quintilian argues is the general basis for all deliberative speeches.

Such comparisons highlight both the differences and similarities between objects, and progress from “the lesser to the greater”.

Therefore, we start with Adam and move towards Christ.

Both Paul’s illustration and conclusion will follow this pattern.

And this allows Paul to conclude on a positive note by ending with his considerations of “the greater” (i.e.

Christ).

Second, Paul uses the “rhetoric of digression” to temporarily depart from his main subject in order to strengthen the foundation of his argument before returning to the theme at hand.

Those of you who did your weekly assignments will notice that this is partly what makes this week’s text so difficult to follow.

And lastly, Paul employs the “rhetoric of personification” in order to treat concepts like “sin”, “death” and “the law” as characters in a play so that he can more effectively make his point.

Finally, our last observation is that we’re entering Paul’s fifth argument (5:12-21), which is also his shortest and heaviest argument.

As we have already suggested, this argument is going to provide the rational and theological framework necessary for his remaining arguments.

The comparison between Adam and Christ, the personifications of “sin”, “death”, and “the law”, and the basis for how Christ’s salvation is brought to the whole world are necessary if we are going to understand how God is going to rescue the human race from the reign of death.

Together these observations suggest that Paul is about to introduce us to the pattern that he will use to make his final arguments.

We will see how the reign of death seized power through the old man, Adam, and how the reign of grace triumphs through the new man, Jesus Christ, for eternal life.

And this provides us the necessary framework to interpret chapters 6-8.

“Therefore” (Διὰ τοῦτο) (v.

12): These “Διὰ τοῦτο” clauses are vital to interpreting Romans because they summarize and transition Paul’s main arguments.

And nowhere is it more important to identify exactly what is being summarized and transitioned than here.

So minimally, Paul is at least summarizing verses 1-11:

Taken in this light, Paul is addressing how we are set right with God and access into his presence is restored to the human race through our Lord Jesus Christ.

And all of this is true and will feature heavily in Paul’s argument moving forward.

However, you’ll notice these verses also begin with another “therefore”, indicating that they are also drawing forward prior themes.

So, taken in this light, this argument draws on the full meaning of gospel justification in order to illustrate for us the salvation we’re receiving in Christ.

So let’s take a bird’s eye view of this message:

Rapid Birds-Eye View > > >

These verses describe both the fall of humanity through Adam and the birth of a new humanity through Jesus Christ.

What perished through Adam’s rebellion is reborn through Jesus’ resurrection.

This “new humanity” is what Jesus envisions in his “born again” metaphor:

At the heart of Jesus’ message is the hope that we can put off our corrupt nature and be clothed through the resurrection in immortality!

The flesh cannot enter eternal life because it is subject through sin to death, but, praise God, we can be born anew through the Spirit, which is dually symbolized by the washing of baptism and the washing of the water of God’s word (Ephesians 5:26; 1 Peter 1:23).

“Just as” (“protasis”) (v.

12): We need to pay attention to this clause.

Scholars refer to this as the “protasis”.

In ancient Roman dramas, the “protasis” was the opening part of the play in which all the main actors were introduced.

And, in logic, the “protasis” is the conditional statement upon which another depends.

Most importantly, when we read “just as”, we naturally expect “so then” (i.e. the “apodosis”).

In other words, we should anticipate the rest of the play!

I trust you’ll see in a moment why this makes these verses among the most difficult to interpret in Romans; “where is the “apodosis”?

Answering this is made difficult because it is not at first immediately obvious where we should look for the “apodosis” to enter.

“Sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin” (v.

12): What is clear is that this is the opening scene of humanity’s ancient drama.

In the Biblical narrative we see both human community and personal individuality intricately weaved together within divine providence.

So on the one hand, the human race composes one people such that the actions of one affect the whole.

But, on the other, the human race is composed of individuals, who act on their own will.

So Adam, as both an individual and the representative of the whole human race, brought sin into the world, and through sin, the whole world was subjected under the reign of death.

“In this way death spread to all people, because all sinned” (v.

12): Anyone reading from translations like the ESV, NASB, or NET will notice that this verse reads “And so death spread to all people”, while those reading from translations like the CSB, NKJV, or NIV will notice that the “and so” is omitted and replaced with something like “And thus” or “and in this way”.

This is because “and so” is the grammatical form used to introduce the apodosis, the end of the scene.

But the full force of the scene has not yet been made.

So the latter translations (I think rightly) translate the meaning of this clause instead of its form in order to avoid confusion.

As a result of this, some scholars do argue that this is the end of the scene.

Everything that follows would the be Paul’s argumentation.

But, this view is rarely adopted because it leaves Paul’s illustration very flat.

You’ll notice that none of Paul’s other illustrations are so short.