Romans 5:12-19
* April 27, 2008 * Easter
6 *
Sr. Vicar Thomas Engelbrecht
Who is responsible? That can be a scary question. That is a common question. There are many situations in life where no one wants to take responsibility. For example, imagine you hear a crash in the living room and you walk in to find your three year old and your one year old standing over a broken lamp. You ask the three year old, “Did you do this? Are you responsible?” Almost instinctively the three year old points to the one year old.
Or perhaps your parents let you take the car out with some friends. The weird thing is, the next morning the car is in a slightly less good condition than it was the night before. “It wasn’t like that when I brought it home, dad,” says the teenager, “I’m not responsible for that.” And I’m sure that after your company has lost an account or a big sale fell through, you’re not the first in line to take responsibility. Often it isn’t the most fun to take responsibility for bad things in our lives.
What about sin? What about the effects that sin has in the world and in our every day lives? Who is responsible for that? Who is responsible for the fact that from the day of conception we are subject to sin and death? Paul tells us today that One Man Is Responsible. One man is responsible for the condemnation of all people. One man is responsible for the justification of all people.
Who is responsible? That question came up a long, long time ago. Adam and Eve lived in God’s brand new perfect creation. The land was perfect. The trees were perfect. The animals were perfect. The weather was perfect. Adam and Eve were perfect. God didn’t miss a thing. He provided everything that they needed. He even gave Adam and Eve an opportunity to worship him. The one special opportunity that Adam and Eve had to worship God was to obey God’s command by not eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
Unfortunately, we know what happened. When we recall Genesis 3 we are reminded how the sneaky serpent convinced Adam and Eve to break God’s command by eating the fruit of the tree. After the damage was done, after the lamp lay broken on the ground, after perfection was interrupted, God came and asked Adam, “Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?” In other words, God said, “Are you responsible for this?” With his newly formed instincts Adam pointed to Eve and basically said, “Don’t look at me. She’s responsible for this.” Eve also tried to deny responsibility and pass it on to the serpent, but the damage was done. Adam and Eve had sinned. Sin was now in the world.
This is exactly what Paul is saying when he said in verse 12, “Just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned.” Paul doesn’t deny whose responsibility sin is. One man is responsible for sin. Adam is responsible for sin. Eve handed him the fruit he didn’t think twice about biting into it. It’s Adam’s fault that sin is in the world. It’s Adam’s fault that death is not only in the world, but that it has reigned in this world ever since Adam. It’s Adam’s fault that every generation after him has had to be laid in the dust, including yours and my grandparents, parents, spouses, and children. It’s Adam’s fault that one of the only things we can be certain of in this life is that we will die.
One man is responsible for sin. Sin against God brings God’s judgment against sin and God’s verdict for sin is always condemnation. Therefore one man is responsible for the condemnation of all people. Paul puts it this way: “The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation.” One sin. One sin was all it took for the world to be condemned. Our inheritance from our first father, Adam, was a spot in hell.
One man is responsible for the condemnation of all people. That doesn’t seem fair. But the truth is we all have inherited our sinful nature from our parents, who inherited it from their parents, and so on. That sinful nature makes us responsible, right along with Adam. This is true, as Paul put it, “because all sinned.” We aren’t let off the hook. Every sin that we commit proves that we have inherited Adam’s responsibility. Every time we fail to fulfill our roles as husbands and wives we prove that Adam’s apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree.
When we make decisions between right and wrong in our lives based, not on the Bible, but solely on what we think we show that we still walk in Adam’s trespasses. When we are confronted with a temptation and try to rationalize in our hearts why it’s ok to bend the rules just this once, we expose ourselves to what we are by nature. One man is responsible for the condemnation of all people, and as far as our sinful nature is concerned, condemnation is what we deserve.
Paul makes sure that we understand that one man was responsible for the condemnation of all people. He makes sure that we understand that by nature we all are included in “all people.” Why is it so important that Paul show us how deep the roots of our sin lie? He had to reveal our sin to us to show us how great our need is. God had to show us the great need we have for one man to be responsible—one man to be responsible for the justification of all people.
So far we
have only dealt with the first half of Paul’s comparison. He said it in several different ways
throughout these verses: “just as sin entered the world through one
man…if the many died by the trespass…the judgment followed one sin and brought
condemnation…if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one
man.” It’s time to hear the second
half of the comparison. Paul sums it up
the best in verse 19: “For 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 made a comparison between Adam and Jesus because as he says in verse 14, Adam was a pattern of the one to come. Adam’s disobedience had its effect on the whole world in the same way that Christ’s obedience had an effect on the whole world. But the second half of the comparison is much, much better because Christ’s obedience justified the whole world.
That word, justified or justification, is a word that we often hear at church. The teaching of justification is often referred to as the chief teaching of the Bible, so it’s important that we understand what that word means. Justification is a term that you’d hear in a court room. To be justified means to be declared “not guilty.” If we were standing in God’s court room, we would have a long list of offenses against God. There is no denying that fact.
But when God looks at us he says,
“Not guilty.” We aren’t held responsible
for our sins. Only one man has taken
responsible for not only our sins, but also for the sins of all people. Jesus took the responsibility and the
punishment for the sins of all people when he took that cross on his shoulders
and carried it to
How could Jesus do this? Through his obedience. What a contrast that is! Through the obedience of one man, Jesus Christ, all people are declared, “Not guilty.”
One of the first things that comes to mind when we hear of Christ’s obedience is the temptation of Jesus in the desert. Jesus went toe to toe with Satan in the desert so that he could show his obedience for us. For forty days and forty nights Jesus battled the temptations of the devil. His whole life Jesus perfectly fought off temptations. Every step he took in his life was obedient to the will of his heavenly Father.
Every obedient step was a step closer to his death on the cross, through which he took away the sins of the world. Our inherited sin no longer condemns us. Our failures in our families and our weaknesses towards temptation no longer count against us. One man has taken responsibility for our sins. Jesus has already taken the punishment.
We are not guilty. We are no longer condemned. Death no longer reigns on this earth. Jesus took our punishment when he died on the cross, and it is in his resurrection that death was defeated.
Through Jesus we will live, even though we die, because he will raise us from the dead to rule with him in heaven. Until that time, we have the comfort in knowing that death’s grip on this earth and on us is superficial. Our loved ones who have died in the Lord have life in Christ. We have life in Christ. The fear of condemnation is gone. Life eternal is our reality.
Today a group of young people is going to make a promise to be faithful to their Lord as long as they live. They make that promise because they know the gift that God has given to them. They know and trust that Jesus has conquered death and given them life. They have that assurance through the resurrection of Christ.
You and I know that the road ahead of them is still going to be filled with sin, just like our lives are filled with sin. But God’s grace will continue to overflow in their lives and in our lives, because the gift is greater than the trespass. Through Christ the verdict remains, “Not guilty.”
When bad things happen few people are willing to take responsibility. When sin happens, no one wants to take responsibility. But Paul tells us who is responsible. One man is responsible for the condemnation of all people. Because of our sin, we are included in all people. Thankfully we are included in all people, because one man is responsible for the justification of all people. Through that one man, Jesus Christ, we have life. Amen.