Made New:  The Most Important Man in Your Life

Romans 5:15-21

     Today, we will do what Jesus commanded us to do together when we gather as his followers, i.e., we will remember our Lord Jesus’ death until he comes back again (1 Cor 11:26).  I am convinced that doing this, receiving communion together, is one of the most important part in the life of a church.  One of the reasons I say this is that, when we receive communion, we are forced to ask ourselves the question that is at the heart of the passage we return to today, Romans 5:12-21.

     What is that question?  How is it possible that one man’s death can bring such blessings to so many people?  Look at that question and let me remind you of a couple of things:

1.  The Blessings – They are what we spent three weeks talking about at the beginning of this series.  You find Paul rejoicing about them in Romans 5:1-11:
   1. Justification -- We who are sinners can be declared right with a holy God (5:1a),
   2. Shalom -- We who are broken can experience peace with God (5:1b,11),
   3. Certain Hope -- We are sure that God will make all things new in our lives (5:2,9-10),
   4. Purpose – We who find this world to be sense-less can live with the certainty that God uses all things, even suffering, to further his good work in us (5:3-4).
2.  The Means – The means by which we can have these blessings is spelled out in 5:6,8: “When we were powerless, Christ died for the ungodly…  God demonstrated his own love for us in this way: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

     This is the heart of what we call “the gospel, i.e., God’s good news.  Most of us who go to church believe this good news from the depths of our hearts. Our responsibility is to place our faith in Jesus.  See 5:1-2 – “We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.”

     This is a beautiful and life-changing message.  But, for many of Paul’s readers – and for many people ever since -- it brought up the question that Paul addressed in 5:12-21 -- How is it possible that one man’s death can bring such blessings to so many people?

     To answer that, the Apostle Paul draws upon something I spoke about at length last weekend – that there is a connection between all things in this world God made.  In particular, there is an inter-connectedness of all human beings.  What one person does affects all others to some extent. With that in mind, in 5:12, the Apostle Paul takes us back to Genesis 3, the chapter that describes the time when sin entered the world.  What the first Adam did by disobeying God negatively affected everything and everyone.  “It’s like that,” Paul said. “The impact of Jesus is a lot like that.”

     So, all lives affect all other lives.  But, in particular, what Adam and Jesus did have an ongoing enormous effect on others.  It’s because they were the first to do what they did.  Adam was the first one to sin, to disobey the God who made him.  Jesus was the first one to live life as it is supposed to be lived – without sin. 

      As I was thinking about that point -- that those who do something first often have a transformational impact (for worse or for better) -- I began to think about the Oscar-nominated movie that I saw last year, i.e., Hidden Figures.  It is a movie about three African American women who were the first to break the gender and color barrier at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), the forerunner of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).  Mary Jackson was one of those women.  She became the first African American woman engineer at NASA.  However, before she could get the qualifications to become an engineer, she had to get a graduate degree, a degree that was only attainable in an all-white school.  In her appeal to a judge to allow her to get into a graduate engineering program, she powerfully made the point of the significance of being the first one to change things. www.youtube.com/watch?v=   The judge in the movie made a hard decision that day.  He was the first to open the door for a woman like Mary to become an aeronautical engineer.  Acts like that have had, and continue to have, a huge impact on our world.  If you will magnify that principle a million-fold, you will grasp just a bit of how it is that one Person, fully God and also fully human, living a sinless life, willingly dying in the place of sinners, and then defeating both sin and death by his resurrection can change the lives of all who follow him.

Whose Family Are You In: Adam’s or Jesus’? (5:15-18) -- If the many died by the trespass of one man, how much more did God's grace and the gift that came by the grace of that one man, Jesus, Christ, overflow to the many (5:15).

     To grasp this important message, you should picture that Paul is describing two different families.  Right now, all people in our world are in one of two families, each bound together by the head of the family.  We might call them the family of Adam and the family of Jesus.

     When we think about our nuclear families, we realize that we derive our beings and much of our identities out of two people called parents.  Those parents derive their beings and much of their identities out of four other people called grandparents, and on it goes back to the very beginnings of human life.  We're tied together in this human family in ways I think are undeniable.  And that's why the heritage of all of those in Adam’s family is sin and death.  Paul says that is our human family inheritance.  We are blood kin.

     But, you may think, if that’s true, we have no hope. We’re just born into that Adam-family and the consequence of that is that we all sin and we all die.  I’m quite sure that most of us don't want this family inheritance “in Adam” but we don't know how we can escape it. 

     The Bible says, “Yes, that’s the bad news.  And it’s real news – not fake news!”  But, says God’s Word, there is good news available to you. You have the possibility of becoming a part of another family.  It is true that you don’t have a choice about whether you’re born into the Adam-family.  But you do have a decision to make about whether you will stay there.  Now, all who trust Jesus as Savior are adopted into a new family with a new family head, the Lord Jesus.  Yes, Jesus – the one who loves you and who died for you.  And, note this:  The contrast between those two families is enormous.

     See v. 19: Just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.  Paul is saying that God is offering us a new family head, the Second Adam, Jesus.  What Jesus has done can now change the entire direction of your life. Adam's sin resulted to your sinfulness.  But when you become a part of the family of God, Jesus' work on the cross will lead to your righteousness.  Adam's sin leads to death, both physical and spiritual.  Jesus' resurrection from the dead will lead to you being spiritually alive (i.e., born again to a new life).

     That’s what Paul talks about in Rom 5:12-21: All who trust Jesus are made a part of God’s family, what we call here at Lake, God’s “unexpected family”, one no longer bound by bloodlines but bound by faith.  In the eyes of the world, it’s an unexpected family because it’s made up of Jew and Gentile, indeed, of every people group, language group and nationality.  We become one family “in Christ”. We are changed by what He has done.  His death provides the punishment necessary for our sins; his resurrection life is passed on to us.

     Therefore, in this new Jesus-family, sin and death no longer reign.  Oh, physical death is still a part of this world, but death's sting is gone.  We will be resurrected because our family head has been resurrected.  And sin is still a part of our existence too ‑‑ but with God's power at work, that is in process of being dealt with too.  One day, sin will not affect us any more. For those in God's family, sin and death will no longer be masters. 

“How Much More”

     I don’t want you to miss that phrase “how much more” in vv.15, 17 and 20.  When you give your life to Jesus by faith, he does much more than simply restore you to being the way Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden.  Sometimes, we have the idea that God is only going to take us back to being the way Adam and Eve were in Genesis 2. But, when you think about it, there wouldn’t be a lot of hope for us if that’s all that God does for us.

     In Genesis 2-3, it seems clear that the bodies Adam and Eve had were sustained by their access to the “Tree of Life”.  When they no longer had that access, they began to die.  Even more seriously, Adam and Eve were susceptible to sin.  When a temptation came to put themselves into the place of God, they gave in.  If we simply become like Adam and Eve were, we would sin and give up heaven in a moment.  No, we need “much more” to happen than for us to become the way Adam and Eve were before they sinned. 

     And that’s what God is doing in you and me.  He’s remaking us so that we will become conformed to the image of Jesus.  As theologians put it, we will be freed both from the presence and the power of sin.  When God is done with his work in us, what will be gained will be much more than what was lost when Adam sinned – we’ll be in a better garden, with better bodies and with a new moral strength made to be like Jesus.

     And, all this is a work of the “grace” of God.  The Bible says this over and over in Romans 5.  We don’t deserve all these promises and blessings for we all of us have sinned. We cannot earn this great salvation because – well, as this entire text has declared it, we can’t.  We’re trapped in this old family and in this old way of life.  Our salvation is about grace.  Grace is not achieved.  It must be received.  Grace cannot be earned.  Grace is a gift God offers to people because he loves us.  We receive that gift through faith in Jesus.   

     It is through grace poured out in Christ, sinners like we all are can be made right with God. Nothing else in the world works this way. You know that, don’t you?  In every system in this world, whether it be education, sports, business, or the military, you have to perform before receiving the verdict, the reward or the grade. You must complete the mission, pass the test, win the game, or pay the debt before the reward or verdict is given.

     But, with the gospel of God’s grace, the verdict about you comes first. God declares you right and forgiven because of the work of Christ done on your behalf.  When you grasp this, and receive God’s gift of grace by faith, then something begins working in your heart.  Here’s what happens:  When your faith is real, you become grateful.  You begin to experience the presence and power of God within.  It is through the work of God’s Spirit in the hearts of grateful people that you and I begin to live new lives in keeping with God's will.

     Listen carefully:  You must never reverse this. You must never think that God accepts you based on how you perform. Jesus performed in your place through His life, death, and resurrection.  On that basis, he offers you all those benefits of Rom 5:1-11: right standing with God, peace in your heart, and a promise that what God will bring to completion what he has started in you.  And, until he’s done, nothing will separate you from his love that comes through faith in Jesus.

Responding to God’s Word: I want you to receive Jesus, to represent Jesus, and to remember Jesus.

• Receive Jesus -- I cannot preach a message like this without asking, “Are you in the family of God?  Have you placed your faith in Jesus?  The Apostle John used a lot of the same language in John 1:12-13 that Paul used in Romans 5.  He said, “To all who receive him (Jesus), to those who believe in his name, he gives the right to become children of God —  children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.”

• Representing Jesus -- Once you receive Jesus, you soon hear the privilege Jesus gives you of representing him in this world.  After his resurrection Jesus told his followers, “As the Father sent me, I am sending you (Jn 20:21).”  We are sent into the world as witnesses to the life all can have through faith in him.  This Bible passage tells us what we have to offer our world.  The world human family is hurting.  It's trapped in a way of life that is futile.  Death comes again and again with people not knowing where it leads or how they can have the hope of eternal life.  The world's human families are thus broken.  But we can offer a different family. And the local church is to be the place where, practically speaking, the support of that family is carried out.  Today, ask yourself: “Who is there in my circle of relationships that I should witness to?”

     But notice that Jesus said, “As the Father sent me, I am sending you.”  What Jesus did was to enter into our world – with all its sin and death.  He did not simply teach but entered into the lives of lepers, the demonized and prostitutes.  He took on human flesh and faced all the temptations and trials that are a part of our fallen world.  “Jesus personally bore our sins in his body on the tree (1 Peter 2:24).”

     We are called to do the same.  “I send you as I am sent.”  But, what does that look like?  I know this kind of entering into the pain of people in our world can take on many forms.  It’s also something that even a child can do.

     Last year, my 8-year old granddaughter Riley discovered her friend Sophie had a malignant brain tumor.  Riley already has an open heart for God and for people.  When Sophie’s hair fell out due to chemotherapy, she obviously felt self-conscious and alone as well as afraid of the cancer.  So, this spring, when Riley heard of an opportunity to identify with her friend as well as raise money for childhood cancer, she became the only girl to volunteer to have her head shaved in solidarity with children with cancer.  (I’ll show the pictures.)  She was motivated by her love for her friend.  She was moved because of her love of Christ.

     How might you enter into the lives of people in our community?  When you do, you show a small measure of the love of Jesus who entered into our world of sin and death in order to set us free.

• Remembering Jesus – Our gratitude for the love and grace of Jesus is the main motivation for us to want to obey and please him.  So that you and I might never forget – that we might remember the Jesus who “when we were powerless, he died for the ungodly (Rom 5:6)” – I’ll ask pastor Annie/Jeff to come and lead us to the cross as we together will receive communion…