In Adam or in Christ?

Brothers and sisters in the Lord, it was I think about a week and a half ago that I received
a long-distance phone call from the front of mine. He's a colleague, he pastors a Christian
reformed church elsewhere in this country, like myself and like many of us in this church
community, he is a man who is committed to realizing the vision that God has for the church,
and as is so often the case God is really blessing his work. Saints are being transformed,
sinners are being converted with great power. The spirit of God is mightily at work and
not only his own life, but also in the life of his congregation. And as happens rather
typically that whole process is accompanied of course by tension and by friction and
some measure of opposition. But opposition, he told me on the phone, came to the head
a number of weeks ago as is so often the case over the issue of songs that their worship
team leads the church in. And a few weeks ago he told me that they were led, they believed
to sing in the church, just a rousing song of boasting in the Lord, testifying to the
amazing grace of God in Jesus Christ with zeal and vigour with enthusiasm. And while
that was very well received by the bulk of the congregation, there were a number of individuals,
one man in particular who was very offended by that whole process, so offended as a matter
of fact, that when what he marched out of the service, he jabbed my friend in the stomach.
He can picture this, precipitating there by not a minor crisis in the life not only of
the pastor, but the church as well. And that's why he called me. And as he shared the story
with me and asked me to pray about it, he said, "As I've been thinking about it, reflecting
on this whole business that occurs to me," he says, "that the issue is not the song,
the group saying in church." He said, "The real issue is whether Jesus Christ, when
he came into the world and died and was raised and ascended on high and poured out his
Holy Spirit, whether he can take sinners and make them a new creation that are filled
with the glory and the praise of God." I don't know a lot about his church, I've been there
at least once, maybe twice, if my memory serves me correctly, but offhand I'd say he's
hitting the nail right on the head, because my experience in renewal and the church has
been that when the Spirit of God begins to renew things, the bottom line issue is never the
externals, even though those will often become the lightning rod that draw the lightning.
Much rather the issue is, does Jesus Christ, by the power of His Spirit, touch our lives,
renew our lives so that we can begin to live in this world as a renewed people living
by the grace and by the power of God? Because you see, there is within our religious tradition
a whole strand of thinking that specializes in our sin and misery. You've met them.
They're the kind of person that says, "I'll pour little old me, I'm just a nothing
in a nobody, and I'll never ever really get anywhere, and if I talk or somebody else talks
about who they are in the Lord and what the Lord can do with them, then they're bragging
and they're boasting." And there's something good about that attitude. There's something
good about that attitude in the sense that unless and until we see or sin in our misery,
we cannot come to Jesus and we cannot experience the power of His redemption. But having said
all that, the mistake that some people make is that they like being that way so much.
They don't want to change. Had a professor in seminary, he put it this way, he said,
"In our tradition, we have people that believe in original sins so much, they think they
have to practice it all the time." I thought that was wonderfully what. And that of course
becomes a perversion of the gospel. It becomes an excuse to hide behind so that I can keep
on living the way that I'm living and I never have to change. And if you now come along
with a gospel that says, "Jesus Christ can change all of that," then I need to change
and then I have to look at things in my own life. And so there are people who have
a vested interest in holding on to their sin in misery, not because it leads them to
Jesus, but because they're really quite happy in their sin in misery and they don't really
want to change. I submit to you that's a perversion of the gospel. Because the gospel is a gospel
of good news and the good news is that no matter what it is that we are in Adam, how sinful
and how trety and how under condemnation as we'll see this morning. In Jesus Christ,
we are a new creation and we are being released to live for the praise of God's glory. And
that agreed to which we experienced that in our lives is determined by the degree to
which we understand the difference between being in Adam and being in Christ. And that's
what Paul begins to talk about now in these remaining verses that we have read together
of Romans chapter 5. He summarizes everything that he's been teaching in the book of Romans.
And while what he writes here in these verses that we have read together is in places very
difficult and very complex argument that he spins because Paul is the kind of preacher
who gets so carried away with his words, he doesn't know where to go with his sentence
and then he puts in a dash, you know, English teachers would flunk us for doing the kind
of stuff that Paul did. But he's so excited about Jesus Christ and what it is to be in
Jesus, he gets lost in his own argument. And he goes all over the place, but I think if
we want to try to capture what it is that he's talking about in these verses, he comes
back to it in verses 18 and 19 and he gives us a marvelous succinct summary of what it is
to be in Adam and what it is to be in Christ. Listen to these verses again. Then, as one
man's trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one man's act of righteousness leads
to acquittal and life for all men. For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners,
so by one man's obedience will many be made righteous. Notice immediately the contrast
with in those two verses the play on one man. By one man's disobedience were all in trouble.
By one man's obedience we get out of trouble. And the people that he's talking about in
that passage, of course, if you're read it in his context is Adam on the one hand. And
Jesus Christ on the other. As far as Paul is concerned, every member of the human race
falls into one of two categories of people. They're either in Adam who represents the natural
head of the human race, out of whom everybody flows forth in the natural, or they are
pardoned parcel of Jesus Christ, who is the head of a new race of people, a new creation
and depending on which group we belong to, he says, those are the characteristics we share.
If we are in Adam, then we share the characteristics of Adam. But if we are in Christ, we share
the characteristics of Jesus Christ. And then in this passage he gives us a number of
characteristics of both Adam and Christ. And in the time that remains, let's try to look
at those in a little bit of detail. And then let's try to apply that to our lives today.
By one man's trespass, it led to condemnation for old man. And by one man's disobedience he
says, many were made sinners. The first characteristic of being in Adam. What we have received
by virtue of being the offspring of Adam says Paul number one is we are constituted sinners.
We are made sinners. One man's trespass leads to condemnation. One man's disobedience.
We are made sinners. The word there is constituted sinners. That is to say we are a people who
come into the world and we are guilty before the face of God. Not only because of our
own sin, we are already guilty before we are guilty of our own sin because we share in
Adam's guilt. We have inherited the judgment that is on Adam. Not only that. But because
we also inherit from him a sinful human nature. We grow up when we live in a world where
we are enemies of God as we've seen before. We don't naturally gravitate towards God
and towards the things of God. And I think it's really important for us to understand that.
Because sometimes even Christians get down on themselves because their sort of inherent
bend is not such that says, "Well, I want God and I want to worship God." That's natural.
That's what it is to be in Adam. And many of the things that we struggle with and many
of the things that keep us from being obedient to God is junk that we have received
through all of our ancestors all the way back to Adam. In Adam we were made sinners.
We are alienated from God. And he goes on to say, "Because of that, because we are sinners,
we live under condemnation in Adam." Verse 18, "One man's trespass led to condemnation
for all men." condemnation here is the sentence of death that God said would happen to Adam
and to all of us offspring the moment they ate from the forbidden tree. The day that you eat
there of God said, "Way back in Genesis, you will surely die." And death in the Bible isn't
only physical death. It's emotional death. It's psychological death. It's spiritual death.
It's losing control over one's life and over one's circumstances. It is living in the darkness as
we're going to see together tonight. It is losing it in every dimension of one's life. It is living
under the judgment of God. Verse 12 puts it this way, "Sin came into the world through one man
and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned."
You want to show to yourself some time whether the Bible is true and whether the biblical picture
of reality is an accurate picture of reality, then look at the issue of death in the world. There
are people who think that death in the world is the natural process of one generation leading to
another generation. I remember being in a discussion a number of years ago with a good friend of mine
who was a Christian elementary school teacher and we got talking about this whole issue.
And she told me that what she had been teaching her classes, quite unbeknownst to her own line of
reasoning is that death was a regular part of the world. That's how God made it.
And it came as a bit of a revelation to where to discover and she really shouldn't know
better that in the opening chapters of the scriptures, death becomes a judgment on sin. We have not
been created for death. And those of you that have been at recent funerals know that even when people
die in a mature age as Brother Westerhoff, for example, after many years of illness, death isn't
natural. We've been made for life. And death and brokenness came into the world because in Adam,
we have all sinned that it's so important for people to understand that because if you don't
understand that, you always end up blaming God for the trouble in the world. As by one man's
trespass led to condemnation for all men. So one man's act of righteousness leads to acquittal
in life for all men. As by one man's disobedience many were made sinners. So by one man's disobedience,
many will be made righteous. God could have left us in Adam. God was under no obligation at all
to come to you or to me and to give us a new starter, a new hope in life. But God, of course,
is a God who is filled with love and who is filled with compassion. And it wants to demonstrate
the reality of his love in the gift of his Son. And so the Bible tells us that in the fullness of
time he sent his Son into the world to be born under the law. And that little baby whose birth we
celebrate in this season came into the world to become the new head of a new race of people
who would live in righteousness and who would share in the glory of God. Because Adam had sinned
and because Adam had lost it, a member of the human race had to win it back. And so he came in
human flesh and he lived your life and he lived my life, faced every temptation that we will ever
face and the uniqueness of Jesus as you know. Is that he never fell asleep? Never disobeyed once,
never put himself ahead of God, never put himself ahead of anybody else, gave his life as a ransom
for our sin, was raised from the dead, sits at the right hand of God, and today represents a new
humanity in the presence of God. And the Bible says that when a race have been open to see our
condition in Adam, and by faith we have embraced the Lord Jesus Christ, then as in Adam we share in
his sin and condemnation, then in Jesus Christ we share in the qualities that are in Jesus.
And the first of those qualities, Paul here, is that we are righteous by faithy to him.
Listen again to verse 19. One man's disobedience, as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners,
so by one man's obedience many will be made righteous. Now want us to notice the parallel
structure there. As by one man's disobedience many were made or constituted sinners, so by one
man's obedience many will be made righteous. That is to say the righteousness that we receive in
Jesus Christ is as far reaching as the sin that we receive in Adam. What does it mean to be righteous?
Well it means that I'm right before God. It means that when God looks at me there isn't anything
in him anymore that would want him to push me away because I am measuring out perfectly to the
standards of God. The Bible says that if I have come to faith in Christ, have truly understood my
sit in misery, have truly repented of it, truly want to live for God and be everything that God
wants me to be, then in Jesus Christ I am constituted righteous. That not only means God forgives
me all my many sins but it also means that I am positively righteous before God. God looks at me
and he doesn't see any sin anymore because I am his child in Christ Jesus. And the same Jesus
who faced every temptation overcame them, sat down at the right hand of God in glory and now
poured out his spirit will continue to work out that process of righteousness in my life.
And he will present me before the throne of God without any spot or wrinkle or blemish or any
such thing because Jesus has done all that needs to be done to declare me totally righteous
before the face of God, God's people need to understand the reality of that truth. Because you
see it's pretty easy to look at my own life, for you to look at your life. And to say, well,
poor little old me, I'm falling short here and I'm falling short over here and the more the
spirit of God works in your life, the worse it gets because you begin to see all the stuff that's
wrong with you. Before that, only your neighbor saw it. Now you see it. And now you begin to wonder,
well, how can God ever put up with me? You know, and we go into this whole law routine of,
I got to get better and stronger and I can't afford to face my failures because God won't love me
anymore. If you are in Christ, then in Christ you are righteous before God the Father. And as long
as we walk in true repentance and faith before God, the blood of Jesus just washes us clean,
we are righteous as righteous in Christ as sinful we are in Adam. Do we understand that reality?
There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. And the Christian isn't one that
has to go around hanging his head on the ground as if somehow or another, that gives greater glory
to God. Yes, the Christian has to go around repenting of his sin. And there will be seasons when
the spirit of God convicts us through and through of how rotten and how miserable and how far
short of the glory of God we have fallen. But a Christian doesn't stop there. A Christian moves
boldly forward that in Jesus Christ, his sin has been forgiven, he has been declared righteous
and with boldness he can enter into the throne of God's grace and we see mercy and help in time
of need. A Christian is bold before the face of God not because he thinks he's good enough,
but because he knows that in Jesus Christ he is the righteousness of God as by one man's disobedience,
many were made sinners. So by one man's obedience will many be made righteous. So number one,
we're righteous in Christ and then number two, we begin to share in Christ in all the blessings
that we have lost in Adam. Listen again to verse 18. Then as one man's trespass led to condemnation
for all men, condemnation now being death. So one man's act of righteousness leads to acquittal
and life for all men. Notice again the parallel structure. One man's trespass led to condemnation.
One man's righteousness leads to acquittal and life for all men. He uses two words here to describe
the benefits that we have in Christ, acquittal on the one hand and life on the other. They're not
the same. I recall after the William Kennedy Smith trial done in Florida a few weeks ago.
I believe it was his accuser who was, it was either her or her lawyer, but I think it was she
was asked predictably at the end of the trial what she thought of the verdict of the jury
and she said something that was I think fairly profound. She said not guilty is not the same
as innocent and of course from a legal perspective that's true just because you've been declared
not guilty doesn't mean that you're innocent. When we stand before God in Jesus Christ the first
thing that happens is that God declares not only that we are not guilty but we are innocent we are
acquitted of all the charges that have been laid against us because Jesus Christ died in our place
and we live now longer now no longer under the cloud of condemnation that makes us feel that
God's out to get us because we know that we've been wrong but it doesn't stop there. One man's
act of righteousness leads to acquittal and it leads to life. Words failed me to describe what life
is because life is the opposite of death and if death means losing it all then life means gaining
it all and the amazing thing of the gospel is that in Jesus Christ God restores to us much more
than what we have lost in Adam. Adam was intended to rule over all creation you'll recall. He lived
in the presence of God. God gave him a destiny, God gave him a purpose, God gave him a sense of
calling and he knew that he was a worthwhile individual because he knew that he was made in the
image of God and life was destined for Adam to be an ongoing unfolding of all of the potential that
God had created within him to the praise and to the glory of God. If you can picture that
and multiply that by infinity you begin to get an idea of what it is to inherit life in Christ.
Not only means that someday we're going to go to heaven and rule over God's new creation
it means that already today by the power of God's Holy Spirit we begin to experience the
benefits of salvation and we've looked at some of these before we have peace with God.
We have grace in which we stand. We rejoice in the hope of glory. We have a new ability and a
new determination to live with the sufferings and the injustices of life because we know that
God is building us into the image and the likeness of Jesus. And if we're in Christ
then we share in the abundance of God's grace so that instead of going to pot because the
forces of evil and sinner in the world God helps us to overcome and to fulfill His plan
and His purpose for your life and for my life beginning already today. Verse 17 Paul puts it
this way of marvelous, verse if because of one man's trespass death reign 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 you find there that contrast on the one
hand in Adam death reigns. We all know what that means. Things fall apart. Even the best moment of
happiness in Adam is like a soap bubble you look at it and it's gone just like that before your
eyes. Death reigns it's an awful reality but in Christ the free gift of righteousness causes us
to reign in life. And Paul's whole emphasis in his whole passage is that what we have in Christ
far out ways what we have in Adam three times in this passage he uses the phrase much more.
He uses it in verse 9 when he says we are justified by his blood much more shall we be saved by
him from the wrath of God. He uses it in verse 15 when he says if many died through one man's
trespass much more have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of that one man, Jesus Christ
abounded for many and then he uses it again here in verse 17 if because of one man's trespass death
reign through that one man much more well those who receive the abundance of grace and the free
gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ. So Paul's whole argument in
his passage is that which we gain in Christ far out ways what we have lost in Adam and if this
morning you and I are in Christ then we share in the righteousness of Jesus and because we share
in the righteousness of Jesus we share in acquittal and we live in life doesn't mean we don't
have problems doesn't mean we don't have struggles doesn't mean we've got it all together
it means we need to learn to see ourselves as the children of God redeemed by the blood of Jesus
able by the grace of God to rise up to the occasion and to be all that God calls us to be in Christ
but you say I can't poor little old man two weeks since too strong that makes mockery of Jesus
in Adam you share in all of his junk but in Christ you share in the righteousness of Jesus and
what the church needs to do to understand that and having understood that needs to learn to walk
in that victory because as we walk in that victory the same power that raised Jesus from the dead
is a power that comes to live within our lives and from the position of knowing that we are
secures the children of God redeemed by the blood of the lamp made righteous before the face of God
airs the kingdom of God we can press forward and we can lay hold of God for everything that we
need to be what God would call us to be and our lives will be transformed from glory to glory
to live for the praise of his glory that's God's call to the church
and it's that call upon the church that's going to make a shine like lights in the world
until that day when every knee bows and every tongue confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord
to the glory of God the Father it's that reality and it's that understanding and the experience
of that grace within our lives that wants to make us echo the words of Scripture when we are
commanded to praise God with everything that is within us because by his death and by his
resurrection by his coming into the world Jesus Christ has redeemed us
to be his very own to God be the glory let us pray
father we look at many of these things and Lord there's part of us
that wants to believe all that
and then there's part of us that says I don't understand it
and I'm not really sure I want to understand it because
that means I've got to change I can no longer just be who I am and hide under the excuse of
my personality and my nature and my upbringing and and Lord all the things that we hide behind
in order to keep you from giving us our hearts obedience forgive us Lord for the unbelief
that so often lives within our lives give us Lord God a new revelation
of who we are in Jesus and a faith father to believe that even though we can't understand how
this whole process might work before your face that that nevertheless is what your word teaches
and that as you give us grace Lord we are prepared to believe that in Christ we are a new creation
and that while we shall often sin and often fall short
will not be pushed away and will not be condemned because in Christ there is forgiveness and there's
healing and there's restoration and Lord we can stand before you boldly and confidently
not because of our own goodness not because of our own righteousness but rather by the righteousness of
Jesus and Lord out of that faith and all of our lives and our homes and in our church community
let new life bubble forth so that when people broken by sin and broken by the consequences of
sin and overcome by the power of the curse may come to this place and hear a gospel of good news
that in Jesus Christ there is forgiveness in Jesus Christ there is a new creation there is healing
there is wholeness there is a new life a life that will never end because it is but the foretaste
of eternal life oh father fill us with a spirit of faith with a spirit of understanding
spirit of knowledge and a spirit of truth let the whole world know that Jesus Christ
is Lord thank you father for hearing us in his name amen