Romans 5:12-21; Much More

Jason Sterling March 22, 2026 Faith Presbyterian Church Birmingham, AL Bulletin

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Transcript

Reading Romans 5 And Purpose

SPEAKER_00 0:23

If you have a copy of God's Word, turn with me. Romans chapter 5 this morning. Romans chapter 5. It's in your bulletin. It'll also be on the screen behind me in just a moment. But we've been working our way through the book of Romans, and we've been talking a lot about justification. And we talked about that last week. And we looked at the benefits of justification, peace with God, hope in the midst of suffering, the certainty of God's love through the cross. And this morning we come to uh it's a difficult passage, and you'll see as we read. Uh, so it will require some attention and engagement on your end, but it's a very critical passage to understanding the gospel and understanding the book of Romans. Paul wants to show us how these benefits of justification that we learned about last week, how they become a reality in our own lives. And it all comes down to two men. You'll see what I mean as I read. Follow along with me. This is the word of God. Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned. For sin indeed was in the world before the law was given. But sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come. But this free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man's trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for many. And the free gift is not like the result of that one man's sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. For if, because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through that one man, Jesus Christ. Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by that one man's disobedience, that many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience, the many will be made righteous. Now the law came in in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness, leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Let's pray and let's ask for God to help us with this passage. Let's pray together. Father, we do need your help. Come and bring uh clarity to this passage. And we're here. You've brought us here, we're listening. I pray that you would open our ears, give us receptive hearts, give us attentive hearts. And we want to leave here changed. And so give us something that we can lock on to this morning, that we can take with us, that would go deep into our hearts and change us. Show us the Lord Jesus Christ, show us how good and glorious the gospel is. In Jesus' name, amen. When something breaks in your house, you fix it. You have a hole in your drywall, you patch it. If you have a window that's broken or cracked, you replace it. The goal of repair is to restore something to its original condition. But repair is not renovation. A renovation doesn't just fix what is broken, it transforms the whole thing. It transforms the space into something better. Think about it, if you've done any sort of home renovations, a new layout, you're knocking walls out, new finishes, a new function, and new flow of your house. You don't walk in and say, oh, everything's back to normal. No, you walk into a renovation and you're like, whoa, this is completely different. That's exactly what the Apostle Paul's point is in this passage. Three times he says Christ's work was much more than Adam's sin. The gospel is not a repair job. The gospel is renovation. Jesus didn't come to get you back to the garden. He came to transform you into something completely different, something better. And Paul here draws this massive contrast between two men: Adam, whose sin brought death into the world, and Jesus, whose sacrifice brings life. The question this morning that we're going to look at how can one man's sacrifice be enough to overcome the disaster that one man's sin created? How can one man's sacrifice be enough to overcome the disaster that one man's sin created? Paul's answer is grace doesn't just match sin, it completely takes it over. It completely overwhelms it. Three things this morning in this passage: the problem, the plenty, the parallel. Problem, plenty, parallel. That's the map. That's where we're headed. Let's look at our first heading, the problem. Look at verse 12. This verse is packed. Follow along with me. Paul walks us through three stages here. First, look at what he says: sin entered the world through one man's sin, Adam. Second, death entered the world because of sin. And then lastly, death spread to everyone because everyone sins. And you might think, well, wait a minute, when did we all sin? Well, look at what Paul says. Death spread to all men because all sinned. Past tense. Not saying all are sinning. All will sin, all sinned. In one past act, we all sinned in Adam. And that might sound a little strange to our ears. How can we be guilty for something that Adam did and someone else did? Well, this is a very important doctrine, uh, and it's an important doctrine for understanding the gospel, and it's called the doctrine of federal headship. Adam wasn't just the first man, he was our representative. He stood in for the entire human race, and when he fell, we fell with him. And again, I know this is hard. We live in the West, and we're very individualistic, and we're think to train, I'm thinked to train. I rise and fall on my own. I can do it. The Bible doesn't work that way and doesn't talk that way. And Paul, he knows that this is going to sound strange, and so he pauses. Look at verses 13 and 14. People died, that's what he's saying. People died between Adam and Moses before the law was even given. They weren't breaking specific commandments like Adam did, but they still died. Why? Because they were guilty of Adam's sin. Death reigned over them, not because of what they did necessarily, but because of who their representative was and what he did. And Adam wasn't just, and I think this is important for us to understand, wasn't just some random guy. God created Adam. Holy God, righteous God created him to be our representative. He had everything. And I say this because oftentimes people say, Well, if I were there, I would have done better. No, he had everything. No inherited guilt, no corruption, the perfect environment, and only one command to keep. And he failed. He couldn't do it. Adam, in other words, was our best shot. And if he failed, if Adam couldn't do it, we can't do it either. And before you dismiss this whole idea of a representative, I want you to realize that we do it and actually believe it because we do it every single day. We act and relate to this all the time. Let me give you a few of examples. If you're watching March Madness this weekend, maybe your team was playing. Maybe you watched hockey in the U.S. win the gold. And what do we say when our teams win? We're talking on the phone or talking to somebody, we say, we won. We did it. You didn't do anything. We were sitting on the couch eating chips. Now your team won. You we didn't step foot on the ice. You didn't step foot on the court. Or maybe that doesn't relate to you. Think about an election. After an election, we say we won. Well, you just voted. Your representative won. You see, that's how representation works. And maybe, well, that's not fair. And you're right. If we think about Adam, if that's where the story ended, but the story doesn't end there. And that's Paul's whole point here. The same principle, and this is so important, the same principle that condemns you and condemns all of us is the same principle that can save you. And that's what Paul's getting at here. And so, so what? What does this mean for you this morning? It means that you sin because you're a sinner. Not you're a sinner because you sin. Let me say it another way. The problem is not your track record, the problem is your representative. And we get that backwards all the time. I think, or we think, I mean, if I can just clean it up, I can just get my life together and quit messing up, I'd be okay with God. The problem is we're guilty because we are born in Adam. We inherited his corruption. You didn't choose it, but you can't escape it. And we spend our whole lives trying to fix our lives and say, if I could just get my act together, I'd be okay. You cannot fix your representative by an improved performance. Or maybe this doesn't resonate because you're not worried at all because your record seems pretty good. Maybe you think I've got a decent record, but this is saying your problem goes deeper than your behavior. If Adam is your representative, which the Bible says, then pretty good isn't good enough. And so thank goodness that the story doesn't end there. If we had to stand on our own and be our own representative before God, we would have no defense. But God doesn't work that way. He deals with humanity through a representative. Our first representative failed miserably, but we can have a second representative, a better one who won't fail us. Look at verse 14. Who is a pattern, Adam was a pattern of the one to come. And so this first point is we need a new representative. And Paul is about to show us one that God provides that doesn't just replace what Adam lost, but he is about to show us one who delivers so much more than Adam ever could. And that's the second point, the plenty. Look at verse 15. But the free gift is not like the trespass. And so Paul is thinking, okay, Adam messed it up, Jesus can fix it. Maybe we're thinking that one for one. And it's as if he immediately stops and says, the gift overwhelms the problem. And that's his argument. If Adam's sin caused so much damage, then Christ's gift does so much more good. Look at verses 16 and 17 with me, and I need you to track with me through these verses, and we'll try to work it out and bring some clarity to what Paul is saying. Look at verse 16. One sin brought condemnation. And so you would think that more sins brought more condemnation, like an interest compounding on a debt. Adam commits one sin, the whole human race is condemned. And so when we start piling on thousands more of our lies and our selfishness and our rebellion, surely the condemnation will get worse and worse and worse. And then Paul flips it. And he says the gift doesn't just cancel Adam's one sin. You ready for this? It swallows the whole pile. Every sin that you've ever committed. One gift, intimate reach. That's the amazing reversal of the gospel. We expect escalating judgment. And instead, we get overwhelming grace. It gets better. Look at verse 17. Death reigned through Adam. Paul doesn't say life reigns as the opposite. He says we reign in life. Before death was the king, and we were the slaves. In Christ, we don't just get a kinder master, we become kings ourselves. You don't just get merely get your debt canceled. That's awesome. You get a crown. You don't just survive and get back to neutral. You reign. And this is the key. Christ doesn't merely reverse what Adam did, it completely overpowers it. Doesn't just, grace doesn't patch a hole, it tears the wall down and builds something better. Rod Rosenblatt was a Lutheran professor and pastor. He was pretty popular. He was on White Horse Inn, if you're familiar with that radio show years ago. And he tells this story right before he died, which was a couple of years ago, about a time when he wrecked his car when he was 16. He had been drinking. All his friends had been drinking. After the accident, Rod called his dad, and the first thing his dad says is, Are you okay? And Rod said, Yeah, I'm fine. He's terrified. He confessed that he'd been drinking that night. He gets home. He goes straight to his father's study. He's embarrassed and he's ashamed and guilty. And his father, at the end of it all, his father looks at him and just simply asks one question. He said, How about tomorrow we go get you a new car? We hear that story. And Rod says every time he tells that story, people get angry at the response. They think, that's not fair. You wrecked the car, you don't deserve a car. You lose a car. Justice says you pay for what you broke. But you see, this is what Paul is getting at. This is exactly what he's showing us. Rod's father didn't just forgive the one wrecked car, he gave him a new one. Overflow. Abundance. Grace doing much more than justice ever could. And Rod says what that grace actually did in his life. He said, When my father spoke words of grace to me in that moment that I knew I deserved wrath, listen to this. He said, I came alive. I came alive. And at the end of his life, as he's looking back, he says, I became a Christian in that moment. Grace, he says, didn't turn me into a drunk. It turned me into someone who loved God more and loved my father more. That is overwhelming grace. And that's what overwhelming grace does. It doesn't make you careless, it makes you come alive. It doesn't just cancel the debt, it makes you want to live differently. Paul keeps coming back much more, much more. Because the problem is most of us often live like grace is much less. We live like one more sin might tip the scale. Or like grace barely is going to cover what it is that we've done. Are you living this morning like you have much more grace or barely enough? And maybe you think this morning, well, you don't know what I've done. And you don't know how many times I've failed. I have crossed the line that grace cannot reach. Look at verse 20. Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. Not grace tried to keep up. Not grace barely covered it. Grace abounded all the more. Your sin increased, grace increased more. You piled on more failures, grace piled on higher. You cannot outsend the grace of God. You're not standing on the edge of grace wondering if there's enough. You know what? You are standing in a flood of grace that keeps rising. You don't have barely enough grace. You have, Paul says, much more. Lastly, the parallel. Now he shows us how Jesus is the same. One representative's actions affect everyone united to him. Look at verses 18 and 19. Follow the logic with me. Both representatives work the same way. One man acts, everyone united to him gets the result. So you see it in these verses. Adam's one trespass, condemnation for all. Christ, one act of righteousness, justification for all. Adam's disobedience, many sinners. Christ's obedience, many made righteous. And notice here when Paul calls Christ's work one act of righteousness or obedience, he's not talking just about the cross. He's talking about Jesus' entire life. From the moment of his birth to his death, every temptation resisted, every command kept, every moment of perfect faithfulness that Adam failed at and that we fell at every single day, all of that counts as yours. And so now we're right back at justification if you've been keeping up with the series. Paul can't quit talking about it. God removes your sin and he gives you his righteousness. Think about it like those group projects in school. You either love those or you hated them in high school or college, and you love them if someone else did all the work, and you hated them if you were the person doing all of the work. Think about, you know, you walk in and you get uh show up to the presentation, you haven't been keeping up, you've missed all the group meetings, you don't even know the slides, your name is on it, but you didn't do the research, you didn't write the paper, you didn't build the argument, and then one of your teammates stands up as representative of the team and they answer every single question perfectly that the professor has, nails every detail, and the professor hands out the grades, and you get the same one as they do. You didn't earn it, you didn't deserve it, but you were on the same team as someone who did all the work. They represented you, and their performance became your grade. You did nothing, they did everything. That's the gospel. That is exactly what Jesus does for you. And we have this tendency, though, in that moment to think, yes, Jesus, you got me 90%, but I got to do something. That last 10%, I've got to be more consistent, my effort, my spiritual disciplines. Friends, representation does not work that way. You can't be a little bit in Adam and a little bit in Jesus. When you're united to your representative, you get it all. You get everything they've earned or all that they've lost. There's no blending of the two, blending of the grade. Adam is your representative and you get all of his condemnation, or Jesus is your representative and you get all of his righteousness. And the moment you try to add something, you're back to representing yourself and you lose the gospel. And here's what you need to understand this morning as we close. You cannot escape representation. You're either in Adam or in Christ. There is no third option. There's no middle ground, there's no opting out. You're born in Adam. That's your default. And his trespass is your condemnation, his disobedience made you a sinner, death reigns over you. But God, in his goodness, offers you a second representative, Jesus Christ, whose righteousness and obedience saves you and makes you righteous and leads you to eternal life. And so, how do you make the move from Adam to Christ? Faith. You believe. And at the moment that you trust Christ as your representative, at that moment, God unites you to him. And everything that is true of Jesus then becomes true of you. And God looks at you and sees Jesus his representative. And so if you've never trusted Christ, the question's simple this morning. Will you keep Adam as your representative? Or will you open up your hands and receive Jesus? Two humanities, Adam or Christ. Which humanity do you belong to this morning? The answer to that question determines everything. Let's pray. Father, thank you for the gift of Jesus. Thank you for his overwhelming grace. Would you forgive us for doubting that your grace is enough to cover our sin? In Holy Spirit, help us to trust Jesus as our representative. Give us faith. There's someone here that does not believe in you. Would you give them eyes to see and hearts to receive and open up their hand and trust you to be their representative? We ask that you would do this in Jesus' name. Amen.