Download Rom 5:12-19

Rom 5:12-19
Dear Christian Friends and Fellow Believers:
On the 28 of June 1914, a Serbian named Gavrilo Princip
assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife heir to
the throne of the Austrian empire, the old Hapsburg Empire
of Europe and triggered the beginning of World War I.
Austria backed by Germany declared war of Serbia; followed
by France and Russia declaring war on Germany and
Austria.
The action of this one man caused a domino effect ultimately
touched the lives of everyone in the world at the beginning of
the 20th century and ultimately laid the foundation for World
War II.
Our Old Testament lesson today reviews the action of the
first man created by God at the beginning of time. He
sinned. He disobeyed God just once. His action that day
brought sin into the world and all of its ugly consequences.
But on the same day that Adam sinned, a second Adam was
promised, one whose actions would also affect all mankind,
his name was Jesus Christ. Let us mediate on our text using
the theme: Sinful in Adam - Righteous in Christ! 1) All
people are guilty because of Adam’s one sin. 2) All people
are declared righteousness because of Christ’s obedience.
1) Never underestimate the power of sin. One sin has the
power to corrupt a whole race of people through and
through. Adam’s fall was not a slow decline. Just one sin, a
sin that seems to be small from a human point of view
changed Adam’s nature. It changed the whole world. Now
neither Adam nor his descendents could do anything good;
Adam had lost his free will; he had lost the image of God; he
was no longer righteous and blameless in God’s sight and all
Adam had done was to disobey God once: He ate
something God had forbidden. Behold the terrible power of
sin.
What Adam did affected the entire human race after him. It
is like Adam was a representative of all people. When he
sinned, it was as though everyone had sinned. And God
condemned them all, including you and me. Adam didn’t
corrupt the human race through a lifetime of sinning, from
God’s point of view he corrupted the world through one sin.
The result: universal guilt for everyone.
People after Adam were sinners now even if, strictly
speaking, they didn’t break a direct command of God as
Adam did. The Law had not yet been given on Mount Sinai;
nevertheless, people died because they all sinned. Death
follows sin, sin and death are closely tied together. Can’t
have one without the other. Cain died, but so did Able. The
people of Noah’s day died in the flood but so also did Noah
and his family eventually. All people died, they died because
they were sinners; they all died physically and so will we.
Here we are not really talking about actual sin, we are
emphasizing the power and guilt of sin. From the moment of
conception people are infected with the germ of sin and it
holds them fast in its grip. They cannot break free. Even in
the womb they are subject to death because of sin. And
they will remain subject to death until the grave claims them.
What Adam did affected the entire human race including all
yet to be born. “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 sinned.”
And death here does not just mean physical death, it also
means spiritual death in hell, Through Adam’s sin every
one of us became prisoners of hell like Satan and the evil
angels.
Just like each child in a family is included in their father’s will
and each receives a share of the estate, we all have
received this damning legacy form our father Adam. And we
have no choice in the matter. It all happened before we were
ever born.
Some might say “Send Adam to hell, not us.” But Adam’s
sin rendered the entire human race “unable not to sin.” We
are under the power of sin the moment we are conceived. If
we demand Adam to go to hell; we are demanding that each
of us must also go to hell since we have the same fallen
nature as Adam While sin is not a part of our essence, it so
thoroughly infects our nature that we, since Adam’s fall,
cannot not sin.
As one hymn writer has said, “All mankind fell in Adam’s fall,
One common sin infects us all; From son to son the bane
descends, and overall the curse impends.”
This doctrine of Original Sin is so offensive to natural man,
he resists it every step of the way. How can God condemn
all humans because one man ate a piece of fruit he shouldn’t
have. But at the same time it is equally offensive to natural
man that God should forgive all people because one man
died on Calvary’s cross.
Our text is not reasonable to the human mind; it is not logical
but it is revealed in God’s Word and is comprehended by
faith. The doctrine of Original Sin makes people hate God
even more but that in itself is enough to convince us that by
nature we deserve hell.
How important it is to baptize little babies as soon as
possible after they are born. They desperately need the
forgiveness they have in Christ connected to the Baptism.
What a tragedy for millions of babies around the world to be
aborted in the womb each year. While it is impossible to say
for certain what happens to babies who die before they are
baptized, we have no right to assume that all babies are
innocent before God and will automatically go to heaven
especially in the case where their parents are not believers.
No one by nature is innocent; all are guilty; all are under the
power of Adam’s first sin. “For just as through the
disobedience of the one man the many (that is the all) were
made sinners; so also through the obedience of the one man
(Jesus Christ), the many (that is the all) will be made
righteous.
2) Yes, the action of one man started WWI. And Adam’s
one sin affected the entire human race, but it is also true that
the actions of the one man Jesus Christ also affected the
entire human race. Because of the obedience of Jesus
Christ all people are declared righteous in God’s sight.
Jesus is sometimes referred to as the second Adam in the
Bible. Not that Jesus is therefore equal to Adam. That is not
taught in the Bible; Jesus is true God, Adam was only a
mortal. But what Jesus did far outweighs what Adam did.
The gift of righteousness from Jesus is so far greater than
the reign of death caused by Adam, that no one can blame
God if they are not saved. There is more than enough
righteousness to go around.
The work of Jesus as our substitute made Paul so happy. It
was the antidote to original sin. Yes, although the entire
human race was condemned in Adam but it was also
declared justified in God’s sight for Jesus sake. All of
mankind is made righteous in Christ from God’s point of
view.
Jesus did die for the sins of the entire world, did he not?
Jesus kept God’s law for the whole world, did he not? All
those who by the work of the Holy Spirit have come to
realize that Jesus has paid for the sins of the world and
therefore their sins, have made the fact of their justification in
God’s sight their own. Those who believe that Jesus died
only for the sins of believers have not understood the words
of our text and have robbed themselves of the comfort that
could be theirs through the doctrine of universal justification.
Jesus did die for the many, that is, the all. Adam infected all;
Jesus earned righteousness for all but that does not mean
all will be saved. Those who have no faith in the obedience
of Christ as our substitute don’t benefit from it. Universalism
is not a teaching of God’s word. Unbelief forfeits the
blessings that Christ has won for everybody.
While we were made sinners in Adam, we were made
righteous in Christ. Both are true. We had nothing to do
with either but praise God that the imparted righteousness of
Christ is so much greater that the imputed sin of Adam. The
results mean life for us as Paul says. In Christ we receive
more blessings than our fathers’ lost. Praise be to Jesus our
substitute, our representative, our Savior. Amen.