The Super Abounding Grace of God — Conrad Mbewe

Make us to be what we profess to be. Let prayer be prayer, and praise be heartfelt praise. From unreality, oh, set us free. And let our words be echoed by our ways. I trust that is your prayer, as we now attend to the Lord's word, as it is found in Romans and chapter 5, Romans and chapter 5, Romans and chapter 5.

Perhaps before we read the section, I'm just thinking aloud. I'm sure the library ministry will do well to do something. But just in case there are some of you that are benefiting already from the recording system, Sunday evening, this coming Sunday evening, I'll be preaching in the church where the family that donated the recording equipment worships.

And so just as we did last time with the little camera to sort of catch a few words from you, please feel free. After the evening service, to say a few words in the camera, you might want to do it in the studio itself so that the background is the equipment.

And then we'll bring a CD and hand it over to the family so that they can hear from you, rather than from you through me, but from you yourselves, your appreciation of their generous donation. All right.

So please take a bit of time after greeting one another, smiling in each other's faces, to just go in and say a few words. Romans chapter 5, and we'll read together, commencing verse 18. The Bible says, consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men.

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. The law was added so that the trespass might increase.

The Reign of Grace Through Jesus Christ

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. As we continue to look at this passage of scripture, I trust that you are beginning to appreciate more and more that we are dealing with a world of truth gathered together in small campus.

We're basically dealing with the reason why you and I, while we are still on earth, while we are still struggling with the reality of sin, should still be secure, assured of our eternal salvation. That's basically what the Apostle Paul is dealing with.

And all you need to do is remember the way he began chapter 5, verse 1. Therefore, since we have 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 rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. That's really what Paul is saying throughout this chapter. That yes, though we might be going through suffering, though we might be under extreme tribulation, let us not for one moment begin to entertain the idea that perhaps the end of my relationship with God, the destruction of my hopes in God, has come.

It has not. Now, what we have said thus far is that in the Apostle Paul seeking to assure us of this, he essentially brings in the two heads, Adam, or perhaps better still, the first Adam, and Jesus, or better still, the second Adam, or the last Adam.

And what he is telling us is simply this, that just as our condemnation was secured in the first Adam, we were born sinners. Even before we individually sinned, we were already under that condemnation because our federal head, our representative head, had already broken God's law in the Garden of Eden.

Just as that is true, Paul is saying that it is equally true to say that when Jesus Christ satisfied the law of God, when by his life and by his death, he completely satisfied the demands of God's law, our salvation was equally secured in him.

We need to be equally convinced that just as sin came into the world, and death through sin, and consequently we all die because we all, in Adam, sinned in exactly the same way, righteousness has come into the world through the one man, the Lord Jesus Christ.

And that is in terms of a declaration. It has been given to us. We are justified by faith. And by this, we have entered into his grace. And in that grace, we will stand to the very end. Well, that's essentially what the Apostle Paul was saying throughout this chapter, and especially when he reached verse 18 and verse 19, where he finally arrived at what he had been wanting to say all along, but kept going to deal with preliminary issues.

The Law Reveals the Depth of Sin

Now, last week, we noticed the Apostle Paul pausing for a moment to take us to deal with an issue that he had left hanging, and it was the whole question of the law. And you remember I said that for a Jew, it meant a lot to him to ask this question.

Now, Paul, you seem to take two points in history, and only two points as the only ones that matter. Adam in the Garden of Eden, Jesus on Calvary. And yet we've been living our entire lives revolving around Moses and the law.

Are you now telling us that all this is useless? And what we did last week was to spend time seeing Paul's answer, which is the first section of verse 20. The law was added so that the trespass might increase.

I do not want to spend time on that by virtue of the fact that we dealt with all that needed to be dealt with at that point, and there is a lot of material that needs to be covered this evening. All I want to say is that Paul's point was that the law did not come in with saving value.

That's not why it came. In fact, it came in order to make seen, to be seen, S-double-E-N, for what it really is. Utterly sinful. Because now it is against the light. Now it is with the actual positive law given.

Now it is against the law giver himself who has written this law on tablets of stone. Now here you are wanting to still go ahead to break the commandments. Now that you know what God actually says. Now today, we move on to see that what Paul wants to tell us in introducing this missing element, this issue that he had left hanging, what he really wants to tell us is not so much about the law, but about the fact that the grace of God in Christ Jesus deals with this thing that was introduced in the middle.

It is not oblivious of the fact that condemnation from God has become even more scathing, so to speak. It's not oblivious of that. The grace of God addresses and deals even with the effect of the law.

How does Paul put it? Look at the way he reads. Rather, he puts things in verse 20. The Apostle Paul says there, the law was added so that the trespass might increase. Now here he goes. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more.

Now I need to quickly state here that notice Paul's change of words as he begins the second section. You would have expected him to say, but where the trespass increased, grace increased all the more.

And yet you'll notice he deliberately replaces trespass with sin. Why? Now the simple answer is that that's really ultimately what the major problem is. You see, the trespass element, or as some of your visions put it, the offense element is simply an addition to the problem.

The real problem is sin. And even before the law came in, sin was already there, and God's hatred for sin was abundantly evident because with sin came death. And so ultimately, post-consent is not so much with the addition, this extra as important as it might be in addressing the Jew.

Post-chief consent is this, that ultimately what the law did was to show us how sinful we really were. And that's what Paul wants to deal with. What the law did is it made us to become more guilty of sin because now it was against the light, as we saw together last time.

In other words, in the light of the law, you and I should be sitting in total despair because now we know that this thing that has been coiling around us is not a necklace made out of diamonds. It is a puff adder or a python that is just waiting for the right moment in order to squeeze us to the point of death.

We now know it because having looked the law into the face, we thought we could now amend our ways, and we have discovered that with every one step forward, we have been making 10 steps backwards. We have soon concluded that our hearts are desperately weakened.

There's absolutely nothing we can do in our own strength, in our own power to change that. We have come to know that sin is such a powerful force in us that it would even dare to assassinate God if it could.

And therefore, we do deserve, we rightly deserve the wrath of God. We deserve to go to hell. We know it. The Lord Jesus in Matthew 21 gives a powerful illustration of the extreme to which sin can go. I want to just quickly turn to it.

Sin’s Rebellion Against God in the Parable of the Tenants

Matthew 21, beginning with verse 33, it's called the parable of the tenets. The parable of the tenets. This was one among a number of parables. The previous one was the parable of the two sons. And essentially, in all of these parables, Jesus was speaking to the Pharisees, to the Israelites, to those who were trusting in the law.

And what Jesus is trying to teach out of these parables is that though you are cheating yourselves in thinking that because you give mental assent to the law, God is not cheated. And the reason why God is not cheated is that he actually sees how attached you are to sin, how lawless you are, and the extreme of enmity that is in your heart against him.

And this particularly comes out in the parable of the talent. Let me just read verse 33 onwards. Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a winepress in it, and built a watchtower.

Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and went away on a journey. When the harvest time approached, he sent his servants to the tenants to collect his fruit. The tenants seized his servants. They beat one, killed another, and stoned a third.

Then he sent other servants to them more than the first time, and the tenants treated them the same way. Now, listen to this. Last of all, he sent his son to them. They will respect my son, he said. Now, if there's anything that is true about their sinful hearts, I don't think they will go that far.

They can ill-treat my servants. They can deal with them ruthlessly because they are not related to me as the owner of the vineyard. Well, he was badly mistaken. Listen to this. But when the tenants saw the son, they said to each other, this is the heir.

Come, let's kill him and take his inheritance. So they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants? Well, listen to what these gentlemen say in reply.

Not knowing they were passing judgment on themselves, he will bring those wretches to a wretched end, they replied. And he will rent the vineyard to other tenants who will give him his share of the crop at harvest time.

Now, brethren, the point from this parable, of course, in its immediate application, it had to do with Israel and the way in which they finally treated the Lord Jesus. But the point, the general point of this parable is this, that our hearts are so sinful that what the Lord did was to simply bring out how bad we really were, to the point where once God reveals himself to us, our answer is, who is the Lord that I should obey him?

Who is he that I should worship him? And so, really, we deserve to die. There's absolutely no excuse. We all deserve to go to hell. That is the reason why, to the natural mind, if we go back to Romans chapter 5, to the natural mind, our text ought to read this way.

Let me change our text. Let's go back to Romans 5, verse 20. And please keep your eyes on that text because I want you to see how I'll change it. The law was added so that the trespass might increase.

And where sin increased, sin reigned in death. I have skipped something there. Where sin increased, I have skipped grace increased all the more so that just us have skipped all that. Where sin increased, sin reigned in death.

Now, that's what we would expect to see. Perhaps a province in Zambia that decides that it is going to go up in armed rebellion. And so the president sends an ambassador to go and talk to this province.

And each one that is sent there is killed. Then he says, fine, maybe let me send my wife to go and talk to them. He sends his wife there. They are also killed. Rather, his wife is also murdered, sent back as a corpse, perhaps cut in pieces.

Now, I know. I don't need to be a genius. I know what's going to happen next. It is that the president is now going to send an army with the biggest and most powerful weapons. And in a very short time, what I'm going to discover in that province are carcasses, bodies strewn all over the place, killed because the president is now mad.

He's angry. Friends, that's the point of this text, that the natural mind, that's what you should be expecting, that now that sin has increased, then sin is going to reign in death, or to use the picture of actual rain from heaven, is going to reign death upon all.

And in many ways, we are right. And we're going to discover that when we come to expound on verse 21, because that's essentially what Paul is going on to say, that just as sin reigned in death, that's what sin has actually done.

It has ruined the face of the world. It has brought in death. It has brought in physical death. It's brought in spiritual death. It has brought in eternal death. There is a hell, there is a lake of fire, where people are going to spend their entire eternity weeping and gnashing their teeth because of sin.

Grace Overcomes Abounding Sin

However, the Apostle Paul, in between these two phrases, introduces something that we need to look at together here. And that word that he introduces changes everything. He introduces the word grace. Let's go back to our text.

But where sin increased, grace, that changes everything. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more. And it is because the Apostle Paul, in his mind, had the word grace as he was beginning his sentence.

Instead of beginning it by saying, and where sin increased, he instead began by saying, but where sin increased. In other words, he knew that this word I'm about to introduce is going to change the picture completely.

People were going to be expecting that I'm going to say that because sin has increased, therefore death has now wreaked havoc in the whole place. However, I'm about to introduce a new word, and because of that, I'm bringing in the word but.

In other words, out of this darkness, we are bringing in light, extreme light, blinding light. And it is all because of the word grace. I want us to think about it for a moment. The word grace is not appearing here for the first time.

Let's just quickly do a rundown in the places where it has appeared, and then I will make my comment after that. Let's begin with chapter one. Chapter one. It has appeared approximately eight times. In chapter one, verse five, the Apostle Paul says, through him and for his namesake, we received grace and apostleship to call people from among all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith.

Verse seven, to all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints, grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Chapter three. Chapter three, verse 24. Chapter three, verse 24.

The Bible says there, let me begin from verse 23. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. Chapter four, verse 16.

Chapter four, verse 16. Through the promise, sorry, therefore the promise comes by faith so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all Abraham's offspring, not only to those who are of the law, but also to those who are of faith, of the faith of Abraham.

And then three times, or rather four times in chapter five. The first is verse two. Through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. The next two are in verse 15. 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 overflowed to the many. And finally, verse 17. It actually appears after our reading, but I want to just make a point here.

Verse 17. 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.

Grace Is Understood Against the Background of Sin

Now, let me explain my whole point in making you read all this. Although this word has appeared so many times, about eight times up to this point, it is the first time it is being used in its normal context.

It is the first time it is being used in its normal context. What do I mean by that? It is the first time that it is being put side by side to the offense committed. The offense committed. Let me explain.

You know, let's assume you are with your friend and you are saying that somebody loves you and you're saying to your friend a few things and out with what you are talking about is the love of your friend, okay?

Whoever this other person is. And you keep saying to him, well, you know, he loves me or he said he loves me and we did this and that together. No, he's a nice chap. He really loves me and so on. It won't register in the person who's listening to you as much as when you now show him the extent of that love.

If you now show this person what this individual has actually done to express his love to you, then he's going to go back home and go and tell other people, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma. Uleung guys, ulea, bali mute mua.

Because it has now struck you. You have seen the love displayed in a particular context. Now, in all the passages we have read thus far, in one or two, it is in the context of forgiveness, but it is not telling us the extreme of our sin, the extreme of the offense, the extreme of the trespass.

It's not said anything to that effect until Paul gets here. And here Paul says that the law was added to magnify the sin, to show us just how utterly sinful sin is. And it is in that context that he goes on to introduce grace and for the first time, it hits you.

When Paul was saying, look, we received grace and apostleship to preach here, there, and so on, instead of sitting there saying, yeah, yeah, okay, go on. He comes to you and he says, you know, grace and peace to you from God the Father, and so, okay, okay, Paul, come on, get on, let's move on.

But now he tells you that you know your sin is an insult to God, that even when God shows you that you ought not to go this way, you still stubbornly continue going in that direction. And when God brings in his own son along the way to stop you heading headlong in that direction, you murder his son to continue going headlong in that direction.

Now he is coming. Can you hear the galloping horses? At that point, you begin preparing yourself to die. You begin preparing yourself to go into the grave. If I know just you, you know you're going to be totally wiped out.

And then you are told, no, hold on, hold on. He's actually not coming to wipe you out. He's coming to bless you. He's coming in order to give all of you enough money to turn all of you into millionaires, all of you.

That's what he's coming to do. You say, no, it's not possible. It's not possible. We declared rebellion against him. He sent us his cabinet ministers and ambassadors. We murdered them all. He sent us his wife.

We murdered her, sent her back in three pieces. You can't tell me he is now coming to make me into a millionaire, to turn the entire province into millionaires. It's not possible. The truth of the matter is that that's what Paul is saying here, that that's what God did for us.

And friends, you cannot appreciate grace until you give it the background, the backdrop of the sin which has in fact multiplied. As we have broken his law times without number, you cannot understand grace until you see yourself as a hell deserving sinner, that I deserve to be in the hottest place in hell because of the darkness of my own sinful heart.

Paul introduces the grace of God and the picture changes. How does he introduce the grace of God? Well, I need to quickly go on to that. In introducing God's grace, Paul is not simply saying, do not worry.

God has dealt with the increase of sin in your life. He will now forgive you as long as you repent, which is what I'm sure many of you must be reading into the text. That when Paul says, but we are sin increased, grace increased all the more, what Paul is saying, don't worry.

I know you've sinned against God, but don't worry. God has done something that's going to ensure that you are forgiven. Allow me to say no. Allow me to say a thousand times no. No. Paul is saying in those words, something infinitely more glorious than that.

What Paul is saying can be likened rather to the picture I used previously concerning this province that wants to break away from the nation. And the present is coming. It's not simply coming to say, okay guys, all right, all right, all right.

I'm not going to kill you. I'm not going to kill you. Let's just agree now, okay? Let's just be friends. I'm not going to kill you. Now, if the present came that way, you would still call it grace because you deserved to be snuffed out.

The entire province snuffed off the face of the earth. You deserve it. Therefore, if he comes and says, okay, okay, okay. I've got your point. Let's forget this enmity. Let's start afresh. You'd still say he's gracious.

Let me repeat a thousand times, no. That's not God's point here. He comes and he makes you millionaires. Not with the Zambian Kwacha, by the way. With the American dollar, the British pounds. Pounds telling.

Millionaires in that sense. That's what Paul is saying here. He's saying, you know, God has come not only to cancel our debt, but he has come to give us infinite resources. Resources that are inexhaustible.

You cannot finish them and end up finding yourself in hell. It is utterly impossible. That's what he's saying. Now, how does he say it? Just in case a number of you are already looking that no, no, no, this is unbelievable.

That's the whole point of Paul here. But how does he say it? He says it by the words that he uses. Let me, let's look at the verse properly here. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more.

Now that's a very poor way of expressing what Paul is actually saying here. The phrase Paul uses after sin, which is the word increased, is actually different from the word he uses after grace. Now, my version, and I think most versions here use the same word.

In the Greek, they are different. The difference is something like this. Let me go into the realm of marketing. Okay? You know cantemba? Do we know cantemba? Okay. Where sin increased, he's using a word which would be equivalent to a cantemba.

Grace increased all the more. That phrase there, increased all the more is actually just one word. And it can be likened to a, not just a market, not just a supermarket, but a hyper supermarket. That's the phrase he uses.

Now it's important to capture it because you know, he's not making a mistake. He's not just writing. He's writing under inspiration of the Holy Spirit. And the phrase he uses, you can't find an English equivalent.

You can't say, you know, kabwata, hyper supermarket. They'll say naba penaba. You can talk about a supermarket. You can talk about a hyper market. You can't speak about a hyper supermarket. Now my point is, if you want, you can go and check your Greek, whatever things you have at home.

That's exactly what he does. He uses a word which in itself is already an overflowing phrase. And yet he adds a super to it. In fact, the word hyper is the actual word that he uses there. He's saying, look, here was the problem.

Sin increased. And because it became utterly sinful, we knew we had it. We were destroyed. We were headed for hell. There was nothing we can do about it. Grace comes in and it does something which is infinitely more glorious.

That's what grace has done. There are two other places where Paul uses this phrase. And so let's quickly go to those places to make the point abundantly clear. The first is in chapter 15 of Romans. Chapter 15.

Now when we come to chapter 15 of Romans and verse 22, you will notice that almost every version has a different rendering of this word. Again, the reason is simple. It has no English equivalent. Chapter 15 and verse 22.

This is why I have often been hindered from coming to you. Here, it is simply translated as the word often. Some versions say this. This is why I have been hindered from coming to you again and again.

Is anybody's Bible saying that? Again and again. Now the point of Paul here is to try and assure the brethren that it was not only once when he thought about it. It's not only once when he tried to come to the Romans.

He's saying, look, it's been in my plans so many times. I long for you. I've wanted to come to you. But each time I do so, something else comes up to do with his obvious ministry to the places where the gospel is not yet heard, where it's not yet known.

And because of that, over and over and over again, I have failed to make it to you. It's the phrase you use when somebody is angry. Those of you who sort of watched Bruce Lee movies. Angry and is now just hitting somebody with blows.

The person has probably already died, but he's still just in anger, just still hitting and hitting and hitting. And the person has died, but he's going again and again and again and again and again. Until he himself falls in exhaustion.

That's the phrase that Paul is using here. One more, and thankfully there, the New International Vision does a better job than it does here. And that's 1 Corinthians chapter seven. 1 Corinthians chapter seven.

1 Corinthians chapter seven. No, no, no. Should be 2 Corinthians, sorry. Let me just counter check. It must be 2 Corinthians. Yeah, it must be 2 Corinthians. Yeah. Listen to what he says. Maybe let me begin from verse two.

Make room for us in your hearts. We have wronged no one. We've corrupted no one. We've exploited no one. I do not say this to condemn you. I've said before that you have such a place in our hearts that we would live or die with you.

I have great confidence in you. I take great pride in you. I'm greatly encouraged in all our troubles. Now here it is. My joy knows no bounds. That's the phrase. Knows no bounds. Can you see why I'm saying that increased is a pale figure of what Paul is saying?

Because you see, if you give me a thousand Kwacha and then I add a 20 Kwacha note, the money has increased, but it has bounds. It is limited. It's only 120 Kwacha. You can't even buy bubble gum out of it, but it has increased.

And to many of us, that's our Christianity. You see, all God has done is said, okay, okay, reach here, and then I will help you just one step over. And then you better be thankful that I've managed to give you just that.

No! It is no, no, Pinchek as it were. It's what we used to learn in mathematics, the definition of infinity. It is where two parallel lines meet. And as you know, they will never meet. But that's the point.

God's grace has been added in such a way that it knows me saying this, that if you are a sinner a million, million times, God's grace is still infinite. It covers all your sin, all of it. If you are a sinner a billion, billion times, God's grace is still infinite.

It covers all of it. If you are a sinner in gigabytes, giga times giga, gigabytes, God's grace comes and in its infinitude covers all that sin. That's what Paul is saying here. It knows no limit. That justification that we've experienced, which we'll be dealing with in verse 21, reign in righteousness, that justification that he has given you, he has declared upon your life, that is infinite in value, totally infinite.

If that doesn't blow your mind, nothing ever will. Where sin increased, grace hyper super abounded. That's the closest we can get to finding an English equivalent for it. Grace hyper super abounded. Now, if I was preaching in a Pentecostal church, they would be saying hallelujah, but here I'm being stared at as though I've fallen from outer space.

Grace Does More Than Forgive

Friends, this is the salvation that we are partakers of. Paul is saying here, it is a salvation that takes into account our ugly, sinful lives. It doesn't play hide and seek with it. You say, no, no, no, okay, yeah, it may have been a little bad, but come on, you know, once everybody been put God, you know, no, no, no, no, no.

It takes cognizance of the fact that indeed we are rebels against God, that indeed we have murdered his own son. He takes cognizance of the fact that even after we have professed faith in him, we have repented of our sin, we will not be perfect until we reach heaven.

It takes even that into cognizance that we will sin against him. And he says, bring all that debt to me, bring it. Multiply it by a million if you want. And then my grace is going to cover all that, cover it.

If you're sitting there saying, no, no, no, if salvation is going to be like that, won't people now just start sinning, knowing that, you know, God's grace is infinite, we'll cover it. If that's what you're thinking, then you've understood Paul.

You are the only one who've understood him because that's exactly the problem he begins to address in chapter six. He's created a problem in the minds of those who've understood him correctly. And he says it there.

What shall we say then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? And I want to say that to us, friends. If the way we teach salvation to people does not bring them to this point, we do not teach them the salvation of the Bible.

We don't. We are too careful to present to people a God who's extremely generous with his grace. We are too afraid. Paul wasn't. And Paul says, we are seeing increased. Grace went right past, covered it completely.

And that's how we will get to heaven. It is by a marvelous, infinite, matchless grace. One that makes English fail to express its magnitude. Completely fail. We ought to thank God for that. That having been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

And we have entered into this grace in which we now stand. It ought to fill our hearts with song after song after song, amazing grace. How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but I am found, was blind, but now I see.

We ought to be a singing people because we know that the grace of God is infinitely poured upon us in torrents coming upon our souls again and again and again until we feel we can contain it no more and say to God, oh God, hold on before my soul bursts with affections towards a God who can love me so.

Or as Charles Wesley puts it, plenteous grace with thee is found. Grace to cover all my sin. Oh, am I speaking to someone here today? You have lost your sense of assurance of your eternal salvation because your view of salvation always has the arm of flesh tied to it somewhere.

Something to do with me and I and myself and it always fails you. Some contribution you have to make to it and that contribution always fails. May I advise you when you go out of this place to go and open the rubbish heap or the toilet or the septic tank and throw it in there.

It's not worthy of a religion that can truly glorify God and come to believe a salvation that is all of grace, all of it. A salvation which is of grace from first to last. A salvation which is of infinite grace.

A salvation that makes you raise this question at the beginning of chapter six. If God is going to be this gracious, isn't he tempting us to now go out and start sinning? Don't worry, he will answer the question when we get there.