Sermon Text: Romans 5:12-19
Date: February 26, 2023
Event: The First Sunday in Lent, Year A
Romans 5:12-19 (EHV)
So then, just as sin entered the world through one man and death through sin, so also death spread to all people because all sinned. 13For even before the law was given, sin was in the world. Now, sin is not charged to one’s account if there is no law, 14and yet death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those whose sin was not like the transgression of Adam, who is a pattern of the one who was to come.
15But the gracious gift is not like Adam’s trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of this one man, it is even more certain that God’s grace, and the gift given by the grace of the one man Jesus Christ, overflowed to the many!
16And the gift is not like the effect of the one man’s sin, for the judgment that followed the one trespass resulted in a verdict of condemnation, but the gracious gift that followed many trespasses resulted in a verdict of justification.
17Indeed, if by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through the one man, it is even more certain that those who receive the overflowing grace of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ!
18So then, just as one trespass led to a verdict of condemnation for all people, so also one righteous verdict led to life-giving justification for all people. 19For just as through the disobedience of one man the many became sinners, so also through the obedience of one man the many will become righteous.
Adam’s Disaster Is Solved by Christ
“Desperate times call for desperate measures.” Or so the saying goes. Such an attitude can be a double-edged sword. If you have a problem that is big and you take riskier and riskier paths to try to solve that problem, that can make things much worse than they began. Consider the man who is facing down the barrel of gigantic medical bills. He tries to pick up extra work to pay them, but it’s not enough. So, in a more desperate attempt to get money, he begins buying lottery tickets. When those don’t pan out, he takes the remaining money that he has left and attempts to multiply it in Las Vegas—and loses it all. Truly desperate times, but his desperate measures left him worse off than when he started.
It doesn’t get any more desperate than the situation mankind found itself in after our First Reading this morning. Adam and Eve were created in perfection. They were made in the image of God—in perfect harmony with God. They loved God perfectly and agreed with everything he said. He gave them one command—don’t eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil—as a way to show their thanks to him for everything he had done for them. Martin Luther called that tree their altar where they worshiped God. And then Satan stuck his nose in there.
Satan tried to get Adam and Eve to see God’s command not as a good thing, but as a limiting thing. “Do you want to be smarter, better, more like God? Just eat the fruit! It’ll be great!” And so, Eve eventually takes the fruit and eats it. And Adam, who was right there and did nothing to even attempt to stop this from happening, also eats it. And then it turns into the blame game. God confronts Adam; Adam blames Eve (and blames God as well); Eve in turn blames Satan. No one takes responsibility for their actions; no one approaches God with sorrow and repentance over what they had done.
And the results? Sin and death enter the world. But not just for Adam and Eve or the creation at that time. They brought full-blown corruption to everything until the end of time. Adam and Eve would have children, not in God’s image as they had been made, but in their own, fallen, sinful image. From Adam and Eve would come a sinful nature that has been passed on to every single person from the first children, Cain and Abel, down to you and me today. This inherited or original sin is why we are born as enemies of God, and why we are fighting against him from conception. This is why Paul said in our Second Reading that sin entered the world through one man and death through sin, so also death spread to all people because all sinned.
The result is that death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those whose sin was not like the transgression of Adam. When Paul says that people weren’t sinning like Adam did, he means that people weren’t breaking a stated or written law from God like don’t eat the fruit of the tree or like the laws God gave to Moses for the nation of Israel many years later. But God’s moral law still stood. People, despite being sinners, knew the basics of right and wrong—and ignored them. People from Adam on were breaking the laws that God had written in their hearts and were just as guilty of sin as Adam was. We know that because death is the result of sin—and everyone from Adam through Moses died (save for someone like Enoch whom we hear that God took directly to himself in Genesis chapter 5).
Look at how disastrous Adam’s sin was! He brought misery and pain into the world. People died because of sin—which was not part of God’s original design. Paul says, “Many died by the trespass of this one man.” But it’s even worse than that. Because it’s not just physical death that is the result of sin, but the spiritual death of unbelief that we are all born into and the eternal death of hell as the ultimate expression of what our sins deserved. That’s what Paul refers to when he says, “the judgment that followed the one trespass resulted in a verdict of condemnation.”
And what could we or anyone else do about this? Nothing. God’s demands are clear: be perfect. Anything short of perfection, even a single sin, brings condemnation. And because of Adam, we all started condemned from the get-go because we were born with sin as part of our nature. You can’t make God happy with you; you can’t pay off any of your sins; you can’t make your life with God right in any way.
That’s the result of Adam’s work. Of course, Paul is carefully comparing what Adam did to what Jesus did because whereas the result of Adam’s sin was a disaster for all the people that followed, the result of Jesus’ work for us means forgiveness for all people. Paul is back and forth, comparing the extreme opposites of Adam and Jesus throughout our Second Reading:
For if the many died by the trespass of this one man // it is even more certain that God’s grace, and the gift given by the grace of the one man Jesus Christ, overflowed to the many!
the gift is not like the effect of the one man’s sin, for the judgment that followed the one trespass resulted in a verdict of condemnation // but the gracious gift that followed many trespasses resulted in a verdict of justification.
if by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through the one man // it is even more certain that those who receive the overflowing grace of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ!
just as one trespass led to a verdict of condemnation for all people // so also one righteous verdict led to life-giving justification for all people.
just as through the disobedience of one man the many became sinners // so also through the obedience of one man the many will become righteous.
Paul continues to state the problem and then the solution. Whereas Adam brought sin to all people, Jesus brought a life of perfection to all people. Jesus never sinned once in thought, word, or deed in his entire life. Because he is God and was conceived by the Holy Spirit, Jesus didn’t start out with a corrupted human nature; he started with a human nature as God originally designed it. He battled temptation just like we do but was always victorious. Our Gospel had one small example of that work as Jesus fought off the temptations of Satan with God’s Word and promises—the complete opposite way from how Adam and Eve dealt with temptation in the Garden of Eden.
But Paul is clear why he lived that perfect life. It wasn’t to prove it could be done. It wasn’t just to shame us even more by showing us that he did it just fine. It wasn’t even to provide a model for us to follow because we already have that corruption of sin; it’s too late for us to do anything to fix it. No, Jesus lived that perfect life in our place. Jesus’ perfect life, through faith, is credited to you and to me. We received this gift of righteousness through Jesus’ love and mercy to us. Now we have righteousness, that is, we have a right and proper relationship with God; the relationship that had been ruined by sin is fixed. This is the mission of grace that God the Father sent Jesus on; this is the certainty of our forgiveness that the Holy Spirit has given us the faith to trust.
And because of that, everything changes. Instead of being condemned, we have a verdict of life-giving justification. Justification is that courtroom term that means “to declare not guilty.” So instead of being condemned to hell for our sins, God looks at you and me and says, “Because of Jesus, you are not guilty.” Jesus’ perfect life is applied to us, and when Jesus died on the cross, he paid for every sin. We are freed. We are forgiven.
Adam’s disaster was gigantic; its damage was incalculable. But God’s plan to send a Savior—first promised right there in the garden when we are told a champion would come to crush the serpent’s head—is fulfilled in Jesus.
During Lent, we have the special opportunity to meditate on Jesus’ work to save us, and Paul begins this season with a look ahead to the results of that work. Though we deserved hell, Jesus suffered it for us. Though we should have been perfect, Jesus did that for us. So, because of Jesus, we have nothing to fear from God. Because of Jesus, our sins are forgiven. Because of Jesus, our lives are seen as perfect. Because of Jesus, we will be in the perfection of eternal life with God forever.
Desperate times call for desperate measures, and no measure is more desperate or more successful than God himself taking on human flesh, living in our place, suffering our hell, and giving us these eternal blessings as completely free gifts. Our desperate time called for desperate measures on God’s part, and that’s exactly what he did and accomplished for us. Adam’s disaster is solved by Christ. Jesus’ work means that Adam, Eve, you, and I are all forgiven. Thanks be to God! Amen.
