Romans 5 — L.E. Maxwell

Justification Through Adam and Christ

Now in 5 .12 -21, let your eyes scan that section, 5 .12 -21 we see that our justification reaches all the way back to Adam and covers our Adamic involvement in his sin, so that we are justified not only for our personal transgressions, but justified from past Adamic sin.

We are sinners by nature, that's the reason we sin. We got forgiven for our sins, but thank God we've been justified from all things, even from Adamic sin. In union with Christ, listen, in our union with Adam, sin reigned, and there followed condemnation and death.

In our union with Christ, the last Adam, grace reigned. And whereas in the first Adam there was sin, condemnation, and death, they followed one the other. Sin, condemnation, death. So now under grace's reign, under the reign of grace, there follows righteousness, justification, life.

Three things down, three things back up, three things down in the first Adam, three steps up in the last. Now, every man in this world, every man in this world is united to one Adam or the other, but not to both at the same time.

If I am in Adam, I am in sin and condemned, awaiting death and execution. If I am in Christ, I have his righteousness, justification, and life. You find all that in 5, 12, 21. These are great facts. I have used them in years past, and I don't remember when I last took a series on Romans 6.

I don't know whether it was last year or the year before, but I find that we need to do this continually because this is the great doorway into victory over sin. Great facts. The Kaiser, Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, was once asked to entertain a group of men called German.

They called themselves German Americans. He says, Who are they? German Americans. Oh, he says, Germans I know, and Americans I know, and Germans I know who became citizens and ceased to be Germans. But German Americans, I don't know, and he didn't entertain them.

He refused to entertain a group who came to him on the basis of a double-minded citizenship. Now, you're either in Adam or in Christ, but you're not an Adam-Christ believer. Away with your double-headed, double-minded, double-notioned idea.

No, no. I'm not an Adam-Christ believer. I am a Christ one and his only. All right. In 5, 12 to 21, in 5, 12 to 21, which has dealt with sin in Adam and righteousness in Christ, that passage concludes.

Look at it. Look at it in 5, 20 and 21. Notice how it concludes. Will you please? And the law came in besides that the trespass might abound, but where sin abounded, grace did abound more exceedingly, that as sin reigned in death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Grace Superabounding Over Sin

Now, so I come up to chapter 6. Are you there now? You're saved, you're justified, God has declared you righteous. I come up, you and I come up to chapter 6 as a justified man, having been taken out of Adam and put into Christ, so that where sin abounded, grace superabounded and outreached sin's deepest dye.

Do you know what was said about Bunyan? It was said about Bunyan that when he started to swear in his unsaved days, when he started to swear, even ungodly people got afraid the heavens might drop down on their heads if they stayed around a man like that.

Even unsaved man feared him. What an awful man he was. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. No wonder he wrote sin, grace abounding for the chief of sinners. What an amazing salvation was his.

In other words, the deeper the sin, the greater the grace. Wonderful. Now the question arises, either naturally or subtly, either naturally or subtly, what should we say then? 6 .1. Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?

If sin once magnified the grace of God in my salvation, then shall I conclude that the more sin, the more grace? Shall I continue in sin, what does it say, that grace may abound? Do you know the way we put it today?

We put it a little differently. Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? We put it differently. We say, may I not continue in sin because grace abounds? That's our reversed version of this question.

Or to put it in modern terms, because grace abounds. Now the answer, God forbid, that's the repulse. Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? God forbid, perish of thought. Away with the idea. And what is that based upon?

What is the God forbid based upon? You've got it right there. I'm reading your revision, and for that reason, God forbid, watch it. We who died to sin, how shall we any longer live therein? That brings me to consider my second R.

Recognizing Union With Christ in Death

My second R. Recognition. Recognition. Recognition of what? Recognition of our union with Christ. All right, going on now. The Apostle says, or are you ignorant? Are you ignorant that all we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?

Now, here, just here, it is clearly implied that I may not recognize, I may be ignorant of my union with Christ and of all that that union with Christ implies. I may be ignorant. I may not recognize it as, I may not know.

Know ye not? I may be ignorant. I may need instruction. I may be ignorant. I may not recognize, because of my ignorance, my union with Christ and all that that implies. Read on. As you read on there, you find my union with Christ, my union with Christ.

Now, we're going into another step here. My union with Christ could only have been at the place called Calvary. I couldn't be joined to Christ except at the cross. I needed not an example to follow and imitate him.

I needed him first in his dying to give me what I've already noted, reconciliation. Now, I have my reconciliation, but I need to recognize the implications. Let's see it. When I came to Christ, I was united with him, but it could only have been at the cross where I came in touch with Christ for my justification.

I am justified in Christ through union with him, and that union is necessarily, unavoidably, inevitably a union with him in death and resurrection. The Apostle therefore points me to my union with Christ in death and resurrection when he says, We who died to sin, how shall we, such people?

How shall we, the like of us? How shall we, we, we who died to sin, how shall we live any longer in sin? How shall we, such in ones who died to sin? This is the first great fundamental fact, the great fundamental fact, the basic premise.

Faith Based on Facts Rather Than Feelings

It's for us to recognize this great fact and let faith build, fashion on this fact, regardless of feelings. As you have it brought to your attention, faith or fact based on feelings. I thought maybe some of you young folks, by the way, you good old dignified folks, we youngsters would like a little illustration this morning, and I thought perhaps you older folks could listen in.

Maybe you'll be able to understand it also. But I want to put these up in order now. And would you come up here you folks? Now let's see. What is your name? Mr. Fax. Mr. Fax. Oh, Mr. Fax. Yeah. And what is your name?

Oh, Mr. Feeling. Yeah. So we have Mr. Feeling and Mr. Fax. Now I want Mr. Feeling and Mr. Fax to stand over here, will you please? There you are. Now, you turn around here. Now your name is? Mr. Fax. Mr. Fax.

Your name is? Mr. Fax. Mr. Feeling. All right. I'm going to be Faith. Mr. Faith. All right. Now, I've just been saying that it's your business and mine to fashion on the facts, and you let the feelings follow.

All right. Your name is, Mr.? Fax. All right, you get going. You see, I didn't know or care whether he would follow me or not. I'll get going. Oh, you keep taking down the grandma. Paul and Barbara are preaching in Calgary today, so that's the reason I used the wee lad.

Now, beloved, listen. Let Faith fashion on facts, and it didn't matter to me whether he followed or not. There's your feelings. Feelings come or feelings go or feelings stay or feelings follow. Maybe.

Makes me know never mind. Faith, Faith follows, fashions on facts, and lets feelings follow. You may have feelings, you may not. But Faith has nothing to do with feelings. Faith has to do only with facts.

And the fact is that I've been united with Christ in death and resurrection. That's a fact. Praise God for the fact. Now, listen. Now you've got your thinker there because I'm going to make it work, if it's possible.

Maybe it isn't possible. All right, we'll excuse you. All right, you ready to work? Let's go to work and find something. The past. Chapter 5. Chapter 5. The past of sin's guilt. You hear that? Two things.

Justification and Sanctification

Past fact of sin's guilt has been met in my justification. But what about the present of sin's power? Chapter 6. Justification has taken care of the guilt of sin's past. Sanctification is to take care of sin's present power.

In Christ crucified, in my union with Him, I was given my justification. Now, in my justification, and what does justification mean? God declares righteously ungodly, trusting Christ. Justifies the ungodly, reckons them righteous.

Not makes righteous, but reckons us righteous. All right, follow me. In my justification was laid the foundation, the foundation of holiness, by canceling out sin's guilt, getting us into the Christian life, joined to Christ, trusting Christ.

Now, justification, chapter 5, in that we have seen the narrow gate through which we enter into the narrow way of sanctification in chapter 6. I want you to watch verses 19 and 22. Watch 6, 19 and 22, will you?

I'm going to cover so much territory, I'm going to presume upon your readiness to worship God in your thinking today, because to have your understanding right means a great deal here. 6, 19. I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh, for as ye presented your members as servants to uncleanness and to iniquity, even so now present your members as servants to righteousness unto sanctification.

The word holiness and sanctification are interchangeably used in chapter 6. Look in 6, 22. But now being made free from sin and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto sanctification and the end of eternal life.

Now there we have the word sanctification. In chapter 5, justification. In chapter 6, sanctification. Now the foundation, you know what a foundation is, do you? The foundation has been laid in justification, chapter 5.

Now we are to see the new life, the superstructure foundation has been laid. Now on that foundation of justification, the superstructure building is to be built. What do we mean the superstructure? The new life is to be built up.

For justification was not an end in itself. Justification was a means to an end, a foundation for a superstructure of a new life. You see the two in their connection? Justification is not an end in itself, but a means to an end, namely holiness of life.

I said in class the other day, justification was not to make me straight, but to make me sound. Justification puts me on the foundation, soundness in a good building of a new life. Since the foundation was laid in order that you might have a building on top of it, a new life.

Sin's Guilt as Penalty and Sin's Reign as Power

Now the question is how. Here we are. The question here is from here on how the life is to be lived in holiness. The new life now. In chapter 5, the contrast. Here we are again with a new jumping off, a new step.

In chapter 5, the contrast in that chapter was between wrath, the wrath of God that abides on the sinner before he's justified. The contrast there that was considered was this. Between wrath and justification.

That is, how to be saved from sin's guilt as a penalty. In chapter 6, the contrast is between sin and holiness. How to be delivered from sin's reign as a power. Chapter 5, sin's guilt as a penalty. Now, chapter 6, sin's reign as a power.

See those two contrasts, double contrasts? Now wait a minute, here's another one. Justification. When I was declared righteous, my justification altered, changed, changed my judicial position as a son of Adam, making me now join to Christ a child of God.

My position was changed because my place was changed. Sanctification, chapter 6, is now to alter not my position, but my spiritual condition. Not a hint or a word, listen to me, not a hint or a word in chapter 5 in my justification of God making me good.

But there was emphasis there on God having declared me good. God having declared me righteous. Chapter 6 is to make me righteous. Chapter 5 declared me righteous in God's sight, as to position, legal position.

Chapter 6 is going to show me how to become righteous in life. Are you getting some truths contrasted and compared truths here? Justification, I say again, had not one word to do with making me good or making me righteous.

There's not a hint or a word in chapter 5 about making me good. But it's an alteration of my legal position before God. Now, how to live the new life. How am I going to become righteous? How am I going to become righteous in life?

That's the point. In chapter 6 we have sanctification. God declaring, God having declared me holy in Christ, God says it. Now the present problem is how to become righteous. Have we been reckoned or declared righteous in 5 .1?

And did we have all the benefits following in chapter 5 of justification? Therefore, having been declared righteous through faith in Christ, we have peace, hope, joy, and even deliverance from the penalty on account of a damned sin.

So all was handled in my justification. Great word, justification. No wonder it's more than forgiveness. No wonder it's more than pardon. It's a sweeping word. God having declared righteous and ungodly wretch.

Putting me in a right position before God. Not a word about making me good yet. But chapter 6 has to do with that all the way through. All right. Now we may become. How? How may we become righteous in spiritual condition?

Through sanctification. All right, now I'm going to say something more. I'm going to fill your head full until it bursts. Ready for some more? Both justification and sanctification are through the once for all death and resurrection of Christ.

Both are through that once for all death and resurrection of his. Both are, both justification and sanctification are through our union with Christ. Now, in sanctification. Here, I want you to. Was my justification, was my justification in connection with Christ?

Was my justification in connection with the person of Christ? Was I, did I touch, did I touch the atoning sacrifice, trusting Christ? Was I justified in connection with the person of Christ? In other words, if I was once in Adam lost, unjustified, I am now in Christ justified in connection with the person of Christ.

The Believer's Continuing Union With Christ

Now, now, what about next? Now, in sanctification, listen to me. In sanctification, do I get reconnected with Christ or can I as a justified man be considered at all as isolated from Christ? A thousand never.

And do I in sanctification have to become reconnected with Christ or have I been blessed with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places in Christ? Is that the minute I'm saved and is it for every saint of God?

All right, there we are. How can I be considered, how can I dare to think of being considered as disconnected with Christ between justification and sanctification? Am I not vitally connected with and united to Christ?

Am I not already as a justified man in union with Christ? He that is joined to the Lord is one. Hallelujah. One Lord, one faith, one baptism into Christ. Well, all right. Now, the Apostle says, you following me now?

The Apostle therefore says, how shall we, Christ ones, justified in Him? How shall we, we, how shall we, the like of us, saved ones, justified ones, how shall we who are justified in Him, in possession of Him, possessed by Him, how shall we who have been grown?

That's the word, united, planted together, grown together, fused. I'm a Siamese twin with Him, grown together into Him, united, planted, grown together, fused.