Romans No.10 Adam and Jesus

One of the great chapters of the New Testament Campbell Morgan, a Bible teacher of a different generation once took a sample from his huge congregation as to what their favorite chapter of Scripture was and he had all the answers collated and the first 20 Became the subject for his next Bible series and There's a book that's still available though. It's not in publication, but you can get it in second-hand shops still available today Entitled great chapters of the Bible. That's how that book came to be written Well, I think if I'd been around along with another hundred chapter five of Romans would have been my One of my favorites to have suggested and I'd like to have heard Campbell Morgan preach his way through it great Bible teacher well verse 12 of chapter 5 therefore just as sin entered the world through one man and Death through sin and in this way death came to all men because all sin For before the law was given sin was in the world But sin is not taken into account when there is no law Nevertheless death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses Even over those who did not sin by breaking a command as did Adam who was a pattern of the one to come But the gift is not like the trespass for if the many died by the trespass of the one man How much more did God's grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man Jesus Christ Overflow to the many again the gift of God is not like the result of the one man's sin the judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification for if by the trespass of the one man death reigned through that One man, how much more will those who receive God's abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness? reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ Consequently just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men So also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men For justice through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners So also through the obedience of the one man The many will be made righteous the law was added so that the trespass might increase But where sin increased grace increased all the more so that just as sin reigned in death So also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life Through Jesus Christ our Lord Well, you could perhaps have entitled this particular passage of Scripture the tale of two men a Not tale in the sense of something that's legendary But here is the contrast made between The work of Adam on the one hand and the work of our Lord Jesus you remember how Paul in previous chapters and especially the fourth Has made reference to Abraham one of the great if not the greatest character of the Old Testament He's had to show the Jews how though when Paul preaches the gospel What he has to say is not unrelated to the life of Abraham for Abraham was a man who was pronounced Justified that is saved if you please in the sight of God Through an act of faith similar to the acts of faith that you and I have made in our Lord Jesus So in a very brilliant way the Apostle Paul deals with the question the case of Abraham But of course perhaps even more fundamental at least chronologically speaking because he's the first man is the case of Adam What does Paul have to teach us in regard to the gospel of Jesus Christ? From the person of Adam now That's the question that he answers and he answers it in a most remarkable fashion as you would imagine But before you're really prepared to launch yourself into these verses One thing that stands out Paramountly that needs to be said today, but perhaps a hundred years ago would not have needed to have been emphasized And that is that the Apostle Paul did believe in a real Adam now Perhaps we're moving to the position in so-called Christianity where that viewpoint is in the minority rather than the majority I mean by that there are folk who have tried to deny that Adam really was a man a literal man Rather he's a convenient figure a legend a myth which was necessary to Put to more primitive minded people the whole business of creation now my contention on grounds other than Biological or geological for that matter on purely biblical grounds is this that Adam? Was reckoned to be by our Lord Jesus Christ a historical figure And the Apostle Paul's argument here falls completely to the ground Unless you concede that the Apostle Paul like the Savior looked upon Adam as being a real man of flesh and blood who lived thousands of years before and from him all men Take if you like their descent or to put it the other way to turn it round.

He is our ancestor You have to bear that in mind you have to accept at least that the Apostle Paul did believe this you also need to bear in mind if you're going to Appreciate what Paul is teaching That in in one sense the Lord Jesus more than any other person stands out as The one who fulfills the type that Adam was you say what do you mean by that? Well, let's just drop down This is just introductory comment to start with let's just drop down to the last part of verse 14 Shall we because there you've got this extraordinary statement? That Adam last part of verse 14 Adam was a pattern of the one to come Adam was a pattern of the one to come now go to 1 Corinthians chapter 15 Will you and you'll get Paul's comment on that? 1 Corinthians chapter 15 and There we read in Around the 45th verse. Let me get the right reference. I gave it you as chapter 14 actually in your notes It's chapter 15 verse 45.

You get this this comment So it is written the first man Adam Became a living being the last Adam a life-giving spirit What is meant by the last Adam? Well, none other than our Lord Jesus Christ In what sense does the first Adam and the last Adam have a common denominator? Well, it's really perfectly obvious to you Christian people. I'm sure Adam was the founder so to speak the the beginner the the origin of the human race Now the Lord Jesus Christ comes into this world And in a very real sense, he founds a new humanity doesn't he I mean we have this statement that the Apostle Paul Makes elsewhere if any man being Christ, he is a new creation So so in one sense, there are two key figures in our world. This is what Paul teaches This is what is Adam braided.

I mean by that. This is what is set forth argued for from the Holy Scripture There are two leading characters One is Adam historical Adam to whom we all trace our ancestry and the other is the Lord Jesus Christ and some of Adam's sons and daughters Have if you pleased moved over from the category of being Adam men and women to being Jesus men and women I Give you the the the quotation from an Oxford professor of years ago in God's sight there are two men Adam and Jesus Christ and these two men have all other men hanging at their girdle strings Now you'll begin to see the point of that as we somewhat rapidly make our well our way through these verses From the 12th verse through to the 14th we have the rather lamentable point repeated that it is through man and Especially the first man that death Entered into the world. I make reference in my notes to handles great oratorio the Messiah as by man came death You remember it's expressed in a dirge.

It's sad as by man came death Sin enters the world through one man and the consequence of sin, but further in verse 12 is death Do you ever go to Chichester? I? Like to go to Chichester. I think it's a nice place I like old cities with Ecclesiastical history But but one of the reasons why I like Chichester is I like John Keats The evidence Keats poetry when you're at school. Well.

He composed a lot of his poetry at Chichester And one of my favorite poems of John Keats is the ode to a nightingale Thou was not meant for death the immortal bird Says John Keats you see John Keats is dying he dies prematurely and he sees this nightingale He hears that the birds singing away And and it seems to him that the nightingale represents all that he wants to be there's something of immortality He believes within that bird as he in his fancy as a poet. He lets his imagination wander thou was not meant for death immortal bird Now you could say that of man before he sinned He was not meant for death Death is not natural to man as he was created from the hand of God Death came into our world through Adam's Transgression and death if I may make a solemn comparison is like AIDS Anyone who is contacted With someone who has that disease Unfortunately, it is transmitted to them as Through man came death so that death has impregnated all the descendants of Adam And we find ourselves at the natural level in a condition that God never intended in the first instance Death is the end of our mortal life Death has come to all men because all have sinned in the same way as Adam sinned you have sinned and even those verse 13 who lived between the life and death of Adam and the birth of Moses they too sinned although law was not in the world the Ten Commandments had not been given they did die during those centuries Indicating says the Apostle Paul that sin reigned sin triumphed in every generation And we don't of course need to emphasize the fact that death reigns in our world today, but it is basically an intrusion Death has come into our world through Adam Nevertheless verse 14 death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses Even over those who did not sin by breaking a command as did Adam who was a pattern of the one to come So we'll settle for underlining that main point in those Opening two or three verses death has come through man death is now natural to man But it did not used to be natural to man. That was not God's intention So let's go to the 15th verse shall we and through to the 17th verse and here the Apostle Paul brings alongside Adam that other man The the last Adam the Lord Jesus Christ And we have contrasted there the work of the first Adam and its Consequences and the work of the second Adam and its results So verse 15 and the first word is most important but he's going to show the difference between these two characters and The difference is important for both you and for me to latch on to Let's take two words out of the 15th verse.

Shall you and then you'll understand what it means We take the word gift and we take the word trespass What is the trespass? well trespass means going where you shouldn't doesn't it and what basically is a gift a Gift is donating Donating what you needn't have you got that a Trespass is going where you shouldn't a gift is giving What you needn't Adam went Where he shouldn't he trespassed against the law of God and as a result of that He died and as a result of his example and sin with all its terrible Consequences making its way into the warp and woof of human personality many many people die For if the many die by the trespass of the one man The apostle is referring to every son every daughter of Adam. They've gone where they shouldn't but here is the second Adam the last Adam and He is referred to in Terms of one who displays the grace of God for if the many died by the trespass of the one man Adam how much more did God's grace and that gift and the gift that came by the grace of the one man Jesus Christ overflow to the many So what is it that Jesus Christ has brought into this world? Which he needn't have given to us Well, it's the benefits of his own life and death What do you inherit from Adam? the consequences of his sin What do you receive from the Lord Jesus? the benefits of his righteous life And the Apostle uses very interesting language to describe that benefit. He calls it an overflow Do you know what it's like to have an overflow? I remember when I was back in in the north of England living with my mum and dad years ago as a teenager we moved Into a very nice house At least it was very nice for us because we'd live very much in a coronation Street sort of set up for for a long Time and we moved to this house Which we've got a bit of a view and I thought it was just like being in Buckingham Palace I never dreamed in I mean it wasn't very wonderful incidentally compared with goring But I mean where we where we were in Sheffield It was fantastic and we got we got to know our neighbors they were really just working-class people I suppose and They didn't have a great deal of money no more than my mum and dad did And on one occasion that they brought a plumber into their house Who was doing a job on the cheap actually he wasn't a plumber? He just had a you know he had a dove hand at these sort of things And and he was fixing something I've got it wrong my memory is now working a little better.

He wasn't a plumber He was a carpenter, or he thought he was and he was fixing some stair rods and laying the carpet And as he used his drill he went straight through the main water pipe in their house You have never seen such a mess in all your life It was just as though the Niagara Falls had been transplanted and come to Sheffield the water was cascading down It was an overflow and nobody knew what to do this tremendous panic And my my father won the eternal gratitude of his next-door neighbor by actually finding the the stop tap Know how difficult it is to discover that if you haven't sort of worked out whereabouts it might be When you've just moved into into a home And you're not too sure where everything is when my dad found it turn the thing off stop the flow and and so forth Now now it seems to me That this is what the Apostle Paul has in mind when when he's referring to the gift of salvation That's come into the world. It's an overflow you see it flows forward to all those who've put their trust in the Lord Jesus and in one sense Anticipating the possibility of salvation it flows backwards to all those who in older days who in former generations? Were reaching out in faith hoping that somehow God could rescue them from the plight that their first father had got them into So there's a contrast between the gift and the trespass, but look at verse 16. Let's lift out a couple of words from there Shall we there's also a contrast between? Condemnation and justification Condemnation well, that's what came as a result of Adams disobedience not so But we are informed by the Apostle Paul Building up further on the gift of God again Again the gift of God is not like the result of the one man's sin Judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation But when the Lord Jesus came into our world bringing his gift of eternal life it followed many trespasses Having juxtaposition will you the one sin Adam sins in the garden and as a result? he's condemned and many many many many many many many more people follow in exactly the same way as Adam, but when Jesus comes into the world his righteous offering of his own life Pays the penalty for many trespasses All my iniquities on him were laid he nailed them all to the tree All the rotten things that you ever did all the heaped up guilt of a world in rebellion against God the tyranny and the barbaric aspect of the of the Assyrian Empire and the Roman Empire And moving down the centuries into the into the horrendous business of the Nazi Party and all that came as a result Of Hitler and and so forth in in Europe every rotten thing that there was is taken Into the body of our Lord Jesus so to speak and he deals with it on the cross of Calvary thus bringing justification making justification possible for the many you and me Those who are prepared by God's grace to move from the category of Adam to the category of the second Adam That's what Paul is teaching in his comparison And in the 17th verse He develops it a little further and and he introduces a somewhat daring term He refers to rain doesn't he re I G N. It's good to get your spellings, right? Sometimes we can wrong on that word processor.

Incidentally, did you know that the downs? Bible week the other year it threw it down with with rain so much that they banned the hymn our God rains However, that's just an aside rain in the sense of a king who reigns Now here says the Apostle Paul verse 17 by Adams sin Death reigns over humanity, I Didn't stop to explain but it's in your notes that the Hebrew word for man is Adam And in one sense, we're all Enveloped are we not in the person of Adam? I use the illustration of the acorn When you see an acorn potentially you see An oak tree, don't you because the oak tree is latent within the acorn So my brothers and sisters you and I were latent in Adam Potentially we are in Adam Now as a result of that death reigns as we've already worked through in Paul's Argument, it's rain down the centuries. It rains today But if death reigned through that one man Adam says the Apostle using a very favorite expression of his how much more Will those who receive God's abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness? reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ So there is a choice of the reign of death in our lives or the reign of righteousness Dependent upon which category we find ourselves in Now let's move on to the 18th verse and the 19th and what you've got there is a repeat of Paul's argument from verses 15 through to 17. It's good Isn't it on occasions to repeat the the Lord Jesus did that many many times our Lord told the same story I've never really understood people who won't listen to an address twice Sometimes I've got to hear some addresses three or four times before they're really striking to my soul I mean, I've listened to Lloyd-Jones on Various parts of Romans on on many an occasion.

I've read books through several times and well It's good to repeat, isn't it? As long as it's not boring. It's good to repeat. That's the art of teaching repetition Reinforcing in the mind of your hearer that which has already been given to him.

So the Apostle reinforces his teaching He repeats his contrast Consequently verse 18 just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men So also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men Verse 18 refers to the act of Adam and the act of Jesus Verse 19 refers to the attitude of Adam and the attitude of Jesus What is the act of Adam that Paul has in mind? well, it was his his failure to fulfill God's law in the Garden of Eden Eve came along and Incidentally in Jewish theology Eve is always blamed Sin came into the world as a result of Eve and therefore women are to say could take a second place How's that for chauvinism? It really is most most Unfortunate and in one sense a complete a complete Error in in the rendering of Scripture both both Eve and and Adam are responsible Together for the sin that comes into the world. Here's another Jewish theologian Who's a little brighter Oh Adam, what have you done for though? It was you who sinned the fall was not yours alone, but ours also who are your descendants Well, the act that is in mind here in the 18th verse was the act of taking what God had forbidden You remember how the devil slides along Eve chapter 3 Genesis tells you and says take eat and she takes and she eats and one Anglican perceptive Bible commentator says that God will have to be born on earth and Die and rise again Before the verbs take and eat will become verbs of salvation Adam and Eve took and ate What was prohibited it was the act that brought the judgment of God But the actions of our Lord Jesus Well, they are always within the purposes of the father his whole life It seems to me is encapsuled in that statement 18th verse halfway through the result of one act of righteousness On Adam's part his one act brings condemnation on Jesus's part the one act of righteousness brings Justification just as if we had never sinned and that justification it brings life For all men not all men incidentally willy-nilly But all men who have opted to count Jesus Christ and their spiritual ancestry from him Or their spiritual descent from him as the most important thing in life So there are two acts out there in the 18th verse complemented by two attitudes The act of Adam was one of disobedience verse 19 just as through the disobedience of Adam many were made sinners The action of our Lord Jesus is patently one of obedience All the way down his life doing what the father wanted him to do and as a result of that act of obedience He influences many He passes on the value of his perfect life as Adam passed on the problem of his imperfection So you see how the Apostle repeats Neatly in the 18th and 19th verses what he's told us from the 15th through to the to the 17th and then and here we can come bring our fairly short study to a Conclusion then he speaks once more about the law and the grace of God Amazing grace. That's how I summarize the 20 and 21st verse and grace is amazing, isn't it? You see all of us now even perhaps more clearly than those Centuries that elapsed between the time of Adam and Moses know that we are sinful we have the law the Ten Commandments the Extension of the law as worked out through the whole of the Old Testament and the New Testament What does the law do what it identifies sin doesn't it? It makes the exceeding sinfulness of sin stand out the more And if you've got a preacher who's constantly telling you that you shouldn't be doing this and you shouldn't be doing that and then you Go and do it the more you hear him the more guilty you become don't you? See, this is a problem with John the Baptist and Herod I mean John the Baptist was a first-rate preacher and Herod was a first-rate listener But Herod never did what John told him to do.

He liked to listen to him, but he didn't like to do it Carry through the preaching as a result of that Herod got further and further into the morass of sin sin increased in his life and Says Paul the law was added so that the trespass might increase So that your sinfulness might become even more apparent But says the Apostle and here he must have been dancing at least in his spirit Where sin increased grace increased all the more Did you see that pile of sinners? I was trying to build it up the barbarity of the Assyrian age. I made reference to I spoke about the Nazi Holocaust I spoke about the individual Aggregate sin of all mankind only one gigantic mountainous heap that you can't measure It's awful. It's filthy.

It's reprehensible and yet the Bible says that the grace of God Overreached the manifestation of human sin at its most ugly That this is what the Lord Jesus did at the cross He straddled sin. He covered sin. He takes it away in his own body and the grace of the God and father of our Lord Jesus It is manifested in the most remarkable fashion when you look at the cross And see what has been achieved as a result of the goodness of God and his mercy So that verse 21 just as sin reigned in death So also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord You know you can do away with your Napoleons and You can forget about all your great men and women in history You can even forget about Madonna Some of you will be glad to forget about Madonna Somebody was saying do you know what Madonna was before she was Madonna's so I said no they said a pre Madonna The important thing in history In effects as the Apostle Paul is that you should appreciate There are two typical men One is Adam and the other is the Lord Jesus and by Your choice or by default a couldn't care less attitude You will find yourself In one of these two categories an Adam man or a Jesus man the consequences of Adam's life brought death to the world and All men have sinned like he has sinned so you can't say it's unfair Edom's been repeated in everyone's experience on the other hand is the Lord Jesus and the consequences of his perfect life is Salvation made possible to all who cling to him Now we here we've clung to him We're not Adam men anymore We're the last Adams men and thank God as a result We have eternal life and are reconciled to the father eternally Let's just bow our head in prayer Maybe one or two people would just like to take up that last point and pray it in pray it through to us all Reminders before the father that these are not things that some preachers been trying just to academically bring out But this is this is real.

This is a staff of our spiritual life That we belong to God through faith in our Lord Jesus as a result of the work of the last Adam You