Christ Life In Us -Romans 5:12 Sin entered the world through one man - pt 2

Well, good morning. Well, today we're gonna continue on in a series we started last week. And we're gonna talk about a very familiar place, right? The Garden of Eden. And this picture I found on the internet, I think this is the angel telling Adam and Eve to get out of here. Not a bad picture, I guess, overall. So we're gonna talk about how sin entered the world through one man.

So this series we're going to call, we actually just finished for the last two and a half years we said the book of Romans. So we liked it so well we decided to go back and kind of do what I would call the core section of Romans. Romans 5, basically 5.12 through about 8 is kind of the core doctrine of what some people call sanctification, the Christian life. how Christians are to live, how we are to consider who Christ is. So I've titled this, Christ's Life in Us. So basically if you had to kind of put a little paragraph together, a little statement together, Christ's life in us is to be death to all that we were in Adam, but his life is to be lived through us by the power of the Holy Spirit.

So with that in mind, we're going to go through these verses. We're going to start off with where sin came from, right? We're going to talk about today, this is part two of this, sin entered the world through one man. And then next week we're going to talk about the idea that death, what's interesting is, and we're going to find it out today, sin enters the world and it has a friend, not a friend, an awful companion, death. Sin and death come together into the world. We're going to see that kind of over and over again.

So next week we'll see where death reigns, then to finish out chapter 5 in Romans we're going to see the free gift, justification of life to all men, then the law's purpose, then these verses starting in with union with Christ are in chapter 6. So if you want to read ahead, 5-12 for the next couple weeks, then into chapter 6 for a while. And then we go on to 7, then 8. So that's kind of where we're going.

This is more going to be maybe a topical study of these verses. We did them in the past, kind of maybe a little more in depth. This is going to be a little bit higher level maybe, but still with the idea of showing what would God have us, how should we live the Christian life is kind of the question we're trying to answer. How is that possible to live a life that honors Christ?

Because we're going to see, we have this awful thing called the sin nature, which we don't lose when we become a believer. And that's kind of a little bit down the road a piece, but let's just get into the topic for today. So last week we talked about, we kind of went back to where did sin come from? So we went back to Ezekiel, and we looked at this, if you look at a thing called the King of Tyre, you know, the city of Tyre, the leader of Tyre, and then the King of Tyre, all talk about this, it starts off talking about a man, but then by the time we get to the King of Tyre, it talks about this anointed cherub, which we're going to see is Satan's name before he fell.

He was called the anointed cherub and he was the most fantastic created being that God created. It says you were blameless in the ways from the day you were created. He was created. He was in the Garden of Eden. But then he fell. And it says your heart was lifted up because of your beauty. You corrupted your wisdom by reason of your splendor. So he just was so magnificent You could say it went to his head.

That's kind of vernacular. So this is Macaulay's, Chester Macaulay's kind of little summary. The anointed cherub, Satan's name before he fell, observed his beauty and was impressed, pride, and declared himself independent of God. And it said he sinned, and so we call that the fall, I'm calling it the fall of the anointed cherub. So that sets the stage.

This beautiful creature was in the garden, was created by God. The exact timing of this is unclear from scripture. I couldn't find anybody that wanted to hazard a guess other than the fact that he was created, he was in the garden. So the stage is set for the creation of Adam and Eve.

And when they're created, we know the story pretty well, that both Adam and Eve fell. They both ate individually. You know, Eve ate and Adam ate. They both Independently, even though one was given to Adam, he ate of his own cognizance, so both fell. But Adam gets to blame, because he's ahead of the race. So this disobedience to God's telling them not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, that's how sin entered the world. Okay? So then, mankind kind of comes into the picture.

We're going to find out today, from Romans 5.12, how all mankind fell in Adam as his head. So all mankind, because of the head of the race, we all fell with Adam.

And 5.12 tells us in very interesting detail how that happened. So that's where we're going.

Okay, so let's just look at an overview of these verses. It's 512 but kind of chopped up a bit. And it's arranged by kind of three clauses with three verbs. So let's look at that. So it starts off, therefore, just as, and you can apply that part to each of these three, or actually four statements. The first statement is, through one man, And I put the definition, it's through one man's sin, or it's better probably, the sin, the sin entered into the world, and death entered, that same verb can be applied to death by context, and death entered through the sin, the sin nature, so death spread to all men because all sinned in Adam. So that's our verse for today. We're going to go through three sections of that.

So as I mentioned, there's actually three verbs here, entered, spread, and send. And if you're kind of into the Greek language a little bit, it's this tense called the eris tense. And over the years, that's kind of one of those tense that is not present, it's not past, it's not future. It's called eris, which I like to think of as a factual event.

So what's being conveyed here, sin entered as a factual event it spread as a factual event and sin and sin as a factual event so we could say Paul is telling us about the event of the sin nature entering and death through it then he tells us next about the event of death spreading to all men And then lastly, the event of all men becoming sinners when they sinned in Adam. There are three verbs, all the same tense, this factual event tense. And it's interesting, the focus here is that something happened, and what happened was the fall of man. When Adam and Eve fell, that's the event, and there's like three aspects of that.

There's an inter-aspect, there's a spreading aspect, and a sinned aspect of that event. Okay, so we're going to go through each three successively. But before I get there, last week I presented my favorite pictures about... So we need to kind of do a little housekeeping here.

We're going to see, as we look in Scripture, you're going to see the word sin, plural, and then you're going to see the word sin, singular. And when you see the word sin singular, especially in Romans here, in these verses, it's going to refer to, there's actually what they call a definite article, there's a V in front of it, not translated many times. The Weiss translation pretty consistently does it. That's a translation of the New Testament. So you could render it the sin nature, and that's how I'm going to teach it.

It's going to be sins plural versus the sin nature. But here's the amazing fact. the word sin, the nature occurs 33 times in 5 through 8. There's two other words, sin occurs three times, the word sins doesn't occur at all. So he's talking about this nature, Adam's nature, this sinful nature, that's what he's talking about, not sins, he's talking about a nature.

That's going to be pretty important. So here's my picture. And we've used this over the years here at Holly Hills. Shows this tree with this night root system. So we're gonna try to identify, this is gonna help us hopefully to understand the nature versus the sins, okay? So the nature in this picture is the roots, right? So what do the roots of the tree do? They nourish, they determine the quality of the tree, right? If you have good roots, you got good fruit, bad roots, bad fruit.

So this nature, The sin nature is the energizing force behind all men's sin. If you think about it, why does anyone sin? Believers sin too, because we have a sin nature. That's man's main problem. That's why he commits sins, because he has a nature to do sins. Without that nature, he wouldn't sin.

Okay? So the fruit of the tree indicates the sins, plural, or acts of sin, and that's the result of this nature, this eternal fallen nature, sinful nature, Adam's nature, all kind of synonymous terms. Okay, with that in view, let's get into our first section here. So the A part of this verse, I'm going to use my little diagram form here, so it's just as even. So the subject here is the sin nature, or sin, singular, entered, so sin entered, and the idea is to come in, and it's this Aristant speaking of an event. And the event is it entered into the world, into mankind, and the world, if you look at that word for world, you could translate it mankind.

It's the same word that when we see in John 3.16, for God so loved the world. It's the same word in the original. So we're speaking of mankind as a whole. Sin came into the world and God loved the world. So that's what we're talking about, all of humanity. Okay?

And the event spoken of here is the event of them eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And they died two aspects to death here. And we're going to talk about this quite a bit in this part of it. There's two kinds of death, right? Dying, you will surely die in Genesis talks about. So we have physical death and we have spiritual death. Both those happened when they fell. We'll talk about both of those shortly.

And so it happened, so sin entered the world, into the world, and the additional fact that he brings in this first part of it, it was through one man, through Adam. It just wasn't an oozing thing. You know, if you're into science fiction, you've got this ooze that kind of comes on, and the theater gets dark, and it starts shaking. That wasn't like sin. Sin came through a man. and a woman, but Adam gets the blame, right? Because he's the head of the race. Came through a man and a woman, that's how sin entered the world. So, it's the sin nature, the source of sin, not sins that entered through this man.

Okay, so that's the A part. Now I have some observations about that. So people have spoken about that, I kind of borrowed some from some people, I'll show you this. Okay, here's some observations. The sin nature entering, So once again, maybe a little bit repetitive here, I apologize for that, but we're talking about Adam's fallen nature. And you also see that his nature or what God, when God created man, he said, I made man in my likeness and image, we see that in Genesis. Well, unfortunately, when Adam fell, Adam's nature fell. his likeness and image fell as well.

There's a verse that kind of talks about that in Genesis 5.3. It says, when Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness after his image. So what we see is, we start off in the garden before the fall, man has God's likeness and image, but after the fall, it's always Adam's likeness and image going forward. And it stays that way, every person on the planet has Adam's likeness and image until someone comes to know Christ, and that changes at that moment. Okay, so let's carry on here.

So we know about, Bob knows about this when he talks to patients. Bob Eccles, our doctor in the house. When he talks to patients, he'll say, well, what's your family history? Did your mom have diabetes? Did your dad have this? What about your grandparents?

So there's issues. So here's something Bob's gonna talk about at his next conference. I'm kind of pulling his leg here a little bit. So this is Macaulay, I like this. So Chester Macaulay says, so Paul is saying that there is a spiritual genetics is issue in the human race. We have a spiritual problem, right? And that came through man, so he calls it spiritual genetics. How valid that is for medicine, Bob and I will talk later about that, but that's my little joke for today.

Okay, so Adam is responsible for man's sin nature. Like this is Merriman may just so let's think about the man is I'm sorry I didn't say that right Adam is responsible for man's sin nature But man is responsible for his acts of sin or his sins think about that with we have this nature We have a choice. Do we do we abide in Christ or not abiding Christ? Do we sin or not sin? That's man's choice, but we have this in nature and we can blame Adam for that We can't say Adam made me sin. We can say we have a nature from Adam Okay, let's carry on here. So some more thoughts here. It was through one man. Through is this Greek word dia, you could say by means of. So why the term one man?

So why is Paul kind of focused on the idea, why doesn't he just say Adam? Well, one of the commentators, this is Constable, says, Paul didn't call out Adam or Christ directly. He spoke of them as one man. He referred to each as one man in Romans 5, 12 through 21. So we'll also see he'll speak of them as the one or one transgression. One transgression would speak of Adam. One act of righteousness would speak of the Lord Jesus Christ. So he uses those terms and Constable's thought here is that he's stressing the unity of the federal headship.

You're either under the Adam line or you're under Christ's line. And you have a man in both camps, right? You have the man, Adam, and you have the God-man, Jesus Christ. So you're either in this man or in that man. So that's why he's using that term, man.

And that's from Constable. Okay, so that's the first, the A part. But here's an example that Chester McCauley kind of, at least part of this he suggested. So let's think about our friend Melchizedek. If you're a reader of Genesis, you'll remember this guy named Melchizedek.

He was a priest of the Most High God. He kind of, as someone said, he wanders onto the pages of Scripture, and then he wanders right back off again. He's kind of a mystery man. But what's amazing is, in this battle that Abraham was involved in, he gave a tenth of all the spoils to the Most High Priest.

And we see this event referred to 300 years later When Levi was on the scene, recorded in the book of Hebrews, it says, because Levi was in the loins of his ancestor Abraham, Levi also is credited with giving tithes to Melchizedek. So the picture here, I'm trying to show you the picture of how that we're connected with was something in the past. So Levi was connected with his great-grandfather Abraham. He wasn't born yet, but he's connected, and he gave ties to Melchizedek through his grandfather.

Pretty amazing. Well, if you think about that, that's what Paul's teaching us here in Romans. He's saying, Adam and Eve sinned in the garden. If we make it today, 2,000 years later, He tells us, all men sinned in Adam when he sinned. That's what he's saying. So I'm trying to show you the picture. So one is with this giving gifts or tithes. Levi gave tithes through his grandfather to Mechizedek. And we have a nature, we have Adam's nature, even though it was 2,000 years ago. Or probably more, actually. Anyway, OK, let's carry on. So the next clause here, part B, we start off, now we talk about death. So death entered we saw sin entered through one man now. We see death is entering Through so what's interesting?

It's connected to the sin nature death is absolutely hardwired Connected up to the sin nature death Came with the sin nature It didn't come on its own it came tied to the sin nature sin is never alone death is always with it It's always its companion So that's a pretty hard statement for me to comprehend. So what are some thoughts about that?

The best verse I could think of is this verse here, talking about sin and death. And someone pointed out you have sin and death and grace and truth. One is kind of a very negative thing from Adam. Grace and truth is from Jesus Christ. So this tells us about sin and death. Romans 6 23 for the wages of sin is death but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord so death is a just reward for the sin nature right as the verse says and we think about it death or separation from God was a just reward for the anointed cherub soon to be called Satan and for Adam and Eve's sin. That was a just reward. So sin and death come together.

So I'm gonna keep camped on that for a bit here. Here's some more thoughts about that. So we're gonna see, as I mentioned before, later we're gonna see through this book of Romans here in five through eight, we're gonna see that sin and death came through Adam, but grace and truth were realized through our Lord Jesus Christ. That's gonna be a theme we're gonna see.

So we have two kinds of death here I mentioned before in the human race. We have first physical death. Every person in the line of Adam dies physically. And according to Merriman that's the separation of the soul and spirit from the body, which I think is right. Secondly, we have spiritual death or separation from God in the line of Adam. That's probably the harder one to understand. God warned Adam that he would die spiritually if he partook of the fruit. In Genesis 2 he says, in dying you will surely die. So each person born in the race is born spiritually dead, so we died when Adam died, if you will, separated from God, so we're born dead, spiritually dead, separated from God, and receive the fallen nature directly from our parents.

That's from Chafer. Okay, so let's go on here. So what I decided to do here, I have two charts here. One, we're going to look through Scripture here, maybe about four or five verses on each side. We're going to look at sin and death as Scripture portrays it for a person, an unbeliever, a person who does not know Christ, or the consequences of sin and death. And then we're going to look at the consequences of sin and death for the believer. So one's going to be bad news, one's going to be good news. So first the bad news.

Okay, and this verse has always kind of just shook my boots, so to speak. When Jesus was talking, and he's talking to Israel here, but Jesus said, follow me and allow the dead to bury their own dead so in a sense he was calling people that did not know him the dead which is kind of a not a real pleasant term another verse from our Lord says therefore I said to you you will die in your sins unless you believe I am he you will die in your sins so we see sin and death together here another one in Hebrews and inasmuch as it has been appointed to die once, after that comes the judgment. Then we have in Ezekiel, I always remember the King James, the soul that sins, it shall die. The person who sins will die. Then we have a couple of verses. This verse we'll be teaching next week.

Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offensive Adam, who is a type of him to come. And then the last verse I have in this section, so that as sin reigned in death, so For the person outside of Christ, sin is reigning. It's on the throne of their lives. Sin is reigning in death. Separation. Another way to think of death is separation. You're separated from God or you're separated from your soul and spirit. Okay, so that's on the negative side.

Now on the positive side, for those who know Christ, there's good news about sin and death. So Peter says here, and he himself, speaking of our Lord, he himself bore our sins in his body on the cross so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness for by his wounds we are healed. Then in Timothy it says, but now has been revealed by the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ, Christ Jesus, who abolished death So Christ has abolished death and brought to life an immortality through the gospel. And then this is a great verse.

Many times at funerals, I'll read this verse, which I think is very appropriate. Then we'll come about the saying that death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? And then the last one here, which I think it's, I never actually, I think about this more than in past times.

For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death. The believer in the Lord Jesus Christ is free from the law of sin and death. A wonderful, wonderful thing to remember. Okay, just kind of a side light before we go to the next part of the verse. Merriman kind of pointed this out.

What does dying spiritually mean? So when a man, man's spirit was given to him so he could fellowship with God. You think about in the garden, right? Adam and Eve, they were fellowshiping with God. They walk in the cool of the evening. We're not told a lot about that, but they were having fellowship with God. When man fell or sinned, this fellowship was broken. So they died, they died spiritually, their fellowship was broken with God. Man who does not know Christ as his Savior has no capacity to communicate or fellowship with God. That's something the world doesn't always quite catch on to.

They kind of think, well, You know, I can just pray to God when I want to. No problem, I'll just pray to God. In a sense, that's not bad. But the real story is that men outside of Christ, Christ, or God, I should say, is reaching out to them via the Holy Spirit. He's in the world convincing them or convicting them of sin and righteousness and judgment. So God is reaching out to man. It's funny, Scripture always shows us how God reaching out to man, not man reaching to God. It's always God first and then man responds to that.

Okay, so let's carry on here. So spiritual death now has been passed on through the entire human race. And just a word of encouragement, for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which is lost. Wonderful encouragement. Okay, so the C section, C section, the last part of the verse, death again death now second verb death is spreading now death spread spread so it it death first entered with sin with the sin nature then it spread so that is spreading is the idea to pass upon or spread throughout and Thayer says it's it's spreading not able to be stopped you cannot stop what what death is doing is spreading to all men so also to all men and Here's the reason because all sin in Adam. That's why that's why death is spreading So so death spreads so also to all men because all sinned in Adam Since Adam is the head of the race It's kind of like how you said how many times you don't say this Roger.

I'll say it a few more times Adam is the head of the race when he did, when he sinned, actually when he died, not did, I missed that, has passed upon the entire race of men and women. I'm sorry, actually it's right, never mind. That's funny. Okay, so let's carry on here.

So I want to focus a little bit on because all have sinned, so death spread, so also to all men, And what's the reason for that? Because all sinned in Adam. And that's my comment in Adam, I've added that. So you say, how are you able to do that, Roger? Well, let's see if I'm right. Okay, so sinned, this is a third verb here, is in the aorist tense. And this is Chafer speaking here. So sin is a single historical event. It's saying that each member of the human race dies physically because it was part in Adam's sin. It cannot refer to sins, plural, of many individuals. It's not that man became sinful. It's kind of a trick question. Why are you a sinner? Did your sinning make you a sinner? Well, hopefully you'll be able to say, no, that's not right. I'm a sinner because I have Adam's nature. That's why I'm a sinner. Okay, I'm getting ahead of you.

The assertion that all sinned at one time under the same conditions. So that's what he's trying to point out here. The statement is clear. The issue being that all had a part in Adam's initial sin. And we actually have a parallel verse. You know, I'm at fault here too. I have, most of my Christian life, I have not quoted this properly. And it's actually It's actually all sinned. It's actually the same. All sinned in Adam and are falling short of the glory of God. I have not taught that way many times. I'm not sure why we did previous to this, but as studying through this, it's actually a parallel verse to 512. All sinned. All sinned in Adam and are falling short of the glory of God.

Okay, so now, to kind of wrap up here, two charts to go here. This is the account in Ai, and this is where it's in Joshua. And I wanted to share this with you. I thought it was kind of an interesting thing about the sin of Achan. and how it kind of parallels what happened in the garden, and how it kind of shows that God holds the whole race accountable. And in this case, he holds Israel accountable for one sin, the sin of Achan. So let's go through the story here.

So it starts off in Joshua 7.1. It says, but the sons of Israel acted unfaithfully in regard to the things under the ban.

So Israel here, in this situation, they just finished their triumphant Jericho battle, right? The walls fell down. They can conquer anybody, right? We can conquer the world, right? Here comes a little town called Ai, a small little place. Hey, we can get that, no problem. Those guys are nothing, okay? But the problem is they had a problem. They had a sin in the camp, so to speak.

For Achan took some of the things under the ban, therefore the anger of the Lord burned against the sons of Israel." So one man, one man's sin is going to affect the entire nation of Israel. And notice it says his anger didn't burn against Achan, it burned against the sons of Israel. So he holds the entire nation of Israel accountable for this one man's sin.

So we're going to skip down. So here's, it's in your bulletin and also Jim read it. So Achan answered Joshua and said, truly I have sinned against the Lord and the God of Israel. This is what I did. When I saw among the spoils a beautiful mantle from Shinar and 200 shekels of silver and a bar of gold, 50 shekels in weight, then I coveted them. I took them, and behold, they are concealed in the earth, inside my tent, with a silver underneath it. So he, I saw, I coveted, I took.

Go back to Genesis, right? How about Eve? What happened with Eve, right? The tree looked good. She was good. Eventually, I took and I ate it. Kind of the same scenario. She saw, she coveted, she took. Same picture. So we're not so different from our ancestors in the garden. Okay, but here's God deals harshly with sin. And this is one of the harshest we see in scripture. So basically they don't have to read the whole thing. So here's the deal.

I highlight in blue. So they took Achan. So Joshua assembled all the Israelites. They took Achan, his sons, his daughters, all his belongings into this valley. Not a good thing is going to happen. And Joshua said to them, Why have you troubled us? The Lord will trouble you this day. All Israel stoned them, and those with him with stones. Afterward they burned their bodies with fire. Pretty incredible. All because of this one man, Achan, his entire family, all his belongings, the Lord took out.

So pretty harsh punishment. And that's why, you know, if you think about it, that's why we can't pay for our sins. This would be our result. This is where we would be. Aren't we thankful that our Lord went to the cross and took our punishment so we wouldn't have to incur that kind of awful thing. Okay, a few final thoughts from Chafer. First, it's a broken record, I know.

First, the sin of Adam caused him to be transformed downward into a different kind of being from that which God had created. We call it the fall. He furthermore could not propagate only after his kind. He only could propagate after his own kind. Thus, the race was born in spiritual death received by his heredity from the first man, Adam. Each person of the race is born spiritually dead, separated from God, and receives that fallen kind of nature directly from his parents. So one last thought, not from Schaeffer, But from Merriman, so the question before us, what is God's plan to control man's sin nature? So what is God's plan?

So I'll give you the big picture, and we'll think about the details later. But the big picture is, right, we talk about it a lot here, there's three aspects to our salvation. We were saved from the penalty of sin, from the power of sin, and from the presence of sin. If we trust the Christ as our Savior, we are saved from the penalty of sin. sometimes called phase one. So now we're in what's called salvation from the power of sin. And that's what this passage in Romans 5 through 8 is all about. Salvation from the power of sin. How do we control that sin nature? To us it seems like it's out of control. You think, how can I possibly control that nature that wants to sin?

Well, God has given us his plan for that. That's the fine details yet to come. So hang around for the rest of the I'll see us online and what do we have to do, you know, okay, so let's close Dear Heavenly Father. We thank you so much Lord. We thank you for the blessings. We have in our Savior We thank you for the life that we have in our Lord Jesus. We pray that we come to understand How we're to die to all that was in Adam and live to the glory for you in Jesus Christ We thank you for that. We ask in his name. Amen