WWUTT 136 Original Sin (Romans 5:12-14)

Original sin. That is a pretty common name. Books, movies, TV shows have been named after that particular doctrine.

But what is it? Well, it's understanding that all sin came through Adam, but also that all righteousness comes through Christ when we understand the text.

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Thank you, Becky. God is so good to me. He knows exactly when I need encouragement and when

I need to be humbled. On His timing, not my timing. When I need encouragement, it's not when

I'm moping around going, Oh, I need to be encouraged. Or thumping my chest saying, I need to be humbled.

I don't think anybody that's that arrogant is actually asking for humility. But anyway, God knows how to put the right people in my life at the right time and give me encouragement when

I need it. And my wife is great at that, too, and so are my children. But other people, even around me in my church congregation and in the community, that help to encourage me in the right way.

And I know that's all God's doing. And I am so appreciative to my Lord for that.

So I want to press something upon you. If you observe somebody doing something for someone else or maybe you see them going through an experience where they've been getting a lot of pushback, you don't really think that they deserve to be treated that way.

Why don't you tell them how much that they have ministered to you? Like you could say,

I've been watching from afar and I just want to say how great it's been watching the way that you've treated others, shown compassion and kindness, and I don't think you're really getting the recognition that you deserve.

So I just want to say how much that is ministered to me or I've seen the way these people have been treating you and you have just been responding with grace and that has been a testament to me how much of an encouragement you could be to another person in that way.

We need to be doing this in our families as well, husbands and wives. Now speaking from the standpoint of a guy, okay, guys, we tend to hit this mode where everything is going good and we're just coasting and so we don't really see a need to have to be encouraging because everything's good, right?

You only encourage when things are going bad and I don't think that we're doing it in a heartless way, like, oh, nobody needs to hear encouragement from me.

I just think we're clueless to it. We just don't think that anybody needs to be encouraged because everything's going good right now.

But guys, we need to be an encouragement to our wives. We do need to find something, find something today that you can encourage your wife in or even tell her, sweetheart,

I've seen you doing this over the course of the week and I just want to tell you how much that is meant to me and how much it is meant to the kids.

You can speak on behalf of the kids. That's okay, because sometimes my wife just feels like the kids just don't even recognize her in the room.

And so though they don't know how to express themselves, I can show that to my kids by saying to my wife, babe, we love you and the kids love you and we appreciate all of these things that you do for us.

We also need to be this kind of encouragement to our children. We read in the scriptures and in Colossians and also in Ephesians not to exasperate our kids, not to discourage them.

And the reason those instructions are given there that way, so we understand that we're not communicating to our kids primarily in a disciplinary way, but in an encouraging way.

Not that discipline is bad. We should be training our kids in the instruction and the discipline of the

Lord. Absolutely. But don't let discipline be the way that you're primarily talking to your kids.

You need to sit down with your daughters and tell them how beautiful they are, how much the room lights up whenever they are there with you.

And I don't know your kids. You know them better than I do. Find something that you know speaks into their heart and is an encouragement to them.

Or if you have a son sitting down with your boy and wrapping an arm around him and saying, son,

I just want to tell you how much I appreciate you, how much I love you, how much I'm proud of you. Let's do something together and then go play a game or something together.

All right, and I'm not just speaking to guys. I'm speaking to the moms as well, husbands and wives.

Let's encourage one another, parents. Let's encourage our kids as God knows how to encourage us at the right time.

So let us extend this ministry to others as well. And going back to my original example, let's especially be doing this for one another in the church.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, encouraging one another in this walk of faith that we are all on, this process of sanctification to be made more like Christ.

You are shining the light of Christ into a person's heart when you encourage them, especially when they need it.

And God's going to use you to do that. All right, that's something that God had impressed upon me to share with you today.

So I thank you for letting me take the time here at the very beginning. We are in Romans chapter 5, verses 12 through 21, and we're going to be talking about this week, the doctrine of original sin.

All sin came into the world through one man, Adam, and all who are descendant from Adam are born into that sin.

As I have shared this with my congregation, we are born physically alive, but we are spiritually dead.

And it is Christ that then revives the soul, gives life to our spirit.

And then we are alive together with him forever. We are given eternal life because of the life of the spirit that is given to our hearts by Christ Jesus, our

Lord. So original sin, this doctrine that we come to understand that's laid out in a particular way in the book of Romans, probably in a more concentrated way here than you find it in any other passage.

So this is where you would base a study on understanding original sin. Romans chapter 5, beginning in verse 12.

We're going to go all the way through the end of the chapter and maybe only get about three verses in today. 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 the 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 the 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 the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous.

Now the law came 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. All right, let's go back to verses 12 through 14. 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, this one verse here, by the way,

Romans 5 .12, is the reason why I believe the earth cannot be any older than about 10 ,000 years.

I don't know exactly how old the earth is. Can't be older than that. Why do I say that? Well, because there was no death in the world before Adam sinned, so there could not have been this process of death and decay and fossilization.

Death is the consequence for sin. Romans 6 .23, for the wages of sin is death.

Sin is so serious. It is so awful a rebellion against God that it sent the entire universe into upheaval.

All of creation awaits deliverance from this bondage of corruption as we read about in Romans 8 verses 20 through 21, and we'll get to that coming up, you know, in a couple of weeks, however long it takes us to get to Romans chapter 8.

So it is sin that subjected all things to futility. And prior to that, there was not any death and fossilization, all of this stuff.

So how in the world can I say that when science contradicts it? I really don't think science does.

I've studied young earth creationist kinds of sciences. They're out there. They are the minority opinion.

You're not going to find them in textbooks, but they're out there. Remember that science doesn't say anything.

Scientists do. And so I am going to choose the word of God, no matter how ridiculous it sounds, compared to what worldly scientific notions are trying to tell me that they've concluded the earth can be millions and billions of years old.

Sorry, ain't buying it. And so right here, we come to understand that death came into the world because of sin.

For sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law.

In other words, sin was in the world before God gave the law to Moses and the

Israelite people. It's not that they were guiltless. In fact, we have already seen the wages of sin is death.

We've seen death in the world prior to Moses being given the law because I mean you had the

Noah's flood that wiped out and judged all mankind because of their sin.

So God was still judging sin according to a law that was written on their hearts. Okay, since people still died, it shows that they were indeed guilty and that was a consequence for Adam's sin.

But it was a consequence of having broken the moral law that God has imprinted upon each and every person's heart, which we read in Romans 2 12, not because they transgressed the law as God gave it to his people, which had not happened yet because Paul goes on to say, yet day death reign from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who is a type of the one to come.

And the type that we're talking about is Christ. We'll see this described in 1 Corinthians 15. We're going to look at this more tomorrow, but Adam is the first Adam and Christ is the last

Adam and we'll pick up the discussion on original sin from there. God, I thank you for this time today that we could be in your word.

Nothing is a greater encouragement to us than this, but help us to understand the seriousness of our sin and that you have called us to holiness, to reject sin and walk godly lives, mirroring the character that was displayed by our

Savior Christ. Shape us more into this image and we pray this in Jesus name.

Amen. This is a protection of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas. Find us on the web at www .utt