today's text will be an insert. Let me pray. Dear Jesus, I pray that you would come and you would open the eyes of the blind and the ears of the deaf, that the lame may leap for joy, because they have heard your gospel, they have understood it, and they have been healed by it. I pray for the one who teaches for sins or many that you would forgive them. And I pray for all of us that you have mercy on us all, and your name I pray. Amen. I appreciate Karen's testimony. That's why we move to Seattle. If you look at your text, you should probably have some dissonance because I'm actually in the middle of a series in the book of Genesis. So I know some of you are looking down and saying, why Romans? Well, let me explain to you why I'm preaching to Genesis what the purpose of Genesis is, and then I'll make sense of what I'm going to do with Romans this morning. I'm in the middle of a series on the book of Genesis, and you can't understand the book of Genesis, unless you understand the purpose for the book of Genesis. And the purpose of the book of Genesis is simply to remind Israel and us of the gospel. Now the logical question, it's, Tommy, what do you mean by the gospel? Well, for Israel, it was very simple. The God came to them, and they were in bondage, and they were in slavery in Egypt, and God came to them, and he said, I promise you, I will deliver you from Egypt. I promise I will release you from your bondage, and there was another part to the promise. He said, not only will I deliver you from your bondage, but I promise you that I'll get you to the promised land. That no matter what happens, that is my promise to you, that I'm going to finish the job. And you know the story of Israel, that they languished in the middle because they didn't believe the gospel. They didn't believe that God was going to finish the job. Well, the New Testament says that our responsibility as well is to believe the gospel. And it's the exact same thing, almost. You see, Jesus says that all of us were born in Egypt as well, except he calls it sin. He said, all of you, all of an eye were born in oppression and bondage to this thing called sin. And Jesus comes, and he says, I promise you that I will deliver you from your sin if you would just trust me. And there's a second part. He says, I'll not only deliver you from your sin, but I promise you that I'll finish the job. That once I have delivered you, I'll never, ever let you go. That's the message of the book of Genesis. And up to this point, we've seen, we've preached through the first three chapters, and in the first chapter, we saw that God intervened into chaos, into a hopeless situation, and he intervened with the power of his word. And we see that in our lives, that's what Jesus has done into your heart, your heart with this bundle of chaos, and Jesus comes and he intervenes. And we saw during the creation days that God brings order to that into which he has intervened. And that's what he does to you. He intervenes into your chaotic life and he brings order to it. And then we saw Adam and Eve come on the stage. Remember, Adam and Eve were created and they were perfect and they were holy and happy with God. They had the perfect existence and their job was simply to believe the gospel. Remember at me saying that? They didn't have to believe that they were going to be delivered from oppression. They just had to believe that God was going to take care of them. And did they believe that? No. We saw, I preached I think for three weeks on the fall, this thing that's called the fall, that the serpent came to Eve and Adam and said, you know, you can be like God if you've tasted this fruit. And they had a choice to make, you know, like God or obey God. And they chose to be like God and they knew in the knowledge of good and evil. The problem was that they knew evil because they now were the ones who were evil. You see? And so Adam and Eve ate of the apple and we saw last week the consequences of the fall. Remember the consequences? God gave them a spanking, if you will. Remember I always say that God will spank you but he doesn't kick you out of the house. And that's what God did to Adam and Eve. He gave them a spanking. He promised them that he would bring a deliverer who would ultimately deliver them and deliver their children from sin but there are always consequences. And remember he said to the woman you'll have pain in child bearing and all this kind of stuff. And to Adam he said, cursing is the ground because of you. Your job is always going to stink Adam. It's never going to be ultimately satisfying and many of you should identify with that and guessing. So there are consequences of sin but there are even bigger consequences. That's why we're in Romans today. We look back and it's nice to look at the story and say, wow, I could see how raising children is now hard because of this thing called sin. And I could see how relationships in my job is hard because of this thing called sin. But there is this sort of cosmic consequence that you can only find by sort of fast forwarding to the New Testament. We would get there but it would probably take about 20 years to go from Genesis to Romans. So what I'm doing is on fast forwarding to sort of give you the answer. To give you the answer key if you will. The Old Testament is the textbook and the New Testament is the answer key. And so today we're turning to the back of the book like I always did in algebra class to see what's really the answer to the problem. Okay, so we had the fall and this week that's where we are now. So if you look at Genesis, I mean Romans 5, 12 through 21. Let me read this to you. Verse 12 says, therefore just the sin entered the world through one man, that's it, that is Adam. And death through sin and in this way death came to all men because all sinned. For before the law was given, sin was in the world, but sin is not taken into account where there is no law. Nevertheless death rained from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command as Adam did, who was the pattern of the one to come. But the gift is not like the trespass, or if the many died by the trespass of one man, how much more do gods grace and gift come that came by the grace of one man? Jesus Christ overflowed to the many. Again, the gift of God is not like the result of one man's sin. The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. For if by one trespass, before by the trespass of the one man, death rained through that one man, how much more will those who received God's abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness rain 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 just as through the disobedience of the one man, the many were made sinners, so also the obedience of the one man, the many will be made righteous. The law was added so that trespass might increase, but for sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that just as sin rained in death, so also grace might rain through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus. Now, what's going on here? In the book of Romans, Paul is laying out probably the most systematic explanation of the gospel that has ever been written. And you've got to ask why all the sudden, if you ever read the book of Romans, all the sudden he begins to talk about Adam, and he gives great importance to Adam, to this one man, to this one sin. And the answer is probably that as people are reading, if you have your Bibles, if you look at verses 9 through 8 through 6, Paul has just told people the most radical thing in the world. He says that all of you are completely broken and sinful, all of you are completely hopeless in and of yourself, but through this one man, Jesus, you can be delivered from your sin. And that Jesus is the only way to be delivered from your sin. He says in verse 8, he said, but God demonstrates his own love for us in this, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him? For if when we were enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his son, how much more shall we be saved through his life? You see, you're reading through this text, and Paul is writing this, and he's wondering, he's anticipating what your questions are going to be. And the logical question should be, how in the world can everyone in the world be blessed by the life and death of one human being? Paul anticipates that, and he's going to answer, because what he's going to do is he's going to point us to Adam, and he's going to show us how everyone in the world was cursed through the action of one human being. Because you've got this thing going on that we'll see here where he compares Adam and Jesus. If you look at the text, the first thing we're going to do, basically today I'm going to look at Adam and Jesus, and we're going to contrast them, and then we're going to compare them, and you're going to see the gospel here very simply. Look at Adam and Jesus, first Paul introduces them in verse 12, he says, therefore, sin entered the world through one man and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men because all sinned. And if you're noticing your texts, there's a hyphen there. What's he talking about? Well, he makes it very clear, he says, through one man, sin entered through Adam, sin entered the world. No one would disagree with that. We saw that last week in the Bible that sin came because Adam sinned, and he said, because of this one sin, death entered, because remember what God said, on the day you eat of the tree, you will surely die. But then Paul does this really dicey thing, as he says, and death came to all men, and women, why? Because all sinned. And he interrupts himself in mid-sentence because he anticipates that you're going to ask, what does he mean by that? He said, death entered through one man, and sin entered through one man, through sin death, and everyone dies because all sinned. Now the reason he's stopping there is because when he says all sin, the Greek words he's using there, is a one-time past act. He says, all of you sinned, one time in the past is which brought you death. And so you should be saying, how in the world have I sinned in the past that brought me death now? And there's two sort of answers to this historically, and the one is that you sinned by imitation. But you saw the kind of things that Adam did, and you just copied what Adam did. My guess is, if you're in here at all, you don't dispute the fact that you're a sinner at some level, that you're broken, that you don't do the right thing all the time. And the answer that some people would say is that we just copy. We learn sin. We learn it from other people, right? Historically, this position was represented by a guy named Pelagius. Pelagius was a monk in England who was a very moralistic person. He grew up in a very moralistic home and he never did anything wrong his whole life in his mind. And Pelagius looked at this text and he said, people are so inherently good that the reason that they sin, that the reason they do bad things is because they're just copying other people. They're just copying Adam's sin if you will. They're just watching television, and they're seeing violence on television, and that's the reason kids do bad things. And the reason little children sin, the reason little children do bad things is because they're just copying their parents. Now I always tell people, Pelagius obviously has never done one day in nursery because the little children can think of many sins on their own. You see, why? Is it because did they sin? Because their sinners, or are they sinners because they sin? This text is going to teach you a sinner. Well why are you a sinner? It's not just because you sin. It's because you are a sinner. Why are you a sinner? Because Adam was your representative. Adam was the one who represented you in the garden and whatever happened to Adam happened to you. You see that's the other way. You either sinned by imitation or you sinned by imputation. Forgive me for sounding like Al Gore. I like Al. They're trying to legislate and we're procrastinating or whatever he says. You can either sin by imitation or imputation, and arguably from this text it's imputation. What do I mean by that? That when he says all sinned, what he really means is that when Adam sinned, it was imputed to you. And me it was given to you. It was credited to you. So that when Adam stood in the garden and he took the fruit, he did it on behalf of other people. He did it on behalf of you. Now that should really hack you off. That Adam is in the garden. You're not there. It's completely unfair. You're thinking that I'm here thousands of years later. Adam's in the garden. Adam sins and I get all of the guilt and misery because what Adam did. And in the West, that's a particularly repugnant view. Why? Because all of us are individualists. All of us say I rise or fall. I stand before God on my own. I make my own way in business. I make my own way in relationships. I do it all. And if you think that really, you haven't really thought through how the world works very well. You know, I started reading about investing about three or four or five months ago. And the reason I did is because someone challenged me to start looking at the people who are managing my retirement fund. Because if you look at the stock market over the past few years, the stock market, for example, has done about, I don't know, between 20 and 30%. Just if you didn't do anything, you would have made 20% by putting your money into an index fund. Something that just mirrors what the stock market's doing. I have a mutual fund manager, which I'm guessing many of you do. You just give your money to somebody, right? And I started looking at this guy's performance over the past three years. It was negative 15%. So of course, what am I thinking? This guy is shafting me. He is taking my money and he's completely losing it. And I was angry. And I've every right to be angry. But guess what? I had no choice. Why? Because in the world of finances, he is my representative. You know, if you're a white American, I don't suggest you go on a vacation to Baghdad. Why? Because we walk down the streets of Baghdad. There's a very good chance that I'm saying soldiers would round you up and throw you into jail. And of course, you would get to jail and you would say, I never bombed Baghdad. I never did anything wrong. I don't hate Iraqis. And what would they say to you? You are guilty of bombing Baghdad by virtue of the fact that you are an American. You see, all of life is arranged in these sort of federal headship, these situations where you are represented by someone else and you have absolutely no choice about it. And you know why that is? Because that's the work and wolf of creation. That when Adam came, you are represented by Adam and you had no choice about it. And I know that's terrible, but that's the way it is. I don't know what else to tell you. Now the only thing that's good about this is the fact that there's a chance to be represented by someone else. He says you're represented by Adam because then Adam all sinned, but he throws in this line. He says, Adam, what does he say? He says he was the type of the one who was to come. That you're represented by Adam and you're thinking, man, I really am bad off because I'm represented by Adam. But introducing Jesus, he just gives you this little taste. That Jesus is the type of the one to come. What does he mean by that? That Jesus will be your representative. That Jesus is the one who will come and Jesus will be the representative of new humanity. If Adam is representative of old humanity, by birth you're represented by Adam. That Jesus comes along and there's a chance for you to be represented by Jesus. So let's look at what that means as we move along. Look at Adam and Jesus contrasted the next verses. Verse 15, he says, or Adam and Jesus contrasted, but the gift is not let the trespass in verse 15. For the many died by the trespass of one man, how much more did God's grace and the gift that came by the grace of one man? Jesus Christ overflowed to the many. He's beginning to compare Adam and Jesus and he says, the gift is not like the trespass. What was Adam's trespass like in the garden? Adam's trespass in the garden was an act of defiant, self-reliance. God said, Adam, do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil or else you'll die. And what did Adam do? He ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He just simply defied God. You know Lewis, when he talks about this, says this is nothing more than nothing less than Adam thinking he was too big for his boots. So Adam defied God and Jesus comes along. What is the gift like? If the trespass does defiant, self-reliance, the gift is obedient, self-sacrifice. The Jesus comes along and he is completely obedient, but he also is completely voluntary. You see, Jesus was a ranger. If you know anything about the army, if you know, rangers, rangers is all a voluntary organization and they have this saying that goes like this. Suicide, it's a Latin phrase. However, everything started to hit the fan in a ranger battalion and people started to get squirrely. They would look at each other and say, Suicide Ranger, you volunteered for this. And when Jesus came, things got hard. Remember who's in the garden? And he said, Father, if there's any way that you can take this cup for me, what did God say to Jesus? He said, Suicide Ranger. You volunteered for this. You see, when Adam was defiant and disobedient, Jesus was completely obedient, but completely self-sacrificing. If you've ever read Milton's Paradise Lost in Book 3, remember God comes to the angels in the heavenly chorus and he says, Man has sinned, who will stand on his behalf? And the beautiful line says, in all the heavenly choirs stood mute. And man was doomed to experience God's justice where it not for the Son of God stepping forth. And you get this picture of all the angels cowering before God, who is going to stand on man's behalf? And the angel stepped backwards in the Son of God steps forward, Jesus. And he says, Father on me let death wreck all his rage. You see, Jesus volunteered to become your representative, but to be your representative means he had to undo everything that the first Adam did. And to undo everything that the first Adam did meant that he had to be obedient and he had to be obedient unto the cross. He had to die. He had to experience all of your sinfulness and my sinfulness in and of his own body. And he did that voluntarily. That's the difference between the trespass and the gift. The consequences are also different. If you look at Adam's sin, what did Adam's sin bring to all people? Death and condemnation. And what is Jesus one act of righteousness bring to all people? The text says that at the gift brings justification. Again, the gift of God is not like the results of one man's sin. The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. But when Adam's sin, remember what did God say on the day you eat of it, you will surely die. And from that one thing, all of us are guilty by virtue of the fact we're related to Adam and by virtue of the fact that the things we do before God. And what he says of grace is that first of all, grace is much bigger than the sin. Because he said it took one sin to bring condemnation to all people, but he says after many sins, after a whole lifetime, a whole millennia of sin, grace comes and grace still defeats sin. Because it's infinitely bigger than the trespass. But also he says that grace brings justification. What is justification? This is one of the most important doctrines in the whole Bible. Justification is simply this. Justification means that if you trust Jesus, God looks at you and he declares you one time and for all time innocent. Never to hold your sins against you. That's what justification is. You are made just. The God takes your paperwork, which is completely dirty. It's completely, think about this. If every lie, just let's deal with lying. If every lie that you were ever told was put on paper, how many volumes would that take? And when God pulls out the story of Tommy Allen's life and he looks at it, instead of seeing every bad thing I have ever done, what does he see? It says just. He's innocent. He's completely innocent. That's what justification is. And what we have here is Adam's guilt was imputed to you. It was given to you. It was credited to your account. But when you trust Jesus, what do you get there? You get the righteousness of Jesus imputed to you. You get the righteousness of Christ. Every good thing that Jesus has ever done is credited to your account one time. And that's it. And because of that God, we'll never hold your sins against you. That's sort of like the anchor that holds you fast. Now you're free to struggle. You don't struggle to have a relationship with God. Now you have a relationship with God and now you struggle to figure out what that means. And if we saw the consequences, what were the results? It says that Adam's sin, death-rained. What does he mean by that? Simply this, that because of sin, death is your king. Because of sin, sin is your king. Sin is the thing that rules you. Some of you here, I know are not Christians and you think, you know, the reason I don't trust Jesus, the reason I don't follow Jesus is because I don't want to have to obey Jesus. I don't want to put myself under his authority, under his rule. Now here's the sad thing. If you're not going to be under Jesus rule, you're going to be under someone else's rule. You're going to be under the rule of your own sinfulness. And ask yourself this, what is it that governs your life? What is it that rules you? What is the default thing that you fall back on when everything in your life goes bad? Is it your sexuality? Is it relationships? Is it your money? Is it making it? Now the beautiful thing here is he says because of sin, death-rained, but now the most wonderful thing you would think he would in the comparison, he would say, now because of grace, grace reigns. But he doesn't say that. He says because of sin, death-rained, but because of grace, you reign. You reign through Jesus. What does he mean by that? It's simply this that Christianity is a religion which takes slaves and makes them into kings. Why is that? Because whatever God thinks of your representative, he thinks of you. And if Jesus is a king, then guess what that makes you? Or a queen. You know, I told you a few weeks ago a story from the little princess and I saved the best one for today. Remember in the little princess, Sarah Crew is this girl who is completely, she was a little princess. She was her father's pride and joy and he went off to the war and everyone thought he was killed and she was in a boarding school. And as soon as news came that her father was no longer alive, the evil housemaid and Miss Minchin took Sarah and she took away everything she owned and put her and made her live in the attic. And so but Sarah never gave up. Remember Sarah was completely hopeful all the time. And one time she was having a struggle with Minchin up in the attic and Minchin, the evil Minchin came to her and she said, Sarah, when are you going to give up on all your fairy tales? Don't you know that your father is dead and he's never coming back? And you would think Sarah would begin to cry but she didn't. Sarah looked at Minchin and she said, do you know what your problem is? And Minchin said, what would that be? And Sarah said, your problem is that your father never called you his prince and Minchin stormed out of the room and she slammed the door and as soon as she got to the other side of the door, she broke down cry. You see if you were governed by anything else for Jesus, it cannot and it will not call you its princess. It will call you its slave. But if you are governed by Jesus, if God is your father, God comes to you and he says, you are now my prince, you are my princess, you are my pride and joy, you are the thing that completely and utterly delights me because of what Jesus has done on your behalf. Because I am so utterly and completely and delightfully thrilled that my son Jesus and now you have his record so now I am completely and I am utterly delighted with you. And the problem with most Christians is they go through life and they don't have any clue that they are now a prince, that they are king. If they understand the gospel, they have trusted Jesus, that they have the complete utter delight of God. And if you have the complete utter delight of God, what does that mean for how you live your life? What does that mean for your struggles? What does that mean when you try and gut it out every single day? Simply means this, you don't have to anymore. You don't have to. Let's look at the final thing here. Adam compares Jesus. Adam and Jesus are compared and the comparison is the one act in verses 18 and through 21. Jesus consequently as a result of the one trespass was condemnation for all men. So also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men. And what is the comparison here? The comparison is in the one act. Through one act of disobedience, all men deserve condemnation. But through one act of Jesus, all men receive justification. Now just so you think Paul is an universalist here, that you have to sort of make this decision to follow Jesus. You've got to qualify the word all here. And what does Paul probably mean here, if you look at in the context of this book, was probably all who are related to Adam by birth received condemnation. Who is it that is related to Adam by birth? Raise your hand, everyone. Now who is it that is related to Jesus by birth? It's only the person who has trusted him. You are related to Jesus by birth, the Holy Spirit has come and he has given you a new heart and he has opened your eyes and he has enabled you to see Jesus and you turn from your sin and you embrace him. That is how you know if you are related to Jesus by birth. And if you are related to Jesus by birth, you are completely innocent. You are completely justified and God will never hold your sin against you. Which I think is why Paul adds this little section at the end. You wonder why Paul throws in this verse which seems completely out of context. In verse 19 or in verse 20, he says, all of a sudden he says the law was added so that trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more. Why did all of a sudden when Paul is comparing Jesus and Adam, all of a sudden throw in this little sentence about the law? That the law was added so that sin might increase. And I think it's simply for this, if you are an unbeliever, Paul is wanting you to hear that if you have any hope that the law is going to be your salvation, give it up. You don't have a choice. You either have Adam as your representative before God or you have Jesus as your representative before God. And what he means by that is let's assume that you are a good person. Let's assume that you never did anything wrong your whole life. You still have Adam's sin to deal with. You've still got to deal with that. And so Paul says even if you could do everything, even if you could follow the law, you've still got to deal with Adam's sin. But really what does the law do, it shows you who you are. The law was added so that trespass might increase. You look at the law of God and what that ought to do is it ought to drive you to Jesus. It ought to drive you to see who is my representative before God because I need one. So you ask yourself is Jesus your representative or is Adam your representative? Have you trusted Jesus or have you not trusted Jesus? That's what you have to deal with today. That's what you have to deal with if you are a Christian. I think Paul adds this here for Christians as well because most Christians, what do you think after you have trusted Jesus? What's your job now? Most Christians say okay, I've trusted Jesus. Now I've got to gut it out and keep my nose clean because at the end of the age God still might not let me in. And Paul says where sin has increased, grace has increased all the more. So if you're a Christian, what this means is the law is not your taskmaster anymore. Now the law is the thing by which you grow and grow more like Christ and it has God who enables you to do that. Your job is no longer to gut it out but your job is to trust Jesus. Is that where you are? Think about that. Let me pray. Dear Jesus, we pray that you would in fact communicate to our hearts what it means that you are our representative, that you are the one who stands before God all the time and claims us for your own. We praise you for that and we thank you for that. In your name, amen. Every week at Grace Seattle.