Death in Adam, Life in Christ

If there's a law than the penalties incurred when we break the law and since the penalty for sin is death, and since death reigned from Adam to Moses, there's a sense in which everybody in the world broke the law somehow in adding to our natural minds that doesn't seem fair. Guilty because somebody thousands of years ago. Sin will go to Renewing Your Mind for this Wednesday. Today we returned to Dr. Darcy's groceries from the book of Romans, the apostle Paul is laying out the case for everyone skill words in my that's the bed. Fortunately, there is good we pick up today's messages.

RC turns the chapter 5.

Last week we made it through verse nine where we talked about the justification that we enjoyed while we were yet sinners and we talked about how God had purpose of this redemption for his people from the foundation of the world and so this evening were going to pick it up at verse 10 where we read, for if when 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 that we notice here that we have a comparison that is not one of the quality doesn't say on the one hand it was like this. On the other hand, it was like that, he says, on the one hand we have been reconciled through the death of Christ, much more than have we been reconciled through his life and so the theme of this verse has to do with reconciliation and as I mentioned to you earlier in our study of Romans, the one absolutely essential precondition necessary condition or reconciliation between parties ever to take place is estrangement because without estrangement there is no need of reconciliation. We don't sense. We don't feel the weight of that burden of our natural hostility towards God and that the New Testament speaks about reconciliation because reconciliation to God is so greatly and earnestly needed because we are estranged from him. But, beloved, the thing that's even more difficult to get across as we've labored already in this study of Romans is the fact that in that estrangement.

Not only are we at enmity with God. God is at enmity with us.

God is the natural enemy of corrupt sinners. Yes indeed, as we've explored in the past. There is a love of benevolence and beneficence that he displays to creatures indiscriminately but have the same time the Scriptures replete with those descriptive terms.

It tells us how God's face is set steadfastly against the wicked he is to holy as to even look at us. So great is that golf of estrangement between God and us. But there's a big difference of the driving force of the estranged parties. What drives our opposition towards God, which we have innately is evil are estrangement is based in a wicked opposition against God is estrangement from us is found in a holy opposition to see let's understand that difference and not project onto God's character the same on just grounds for enmity that we are guilty of ourselves. It is not right for the creature to be estranged from the creator. Once the creature is sinful.

It is right and proper for the creator to be estranged from the center because God is holy and we are not, but what Paul is declaring here is the glorious work of redemption in which God takes the initiative for our reconciliation. Verse 10 for if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his son, how much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.

Now there's a couple things that we need to pick up on here in the cross by the satisfaction of the atonement rendered by Christ to the father by his work of propitiation, Jesus reconciles the father to the father's people on Good Friday, when Christ paid for my sin and for your sin, if indeed you are in Christ. When Christ made his atonement for his people made the perfect sacrifice satisfied God's wrath completely for those for whom Christ died. That was the end of the estrangement on God's part. So we were reconciled in the sense that God who is the injured party in all of this was assuaged was satisfied and was no longer in opposition to his people, and yet what Paul is saying is that God was reconciled toward us while we were still estranged toward him.

Think of that that in this drama of reconciliation. Christ satisfies the righteousness and the holiness of his father satisfies God's opposition towards us while we are still opposed to him in the day that God was satisfied and was no longer in opposition to his people that did not automatically change us. We did not experience that reconciliation until the removal of our opposition towards him. The removal of our hostility towards him when we were regenerated by the Holy Spirit are hardened hearts were broken and we were brought joyfully into a loving relationship with the father through the son. So it's one thing to experience the reconciliation through the death of Christ.

But how much greater is that reconciliation that occurs through the life of Christ that we can look at that in two waves I've said until you're tired of hearing it, that are justification is not secured simply by the death of Christ but also acutely through the life of Christ because of his life of perfect obedience to the law by which his righteousness was merited and earned and is now given to those of us who have no righteousness of our own, we can say it is the life of Christ, even more than the death of Christ that is the ground of our justification that may be true but is true. But I'm not sure that's what Paul is talking about here when he talks about how much more away reconciled through the life of Christ. Remember he's already introduced the idea that we are justified not only by the death of Christ but the Christ was raised for our justification that we are reconciled because we have a mediator not only who died for us, but who is been raised from the dead for us, who continues to make intercession. He is our peacemaker. He is our peace, and he lives forever. Continuing in that role representing us before the father and is wonderful is that once for all. Death was on the cross, how much greater is that reconciliation that we realize and experience because he lives and ever intercedes for us and others one more point I want to cover here before we go into that next session where the comparison and contrast is made between the work of Christ is the new Adam and the work of the old Adam, that is just a little bit more exploration of the meaning of this term. Reconciliation of some of you remember when we started the study of Romans, we were back in Romans one and we talked about the revelation of the wrath of God beginning in Romans 118, because God has revealed himself plainly to all people and the universal response of fallen humanity to the brilliant manifest revelation of God himself in nature is to refuse to honor him as God, nor were we grateful and then later on in that indictment. When Paul brings the whole world before for God and that tribunal.

He mentions that the substance of our universal guilt and corruption before God. Is this our proclivity for idolatry. The sin of exchanging the truths of God for the lie, serving and worshiping the creature rather than the creator. You may be. Remember that you may remember, also there when I talk about that. I made mention of the word that is used there by the apostle Paul. The word metal loss so which indicates an exchange traded a swap where we trade the glory of the eternal, immortal, everlasting God, swap it for the glory of contemptible things creeping thing labs and spikes, and idols of other sorts and they said there was that metal loss so that exchange that took place that that word has the prefix method which means with you. You trade something in for something other will you carry it with and trade it for something else.

Will the same root word is the root for reconciliation. It's not metal also but coddle us is the verb, and then the noun form is consulate gay and that's the word that Paul is using here when he says we were reconciled to God through the death of his son, much more, having been reconciled, again, that form of colossi we shall be saved by his life and mind that, but we rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom now we have received the couple of day. We have received the reconciliation as if it were concrete noun that that reconciliation is a substantive reality. It is a gift that God has given to his people because of the death and resurrection of Christ. And so what is the result of that unspeakable joy you understand folks that the Christian life is to be from beginning to end a life of joy because we have much to be happy about. There is no room for the sourpuss in the kingdom of God. There is nothing dour about our redemption. If I am the most miserable of of people on this planet suffered to the degree that nobody else has ever been called to suffer if I were a modern-day Job sitting on the dung heap.

I would have no right to say anything different from what he said when he declared Dolly slay me, yet will I trust because there is no affliction so dire. No sorrow so deep, no pain so intense that is worthy to be compared with the glory of that coddle a guy that reconciliation that we have received in the beloved. And so when we contemplate our state of affairs in this world as long as we keep our eyes on this plane of this world and we see our bank account slipping away. We see our homes destroyed. We lose our jobs, our bodies are torn by disease. We have every reason to complain into wine and to weep.

But if we lift our eyes for one second to the cross and the resurrection and see that the Lord God omnipotent who was too holy to even look at us now not only looks at us and embraces us adopts us as his children because he has been reconciled to us pulses.

That's another benefit that flows from our justification not just these things. But we rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we now have received the reconciliation. You see, this is just an expansion of what he says at the very beginning of this chapter being justified. Therefore, we have peace with God and access into his presence and we can help glory and tribulation because it works. Perseverance and perseverance, character, and character, hope, which is never shaky still talking about this same motive right now.

Then he changes a little bit here in verse 12 reintroduces the most difficult concept. Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men because all sinned until the Lawson was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law.

Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned according to the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is the type of one who was to come.

Now there is so much in that text that I just read to you that it keeps the theologians busy studying and arguing ever and ever because is one the most important texts in the Bible to talk about the fall of the entire human race through Adam. Just let me briefly talk about the way in which the argument goes, one man brought sin, Zada, and with that sin came death and death came on the whole human race, because all of sin, but not after the similitude of Adam sin.

What you getting at here. Mrs. everybody dies after Adam. Even babies are born and live for a few hours and they die, and death is the penalty for sin working without sin there can be no death, and without the law, there can be no sin, so Paul was in the remember, death reigned from Adam to Moses death was in the world before God gave his law through Moses because since Adam's fall, all creatures have died because all sinned their and they sinned before the law of Moses.

But remember, Paul is saying your work can be no sin, there can be no transgression. Unless there's law because the definition of sin is a transgression of the law of God.

There's no law, no file, but if there's a law, then the penalties incurred when we break the law and since the penalty for sin is death, and since death reigned from Adam to Moses, there's a sense in which everybody in the world broke the law somehow in Adam. That's the point here of Romans five through one man sin and death came into the whole world. But again, people squirm unless they say wait a minute.

I didn't choose my representative. Let's look at that from Magic King George listen to the protests of the colonists were saying no taxation without representation. So if you like your adequately represented attire. What I'll do, I'll give you representative can be my brother and he points his brother to represent us. How would we scream about that was it. When that's no good because we would have no confidence that our interests would be represented by a representative that was chosen for us by somebody else.

That's why we want to be able to elect our own representatives who govern over us. But you see the complaint here it's built into our American democratic heritage. How can it be just for God to appoint one man to represent all kinds of people and the people don't even have a voice in that election but there's a big difference between King George and God. When God selects your representative. He makes that selection infallibly. He makes that selection impeccably. Nowhere in time and space. Have you ever been more perfectly representative then you were in the garden of Eden by the representative that God selected to act in your and if that be true. We can never curse God and say it's not fair because of I was there I would've done something different. When we complain about being misrepresented by Adam all we do is prove the perfection of that representation. As we manifest our fallen nature our Adamic nature. When we complain against God for that.

Also, for the Christian who doesn't like that and who objects to having a representative in the fall and makes that objection in principle saying God is never is never appropriate for God to accept the representation of one person for another.

If you want to hold to that principal consistently then you must not only reject any identification between you and Adam but you would have to reject equally any representation of you by Christ. The principle of representation, dear friends, is at the very heart and soul of our salvation.

So be careful if you reject that idea in principle, because if you do, you rejected your only hope of salvation one last point about this is that there is a perhaps a more deep combination of realism and federalism expressed in the profound thinking of the Puritan divine Jonathan Edwards who manifested his identity theory and have to have some idea of Platonic philosophy to really grab this. The idea is that in simple terms that in the garden you were present. Not because your soul was there but you were present in the mind of God and what is present to the mind of God is present in reality, because your soul was there anybody was there because in the mind of God you were there in Adam perfectly present. There one last thing about it. I keep saying one last thing and give you another one in Edwards.

Great treaties on Original Sin, where he gave his monumental study of the biblical texts for the fall and Original Sin. He also gave an argument from reason. He said if the Bible never taught about a universal plunge into ruin of the human race at the beginning and Adam if there was no such word of the fall in the Scripture reason would require that we posit such an event. How else could we explain the universality of sin in the human race. Now our culture is schizophrenic on this point because no one handed I want to acknowledge the reality of sin at all, only mistakes may want to say the origin of sin is environment. The reason why people go bad and become corrupt is because they are reared in a culture or a society that's flawed the fall. The scrub going back to the noble savage idea of Jean-Jacques Rousseau but the man was born free, and now is everywhere in chains. The idea is where all born neutral were all born innocent, but the reason why we all sin is because were overwhelmed by the corrupting influences that are all around us, so we all sooner later fall in the sin Edward said if that were the case if we were all born innocent neutral you would expect at least 50% of the population to stay in that state attends.

You have to look beyond the external influence of fallen society and cultural inducements to soon to explain the universality of it and the question that goes begging. Is this if we were all born innocent how that society ever get so corrupt in the first place because what the society is his people, but it's not like 5% of the people are evil and they seduce the other 95% now the reason why to hundred percent because were born in that fallen state and Adam come sin comes death comes destruction into the whole world. This is Paul's premise here when he then turns our attention away from Adam and the destruction that he brings the world to the new Adam. The new representative who doesn't succumb the enticements of the serpent, but who lives a life of perfect obedience, not just for his own sake sake of his people came to represent the reconcile same.

The bad news of sin in Adam is swallowed up by the good news of a new representative one who can save us, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world were learning about the gospel this week on Renewing Your Mind as we are highlights of Dr. RC Sproul series from the book of Romans think there's any question that the gospel has been obscured in the church today leader ministries conducted a state of theology survey a couple of years ago and the results showed confusion among professing evangelicals. For example, more than 40% believe that the Bible is not literally true. More than 30% believe that were counted righteous because of our works in nearly 40% disagreed that the Bible is the highest authority for what we believe.

Believing what Scripture teaches us about Christ, his life, his ministry, his death and resurrection is essential for salvation. That's why would like to get today's resource out to as many people as possible. Dr. Strohl was able to explain scriptural truth in a winsome, easy to understand way. In this sermon series from the book of Romans is really a master class on what the gospel is in and how to share it when you contact us today with a donation of any amount. We will send you a single USB drive that contains all 59 sermons give your gift online when you go to Renewing Your Mind.org or when you call us at 800-435-4343. That's 800-435-4343 well in Romans chapter 8, Paul explains how God saves his people. We hope you'll join us tomorrow for the message titled the golden chain that's Thursday on Renewing Your Mind