Christ The Last Adam

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Hello, my name is Paul, and I am the voiceover for a new ministry provided to you by Jim Pugh at God is Government called Your Daily Bread, taken from Christ's teaching of the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6, verse 11. This is a daily devotion ministry focused not only on uplifting Scripture, but Scripture that will grow your spiritual connection with Christ. We hope that you receive these devotions to uplift you, encourage you, but most importantly, advance your knowledge base of the Holy Scriptures. Today's focus discussion will be on understanding Christ the last Adam. No one really, from a human viewpoint, is going to come up with the idea that something or somebody else does is going to make me right with God. The scheme of man-made religion always says: if I'm going to be right with God, there's got to be something that I do. This is the religion of human achievement. We often call it salvation by works or works righteousness. By what a person does, they achieve favor with God. The message of the Book of Romans from beginning to end is that access to God and forgiveness of sin is not something to which you make a contribution at all. It is something that is provided by one person for all. Now that's not an easy thing for people to accept. The question would come up as to how can what one person does affect so many. Two men, and one in particular, have made the most monumental impact on human life. Two men have affected the whole of the human race for time and eternity, more than all others combined and multiplied by an infinite number. Two men in a single act have made a greater impact on the world than all other people, and all other acts combined and multiplied infinitely. You say who are these two men? Adam and Christ. Romans 5 12-14 says, Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned, for until the law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who is a type of him who was to come. Hmm. What he's talking about here is the impact of one man, Adam, on everybody. And he says the fact that that one man, Adam, by one act affected everybody, is a type or a picture of Christ by one act affecting everybody. Now I want you to understand this point because it is at the very heart of the Christian faith. The truth of verse 12 can be divided into four parts. I want you to take them very carefully with me. Number one, Paul says sin entered the world through one man. Notice verse 12. Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world. Here, my dear friends, is the bare root of human history. Right here, the Holy Spirit is giving you the key to unlock history. It's been put in your hand here. Here is the explanation for the world the way it is. Here is the explanation for why things are like they are, because sin entered into the human realm through Adam. By one man, sin entered the world. That man, obviously, is Adam, named in verse 14. Through that one man, sin came into the world. Now listen. Sin entered the world through that one man. It wasn't invented by that one man, it wasn't originated by that one man. You remember Jesus said the devil sinneth from the beginning. There was sin prior to Adam. Lucifer, that great son of the morning, that great archangel who fell because of his pride, was the first and original sinner. But sin entered the world, the cosmos of man's existence, the system of creation as we know it, through one man. He introduced sin to mankind, he became the agent of the devil. It says through one man's sin, singular, not sins. Not all the acts of sin came in through Adam. He didn't invent all the acts of sin, but the principle came. The nature, the disposition, the innate corrupting element entered into the human stream. For Adam was mankind, he was all the mankind there was, along with Eve. And once the sin principle came to dwell in him, he would then pass it on to all of his procreation. Just as all the offspring of Adam have human characteristics like eyes and ears, and hands and feet, and nose and mouth and internal organs, so they have the sin principle as well. That takes us to the second point in this verse. Death entered the world through sin. Point one, sin entered the world through Adam. Point two, death entered the world through sin. That's what it says, death through sin. God said you eat, and the day you eat, you will die. And the death principle became operative in Adam and Eve, the day they ate. If they had not eaten, they would have no doubt been translated into the presence of God without experiencing death. And the notable exceptions of Enoch and Elijah would have been the rule for everybody. But because Adam sinned, death came. Now listen to this. Death is not natural to the constitution of man as created in God's image. Death is an invader, a usurper, an intruder. Death is the penal consequence of sin. Sin destroys. Ezekiel 18 says in verse 4, The soul that sinneth, it shall die. In Romans 6.23, the wages of sin is death. Death became the penalty for sin. And this is the direct and unfailing fruit of the poison that entered Adam's heart. Solidarity and guilt implies solidarity and penalty, and so it is appointed unto man once to what? To die. Everybody dies. The principle is there, and then he will inevitably die. All this because of what Adam did. I know what you're thinking by now. You're saying, if I'd have been there, I wouldn't have sinned. So why am I responsible? Why do I get the effect of Adam's act? How is it that I can sin in Adam when I wasn't even alive, and then become guilty for what I supposedly did there when I really wasn't there, and have to pay the consequences for what I supposedly did when I wasn't there? And the only answer Paul ever gives is this. Well then, how could you die in Christ and rise in Christ and be given eternal life in Christ when you weren't there either? So how can the death of Jesus Christ include you and the resurrection of Jesus Christ include you and impute to you eternal righteousness and give you eternal life if you weren't there, really? How can I be held responsible for something somebody else did? You have to ask the same question about Christ. How can I be blessed by something somebody else did? You know the answer? I don't. That's just the way God did it. And he hasn't told me any more than he told you in the Bible, but that's the way he did it. Adam sinned, sin entered the human stream. Sin entered the human stream, death entered the human stream. How extensive was it? Death spread to everybody, because everybody was in Adam's loins when he sinned. That's the point. It's an incredible thing to think about. One man, one act, unbelievable consequences. Unbelievable. And by the way, God could have said, hey, I give up on you. I'm not going to provide any salvation for you. He did with the angels, you know? When Lucifer sinned, he didn't sin by himself. He took a third of the angels with him, and God provided no redemption and no salvation and no recovery, and consigned them to eternal damnation in the lake of fire, with no recourse. With man, God said, Well, with the angels who sinned with Lucifer, there's no hope. But with the men who sinned in Adam, I'm going to set about a redemptive plan. And he did. And in verse 13 it says, The sin was not imputed when there is no law. In other words, you can't charge people. You can't charge people with a crime unless there's a law that says that what they did is a crime. Right? So until you have a written law, you can't be charging people with sin. But nevertheless, he says, sin was in the world. Even when you couldn't overtly charge a man of sin because the law hadn't been written, God hadn't spelled it out. So you couldn't come to somebody if you were a prophet and say, I condemn you before God because you have violated his law. The guy's going to say, What law? What law are you talking about? And so there is a you go back into the Old Testament and you ask yourself, there's certain behavior by certain people. That's very strange. Why does God let them live? Why doesn't the community of believing people come down on those people and judge them? And why don't the godly people come down on these people and do something? And you have to remember that it was difficult to impute or to charge people with an offense before the law of offenses was written and spelled out. So history proves that, that sin and death pass to everybody because everybody died, even before there was law, which meant that sin doesn't need the law to exist, and where there is sin there is death. And he further says in verse 14, Death reigned even over those who hadn't sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam. Now what does that mean? Very simply, Adam sinned, listen to this, in direct violation and disobedience of a specific command from God. Right? God said do not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Don't do it. And Adam did it. And so somebody's going to say, well sure, Adam died because he directly violated a command. But he says death reigned between Adam and Moses over people who didn't even directly violate a command of God. Because not everybody in the world, during that period from Adam to Moses, as the world was being populated, not everybody in the world knew the command of God. Not everybody heard the command of God. Most didn't. Most didn't have a written law from God. But death still reigned. Why? Because it was the sin principle, the corrupt nature in man that was killing him. And that was the proof that he had received a sinful nature at his birth, which was the proof that it was being passed down from the original sinner, Adam. So his whole point is this all of human history, from Adam on, before the law and after the law, all of human history, whether you sin in direct violation of a command of God, or whether you're an ignorant pagan who doesn't have any idea what God said, all of human history will reveal the fact that man is a sinner at the very deepest level of his nature, because everybody dies. Everybody. What a great statement! How much greater is this gift, how much more wonderful is this? They're different. What Adam caused was terrible, what Christ brought was wonderful. They're different in every way, they're different in their essence. It was Adam's disobedience that cursed everybody. It is Christ's obedience that brings salvation. In verse 17 he says, But if by the transgression of the one death reigned through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the one, Jesus Christ. That's much more, that's much greater, much more glorious, much more far reaching. And so, beloved, we hear Paul say this. Don't be shocked when you hear me say that you have nothing to do with your salvation. You can't earn it, you can't win it, you can't do some religious gyrations that are going to appease an angry God, you can't gain access to God through your morality, your ethics, your personal honesty, you can't do anything to contribute to it. It is the work of one, Jesus Christ, who has accomplished salvation, which is granted to you by grace through faith. You have no more to do with that by way of deserving it than you have to do with your sinfulness by way of deserving that. What a perfect parallel. Whatever we are, says Paul, we are by the grace of God through the provision of one man, Jesus Christ. Thank you for joining us in this exploration of Christ the Last Adam. Until next time, remember to keep the faith, stay strong, and continue to shine your light in the world. To hear these daily devotions of your daily bread, please log on to goddessgovernment.com. Goodbye, and may your faith always lead the way.