Jesus Christ overcomes all the power of sin: 5:12-21

Recap and Background

Welcome to this second episode in Series 2. I hope that many of you will have listened to the previous episode because the two sit together very well. In Series 1, Paul has outlined his gospel: what it meant, what Jesus did on the cross, why it is so important for us, and why we need to be saved. He explained that very thoroughly in Romans chapters 1 to 4 and you can study them to work out exactly how Paul argued his case and explained the universal power of sin affecting all of the human race.

As we enter Series 2, Paul is in a different mood, a different frame of thinking. He is emphasising not just the nature of the gospel, but actually how we live our Christian lives. We looked at the magnificent things that Paul says about our situation now, in Christ, especially through looking at Romans 5:1 - 2.

“Therefore, since we’ve been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God.”

Romans 5:1-2, NIV

I explained in the last episode, that Paul was talking here about the three time dimensions of the Christian faith: the past - the moment or the time when we believed and were first saved and born again; the present - how we live our Christian life today; and then thirdly, the future - our hope for God’s glory, for eternal life, for the resurrection of our body, and for being redeemed from this world.

Let me use an example to illustrate this. Wherever I travel in the world, people are interested in football - their national team, the World Cup, the regional events, and the key leagues that operate in their countries. We follow footballers and football teams all over the world. Consider the footballer who was signed up by one of the major teams in your country. He got a six-year contract. When these things happen, all the media are there with the cameras, and everybody says very positive things about what the footballer is going to contribute to their club, and all the trophies they are hoping to win in the future. I am sure you can imagine the scenario which appears regularly in media in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and North America and in Europe. In the life of the footballer, in the past, he previously played in a small club. He signed a contract which is the moment that changed his life. Now he is playing in a top club. He suddenly becomes famous playing in a top team. We are two years into the contract and things are going well. The manager is very supportive and they are paying his wages. They are fulfilling the terms of the contract; he is scoring goals and he is contributing to the team. Sometimes he does well, sometimes he does less well like any footballer. This is his present experience. His past experience was that his life was changed when he signed that contract. His present experience now is that, although he is an imperfect footballer, he is experiencing the benefits of that contract. They are paying his wages, training him, supporting him, coaching him and encouraging him. In the future, when the contract ends and he decides to retire from football, he will receive a tremendous bonus as a sign of appreciation from his club. I am aware that not all football contracts work out this well but this is just an illustration of some of the things that Paul was trying to say. Something happened in the past that changed this footballer’s destiny; he signed a contract with a big club. Something happened in our past that changed our destiny; we entered into a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Today we live in the benefit of that. God’s grace is with us; his Holy Spirit is with us, and he is helping us along the way. Sometimes we do well in life, sometimes we do less well and we make mistakes, but he is still there with us. And in the future, when our life is over, we enter into glory. That is the message that Paul was explaining in the last passage.

The Power of Sin

In this passage, Paul begins to explain more fully something that he has spoken of earlier in the book - the power of sin. He has spoken of how this power affects everybody and how it means that, whatever revelation of God we have received - through creation, through conscience, or through God’s direct revelation through the Old Testament - because of the power of sin, we can’t respond to it fully. Paul hasn’t given us any detail about how sin came into the world, and how it spread across the human race, and what the consequences were. The way Paul writes the book of Romans is that he sometimes goes back to something that he has mentioned briefly before, and then expands it.

He did that with the gospel: in Romans 1: 16 - 17 he gave a very short statement and then in Romans 3: 21-26 he gave a much longer explanation. Earlier, in Romans 3: 9, he explained how all humanity is under the power of sin and now in this passage he is going to explain how he understands that sin came into the world and affected all of us, whatever race we are, wherever we live, whatever era of history we have lived in; we are all affected by sin. So, this is quite an important part of Paul’s explanation of the background to the gospel.

Sin Comes into the World

“Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned- To be sure sin, was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not charged against anyone’s account where there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigns from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come.”

Romans 5:12-14, NIV

Paul is describing how sin got into the human race. He names Adam - the first man created, as described in Genesis 1 and particularly in Genesis 2. We know that alongside him the first woman created was Eve. The Bible is clear about human origins. All humanity, according to the Bible, has come from Adam and Eve as the human race spread out across the earth. That story is told clearly in the Old Testament. Here Paul is interested in the question of how sin got into the world. Remember we have defined sin as living independently of God and becoming his enemy, and disobeying the things that God has commanded.

As Paul mentions sin coming into the world through one man Adam, he has in mind Adam’s wife, Eve, as well. He is thinking back to the events described in the first few chapters of Genesis. We are going to pause and think about those events. Adam was created, then Eve was created shortly after him, and they were placed in a special part of the world called the Garden of Eden. This is made clear in Genesis 2. Adam was given a particular series of commands. These are the first commands of the Bible towards the human race. Adam was called to cultivate and care for the garden and secondly, he was commanded that, although he could eat all the products, vegetation and fruit from trees that arose in the garden, there was one exception. There was a tree, the ‘Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil’ which he was not allowed to take fruit from. Eve was created alongside Adam and was also responsible for following those commands. The story in Genesis is well-known. Satan appears. A demonic force appears in the garden in disguise, in the form of a snake or a serpent, and starts to speak to Eve, suggesting to her that the ‘Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil’ has tasty fruit that is really worth eating. He tries to persuade her, even though she knows that she should not be eating it, that it is fine to eat it and no harmful consequences will come. Eve, and Adam who was with her, ate the fruit of the tree. This is the story Paul has in his mind when he makes the statement that it is ‘through one man, through Adam, that sin came into the world’. Sin is disobeying God and living independently of him. That is exactly what Adam and Eve did. They decided that it wasn’t necessary to obey God’s command that they would be better off without obeying his command. This is the beginning of the process of mankind saying that we can live independently of God. He points out that death came through sin.

God had said that when they sin, they will die. What did this mean? Death meant several things. It appears that Adam and Eve were not subject to the decaying of their bodies through old age when they were living in perfect relationship with God. God said that they would return to the dust of the earth. In other words, physical death came into human experience through sin. Death also means, not just the end of things, but the separation of things. Death is the separation of the human spirit from the body. But there is another death that took place, which is the spiritual separation of Adam and Eve from God. They became outside the sphere of his grace. They were spiritually separated. Paul speaks of this in Ephesians 2 when he describes us today as being ‘dead in our sins’. That means we are separated from God by sin.

Later, in the book of Revelation, John speaks of the second death, which is eternal separation between us and God. When Paul here describes death coming the physical death is part of a wider process, where there is a separation of humanity from God. It came about through Adam and Eve. What Paul says, is that death came to all people, because ‘all sinned’. All those people who followed Adam and Eve, their descendants, had been changed inside. They weren’t the same as Adam and Eve were, spiritually, when they were in the Garden of Eden, before sinning. They had developed this independent characteristic; the power of sin got into everybody, just as death spread across the earth.

Another point that Paul is making here, is that the Law of Moses, which he has been talking about a lot in the book of Romans, didn’t exist at this particular time. Sin existed without the law. Death existed without the law. It came right at the beginning of human experience.

Adam and Jesus

“But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! Nor can the gift of God be compared with 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 the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ! Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people. For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.”

Romans 5:15-19, NIV

In this section, Paul is comparing the consequences of what Adam did with the consequences of what Jesus did. A total contrast for humanity, as we move from Adam into Christ. There is a total contrast. Adam’s actions brought condemnation and death and sin to everybody, and Jesus’ sacrifice and his forgiveness brings a new relationship with God for everybody who chooses to believe. Paul speaks here of what Christ actually gives us, in verse 17.

“those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ!”

Paul comes back to something he has spoken of several times already - the gift of righteousness. He reminds us again that the gospel puts us in a completely different relationship with God. We have been transferred out of being under the power of the sin that Adam brought into the world, to being in God’s Kingdom, part of his people, being put right with God, having a new relationship with God, being born again through the power of the Holy Spirit, with no fear of judgment.

The Purpose of the Law

“The law was brought in so that the trespass might increase. but where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Romans 5:20-21, NIV

He speaks here about the role of the Law of Moses. The Law of Moses increases the sense of sin. It doesn’t bring salvation in itself. Paul has been emphasising this all the way through the book of Romans, partly because he is speaking to a Jewish audience, amongst others who tend to depend on the Old Testament, and the Law of Moses. But the Law of Moses intensified the problem of sin and made the need of salvation that much more urgent.

Let me give you an example of how this works in ordinary life. I had a friend many years ago who used to drive his car fast most of the time, frequently exceeding the speed limit in our country. Speed limits are observed differently in different parts of the world, and some countries have very few effective regulations. But in the United Kingdom there is an effort by the traffic police to monitor speeding. For many years, the friend had been driving above the speed limit regularly. He was a good driver and he drove very fast indeed. He had a good job which was some way from his home. He was driving back from work one day, very fast, and the police saw the car coming. They registered his speed as very much above the speed limit. So, he received a summons to the court and was threatened with the possibility that he might lose his license, which would have meant losing his job. Fortunately, he got away with a heavy fine and he kept his job but in that moment the law became more real, and the awareness of his breaking the law became much more real, because the police brought it to his attention, and the consequences were potentially very dangerous and risky for him. That is like what the Law of Moses does. It brings to our attention, those of us who know it, all our shortcomings. That is exactly what happened to Paul and he refers to it in Romans 7;’ ‘the law intensifies the problem of sin’. This is what he is referring to here.

But sin is not just to do with the Law of Moses. Sin is much more deeply rooted than that in human experience, all the way back to the beginning of the human race, to the time of Adam and Eve’s decision to go against God and disobey one of the two commands that they had received from him in the Garden of Eden.

Reflections

What can we learn from this passage? It is a complicated passage, but some of the things that it is trying to teach us are fairly straightforward. We see here how deeply rooted sin is in the human condition. We can’t escape its power except by the power of the gospel.

Secondly, remember that Adam is actually our physical ancestor, according to the Bible. This means there are no racial distinctions in terms of the impact of sin. Because we live in a world where often there is racial tension and conflict between different tribes, and different nations, and different races; we can very often think that others have oppressed us, or have fought against us, or we are in an economic battle, or they are somehow morally worse than us. This teaching by Paul, suggests that the power of sin has extended to every single ethnic group. They may have had different opportunities and more or less power to express that, but sin is there throughout the human race. We are all on an even footing when it comes to the cross. We all need salvation in exactly the same way.

I want to end with a story that happened to me recently, that reminds me of the importance of passages like this. Within the last few weeks, in the town that I live, I was involved in a business transaction with somebody who I had known for 20 years. The man is in his 50s and we met on a particular day, and we did business. I said to him, “What are you doing tomorrow?” Tomorrow was his day off work. He said he was going to go to a sports event and relax at home. This man knew of my faith and I had spoken to him about my faith on a number of occasions. The day after we met, he went to the sporting event, got some food, came back to his house, sat down in his chair, and had a heart attack and died immediately. He was found in his chair. I met somebody close to him in the street, just a few days later, who was shaking with sadness and shock at this terrible thing that had happened. It reminded me of how fragile human life is, and what a great opportunity we have to believe the gospel. What a tragedy it is if we don’t take the opportunity.

We end this episode with real thankfulness. Although Paul portrays the power of sin as being tremendously strong in this passage, he portrays the power of Christ as being much more powerful than the power of sin. We can be taken out of that realm, where sin controls us, but we have to make a decision. We can receive, in Paul’s words, ‘God’s abundant provision of grace and the gift of righteousness’. If anyone listening to this hasn’t made that decision to follow Christ, and you are listening to this video, or maybe listening to it on audio, wherever you are in the world, can I say to you, ‘Don’t make the mistake of delay. You never know how much time you have, but take the opportunity to receive ‘God’s abundant provision of grace’.’ Paul believed this so passionately that he gave his whole life to travelling, preaching, writing, and communicating the gospel to people. We benefit from him, because he wrote this amazing book of Romans, which gives the fullest explanation that he gives anywhere in his writings, of the nature of the Christian gospel.