Morning. All right, brethren, we're gonna
be in Romans chapter five. Romans chapter five. And we'll
be looking today at verses 12 through 14. Now, up to this point, we've
been seeing the blessings of justification. The last couple
of weeks, we looked at the blessings that are ours, the believers,
because we are justified in Christ. He's our head and all these blessings
flow to the body of Christ from the head. It says in Colossians
2.19, Paul tells us that Christ is the head from which all the
body by joints and bands having nourishment ministered and knit
together increaseth with the increase of God. So today, what
I want us to do, what I want us to see is that these blessings
that we have, they're given to us, they're ours. Believers have
these blessings, and they're found in Christ. They're found
in Christ, and Christ is called the second man. The second man,
and he's the Lord who comes from heaven. And this is in relation
to the first man, or as opposed to the first man, which is Adam,
the one whom God created and put in the Garden of Edom. And
so, Adam is contrasted to Christ, and what we receive from Adam
is a corrupt nature, a corrupt nature, a sinful nature full
of sin and death. All right, our title is Christ
Restores Fellowship. Christ Restores Fellowship. And we'll be looking first at
a comparison of Christ and Adam, and then we're gonna look at
this time where sin entered. All right, sin entered, and then
we'll have a brief explanation on verses 13 and 14. All right,
so let's look at this comparison here. And let me just say, verses
13 and 14, they are a parentheses, they're part of a parentheses
that goes from verse 13 to verse 17. And what that means is that
what the translators did, they put it in the parentheses and
it means that you could lift that thought out in the parentheses,
you could lift it out of the text and it would still, it wouldn't
harm the thought of Paul from verse 12 to verse 18. And so,
what I want to do first is, we'll just read verses 12 and then
go into 18 and 19, just so you can see his thought. And he says,
wherefore, as by one man, sin entered into the world, and death
by sin. And so death passed upon all
men, for that all have sinned. Look at verse 18. Therefore,
as by the offense of one, Judgment came upon all men to condemnation,
even so by the righteousness of one. The free gift came upon
all men unto justification of life. For as by one man's disobedience
many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many
be made righteous." And so Paul is showing us here in this portion
of Romans chapter 5, he's showing us here how all men came into
the condition that we're in, in the condition of sin. He's showing us how that we're
all now depraved. Our nature is fallen and we are
depraved sinners and we are unable to work a righteousness for ourselves. If you recall in Romans 3, verse
10, he tells us, there's none righteous, no, not one. And, well, why is there none
righteous? Why is there none righteous?
Well, Paul is telling us why there's none righteous here.
He's showing us what occurred in the garden, in Adam, and that
now we're all sinners because of what happened there in the
garden. And so Paul is comparing two
heads here, Christ and Adam. Christ and Adam. Now first of
all, God sees all men, all women, all children, boys and girls,
young and old, all are in Adam. God sees all in Adam. And Adam
is the head of all whom he represents. Adam is the head of all whom
he represents. And what that means is that we
inherited what we are. We've inherited from our father
Adam. And what we inherited is a sinful
nature. We inherited a sinful nature.
We're sinners. And what the Lord is revealing
to us is that There's no spiritual life in us. That's what we lost. There's no spiritual life in
us. There's no divine spark. There's
no divine light in us that just needs a little activity or a
little energy to generate light, divine light. There's none of
that. We're dead spiritually. We have nothing from Adam that
helps us with religious or righteous things. And the reason is because
we're all sinners. And because we're all sinners,
we all die. We all died. Paul tells us, in
Adam, all die. In Adam, all die. And that's
what happened. We all died in Adam. But we also
see from the scriptures that God sees some in Christ, the
second man, the Lord from heaven. So all were in Adam, but there
are some whom God sees in Christ. That means Christ has become
their head, and Christ is their representative, and from Christ
we are made righteous in Him. From Christ we are restored,
we are given spiritual life so that now in Christ we learn and
know spiritual things and Christ restores the fellowship that
was lost in Adam. So in Adam, we lost the way. In Adam, we lost the truth. We
lost the life. But in Christ, He's the one that
restores the way, the truth, and the life. That is, we know
Him who is the way, the truth, and the life. He restores all
that. He's provided all that in Himself. The thing to note here is that
if all you have is Adam, if all you know is Adam, if that's your
only representative is Adam, then God sees you only in Adam. And that means all you have is
sin and a natural body, natural sense, natural reason, and you
have no righteousness which God will accept, no righteousness
that pleases God. And so, that means that God,
when he looks on you, outside of Christ, just in Adam, when
he looks upon you, all he sees is one who is dead in their sins. All right, now, let's see our
next point, which is sin enters, the point at which sin enters. Look again at Romans 5, verse
12. Romans 5, 12, Paul says, wherefore,
as by one man, sin entered into the world. By one man, sin entered
into the world and death followed right along behind it in sin,
death by sin. And so death passed upon all
men for that all have sinned. So here we're told, how did sin
enter into the world? How is it that sin entered into
the world? by one man, by one man. Adam is that one man whom
God created and placed in the garden, and when he sinned, or
when he disobeyed God, sin entered, sin entered into the world. We
remember that God gave Adam one law, one law, just one law, and
he said in Genesis 2 16, the Lord God commanded the man saying,
of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat, but of the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat of
it, for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely
die." And we know that Adam, he disobeyed God. He ate that
fruit. He took that fruit and he ate
the fruit and he died in that day just like God said. That's
when sin entered and that's when death entered right in with sin. Because we became sinners, death
entered. Look at our text there again.
Wherefore as by one man sin entered into the world and death by sin. Now, when Adam ate that fruit,
We're told what the description of sin and
death looks like. We're told that. Right in Genesis
3, we see exactly what that death was. Exactly what the sin produced
and the death that was the result of Adam eating that fruit. It
says in Genesis 3, verses 7 and 8, we're told, the eyes of them
both were opened. When Adam bit that fruit, not
when Eve did, but when Adam bit that fruit, the eyes of them
both were opened. They knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together
and made themselves aprons. And they heard the voice of the
Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And Adam
and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God
amongst the trees of the garden. All right, so in summary, their
eyes were open. And what did they see? They saw
we're naked. They became ashamed because they
saw their nakedness. And what did they do? They went
by their own works and began to cover their nakedness. They took fig leaves, I guess
they're big leaves, and they sewed them together or wove them
together and they covered their nakedness. Was it sufficient? They seemed to be okay with it
until they heard the voice of God walking in the garden. They
heard Christ, pre-incarnate, the Son of God, walking in the
garden. They heard the voice, the Word
of God, the Son of God walking in the garden, and they realized,
this covering that I thought covered my nakedness, This isn't
working. I'm ashamed. I know that he's
gonna see through this. He's not going to be tricked
or fooled by this covering. They were still ashamed. And
that tells us that today, we that are trying to work a righteousness,
we that know and see that we are sinners and are ashamed of
our sin, that tells us right there that though you think right
now it may be a covering, when we stand before God, before the
voice of God, the Son of God, sitting on the throne of God
to judge the inhabitants of the earth, that covering that we
thought was our righteousness, we're going to be ashamed of
it. It will not be sufficient in that day. And so we see, we're
looking at that sin entered and death behind it. They never did
this before. Adam and Eve never acted like
this at all. They didn't see that they were
naked. They had no shame, right? When you do what is right, you
don't feel any shame or guilt. But when you do what is wrong,
it's there. It's just gnawing away at you.
You know what you've done is wrong. And they never did this
before. They never hid from God. But
as soon as they ate the fruit, that's when they ran off and
hid from God. And so, this is the relationship
of every one of us that is a child of Adam. This is our relationship
to God. In other words, there is no relationship.
There's no more fellowship between us in God. This is what we've
obtained by inheritance from the first Adam. From Adam, who
we descended from. And it says, Wherefore as by
one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and
so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. So that when Adam sinned, we
sinned. All right, that phrase, for that
all have sinned, if you have a King James Version, certain
ones, they have a margin, and it tells you in the margin how
that can also be translated. And it means, it could also be
translated, in whom, in whom all have sinned. That's what
it's saying, in whom we've all sinned an hour. when Adam was
in the garden we sinned in Adam and we're told in Ezekiel 18
20 the soul that sinneth it shall die the soul that sinneth it
shall die that means we sinned in Adam and we all died in Adam
we don't die because Adam died we died because we sinned in
Adam just as he sinned so we're His offspring were his seed. We proceed from the loins of
Adam. We all descended from Adam. Every
one of us descended from Adam and Eve. And so that's why some
say he's our seminal head. He's our seed head. He's the
fountain of seed from which we all sprung forth from. We all
come from Adam's seed. The picture there in scriptures,
we see it as well outlined in Abraham. When Abraham paid tithes
to Melchizedek, it was Levi who paid them. Levi was in his loins
and God imputed it to Levi, as Levi having done that, because
he was in Abraham's loins. And so, in that same way, sin
was imputed to us, because in Adam's loins, we all sinned with
Adam, in whom all have sinned. And so that's why, because we
now inherited Adam's nature, because sin is imputed to us,
and we are sinners, and we are dead in our trespasses and sins,
we have no spiritual life. Because of that, that's why we
see the result of what we are. We see sin in ourselves. We see
the workings of death in us. We see the enmity between us
and God because that's what we inherited from Adam. We're told,
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And Psalm 51.5 says, behold,
I was shapen iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me."
And so that corrupt nature is seen in all of us. We're all
sinners. Every one of us dies naturally,
right? Who do you know that doesn't
die? Everyone that's come before us, eventually they die. Everyone
that we know dies or we die before them. There's not any of us that
escapes this death. We know, we see the truth of
it, that we physically die. And it's a picture of what we
are spiritually, that we're already dead. And so in Adam, we're spiritually
dead. And that's because of our relation
to Adam. Just as Adam, when God severed
fellowship with Adam, he severed fellowship with us as well. And
that's why the scriptures are very careful to point out to
us that when Christ came, when He came in the flesh, He was
conceived in Mary's womb by the Holy Ghost. He was conceived
in Mary's womb by the Holy Ghost to make sure that we understand
and know He's not of Adam's seed. He didn't inherit that sinful
nature. If He was Adam's seed, He would
be a sinner just like us. But because He's conceived in
Mary's womb by the Holy Ghost, He's of that holy seed, all right? He's of the holy seed. Christ
said unto those that were about him, if God were your father,
ye would love me. For I proceeded forth and came
from God. Neither came I of myself, but
he sent me." So, our Savior, he's descended, or he's created
by, or he was formed in the womb, his body was formed in the womb
of the Holy Spirit, in Mary's womb. He didn't come from Adam's
seed. All right, let's move on to the next couple of verses
here, and we'll see an explanation of these verses. We're gonna
read verses 13 and 14 now. We're told, for until the law,
sin was in the world. But sin is not imputed when there
is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from
Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the
similitude of Adam's transgression. Who is the figure of him that
was to come? All right, well, what is Paul
saying here? He's saying that before the law
of Moses, like if it's only by the law of Moses that we are
condemned sinners, that we are found to be sinners and condemned
to death. Well, what was going on then
between the time of Adam and Moses? Because there was people
dying then. Lots of people were dying between
Adam and Moses. And that was before the law was
given. The law of Moses, the law at
Mount Sinai, We see that men and women and children were still
dying even before the Law of Moses was given during the time
from Adam to Moses. And that shows us that God had
already imputed sin to us. Sin was already imputed to us
in Adam. Another thing that we see there
is that there was a law given. God did give a law. He gave one
law to Adam in the garden, and we broke it when we ate of the
fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We did that,
and so God imputed sin to us all, and that's when the fellowship
between man and God was severed. That's when it ended right there.
It ended for between God and Adam, and it ended between all
of Adam's descendants and God, except in Christ. It had to be
found in Christ alone. So we all sin, we all died in
the flesh, and we all come forth now. When we are conceived, when
we come forth, the scriptures are teaching us that we're all
guilty sinners. We're all destined to die physically, but
we're already dead spiritually. There's no spiritual life when
we come forth. That just isn't there naturally.
It doesn't come from Adam. It's something that only Christ
creates in his people. Only God can give that gift of
spiritual life and fellowship in the Son. And this is why the
scriptures teach us and make plain to us that we must be born
again. we must be born again, because
naturally, when we're first born, we have that natural, we have
the flesh, but there's no life there, there's no divine life,
there's no spiritual life, there's no fellowship between us and
God, not naturally at all. And so in John 4, 23 and 24,
Christ told the woman there at the well, he said, the hour cometh,
and now is when the true worshipers, Those that truly know the Lord,
they shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth, because
the Father seeketh such to worship Him, in spirit and in truth.
He's not accepting anything of the flesh. He doesn't need the
flesh, doesn't want the flesh, it's only by the Spirit, it's
only by the Spirit that we produce fruit that is acceptable to the
Lord because it's Christ in us. It's his fruit that we're bearing
in him. And he tells the woman and us,
God is a spirit and they that worship him must worship him
in spirit and in truth. And so that's why the fellowship
was severed. It was broken. When Adam died,
he died spiritually immediately, and so that fellowship there,
that spiritual fellowship was severed and broken. And so the
Lord tells Nicodemus in John 3, he tells in verse 5, Jesus
answered, verily, verily, truly, truly, I say unto you, I'm not
lying to you, he says, I'm telling you the truth, what you need
to hear, listen, that except a man be born again, he cannot
except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot
enter into the kingdom of God. Except that we come forth of
the flesh, we're born that way, but that's not sufficient. And
he says in the next verse, that which is born of the flesh, that
which descends from Adam, is flesh. That which is of the flesh
is flesh. and that which is of the spirit
is spirit. So we must have that spiritual
birth, and that is needed. None of us has that naturally.
It doesn't come from Adam. That means anything we do in
the flesh to produce that righteousness, it amounts to nothing more than
fig leaf aprons that will not stand up to the eye of God. We
will be ashamed if that's our righteousness, if that's our
hope, is in our works, we shall be ashamed to stand before God
in that day. And so we're told that Adam is
a living soul, or he was created a living soul. But as a man,
when he had children, when he gave his seed to the woman and
a child was formed in her womb, it gave birth only to flesh. As a living soul, he gave birth
to flesh, but we're told of Christ that he's a quickening spirit. He's a quickening spirit, and
that means that he is able and does impart or give spiritual
life. He's the one that bears that
life in us. He's the one that makes us born
again. He's the one that creates the
spirit, the new man in us, whereby we now are alive spiritually
by his work, and so that in that work he restores that fellowship. Because now we're alive spiritually.
Now we can know the true and living God. Now we have his spirit
whereby we bear those fruits of righteousness. and He accepts
those fruits of righteousness. That's why we must be born again.
That's what the Scriptures are teaching us. Naturally, we're
just of the flesh, and we don't produce anything that pleases
the Lord. Spiritually, it means that we're created of Christ.
He's restored that fellowship. We bear those spiritual fruits.
We know the truth as it is revealed to us by God and His Son, Jesus
Christ. And so everything that was lost
in Adam stores by himself, by his work, and he gives that freely
to his children, freely. That's why we rejoice and delight
in him. And so Paul said that believers
have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after
the image of him that created him. So, that means that this
spiritual life in us, this spiritual man that's now in us who believe,
it was put there and created by Jesus Christ, the quickening
spirit who alone gives spiritual life. Alright, so that's why
we must be born again. So, Christ is, we're in Christ
and that's where the new creation comes from. And so, all this,
all these blessings We saw the blessings of justification, and
all that flows from Christ the head, when he rose from the dead,
when he went to the cross, he obtained forgiveness, he obtained
the putting away of our sins, he purged us of our sins so that
we're not guilty of those anymore, there's no debt of righteousness
to pay, he paid it in full, and so that now by his death, burial
and resurrection, when he rose, all these spiritual gifts were
obtained by him and are given to his people severally as he
will, according to the measure of the gift of faith in the Lord
Jesus Christ." He does that. That's the rejoicing we have,
brethren. That's why we declare Christ, because He's the one
who gives this life. He's the one that teaches us
our need of Him. We're sinners by Adam. We're
dead sinners by Adam. We have no fellowship in Adam.
But in Christ, who creates that living soul that gives us the
spirit, that's how we know and worship and whereby we seek the
Lord is in the spirit which Christ has created in his people. So, I pray the Lord will bless
that and you that don't know him, he tells us the wrath of
God is coming against all those that are just in the flesh and
working in the flesh and sown fig leaf aprons in the flesh. The wrath of God is for them
to flee to Christ. That's why he sent Christ to
deliver his people from the coming wrath. So I pray the Lord will
make that effectual in our hearts and cause us to see and rejoice
in the Lord Jesus Christ. All right, let's pray. Our gracious
Lord, we thank you, Father. for your blessings that you've
provided to us richly in your Son, Jesus Christ, who is the
head of his church. Lord, turn us away from the flesh
and from trusting in the works of the flesh. Turn us to your
Son, Jesus Christ, who alone is righteous and makes his people
righteous. Turn us to Christ who restores
fellowship between fallen man and holy God. And Lord, make
us to know you and to serve you and to rejoice in the salvation
that you've provided in your son, Jesus Christ. Lord, we pray
that you would bless this people, bless this congregation. Lord,
prepare our hearts to worship you again in the next hour. It's
in Christ's name that we pray and give thanks. Amen.