"The One Man Adam and the One Man Jesus Christ" (Sermon on Romans 5:6-15)

As by one man all mankind fell
And, born in sin, was doomed to hell,
So by one Man, who took our place,
We all were justified by grace.

So we just sang, and so is the message of our Epistle reading today, from Romans chapter 5. As it says in verse 15 of our text: “For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many.”

In our text, Paul has been setting up a contrast, a stark contrast. Through one man and his trespass, death reigned over all of us. Through another “one man” and his obedience, grace abounded for all of us. What a difference! It literally is the difference between life and death, what comes to us through these two men. Thus our theme this morning: “The One Man Adam and the One Man Jesus Christ.”

These are the two men Paul is putting side by side, to make a contrast. They are the one man Adam, and the other one man, Jesus Christ. Adam was a “type of the one who was to come,” Paul writes. The word “type” means that Adam served as a model, a prefigurement, in some respects, of the one to come. But the parallel runs from the negative to the positive, in going from the one man Adam to the one man Jesus Christ. Adam fell to temptation, fell into sin, whereas Jesus did not. Jesus remained faithful. So let’s compare the failure of Adam vs. the faithfulness of Christ.

On the failure of Adam, Paul writes, “Sin came into the world through one man.” Here he’s referring to the fall into sin from Genesis 3. Adam had received a command directly from God not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But Adam did not heed the word that God had spoken to him. He tuned out God’s word, yielded to temptation, and fell into sin.

Jesus is quite the opposite. The word of God was uppermost in his thinking, when he took temptation head on in the wilderness. Remember how Jesus kept answering the devil. He would say: “It is written.” “Again it is written.” “For it is written.” Jesus took his stand on the word of God, never departing from it. By remaining faithful even while fasting, Jesus embodied the Scripture that says, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”

How about you? Do you ever let temptation--the whisperings of the devil, the opinions of the world, the desires of your flesh--do you let temptation get the better of you? Do you ever tune out the word of God? I guarantee you that you do. For example, in his commandments, God tells you to set aside a day each week to come and hear the preaching of his word, to gladly hear and learn it, and to hold that day sacred, inviolable. But are there weeks when on the Lord’s Day you’d rather do other things than obey God? In his commandments, God tells you not to murder your neighbor, whether in thought, word, or deed. But how often, how bitterly, and how long do you hold a grudge? We tune out God, who tells us to forgive those who trespass against us. You get the picture. We all, each one of us, have inherited that old, Adamic, sinful nature. It’s a family portrait, for all of us in the line of Adam.

Sin characterizes this family, and, as a result, so does death. Paul writes, “Sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.” Death follows after sin as surely as night follows day. Death is the curse and consequence of Adam’s disobedience. Adam sinned, and it corrupted the whole human race. The judgment for sin thus fell on the whole of humanity. Adam sinned. We all sin. Adam died. We all die. Adam was driven out of the garden and barred from the tree of life. Likewise, death consumes us all. All of mankind got messed up, right from the get-go, when Adam got the heave-ho. “Dust you are, and to dust you shall return.”

You and I follow in the footsteps of our father, Adam. Flesh gives birth to flesh. This tendency to sin is common to all the sons of Adam. The fancy term for this is “original sin.” It is the sinful nature of our origin in Adam. The evidence of this reality is the fact that we all sin and we all die. We’re showing the family trait, more telling than red hair or blue eyes or the distinctive shape of our nose. The family characteristic that we all share alike, every one of us on earth, is that we all sin and we all die.

Look, it’s not going to get any better, if all you are is descended from Adam. Sin and death is your sorry lot, and there’s no escape if that’s all you got. You need to be related to somebody else, someone who can get you out of this mess. And that person is Jesus.

If Adam is the first “one man,” who us into this mess, Jesus is the second “one man,” the one who gets it right and gets us out of this death trap that we fell into. Jesus is the head of a whole new humanity. “For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many.” Here is the “one man” you need to be related to: It’s Jesus Christ. You can sum up his whole life, his whole ministry, his whole saving mission, as perfect obedience to the will of his Father, from start to finish.

Adam wanted to be like God, and so he disobeyed and exalted himself. Jesus Christ, the very Son of God come from heaven, did not think equality with God a thing to be grasped, but instead he humbled himself, made himself nothing, and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. He did this, the will of his Father, in order to save and redeem mankind from the black hole of sin and death that we had fallen into. And so the cross of Christ is our tree of life. Jesus willingly died in our place, winning our forgiveness and redeeming us from the curse of death. His resurrection proves it.

Fulfilling the promise given in the garden, Jesus is the seed of the woman who crushes the serpent’s head. He is our divine Champion, delivering the whole human race. Jesus heads up a new humanity, to which, by faith, you belong. God’s gift of righteousness, your right standing before him, is given to you freely for Christ’s sake. You are justified, pronounced righteous, being found in Christ. Adam and Eve tried to cover up their shame with fig leaves, a device of their own making. That didn’t work. God clothes us with the robe of Christ’s perfect righteousness, purchased with his blood when he died in our place. His righteousness is the only thing that really does cover our guilt.

“But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many.” God’s grace abounds for you, my friends! Much more than the sin of Adam is the gift of righteousness in Christ! Much more than the death we die is the life we live in Christ! Our God is a “much more” God! Do you have sins and trespasses that weigh you down? God’s grace is much more than that! It is abundant grace! Do you have death looming ahead in your future, staring you in the face? Much more is the life--the eternal life--that is yours, in Christ!

There’s an old rhyme that goes, “In Adam’s fall, we sin-ned all.” Well, today I’d like to offer a new couplet: “In Christ our Lord, we’ve been restored.” For from the one man Adam, you and I inherited an old sinful nature that wants to tune out God and do its own thing. And with our sin, we get the curse of death that comes with it. But thank God for the other “one man,” our Savior Jesus Christ! For from him, and by his obedience, we receive the free gift of righteousness and life, life that overcomes death.

You see, it’s a “much more” deal. Oh, sin and death are powerful stuff. But much more is the gift of abundant grace and eternal life that are yours in Christ! “For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many.”

We thank You, Christ, new life is ours,
New light, new hope, new strength, new pow’rs.
This grace our ev’ry way attend
Until we reach our journey’s end.

Romans 5:6-15 (ESV)

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person--though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die--but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned--for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.

But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.