Romans 5:12-21 A Brief History of Death and His Demise

A podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsek preaches his series in the Book of Romans, A Righteousness from God. Let's listen in.

Easter, Resurrection, and the Brief History of Death

Well, happy Easter, Recast Church. He is risen. He is risen indeed. I had to get that out of the way, so. A special welcome to those of you that are here, maybe visiting for the first time. Glad that you're here.

I'm Don Filsek, I'm the lead pastor here, as Dave said. And I hope that those of you who were here last week have had a good time this past week rejoicing in Christ. Last week, we had a message on the many great blessings that we have in Jesus.

We're going through the Book of Romans, and it's really cool how often the text just kinda goes along with the theme and the time and the era that we're in, even going through the year. But I hope that you've been encouraged and you have rejoiced this week in your Savior as you reflect on his sacrifice on the cross for you.

As we all celebrate, we remember that he is risen. The grave could not hold him. Death, our ancient enemy, has not won. And he will not, in the end, have the last word. And I love how often it happens that the very next text as we're going through the Book of Romans fits so well with Easter that I'm gonna just go on in the series.

I'm gonna take the next chunk of scripture here in Romans chapter five, verses 12 through 21. The end of that text will land us really, really close to the rolled-away stone. And in our text this morning, we're gonna look at a brief history.

It sounds kinda macabre. We're here celebrating eternal life. We're here celebrating the resurrection from the dead. And we're gonna look at a brief history of death in this text. And we're gonna look at a brief history of death as defined by the comparison between Adam and Jesus in the Book of Romans.

Adam sinned, and he opened the door for the rule and reign of death in the human race. But Christ righteously obeyed his father, and he opened the door to the rule and reign of eternal life in the realm of mankind.

I wanted to just point out what we might know, those of you who have gone through the Book of Romans, have read it before, or have been part of this series ongoing with us, you know that Paul can be a fairly technical guy in his logic, his reasoning, as a matter of fact, his logic and reasoning is worthy of the academic rigorous efforts of many scholars, many pages, much ink spilled, and scrolls taken up, and books written, and I've got tons of books on my shelf back there, I'm trying to understand, and even the Apostle Peter said of Paul, some of the things that he wrote are difficult to understand.

But if this text, if this text that we're looking at this morning doesn't move you in your heart, then I would suggest that either I'm committing pastoral malpractice up here, and not giving the text the adequate passion that it deserves, or you're not listening with a heart to let the Spirit speak.

And so let me just encourage you to all enter into this time of gathering together with a heart asking for the Spirit of God, the Almighty Spirit of God, to communicate to you this morning. He wants to talk to you.

He wants to communicate peace, and love, and joy into your hearts this morning. I say it this way, and I say that it ought to, because we're gonna talk about a history of death, and you go, how is that gonna move me?

Like, that sounds kind of macabre, it sounds kind of morose, it sounds kind of dark, but I say it that it ought to move us because in a way, we know that our enemy is very exacting. He is precise. In many ways, our enemy feels inevitable.

He feels insidious. He feels like he marches right to the beat of the drum of time in our lives. He casts a long shadow that encompasses all of humanity. Our enemy, of course, that I'm talking about here is not just merely Satan, but it is death itself.

And when the hero breaks into the storyline, I can't help but be moved. This week, even just reading and preparing for this text, there were times where there were tears in my eyes as I'm reading this and just seeing that somewhere around verse 17 and 18 in this text, when the history of death and his reign is interrupted, death interrupted, we celebrate today the interruption of death.

And our text this morning explains and celebrates the interruption and intervention of our hero into the history of death. But the text also unashamedly places all of humanity into two categories. Either where you're living our lives under the realm of Adam, under the reign of sin and death, or we have brought, we've been brought by our hero out of that kingdom of Adam into the realm of Jesus Christ.

And in that realm, the rule is the reign of grace and eternal life. So let's open our Bibles, if you're not already there, to Romans 5, 12 through 21. We're gonna read this, pray, and then we're gonna come to a time of offering our praise and worship and singing together.

But open your Bibles, navigate in an app, open your tablet, whatever you have, grab the Bible under the seat in front of you if you don't have a Bible. But recast, this is one of my favorite times of every service where we get to hear from God, we get to hear directly from his word, and this is his precious word spoken to us here on this Resurrection Sunday in the gathering of his people.

What a glorious privilege we have. Romans 5, 12, through the end of the chapter. Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, 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 in 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.

Eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord.

Let's pray.

Father, I rejoice in the privilege that we have this morning to gather together as your people on this resurrection day, on this glorious and beautiful day where our hope was secured by the empty tomb, where our risen Lord and Savior was brought back to life by your power over sin and death.

He who had paid the righteous and just penalty for our sins on the cross, vindicated by you, Father, so that we can be set free. Father, I pray that you would press in our hearts and minds the glory and the beauty of this.

We can get into a routine of the cycles of the months and the years, and as the decades roll on and the years roll on, many of us have quite a few Easter's behind us. But Father, I pray that you would bring to light anew in our hearts, bring it fresh to our hearts, the glory, the wonder, the awesome reality of the resurrection and what it means for us to walk in newness of life, to not walk with Adam any longer, to not walk in the sins of our humanity, to not live according to the rules of sin and death, but to live according to grace and eternal life.

Father, I pray that that would be a reality in our midst and that we would lift our voices in rejoicing this morning,.

That this would be a celebration,.

That it would be so much more than an exercise of our singing and our vocal chords or how great our pipes are, but Father, it would be a celebration of you, that we'd be mindful and thoughtful of you in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Yeah, you can go ahead and be seated,.

But remember to just make yourself comfortable during the remainder of our time together as we're gonna try to focus on God's word. I encourage you also to have your Bibles open to Romans 5, 12 through 21, and if at any time during the message you need to get up and get more coffee or juice or donuts, while supplies last back there.

If you need to use the restrooms, they're out the barn doors down the hallway on the left-hand side. But again, our goal over the remainder of our time is to let God's word speak to us, and I'm gonna just kinda try to walk our way through that and get that figured out.

Adam, Sin, and Death Reigning Through the Law

So I don't need to convince you, I think, that the topic of death is of importance. I don't think I need to convince you of that. It's likely that every single one of us in this room has had some level or some type of tangle with our enemy, death.

Maybe it's the loss of a grandparent or someone else that we love. Maybe it was a totaled car and our life was preserved by mere seconds or mere inches. For some of us, it's just been enough to know that the days march on and that we are mortal.

And that weight has always lingered as we seek to make the most of each and every fleeting day. So death is an important subject. And here in the flow of the book of Romans, Paul introduces death into the conversation, hear me carefully, recast, at the high point of encouragement, at the point where he is seeking to give us the greatest encouragement at the start of chapter five.

Now here, halfway through chapter five, he introduces death. Here, when he's been spelling out the amazing benefits that we have through faith in Jesus Christ, he starts talking about death. Well, let me recap some of the benefits that he talked about last week.

Last week, he talked about benefits like peace with God, that's awesome, or his divine favor, that we stand in the divine favor, the grace of God through Jesus Christ. Or that we have his love poured into our hearts through his Holy Spirit.

Or that we have hope for the glory of God that will come for us in the form of his eternal reign over an eternal kingdom without pain, without suffering, without sin, without, here it is, death. There is a day coming when death will be no, that day is coming.

And so Paul now gives us a brief history of death and his demise by spelling out the arena in which death reigns and the way that our hero has broke into history to defeat the rule of death and to carve out a people for himself who will be a people of eternal life.

And our history of death here in this text and death's demise will outline into three sections here in our text. Those of you that like outlines, those of you that are more detail-oriented or maybe even taking some notes, you'll find that the first three verses, 12 through 14, is the area where really talking about the realm of Adam where sin reigns.

Verses 15 through 17 are gonna talk about the realm of Jesus where his people reign in life. And then the third part emphasizing the defeat of death in verses 18 through 21. I suggest to you that we can't get to an empty tomb without taking death seriously, right?

It makes no sense. We don't merely celebrate resurrection but it requires that someone died for us to even talk about resurrection. And so that's why I think this message to be so appropriate for us this morning as we contemplate and consider the depth of our enemy and how great the victory is over that enemy.

So let's begin with a brief study of the realm of Adam where sin reigns in verses 12 through 14. In these three verses, we see that sin came into the realm of humanity through one man. And at first, you might not know in 12 and 13 who he's talking about until you get down to 14.

I mean, many of us who were maybe raised in the church, you have some understanding of who maybe the one man through whom sin came is but it's clearly stated in verse 14 that the one man he is referring to is Adam, the original created human.

And sin has come through that one man and therefore through that one man, sin came death. And I believe it's a familiar story. I don't need to go through all the details going back to Genesis early in those first three chapters and explaining all the creation and then the fall there.

But for our purposes this morning, I think it is important for us to highlight one specific thing that Paul might be glad for us to take on and all of us to understand about that account of the fall, how we fell.

And it is simply this, that we need to take on the reality that God gave Adam a very specific command. He said, do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil for on the day that you eat of it, you will surely die.

And Adam took from Eve and ate.

And we know where the story goes.

Despite the fact that it seems like such a minor sin, how many of you ever thought like eating a piece of fruit? I mean, come on, that's like getting caught with your hand in the cookie jar, right? That's like mom said, don't eat a cookie and you took a cookie.

Like, what's the big deal here? But I think you have to recognize that the severity of this sin is heightened by who it is that issued the command. Who was the offense against the Almighty God? And further, it's heightened by the fact that it was a high-handed disobedience to an explicit given command by the Almighty God.

Now, how many of you have ever broken a rule and you didn't know it was a rule?

Yeah, you ever do that?

Or how many of you have set up sloppy rules for your family and you're like, wow, my kids find loopholes really quick. Like, I didn't say, specifically, don't take the chocolate chip cookies. So they were like, well, I didn't touch the oatmeal ones.

Are you gonna set up all these, you know,.

Do I have to have a command for every type of cookie here? Like, what's the thing here? So, we all know what that's like. But it was a high-handed disobedience.

We knew the rule.

Adam knew the rule. He knew that he was not supposed to eat from this. And he did anyways. So, it stated clearly that sin entered the world through Adam and sin brought with it death. And death spread to all humanity, it says in the text, because all sinned.

Now, that needs to be tempered a little bit because it seems to imply that the reason that we're all condemned is just because we've committed individual sins. And I don't wanna get into a whole theological treatise on original sin and what that looks like, but I just recognize that this verse has to be tempered with what comes later in verse 19, where it stated clearly that all humanity became sinners through the one sin of Adam.

And here it stated that all of us willingly sinned following in his footsteps. In other words, let me clarify, Adam was representative of the entire human race when he sinned. And our entire race was plunged into sinful rebellion against him so that all of us are born in a nature, a state, a status of sinners.

And because we're all born sinners, we now also, in our will, replicate our original ancestor and we all willingly disobey our creator. I think that's maybe one of the most clear-cut doctrines of all of theology is that we're all born into sin.

Nobody in this room ever trained your child to take a toy from another kid. I hope you didn't.

You didn't have to teach him that.

You didn't have to teach him to say no or to say mine. That's part of our nature, right? We recognize that, and that's what the text is going on about here, that all of us are sinners. We're all broken.

We're all fallen. We all willingly disobey our creator because our nature is broken toward him. And Adam's sin inaugurated the reign of sin and death on this earth, his one act having far-reaching implications for the entire created order.

Everything broken through the one man's sin. And to prove his point, Paul explains in verses 13 and 14 that death reigned over humanity even before the giving of the law. You see, in order to transgress, transgress is a very specific word.

In order to transgress, there must be a law given. Transgression is a specific brand of sin that means that you know the law and intentionally go against it. It's where God has literally put a line in the sand and said, thou shalt not step beyond this line, and we go, okay, what you gonna do about it?

How many of you ever seen that kind of sin in your child? They're staring at you as they reach into the cookie jar. What are you gonna do about it? How many of you recognize your own heart in doing that as you pass the cop on the highway saying, let's see what he does?

Some of you know what I'm talking about. You've done it. Only five over. I mean, I'm only going five miles per hour faster.

Than him.

Let's see what happens here. I don't think many of us do that, actually, but you know what I'm getting at. So transgression is that specific brand of sin that means you know the law. You know it. It's been given to you, and you still go against it.

You see the posted speed limit sign. You hit the accelerator. All of us have transgressed in some way. All of us have known a rule, and we have disobeyed it, and I don't need you to raise your hand on that one.

I often have you show hands if you know what I'm talking. I already know. All of you should raise your hand on that one. But Paul is stating that since death is the consequence of sin, and since death reigned from Adam to Moses, all that era, all that time before Sinai, before the exodus, before the giving of the law, death still reigned during that era.

And so therefore, people were obviously guilty of sin even before the giving of the law. The law is not that which makes us guilty. We're already guilty.

It just highlights it.

And so even when they couldn't sin in the same manner as Adam, Paul says, and transgress in that high-handed way knowing a given law, he is making this argument that they were still guilty, and they were still under sin.

And he's doing all of this for one primary purpose. It serves us here today, recast, and it is to highlight our predicament. Each and every one of us in a serious pickle, a serious conundrum. All of humanity has been caught up into the kingdom of Adam.

And being caught up into the kingdom of Adam means being caught up into the kingdom of sin and death. They are our masters now. And once again, Paul wants us to face our condition before our hero came in to rescue us.

What was your condition before Christ broke in? What was the human condition? What was the flow of history? Where was it all going before Christ broke in? And it was that each and every human needed rescue.

That is our status in Adam. And that leads to the second point in verses 15 through 17. Leave the realm of Adam behind and come to talk about the realm of Jesus Christ where his people reign in life. You see, our hero broke into the dungeon of sin and death where humanity was all held captive in darkness, all of us chained, all of us bound to sin and death.

And our king, our hero, broke in and broke down the walls and said, to me, anyone who would have life, to me, anyone who wants freedom from the kingdom of Adam, to me, all who are tired and weary of this kingdom of captivity to sin and death,.

Come to me, run to me, and I will rescue you.

And all who received him, according to verse 17, all who received him, he led through the breach to freedom and to a new kingdom of grace and eternal life. The phrase in this text that just stands out as stark in this section of the scriptures, the phrase free gift occurs five times in our three short verses here, highlighting the kingdom of our Christ, the kingdom of his son.

Free gift, free gift, free gift, free gift.

And he does so and he writes this five times to emphasize that this rescue comes free of anything that we could do to earn it. We could not break free from our own captivity. We were dead in our sins, slaves to sin, and under the heavy weight of eternal condemnation with no hope aside from his rescue.

And the free gift, it says in the text, is not like the trespass, and in a couple of different ways he highlights it. In 15, he highlights that it is not the same as the trespass in degree, and it's not the same as the trespass according to results in verse 16.

You see, the one sin of Adam resulted in death for many and then it was done, I'll die, and that's just a logical conclusion. But the free gift of the grace of God, it says, abounded for more and more.

The emphasis here is on a Greek word we translate as abounded, and in the English Standard Version, it's a word that we just don't use very often, abounded. And since we don't use that word very often, the meaning of the verse can kind of become muddy to us.

What does it mean to abound? What's Paul trying to explain to us here? But it's a word that's used twice, really kind of three times. It's used abounded, abundance, and abounded. It's used kind of three times with increasing effect in the text.

So that by the time you get to verse 20 and you see the word abounded there, Paul adds the prefix hyper to it. In other words, the grace we received in Christ is an over-the-top kind of grace. Hyper-abounded, mega-provided, like the waitress showing up to your table at breakfast and pouring two gallons of coffee into your little mug.

More than you know what to do with. More than you need. Meaning that the trespass could only give death, but the grace of God and the free gift just keeps pouring out extravagant grace. Superlative grace.

What comes from the free gift of salvation in Jesus Christ? Grace beyond measure. More than any one of us needed to cover our sins. Overkill is what you have received in Christ. How many of you think that God's excessive and abundant favor and grace is better than death?

Go ahead and raise your hand if you think that.

Those of you not raising your hand, that's weird.

Or you're just tired, or you're not ready to humor me yet. But if you agree with that, if you think that God's excessive, abundant, crazy amounts of grace is better than death, then you agree with verse 15, and we can just kind of go on.

I don't need to keep talking about it because that's what he's going on about. It's so much better than what the trespass could bring. Beyond degrees of trying to emphasize how much better. But in verse 16, he gives another contrast.

And it looks kind of like comparing two formulas.

So I'm gonna show you a couple of.

Somewhat mathematical formulas on the screen. What he basically says is one trespass plus judgment equals condemnation. One trespass. One sin brought before the holy God results in what?

Condemnation.

That's what one sin brought before the almighty God produces. But the second formula is amazingly powerful. It shows that superlative nature of grace. Many trespasses plus the free gift of salvation in Christ equals justification, acquittal.

Very different formulas, would you agree with me?

Very different results.

Wherever the free gift of grace through faith is applied to a person, justification. Another way of saying justification is acquittal of sins, being declared innocent. Your sins already punished on the cross of Christ.

Your sins laid on him. Him standing in the place as a substitute, appeasing the wrath of the father on your behalf. That kind of acquittal is applied to anybody who would receive the free gift. But whoever would choose to stay in the realm of Adam and sin, those who would choose to live by the first formula, sin plus judgment equals condemnation.

And condemnation could be defined as eternal death. Are you glad that the hero's broken into the dungeon to rescue you?

Are you glad?

Are you rejoicing this morning in your hearts to think about these things?

I hope so.

The free gift of salvation is offered through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And the free gift is received by faith, according to verse 17. How does it become applied? Why doesn't everybody have it?

Not everyone gets it, according to this text. And some people, if you take a verse out of, this is a very important passage where you have to follow the flow of the logic because if you take a couple of these verses out of context, you're gonna end up in a heresy called universalism.

Everybody gets to heaven. If you take a couple of these verses out and you just put those on a poster, you're gonna believe that everybody gets to heaven, but you've gotta take verse 17 in with it. The realm of death affects every single person in the realm of Adam.

Everybody who is born of Adam, that's all of us, are in the realm of sin and death. But the justification in eternal life affects every single person that now lives in the realm of Jesus Christ. And how do you get into the realm of Jesus Christ?

It is only those who receive Jesus and his abundance of grace and the free gift of his righteousness by faith, by saying, I trust you, Jesus. I believe you died on the cross for my sins. I need that blood.

I need your sacrifice applied to my sins to cover me. Please save me.

And he will. And he will.

And that is the pathway,.

By faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ. On the cross, he uttered the phrase, it is finished.

He did it all.

And it's interesting that Paul says, death reigns in the realm of Adam, but what we might expect to come full circle in verse 17 is that death reigns in the realm of Adam, so life reigns in the realm of Christ, right?

No, but that's not what it says. It takes it up a notch. Death reigns in the realm of Adam, but Christ's followers will reign in life.

Through Jesus Christ.

It's not a parallel.

It's not some generic principle of life that will reign in his eternal kingdom.

It is his followers, his followers,.

That will reign in life in his eternal kingdom through Jesus Christ in life, in eternal life. Our future is one of reigning in life through Jesus Christ for eternity. Let that settle in your hearts. Let that settle in your minds.

For those who are in Christ, those who have received him by faith,.

That is your destiny.

And here is the turn in the history of sin and death. A breach has been opened to the wall of the kingdom of Adam. Jesus Christ, our hero, broke open the wall, and the kingdom of Adam is hemorrhaging people.

Who receive Jesus Christ as savior.

And that makes our work in this world look like telling people there's another way of life.

There's another kingdom. There's another ruler to follow.

There is a better king. Here in this place where sin and death reign amongst our friends, our coworkers, our colleagues, our neighbors, we are given the job to go tell others this glorious message. You don't need to serve death and sin any longer.

Come receive the abundance of grace. Come and receive the free gift of his righteousness so that you also can come and reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. And the text goes on to conclude in the final four verses by assuring us of the demise of death.

Death will surely be done. In verses 18 and 19, Paul gives two more clarifications, really wrapping up the sentence he began and didn't finish back in verse 12. He started off saying, just as sin came into the world through the one man, never finished that thought, kind of got sidetracked a little bit.

He comes back to it in 18. Just as sin came into the world through one man, so too did justification in life come to all through one act of righteousness.

Through one man.

You see, Jesus Christ obeyed his father's will. So salvation comes through obedience of one man just like condemnation came through the disobedience of one man.

See that parallel?

Those who receive the grace of God, as verse 17 clearly explained, will of certainty be acquitted and be given life according to verse 18. And further, those who receive his grace through faith will be made righteous.

How many of you like that? How many of you like the notion of being made righteous? Anybody else tired of your sin? At least tired of other people's sin, right? I hope you're tired of your own sin as well.

We will be made righteous in Christ. Remember that death came through sin. So what could possibly then come through righteousness? Paul is kind of saying to us, death came through sin. What does righteousness produce then?

It produces nothing less than eternal life. The very thing that was removed from us in the curse in the garden due to our rebellion. Don't let them eat from the tree of life lest they go on sinning for eternity.

The very thing that was removed from us is now granted through righteousness. The righteousness of Christ being credited to our account. In verse 20, Paul deals with a little caveat, a little side note, remembering that he was dealing with a lot of the Gentile and Jewish disagreements and trying to bring one church together among different cultural backgrounds and religious notions.

So he deals with a little caveat. Any student of the Old Testament or anybody who's given an attempt to read through the Bible in a year might have encountered this one little thing called the law. You guys know what I'm talking about?

There's a little bit of the law in the Old Testament, right? And it takes up a huge chunk of scripture. So where does that fit into the discussion, some might say? And Paul's kind of heading off that question saying, but you're talking about sin and death and grace.

And all these things.

Where's the law, Paul? Why aren't you talking about law? And the Jews would want to give it a major role. And to be honest, many churches and many legalistic Christians would also want to give it a place of priority, right?

Some of us were raised in churches that might have been tempted to give the law a priority, a place of priority. Some of us were raised in families where the law was given a place of priority. It's interesting what Paul does here, verse 20.

Paul gives this massive stretch of religious history from Moses in Mount Sinai all the way to the manger. A big chunk of religious history, a big chunk of human history, where the law was given and lived out in the life of Israel.

And he gives it one passing verse. He said, I'll give it an honorable mention in this text. And also ran is the law. You see, he says here, now the law serves a couple of functions. It actually shows us the righteousness of God.

It gives us some skeletal structure upon which to understand how we love God now that we are bought by him. Now that we live in a relationship of love to him. But here's the one purpose he wants to highlight in this text.

The law served one primary purpose in the history of death, sin, and grace. It accentuated trespasses. It highlighted our breaking of the law. You see, the law's primary role was to highlight for humanity our law-breaking tendencies in our own hearts.