Sunday Night, September 16, 2018 PM

Romans 3–5 and Justification by Faith

Paul talking about in verse 14, those that sinned but not in the likeness of the offense of Adam. To understand that, we'll back up just a little bit. In the latter half of Romans 3 and throughout Romans 4, Paul is clarifying how it is that we are declared right with God, made right with God.

It is not by works, lest any man should boast, but it is by the righteousness of Jesus Christ. And he proves his point from folks like David and Abraham, pointing out that it was by faith that they were justified with God, not because they were because they were performing well in their duties.

And then, having settled that matter, at the beginning of chapter 5, we hear him apply a few ideas. So, chapter 5 verse 1 begins this way,. Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand.

And we exult in hope of the glory of God. And not only this, but we also exult in our tribulations, knowing the tribulation brings about perseverance and perseverance, proven character and proven character, hope.

And hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who was given to us. And in these verses, therefore, Paul looks at the entire scope of the Christian life, that we are justified in Christ by faith, and that no matter what happens throughout our life, God uses it to sanctify us and to bring us along in our growth in Christ, all the while putting our attention on the hope that we have, the hope of the resurrection, the hope of the new creation.

And this does not disappoint, and we have assurance of this hope because the love of God poured out in our lives. And more explanation, verse 6,. For while we were still helpless at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly.

For one will hardly die for a righteous man, though perhaps for the good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

Much more then, having now been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through him. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.

And not only this, but we also exult in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we also now have received the reconciliation. So Paul wants to put our attention very clearly that our hope of salvation is on the person and the work of Jesus Christ.

Adam, Sin, Death, and the Offense of Adam

Now, when we get to verse 14, Paul, from verses 12 and on, begins to talk about just why it is that we, well, why do we need salvation and how is it that salvation comes about. With such a fixed attention upon the person and work of Christ, we need to understand our absolute necessity for him being our righteous representative, our, another older term is federal head, that he is in charge, that he stands in for us before God, and we need someone to stand between us and God.

Otherwise, we are born in Adam, guilty in Adam, and we will die in Adam without hope. So, verse 12, therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world and death through sin, so death spread to all men because all sinned.

So you understand how sin and death came through because of Adam and because we all, just like Adam, because we are guilty in Adam, but also guilty for our own sins. And so death spread to all. Verse 13, for until the law, sin was in the world, but the sin is not imputed when there is no law.

Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the offense of Adam, who was the type of him who was to come. So when we think of the offense of Adam, and Red's question is about who are those who would not sin in the likeness of the offense of Adam.

So we have to understand what the offense of Adam was and to understand its uniqueness. Adam was made, along with Eve, on the sixth day that God created Adam and Eve. He made them in his image, he made them special, and he, by making them in his image, they were already in a particular relationship with God and with each other and with the world around them.

And God made this clear in the way that he told them to take care of the earth and to essentially love him above all else. Despite the fact that he gave them all these trees and all this wonderful bounty in the garden, he told them not to eat of the one tree.

This was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And this showed that God was more important than the gifts. The giver was superior to the gifts and they should worship the giver, not the gifts itself.

Warning against idolatry, do not worship the stuff. Worship God. Well, Adam was made without sin. When God made Adam and Eve, he stepped back and looked at all of his creation, everything he made, he said, what?

Good. Very good, Ethan. Oh, look at how everything comes together. He is, and Adam and Eve were sinless. They were in a sinless environment. They had every resource at their fingertips to love God, love each other, and steward the creation.

What a privileged position Adam had. And, being the first man, what a responsible position Adam was in. Adam and Eve were called to be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth, and so do it. What a huge responsibility for the first man, and he had no sin and was in a sinless environment.

Now, let's consider his sin, the offense of Adam. Adam's offense and Adam's sin is greater than our sin. It was worse than our sin. And the reason why I say this is because Jesus gives us a clue about that, remember?

He talks about different degrees of sin and therefore different degrees of punishment. He talked about the... to the degree of revelation is the degree of your responsibility to respond to that revelation.

So he said, woe to you, Bethsaiden, if the works were done in... that were done in you were done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented a long time ago in sackcloth and ashes, right? So, what is he saying?

The sin of these people is greater than the sin of these people, right? So, Jesus sees that there's a difference in degrees of sin, correct? Now, consider Adam. What a great sin... Adam walked with God in the garden, and he was sinless in a sinful... in a sinless environment.

And so, when he sins, do we see the greatness of his offense? Do we see... do we see the degree of his offense? Do we see the effect of the offense? So great was the sin of Adam. And just to remind you, that's what he says in verse 12.

Through one man sin entered the world. What an awful... what an awful thing for that man to do and what an awful sin. You know, Jesus said that the Son of Man was betrayed by... by Judas, you know, but... but what a great sin it was for him to betray Christ.

What a horrible and wretched sin for Judas Iscariot to betray Christ. Far greater than it was for even Peter to deny Christ. And in this way, we see what an awful sin, Adam's sin, was. Now, we can... we can all agree with that level of opportunity and blessing and sinless person and sinless environment.

Yeah, Adam had every advantage and he deserves to die for his sin. But you know, death reigned from Adam until Moses even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam. So we get the death penalty too for our sin, don't we?

Adam's sin was of a higher degree. Adam's sin was... was worse, but yet those who... who are born in sin, those who have a depraved nature because of our rupture with God, our fall, even though we're depraved and we are living in a cursed environment surrounded by sin, guilty in Adam and all of it, you would think maybe... maybe there'd be a lesser penalty for us.

I can't help it, right? Or... or it's not as bad, so on and so forth. But you know what? Death still reigns over because of... that's the nature of sin. Sin brings death. The punishment of sin is death.

And so death reigns even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of Adam. Brother.

Red, what do you think? Well, in this passage... And Brother Red, you're right in.

That this passage in Romans 5 and verse 14 and verse 13 as well, is often a passage that theologians and... and let's be honest, parents alike will go to and look at in trying to understand the case of infants and infant death.

This is certainly one of the passages. There are others in Corinthians and, of course, the passage about David speaking about his child who died, his son who died. Right. And so the... the challenge for us, I believe, is that we don't have, and we wish we did, we wish we had a very clear... I mean, just even half a chapter.

God, why didn't you just give us just a very clear description about this so that we would understand and that we would have a very solid comfort? And it is... it is a great difficulty to us when we don't.

I don't know why God didn't give us more clarity about the matter. So one of the things that we have to remember is that whenever we try to answer really tough questions that we don't have clarity in the Bible, in a good desire to answer those questions and to make a statement about that, an interpretation derived from another passage, we have to make sure that we understand what those implications are for other parts of our teaching and of our theology.

So time and again, as I've thought about this, and it's something that comes up on occasion, there... all I know is that God is a merciful God and that there is no salvation outside of Christ, and His death on the cross was effectual, it wasn't potential or possibility or even hypothetical.

So I trust that God will do what is right and what is good and bring comfort to the parents, but I cannot say... I cannot say what the Bible doesn't say, and I can come at it from different angles. I do know this, that when Adam and Eve were sinless, they were naked and unashamed.

They were naked and unashamed, right? Why? Because there was no sin, they had not sinned, but that when sin came into their lives, that then they were, and they had this sense of being naked and ashamed.

So to me, there's something there that I can't declare one way or another as a theologian, and I'm not going to find a systematic theology that'll work with it, and it makes other parts fuzzy, but I'm just telling you, there's a difference between a child who runs around naked and doesn't care, and then begins to be aware and self-conscious about the state of their dress and their clothing.

So, but that... I'll tell you, that is experiential and it's not... and it's derived from the Bible, but I don't have anything chapter and verse to back that up, okay? So I don't know if this passage, and I don't think this passage is directly talking about the death of the innocent, it could be, but it's definitely a question of great importance, especially for those who have suffered the loss of children and who.

Often wonder about that. Well, it's definitely in the context it talks.

About the law, and the question here is, when we look at verse 14 about those who had not sinned the likeness of the offense of Adam, Ryan's talking about the connection of this description in regards to the law, that the law had not yet been given.

And, of course, that's in the context there in verse 13 says that until the law, sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. And it gives us pause to think about how is it that there's sin in the world, but there is... but the law that God declared and gave from Mount Sinai to Israel, the Ten Commandments and all the explanatory material of those Ten Commandments, how is it that sin can be in the world when the law had not yet.

Been thundered from Mount Sinai? Yes, Ken, that's right. So Ken is.

Pointing out that before the law was thundered from Mount Sinai, the fact remains that even those who have not received the law from the scriptures, even today, those who have not heard that law and before the law was given, that we have a wall written on our hearts that read... talked about C .S. Lewis himself, could not give an accounting for this moral compass that was within him.

And yet we know who put it there. It was God, having made us in His image. All of the components of the Ten Commandments are there in the design of a human being. The Ten Commandments talk about loving God supremely, loving others rightly, and stewarding the creation responsibly.

And usually you hear about the two tablets of the law, which I think is a great way to go, but just remember that the second commandment, where we are not to craft an image, to create an image of God and the likeness of anything we've seen upon, you know, planet Earth, that's talking about how we rightly understand creation and what we do with it, that we don't put it up on a pedestal, we don't make it a god.

And the same with, remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy, about setting aside time and space to worship God, that's about stewarding creation. Also, do not steal and do not covet. And so you see that the Ten Commandments have to do with the threefold relationship of being in the image of God.

And thus, by the very design, the way that God made us, he put a conscience in us that, not in the exact way of Holy Scripture, but in a general way, in general revelation, tends to guide us towards the truth of right and wrong.

Okay, there is no hope for a man or a woman to obey that conscience in perfection, to always do everything that that internal moral compass says. In fact, very often we hear in the Scriptures that the searing of the heart and the stiffening of the neck and the suppression of that gift from God in sinning again and again.

But ultimately what we're talking about here is that there's still sin before Mount Sinai, indeed sin from the fall of Adam, that sin is there not because of a particular, not even because of a particular awareness within a person, or a particular revelation from on high, but sin is there because of who God is.

Like the righteousness and holiness, good and truth, and all of these things, God himself in his very character, in his very nature, defines. And so the truth of the matter is that someone in ignorance and a seared conscience can sin, not know it, and still sin.

If sin depends upon our complete and full recognition of it, then sin depends on us and our moral ability in our character development. But in fact, God is unchanging and he's the standard of truth and holiness and goodness.

And by his, by a gift, in grace, he has put that moral compass as part of the design in each one of us. Yes, that's right. The Maltheans are just a different type of Puritan, right? Very, very harsh standards.

Christ as the Federal Head and the Imputation of His Righteousness

Okay, yes. So as we think about the passage in talking about the sin that we.

Have because of Adam, ultimately this is to point us to the righteousness that we have before God only because of Christ. As we talked about, it was last week at the end of 2 Samuel, and that God is dealing with all of Israel based on the merits of the one anointed one, David.

Like he deals with all of Israel based on David's behavior, on the one man. And we say, that's not fair to the 70 ,000 who died in Israel because of David's sin of numbering the people. But we know that God is just and we know that they were all sinners and they deserved the judgment of God, yet he's still dealing with all of Israel based on David's performance and David's behavior.

And yet, we are reminded by that, that Christ deals with, that God deals with all of us based upon Christ, based upon who he is. And that's how he stands in for us, for his people. And we have his righteousness account given to our account.

This is really important. This is something that time and again in every generation has its particular challenger. We are having over 500 years out from the nailing of the 95 theses on the door of Wittenberg by Martin Luther.

The date historians have chosen is the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. Through that and through the resurgence of preaching the Bible over and against Roman Catholic tradition, the doctrine of the imputation of the righteousness of Christ was recovered.

This is incredibly important. Without this clarity, we are given very quickly to looking at our salvation, our standing with God as being dependent upon us. Am I passionate enough for God? Have I served God enough?

Are my motives pure enough? Have I sacrificed enough compared to what others have sacrificed? Are my spiritual disciplines as robust as this person? This is where you'll know where you are in your faith.

You'll know where you are and your understanding of the imputation of the righteousness of Christ and your justification when you read a lot of Christian biographies, especially the ones from about a generation or two ago, where the emphasis is basically reading about amazing saints who did far more in a week than you'll ever do in your life.

And as you're reading through there, sometimes the underlining message is, boy, there are no real Christians left today, are there? That seems to be the import on some of that. And we have to recognize that our acceptance with God and our standing with God is entirely based upon the person and work of Jesus Christ, and that's who we have to hold fast to.

Closing Prayer and Doxology

Alright. Well, I think we should sing the doxology, and then I think we should raise a militia and kill this fly. Okay? Alright. Yeah, okay. Let's go ahead and sing together.