The Second Most Important Man In Your Life

Study Notes

Made New:  The Second Most Important Man in Your Life

Romans 5:12-15, 20-21

     We come today to a passage of Scripture in Romans 5 that has some of the most challenging statements in all the Bible to understand and apply. The Apostle Paul wrote it and, as I was preparing this message for you, I began to wonder whether it might have been about a text like Romans 5:12-21 that the Apostle Peter would later write, “Our dear brother Paul writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of matters related to salvation. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand… (2 Pet 3:15-16).” I say, “Amen.”

     I think the best place for me to start is to remind you of what our series in Romans 5-8 is about.  As Peter said in that letter, Paul wrote in Romans about our salvation.  In Rom 1-4, the Apostle Paul wrote about the only way we human beings can be saved from sin is through a gift of God that comes through faith in the Lord Jesus.  Then, what Romans 5-8 is about is how faith in Jesus not only leads to you being “justified”, (Paul’s word for God declaring us forgiven and right with God on the basis of faith in Jesus), but also to what Paul called in 5:9, to our completed salvation!  As Pastor Tim Peck said last week, the word salvation in Romans is about our lives someday becoming completely right – our lives being conformed to the image of Christ. 

     You see, Jesus doesn’t save you from your past sins to leave you in sin.  No, genuine faith in Jesus actually changes you.  So, this Lent season, we’re going through a very important part of God’s Word that tells you the process by which this change happens.  In other words, if you come to church today knowing that you need your life to change, how does that transformation flow out of believing in Jesus?

     I’m calling our series Made New.  That title itself evokes a big question, i.e.,  “Why do I have to be made new by someone else?”  Why can’t I just make a decision to change my own life?  The Bible’s answer is, quite simply, “Because you can’t.” Not on your own.

     So, that’s what I want to talk to you about today.  I know it doesn’t sound all that encouraging.  But, I don’t think there are many things more important for us all to come to grips with than this if we ever will understand the good news we call “the gospel”. 

     This point struck me in a new way this past Wednesday evening in a meeting many of us had with Mayra Nolan, who gives pastoral leadership to our community outreach here at LAC.  We were talking about our local church and Mayra said, “We all need and want affirmation.  But, there are times when we must ask, ‘What is missing?  What’s not what it should be?  What’s wrong?’”

     That’s what Rom 5:12-15 forces us to do.  I’ve been praying fervently about what God wants us to wrestle with us from this passage and I think it is this: Where are you stuck in your life?  It might be that you’re still trying to live life without God -- and know some things are messed up and need to change.  Well, I’ll tell you now: You need to bring God into your life by placing your faith in Jesus.   That’s where change starts.

     And, for many of us here (probably most of us), perhaps the question is more like: Where are you stuck in your walk with God, in your spiritual growth?  The Bible promises that, when you invite Jesus into your life, God will begin a process of actually making all things new in your life.  Do you ever ask “Why is it taking me so long to get spiritually better?”  So, that’s what we’ll consider in today’s message. I want to talk to you about us – about being human – and why so many of us come to church today with a longing to do what is right and, at the same time, find ourselves unable to do it. 

The Second Most Important Man in Your life -- Here’s how Paul begins in Rom 5:12:  Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned –

     Look at the beginning and the end of that verse.  At the beginning, you see the word “therefore” and, as the quip says, “When you see a ‘therefore’, you must find out what it’s there for.”  This “therefore” looks back to 5:1-11 and all the blessings that come when you place your faith in Christ, including the promise of God to save u completely, to make all things in our lives.  This certain hope (cf., v. 2) comes to us because of the love of God for us.  This promise of being made new is made certain because, when we believe in Jesus, we are actually united to Jesus Christ.  We often speak of this to children as bringing Jesus into our hearts.  Paul says, “therefore” this identity with Christ changes us for the good -- “just as” our relationship to the one who introduced sin into this world, i.e., Adam, has gotten us into this mess we’re in.

     Then, notice also the last thing in v.12, the dash.  Paul says, the ability of one person (Jesus) to change the lives of all who believe in him is like the way that one man (Adam) brought sin and death into the lives of all people.  But, after Paul says that, then he stops.  That’s what the dash at the end of the verse is about.  It’s as if Paul realizes that people don’t really know what he’s talking about.  He senses that people need to hear more about the problem that we are in because we are a part of a fallen people going all the way back to Adam.  Paul says, “Death came to all people because all sinned…”  He stops as if to ask, “You do know that all human beings are fallen and sinful and that all of us die and are separated from God; you know that, don’t you?”

     So, in vv. 12-18a, the Apostle pulls away from telling us that a connection to Jesus will change your life to telling us our problem, i.e., why we desperately need a savior like Jesus in order to be changed.

     This problem Paul speaks of – of our lives being affected by our ancestors, is something many of us in the Western world, like the USA, find hard to understand.  We rarely think about the interconnectedness of all human beings.  Paul takes us back to Genesis 3 when Adam sinned and he says that, what Adam did continues to affect us all.  We here in the Western world are such individualists that we hardly have a place in our brain to grasp this.  But, if I were preaching today in Nairobi, Kenya, or Bangkok, Thailand or in Kerala State, India, I wouldn’t have to say much about this.  Most people outside the Western world already understand this truth very well.  But, of course, I’m preaching in Pasadena, CA so I have to stop and address this.

     I’ve decided to let Dr. David Kasali who has served in Congo and Kenya, one of the graduates of the school I used to preside over, help me with this.  Dr. Kasali wrote, “Westerners may wonder how the sin of one individual could bring such devastation to so many while the death of another could bring such blessing to so many.  Paul uses the examples of Adam and Christ to illustrate the principle of corporate solidarity, in which the actions of one person affect the lives of all their relatives.  An African from a community-based society in which ‘one is because others are’ can easily follow Paul’ explanation, for we share the belief of Paul’s Jewish community that the actions of one person affect all the others.”  (Then, he provides examples from his society.) 

     Dr. Kasali goes on, “Paul contrasts the acts and roles of Adam and Jesus.  Adam was the head of the human community so that when he sinned, he brought God’s judgment on all humanity… We sinned in Adam because he was our representative.  The punishment for his sin was death and that is why death came into the world that God created (5:14). Adam’s sin continues to affect the whole of the human family today.  We are born without a personal knowledge of God, without God walking and talking with us.  All of us in the human family live under a reign of death.  These are things we in Africa understand very well.”

     Do you notice that Paul makes this point about our solidarity with Adam as if he just assumes that everyone will agree with him?  In our society, we read this passage and then have to write volumes of material to try to explain it.  But most people who have lived in this world have known there are bonds that tied all human beings together.  Most people understand that humanity could rightly think of itself as a family tracing the lineage all the way back to our first parents.

     Let's face it.  There are bonds that tie all human beings together.  These are things that go beyond genetic ones like skin color, eye shape and height.  We see it every day in our own nuclear families. I see my children replicating my strengths and weaknesses.  And reason compels me to believe that such links go as far back as they could be traced ‑‑ all the way to the earliest human beings.

     I know this point of our connectedness to Adam and to all who have gone before us raises difficult questions in our minds. For example, does this mean that we are all born guilty because of the sin of Adam.  Many Christians have answered yes.  Many other Christians have said no – that what the Bible means is not that we’re born guilty but that we’re born corrupted by the sin in the human family.  By that, they usually have meant that, the moment we are able to make a moral decision, we who are human make the wrong one. 

     Even Calvin and Hobbes in one of Bill Watterson’s comic strips wrestled with this:  The young boy Calvin asks his animal friend Hobbes, “Do you think babies are born sinful?  That they come into the world as sinners?”  Hobbes replies, “No, I think they’re just quick studies.”

     I am not going to try to address all the debates about these verses with you in my few moments from the pulpit.  Instead, what I want you to grasp today is the main point the Bible makes here, i.e., that there is no way you can change yourself.  You and I (and every person of every age everywhere) are so deeply affected by sin that Paul simply declares that all of people have sinned and that death comes because of sin.  Not one of us is immune to it.”

     This is our inheritance, and, let me tell you now, daily experience simply proves the point Paul makes.  Sin’s impact is seen everywhere – among the rich and poor, in prisons and in universities, in our great-grandparents and our great grandchildren and everyone in between, among everyone who came before and everyone who comes afterward...

     When Adam sinned, sin entered into the human race.  That’s why, for some who are here, Adam is the most important man in your life.  You and I need to be set free from this.  (Next week, we’ll see how to have a new Lord, a new representative and thereby to shove Adam down to #2.)

It’s Not All Adam’s Fault – …all sinned (5:12).  All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (3:23).

     Even though Adam’s sin brought a reign of death and sin to all who follow in his line, that does not mean that we can simply blame all our failings on him – or on our parents and our grandparents who have passed sinful ways on to us.  Yes, we are born into a sinful race – but we all personally make choices to do wrong when we face moral choices. That’s the consistent message of the Book of Romans – and of the entire Bible.

     In vv. 13-14 & 20, Paul wrote about this to his people, the Jewish people, and to a particular issue they had with this matter of how to live without sin.  When they read the books of Moses, many of them said, “Well, of course, after Adam sinned, people continued to sin because they didn’t have the Law of God.  That wasn’t given until much later when Moses went on the mountain.  But, now, we who are God’s people have the 10 Commandments and all the ways of God based on it.  All we need to do is have our parents teach it to us and to have the priests and rabbis teach it and motivate us to obey it and then we’ll be able to live as God means for us to live. The thought, “Do as Dt 6:1-9 says and teach God’s laws from childhood on and we’ll all live well and live long.” Of course, by implication, that means that if people continue to sin, it’s the parents or rabbis fault for not doing their job well – not ours personally. 

     But, Paul said, “No.”  The Bible always said that the Law of God is good but, simply having the Law of God doesn’t give anyone the power to keep it.  Having it only points out more clearly to us that we’re not living as God created us to live.  That’s what Paul meant in v.20 when he said “the law increases the trespass.”  He meant that, when we have God’s Word in our hands and know what God wants us to do and then disobey anyway, it only increases the seriousness of the matter.  That point of course, speaks to us who are in church today with Bibles in our hands.  We know how God would have us to live but fail to live that way anyway.

     Let me illustrate this:  Next to the Jr. High School I attended, there was a man who had a beautiful lawn.  We could get to school on our bikes faster if we rode through his lawn instead of going around it. Of course, we all knew we shouldn’t ride our bikes on his lawn and destroy it -- but many of us did it anyway.  So, one day, we saw that the owner put up a sign, “Do not ride on the grass!”  But some students did it anyway.  You see, simply having a clear statement of what we should do didn’t give us the power to do what was right.     All that it did was confirm that we were doing wrong.  So, we do need to know right from wrong.  That’s in the Bible.  But we also need a new power to do what is right – and stay away from what is wrong.

     I’m quite certain that those in Paul’s circle of acquaintances said, “God gave his Law to us. So, Paul, why don’t you just teach us and motivate us better to keep the Law instead of giving us all this difficult teaching?”  In our day, you might say, “Hey, Pastor, why delve into all this stuff about what God has to do to save and change us.  Why don’t you just remind us of the rules, and then motivate us to do right and to stay away from wrong?”  I join Paul is telling you that simply telling you the rules of what is right and wrong will not empower you to do what is right.  And the problem is not just that Adam or your parents have sinned and that you’re a victim of that. No, even when we know what is right, you and I choose to do wrong. 

     This made me think of another Calvin and Hobbes comic strip.  In it, Calvin had failed a test.  He says to his teacher, “This bad grade you gave me is lowering my self-esteem.”  His teacher says, “Then, you should work harder so you don’t get bad grades.”  Calvin pauses.  Then says, “Your denial of my victimhood is lowering my self-esteem!”

     Bottom line – Our human problem is not simply that we are corrupted or born sinful.  That is a fact of our human existence.  But, it is just as true that you and I choose to sin.  So, what do we need?  One thing we need is to know how God would have us to live – those things that are right and wrong, moral or immoral.  And God’s Word gives us that.  But we need more than that. No amount of teaching or motivational preaching will be able to help you keep that law perfectly.  You and I need ongoing cleansing.  We need the power of God’s work in us that begins when we place our faith in Jesus.  We need a new Lord who will be with us and help us live a new life.  We need someone who gives us his Spirit, one who can liberate both from the bonds of the past that enslave us and from our own ongoing failures.   And, that’s what begins when we receive Jesus. 

     We’ll continue in the coming weeks to see how the Bible tells us that this renewing work of God happens.  But I will stop at that point and call upon us all to respond to what we’ve heard today. 

     Paul wrote these verses in Romans because he knew that people he loved, the 1^st C Jewish people, needed to own up to the reality of their spiritual condition or they could never be “made new”.  He knew that both he and they had a their dire need for a savior from being born into a human family bound by sin and a world gone astray.  He knew how desperately we all need someone forgive what is in the past and to set us free from so much of it. He knew his people needed someone who could pull them out of their patterns of life so that their futures would be different.  And, I preach today to you because I know you and I do too.

     The word that has come to my mind over and over as I have read these verses is the word strongholds.  Centuries of sin in our world have an undeniable effect on all our lives.  The Bible speaks of them as the strongholds of the world, the human flesh and the devil.  I want you to pull out the prayer-kneelers in front of you. Take a few moments now to ask God to open your eyes to some of those strongholds keeping you from the life that God intends for you.  In your family, they may be patterns of abuse, of moral failure, of pride.  Acknowledge those things but not just to say that you’re a victim.  Know that God is greater than whatever strongholds have been in your past.

     Think of the strongholds of the world you have grown up in – those of our own society.  Our nation has been afflicted by strongholds related to race and nationality.  Has that affected the way you see and treat people?  Ask God to show you.  Give that to him.  In our society, we often rejoice about free enterprise – but we know that this has led so often to greed and materialism.  Do you see any of that in yourself?  If you live worrying about material things or obsessed by them, you will find yourself in bondage.  Give that to him in prayer…