Thank you, Brad. I appreciate the fact that you read from Lamentation, too. That was very good. A lot of times after Brad's done telling us these things, I think we should, we could call that the end of it. It's really all summarized right there.

So if you would turn in your Bibles with me to Romans, chapter five, and this is part two of last week's message, and I wanted to You know, we can never really get this clear, as Brad was saying. We can never really understand, comprehend what happened when the Lord Jesus Christ was made sin for his people. But nevertheless, it's important that we understand what the scripture has said, so that we might believe it. Because it's what God has said. What God has said, that is the truth, isn't it? And we should always hold that in our thinking that whatever God said is true.

The other thing we want to remember is that whatever God does is right. That's another thing that we struggle with. If God has said something, it's true. If God has done something, then it's holy and it's right. So remember that. And the other thing I want to say about those things is that whatever God does, he determined to do and knew what he would do to fulfill his will before the world was made. And that said in scripture, in Ephesians 1.11, he works all things according to the counsel of his own will. And he also says that known unto God are all his works from the foundation of the world. So whatever happens, is by the work of God and the will of God established from eternity.

Now that's comforting. God says in Isaiah 46, I have spoken it, I will also bring it to pass. I will do it. And that's seen even in creation, isn't it? When there was nothing, God spoke and everything came into existence. It wasn't there. He commanded it when it wasn't there and it came into existence at his will, precisely according to his word and his power and his mind. And this is actually the character God says that Abraham believed God. He believed him who raises the dead and calls those things which be not as though they were. So it's this view of God that is the object of faith. When we think about God, we understand that he calls things which be not as though they were.

And this is seen especially and especially endearing to us when we realize that in ourselves we are nothing. And so when we were reading from 2 Corinthians 5 a few weeks ago, we were gonna get back there, he says, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation, a new creature. And there you have it, God has created us, he calls those things which be not as though they were, he raises the dead. And these things teach us that nothing is impossible with God. Nothing is impossible with God. And because nothing is impossible, and He does raise the dead, then He can raise me. He can raise me from spiritual death in my sins. He can raise me from physical death in my body. He can raise me to life, to God. And that's a great comfort. He can call what's not true about me personally as so, because it is so in God's esteem, in God's esteem, God's judgment. And whatever God judges to be so, that is the way that it is.

Now, we interpret things, we understand things that are based on our experience. And we feel because we see things or experience things. We have a response to what we feel in our experience. The Lord Jesus Christ also was a man and he experienced many things, but one thing he never experienced was sin. He knew no sin. That means he never had the thought of sin. When David committed adultery with Bathsheba, he experienced lust in his mind. And then when he murdered Uriah, he experienced murder in his mind. The Lord Jesus Christ never thought a lustful thought, never thought a hateful and murderous thought. He only did what was right all the time. And we can't understand that because we've never experienced one thought without sin in it. But the Lord Jesus Christ never sinned. He never knew sin. He did no sin. It says in 1 Peter 2, verse 22, he did no sin. And in 1 John 3, it says, in him was no sin. So we are certain that the Lord Jesus Christ never experienced sin. He never transgressed God's holy law. In fact, his law was within his heart, and that's what he loved. And everything that he told men that they should do, he himself, as the master, did it perfectly. He did it perfectly.

And I will just refer you to one example of that so that you can appreciate what we're about to look at here in Romans chapter five. Remember, there was a rich young ruler who came to the Lord Jesus. He was rich, he was young, his whole life ahead of him, and he was a ruler. And he asked Jesus, what must I do? Good master, what must I do that I might have eternal life? And the Lord told him, you know the commandments. And he listed those that were towards other people. Don't kill, don't steal, and so on. And he said, all these things I've done from my youth up. What lack I? What one thing do I lack? And he says, do this. Go sell all that you have. Everything that you have, sell it. And give it to the poor. and then come and follow me. Now the rich young ruler could not do what the Lord told him he must do to have eternal life. But the Lord Jesus said to his disciples, with this man, the rich man, how hard it is for a rich man to enter heaven. He says, it's harder for a rich man to enter heaven than it is for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. and his disciples were amazed. Who then can be saved? And he said, with men, this is impossible. And how little we believe that. But with men, this is impossible. But with God, all things are possible.

The Lord Jesus Christ was rich. When he gave himself, he was young. And he was a ruler, the prince of life, the Lord of glory. So what he was telling this young man to do was simply an analogy, a parallel to what he himself would do. He who was rich, you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, though he was rich, yet for your sakes, he became poor. That you, through his poverty, might be made rich. Brad was just reading to us about the poverty of the Lord Jesus Christ in Psalm 69 and Lamentations 1. How poor he became in order to make us rich. He gave up everything and he sold it. He sold himself as our Redeemer. He ransomed himself in order to purchase us out of the debt and the prison our sins brought us into.

So what I've done there is I've taken that scripture from Matthew 19 and I've drawn a parallel between the rich young ruler and the Lord Jesus Christ. And you can understand something, you can see something about the difficulty of this rich young ruler, because you know in yourselves that if you put yourself in his place, you would have been no more capable of doing what the Lord told him to do than he was. He was incapable, just as we are incapable of doing what the Lord requires for eternal life. But there was one who was not incapable, and that's the Lord Jesus. Now Romans chapter 5, as we began last week from verse 12, reading through verse 21, follows, as the Apostle Paul often does in his epistles, it follows a build-up to what is there in Romans chapter 5. In Romans chapter 3, for example, as I read last week, it says that Now, in verse 21 of Romans 3, now the righteousness of God without the laws manifested being witnessed by the law and the prophets, even the righteousness of God by faith of Jesus Christ to all and upon all them that believe, there's no difference. For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. whom God has set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past.

So we read those verses and we have gone elsewhere in scripture in order to drag from scripture the explanation of what those verses mean to us. But that's what the apostle is doing in this book. And because he was doing that, he ends up in Romans chapter 5, and what follows Romans 5, actually. But specifically, he reaches this climactic point in this epistle to the Romans in Romans 5 and verse 12, because he left something undone, as it were. He left something unexplained. And that thing that was unexplained is really explained in Romans 5, verse 12 to 21. And that is, how is it that God's righteousness is now made manifest? And how is it that the redeeming work of Christ is the way that we're justified freely by his grace? How is it that these things are? What is the action of God in this? What is our action? So there's many questions that are answered and questions we need to ask from Romans 5 and all that precedes it.

The first question that's answered in Romans 5, 12-21 is, what is sin? What is sin? 1 John 3, verse 4 says, sin is transgression of the law. Sin means we transgress God's holy law. So that in Romans chapter 5, verse 13, he says, where there's no law, there's no transgression. And we read that last week. So sin, we understand then, is to transgress God's law. And those who transgress God's law are counted by God's accounting. You know what accounting is? I'm not an accountant, but I understand that accountants are responsible for making sure the books of what's been spent and what's been collected and all the things related to that are balanced. We have to balance our checkbooks. The bank thinks we have this much money. We know we may have some checks we've written that no one has cast yet, so we have to take those into account to find out what our balance truly is. That's an accounting, isn't it? When we get done looking at our checkbook and say, well, let's see, the bank knows about that, that, that, but not about this, this, and this, that the real sum at the end is our accounting of what's true, and we impute. We impute the value that we come to when we reach it in our accounting, don't we?

Well, God does accounting, and his accounting is very precise. There's no imbalances. Everything is precisely calculated so that there's a known balance. And when God comes to the end of his account, I was thinking about this last night while I couldn't sleep. Think about the state of California. Would you like to be an accountant for the state of California? Or would you like to be an accountant for the state of California for just one of their contracts, perhaps, with the transportation department? No way. Way too complicated. But God's accounting covers all men over all time. And every thought and every word and every action of all men and his accounting is exactly right. And so what God is doing in the book of Romans here is he's giving us an account of things. And the first thing he answers is, what is sin? Well, sin is transgression of God's law. And as we read it last week from Romans 5, 13, he says, until the law, sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed. when there is no law. God's account doesn't count sin without law. There's no transgression without the law, because sin is transgression of the law. And so by God's accounting, there is no sin, not imputed.

So what we learned there is that the imputation of sin means this is God's accounting. And the word imputation is translated as accounting in Romans 4, which we're about to read here. So again, what the Lord is doing is He's taking us from the statements of Romans 3 that says we're justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, to explain then how the righteousness of God is imputed to us because of that redemption. Because that's what He is revealing to us here. We're justified freely. That means we're declared to be righteous by God, freely, by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

But since the first question we ask is, what is sin? The next question that is answered in Romans 5 is, how did sin come into the world that God created without sin? How can that be? That's a hard question to answer, isn't it? Well, God answers it very succinctly. By one man, sin entered into the world. And then we might ask, well, then how did death get here? He answers that, and death by sin. All right, so how then are people made to be sinners? Well, we know it comes by transgressing the law, don't we? Because that's what sin is. So we have lots of questions to ask here. And one of them is, we're building up to this question, but I want to look at Romans chapter 4 to get to it.

In Romans chapter 4, he uses this word, impute and account and reckon over and over again. And if you look at the original word that was used, the King James Version translators translated into these different English words, account and and reckon and impute, that they're the same Greek word. So it helps us to see that. And look at Romans chapter 4. He says in verse 4, now to him that worketh is the reward, not reckoned of grace, but of debt. So if you try to Keep God's law. That's working. Or if you try to gain favor from God, and he gives you favor or gives you life, then the Lord is saying, that's not grace. That's a reward. That's a payment. That's something you deserve. And he uses this word. It's not reckoned of grace. It's not accounted. It's not imputed. Because of grace, it is a debt. God owes you for what you've done.

But then he contrasts that in the next verse. He says, but to him that worketh not. That's someone who doesn't do things in order for God to declare them as righteous or to accept them. But that person who does not work believes on him that justifies the ungodly.

So now here, this is a conundrum right here. What we have here. is a huge paradox. Because in Proverbs 17, 15, it says, it's an abomination to God. Everyone who does this, it's an abomination to God. The one who justifies the wicked, that's an abomination. And the one who condemns the just, that's an abomination.

All right, we have two paradoxes then, don't we? And let me read that to you precisely as we have it in Scripture, and you might want to look at it as well, from Proverbs chapter 17 and verse 15. He says, he that justifieth the wicked and that condemns the just, even they both are abomination to the Lord.

In Romans 4 verse 5 says, to him that worketh not but believeth on him, God, that justifieth the ungodly. The very antithesis of godly, God justifies him. How can that be? That's a paradox, isn't it? And the second part of Proverbs 17, 15 is the one who condemns the just. How can that be just? And yet it says that that the Lord, the Lord Jesus Christ, he died the just for the unjust to bring us to God.

How can that be just? Well, the way it's just is by God's accounting. That's the way it's just here. Notice he says, and in Romans 4 verse 5, it's counted. It means imputed or reckoned. righteousness, for righteousness.

And notice in chapter 4, verse 6 of Romans, he says, Romans 4, verse 6, even as David also... Now remember, Romans 5 is going to uncover, is going to unwrap this package, explain to us how these things are. Even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man unto whom God imputeth righteousness, without works. All right, does God impute righteousness? What does it say there? God imputeth righteousness. And do we do something to earn it? No. Without works. This is David's claim. In Psalm 32, that man is blessed. Oh, the happiness of that man to whom God imputes righteousness without works. That's phenomenal. That's phenomenal. That's what Romans 4, verse 5 said. It says, believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly.

Now he says, the one to whom God imputed righteousness without works saying, this is what God said in Psalm 32, 1, blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin. Now see the words used twice there, imputing righteousness, not imputing sin. All right, and we can go on here. We can go on and on reading in Romans 4. The words reckon and accounting and imputeth are used over and over here. So that we're certain from Romans 4 that God imputes righteousness, and that is the non-imputation of sin. Is that clear? I hope that's abundantly clear, that this is God's word speaking to us here. We can't deny it. It's as clear as it can possibly be, that God imputes righteousness.

And actually, look at the last verse of Romans 4. This is powerful. Christ was delivered for our offenses. Delivered up to what? Well, delivered to judgment. As we just read in Psalm 69, he was delivered up. He was delivered up to God's wrath. He experienced, he was reproached. Drunkards sang of him. He says, they hated me without a cause. There was no cause in me. They tried to destroy me wrongfully, wrongfully. That's what he says in Psalm 69.

Now let me remind you that the verse, the words there in Psalm 69 we just read. He says in verse four, they that hate me without a cause. There was no reason in Christ to hate him. He only did good towards God and towards men, both to their bodies and their souls. He only spoke the truth. Why did they hate him? Because hatred was in them. They hated me without a cause. For they that hate me without a cause are more than the hairs of my head, they that would destroy me being my enemies wrongfully. But notice the next part in Romans, I'm sorry, Psalm 69 verse 4. The last part of Psalm 69 verse 4, he says, this is so powerful. Then, when they hated me wrongfully and tried to destroy me as my enemies wrongfully, I restored what I did not take away. I restored what I did not take away. We're going to understand something about that, hopefully, before we're done here.

Oh God, thou knowest my foolishness. The Lord Jesus was the wisdom of God. My sins are not hid from thee. What sins? Not his own. Ours. And so what we see here is that something had to happen in order to explain this whole buildup from Romans 3 to Romans 5, talking about the imputation of righteousness, the non-imputation of sin, and then in Romans 4.25, who was delivered for our offenses and was raised again for what? Because of what? Our justification. Our justification. Why was Christ raised from the dead? People celebrate Easter every year. And most of the sermons about Easter are to prove there was a resurrection. Historical, you know, testimonies and so on. And they give examples of all sorts of things. Spring and bunnies and chickens and stuff. That's not the point. This is the point. This is what's important here. This is the gospel. Christ was raised because God accepted his righteousness for his people and justified him in the resurrection. This is so essential.

Why was he delivered up though? That's what Romans 5 is gonna tell us. He says now in Romans 5, And as I was saying last week, when Denise and I read this together, we admit that the language seems to make it complicated, almost harder to understand. Be that as it may, hopefully we'll be able to understand it here. And maybe this will help. As I thought about this, what the Lord is showing us here is there's a comparison being made. between Adam, the first Adam, and Christ, who according to 1 Corinthians 15 is called the second and the last Adam. In verse 14 of Romans 5, it says that Adam was a figure of him that was to come. So a comparison is being made. A parallel is being made here. You know, things that run in parallel, they have a likeness to one another in some sense. An analogy, you know what an analogy is. You might say, as a glove is to my hand, a sock is to my foot. Glove helps my hands stay warm, socks keep my feet warm. That's an analogy.

God uses analogies in the scriptures. In John chapter 12, Jesus said, just as a plant springs from a seed, only if the seed dies So all of God's people spring into life only because Christ died. That's an analogy, isn't it? He himself is like the seed. His death was like the seed dying. The plant that grows from the dead seed is like the church that grows from Christ's death. You see the analogy? Scripture's full of analogies. And sometimes it uses things called metaphors, which is just simply saying, like, I am the good shepherd. Now, Jesus doesn't have physical sheep. He has people. And we're like sheep. We're sheep. That's a metaphor. Christ is a shepherd. That's a metaphor. He says, this is my body when he gave the bread to the disciples. That's a metaphor. It's like an abbreviated analogy. It's a comparison between these things.

And so in Romans 5, this is God's setup, God's picture. What he's doing here is that the way that God dealt with people who were related to Adam has an analogy to the way that God deals with people who are related to Christ. In other words, our relationship to Adam is like our relationship to Christ. Adam's relationship to his children is like Christ's relationship to his children. And that's what Romans 5 is talking about here. So there's this parallelism, there's this analogy, a comparison. And yet in the parallel, in the analogy, contrasts are made, things that are different, vastly different. And that's why the language, I think, is difficult. Because in the same sentence, it says, now, this is going to be an analogy of something that's in contrast. And that's why I think that it becomes complicated in the way that we read it. But that's because our minds are weak.

My mind is weaker than yours. I'm not accusing you of being less than myself or whatever. I want to give you a couple more analogies that scripture gives, which are wonderful. Jesus said to his disciples, he says, if a son asks his father for an egg, his father won't give him a serpent, will he? Will he? Dad, can I have something to eat? Can I have an egg? Here, have this serpent, son. No. All right. Jesus is drawing an analogy. He says, if you, being evil, Know how to give good gifts to your children. How much more shall your heavenly Father give, not a devil, a demon, a serpent, his spirit to those who ask him? You see, God's children ask him for the spirit of life in Christ Jesus.

So there's these analogies throughout scripture. And so when we read in Romans 5, the word as, A-S, means this is an analogy. In the same way, this. The same as this, in the same way, that. What God did here, God does there. That's an analogy. This is an exposition. This is an explanation of how sin came into the world. and how death followed sin and death passed upon all men because all sinned.

The first thing I want to observe here is look at this with me in Romans chapter 5 in verse 15. I'm just going to go through and pick out some of the phrases from each of the verses that follow. Verse 15, not as underscore, the offense, so also is the free gift. There's a comparison. He says in verse 15 also, if through the offense of one, you see the emphasis? One transgression, one man. Many be dead, and then he draws the comparison in contrast, much more That's this huge contrast here, this amplification, the grace of God and the gift by grace by one man, another man, Jesus Christ. Who, remember, the first man, Adam, is a figure of him, the analogy of him. How God dealt with Adam, in analogy, God deals with his people in Christ. Just as God says, in Adam all die, even so, in the same way, in Christ shall all be made alive." 1 Corinthians 15, 22. So you see the analogy?

And then in verse 16, notice, and not as by one that sinned. Again, this is Adam, right? The judgment was by one to condemnation. You see the emphasis on the singularity of the transgression and the first man? And then he goes on in verse 17, if by one man's offense, death reigned by one, okay? And then in verse 18, as by the offense of one. So, and look at verse 19, by one man's disobedience, many were made sinners. So if you just take that, you can see that this thread here, this emphasis on one transgression of Adam, his children were all made sinners. And he tells us that this was by imputation. Adam's transgression was imputed by God to Adam and all of his children. What was the basis of that? How can you justify doing that? Well, if we had nothing else than God's statement, that would be enough, wouldn't it? God said it. It's so, and it's good. It's right. It's just accounting. But because God also gives us this other information, that in all of history, there were two men, and only two in whom God dealt with other men. In Adam, all die. In Christ, all made alive. So there are those related to Adam. They're in Adam. How did they get there? Well, God, by God's sovereign accounting, made Adam the head of them in that first law, which was, do not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In the day you eat, you shall surely die. God prescribed death with that law. That's what the law was. The law said, don't do this. The consequences, you die. He did it. He died.

But what Romans 5 is teaching us is that that one transgression breaking that one law. In that, Adam acted as a head for all those who would be born to Adam, who were related to him, in that they were going to be born. When God created Adam, he really created everyone who would be born to Adam in him. And so God, in his accounting, made Adam the head of all those who would be born to him.

Now, in the analogy, Adam and his children There's the way God dealt with his people related to Christ. Those who were related to Christ, Christ acted for them. And this is the wonder of the gospel. This is the good news of the gospel. Eve sinned before Adam. Sin didn't pass. Sin did not come into the world through Eve, did it? Why? Because Adam was the head, not Eve. Adam was the head, not Eve. And so the Lord Jesus Christ is the head.

Now, think about this transgression that Adam committed. Were you thinking about it? Now be honest, were you thinking about eating that tree? No, you weren't born. But, I mean, didn't you think about it when you grew up? No, I wasn't thinking about eating that tree. That law was long since passed. There was no tree. So what you're saying then is that even though you did it in your own mind, or your will, or your experience, eat from that tree, yet God says that you committed that sin because you were in Adam in this way. You were related to Adam by God's doing. That sin was accounted, it was imputed to you. Adam's one transgression was imputed to all his children in the same way, in the same way, as an analogy, as the figure.

So Christ also follows that. That's why Adam was set up this way. This is why God made Adam the head of his people, so that he could make Christ the head of the church. And so that Christ would act in all of his life, not just that one law, because Christ was made under the law. He was born of a woman, made under the law, in order to redeem them that were under the law. The whole law of God, every part of all of God's law, which was imposed on and prescribed death with a breaking of all those, all those were laid on Christ. And so God set it up so that he would act for his people. That's an amazing thing, isn't it?

So in verse 15 now, we're gonna go back through this and look at this again. Not as the offense, so also is the free gift. So in contrast to the offense that Adam committed, there's a free gift. What does sin earn? It earns death. Is it just? Oh yes, it's very just. It's very right when God visits our transgressions with the punishment God prescribed with the law. Whoever doesn't keep everything written in the law is under the curse. That's what the law says. And so it is. But not as that one offense of Adam, the free gift. For, here's how, if through the offense of one, Adam's one transgression, many be dead, That's justice. That's God's accounting. The imputation of his sin to us brought the guilt of his transgression upon us and the condemnation because of that guilt and the sentence of death passed on us also, which is what verse 12 said. Death passed upon all men for that all have sinned in Adam.

He says, if through the offense of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, the free gift is the grace of God, and the gift by that grace, by one man, another man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded to many. So where Adam earned death for all of his children by the relationship God put him into those children as their head in this one law that God gave to him. As long as he kept it, they lived. He lived and they lived too. As soon as he broke it, he died, they died too at that time. The sentence of death came upon him and all of his children because of his sin. Not their personal actions or thoughts, but his. That came upon them because he was the head.

He says, that was just. Listen to this. A free gift has come, and this is of grace. God provided this out of a problem, sin and death. Out of sin, out of death came what? This gift, Jesus Christ. And now this has abounded to many, not just one, but to many.

I said before, when I was reading Psalm 69, Jesus said, then, then I restored that which I took not away. This is what Christ did here. Remember the prayer Moses prayed in Exodus 32 and Numbers 14, where the people of Israel had sinned grievously. In Exodus 32, they had made the golden calf through Aaron, and they were worshiping it. And God said, I'm going to destroy them all. And Moses said, no, no, no. If you destroy all these people, your enemies will say, you brought them out of the land of Egypt, and you couldn't save them. In other words, the argument was, You said you would do it, you didn't, and then you didn't realize how bad they were, and you couldn't overcome their sins against you, so you destroyed them. That's dishonor, isn't it?

When Adam sinned, what happened? The enemies of God rejoiced. Look, this perfect creation ruined. What a failure. What a failure. And he couldn't save him. Look, he killed him. Oh, look at this. I restored, the Lord Jesus said, that which I took not away. The glory of God overcoming sin and death. in the Lord Jesus Christ, all by grace, undeserved, because these men, these people who were under the sin and death, deserved that sin and death, and here comes something from God they did not deserve, but was given to them freely by Jesus Christ. And it comes on many.

Verse 16, Romans 5. Now, as it was by, it says, and not as it was, not as it was by one that sinned, so the gift. Again, there's a parallel, the analogy, but it's given as a contrast. He says in verse 16, for the judgment, listen to the words very carefully, this is the gift, for the judgment, By one to condemnation. All right, the judgment of what? The judgment of God. What was his judgment? You've all sinned. What was the result of that judgment? That he imputed the guilt of Adam's transgression to us. That was the judgment. What was the condemnation then? Well, that condemnation passed on us. The judgment was by one to condemnation, the condemnation that we're under the sentence of death.

But here's the contrast. Now listen carefully. The free gift of many offenses unto justification. Wow. How is it that many offenses justify? That doesn't seem to fit. Even the parallel here is given. First, one sinned, and the judgment by that one was to condemnation. I thought you were going to say something like one Righteousness unto justification. Why did you say many offenses here? This is the explanation. This is the heart of the analogy. This is how God is explaining to us what happened in Romans 3, being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation.

And this is what Romans 4 is talking about when it says, blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin. Because he, let me remind you, Romans 4, he says, as David described it, the blessedness of the man unto whom God imputeth righteousness without work, saying, blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin.

Well, God imputes righteousness, and he says that means he didn't impute their sin. Romans 5, 16 says, through many offenses unto justification. What is Paul saying here? He's saying the same thing he said in 2 Corinthians 5, 21. He made him to be sin for us. He who knew no sin was made sin for us.

You see what God is saying here, the many offenses means our sins. Not just Adam's original sin that we were charged to be guilty with, it was imputed to us. Adam's sin imputed to us. That's the first imputation. Here's the second one. Our sins imputed to Christ. The analogy is the same. just as Adam's sin was imputed to us in God's judgment and condemnation and death followed. Even so, our sins were imputed to Christ and justification followed.

But how? How does justification follow by God imputing our sins to Christ? Well, he says, he goes on. For if by one man's offense death reigned by one, Adam's one sin, what happened? Death reigned over all men. Much more, they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one Jesus Christ.

Notice, the many sins imputed to Christ it says here, was treating in the treatment of those sins made to be Christ's sins, so that he confessed them as the high priest over his own head, as in second, in Leviticus 16, transferring them to the head of that scapegoat. And the Lord laid on him the iniquities of us all, and he bore our sins in his own body up to the tree.

Those things are saying the same thing as the many sins here, the many offenses unto justification. Christ taking our sins was the will of God. That's what Hebrews 10 is saying. Thy law is within my heart. You prepared for me a body. Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me. below I come to do thy will, O God, by the which will we're sanctified by the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all."

So it was in the offering of Christ himself as our head, taking our obligations to God to fulfill that holy law which we broke both in righteousness and injustice, that was the righteousness that he performed. out of those many offenses. The laying of our sins upon Christ and Him owning them as His and bearing them and bearing the curse for them. That was all the obedience that God required for our salvation.

And this was established, this relationship to Christ was established by God in a covenant. When Christ pledged Himself as our surety and as the Lamb of God and from the foundation of the world, the Lamb of God was slain. So that God extracted from him in that covenant by pledge and oath his own blood and he fulfilled it in time. And that fulfillment of that obligation as our surety to take our sins and answer justice as the worst sinner that ever was, and to fulfill God's law in doing so, and also to fulfill it before doing so, because he had to be holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, which he was under the law. And then he offered himself with our sins. They hated me without a cause, because he had done no wrong, and yet he took our sins, and then he bore our reproach, and he paid what he did not take away.

So verse 17 of Romans 5 says, if by one man's offense, one being Adam, one sin, his transgression, death reigned like a tyrant by that one sin, much more, much, much, much more, they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness, God's grace out of abounding sin, many sins, God's grace taking care of the many sins when there was only, there was a man who had never sinned and his one sin brought death on all. Here's a man who never sinned and bore all the sins of his people out of God's grace, and that was the righteousness of God, which was imputed to all of his people.

And what happened when that righteousness was imputed to them? Notice verse 18. Well, verse 17 says it. receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall what? Reign in life by one Jesus Christ. 18 says it more. Therefore, as by the offense of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation. You could leave out the words judgment came because we see upon all men to condemnation. That sin was the sin of all men to their condemnation. Even so, and that was by the relation to Adam that God made. God imputing that sin of Adam to them. Even so, in the same way, the analogy must hold here. God acted the same by the righteousness of one, that's Christ, bearing our sins, fulfilling God's law, and then taking our sins and bearing them.

Verse nine says, being justified by his blood. He says, even so by the righteousness of one upon all men to justification of what? Life. Life. Where Christ's righteousness is ours, there's what? Life. Romans 4.25, he was delivered for our offenses and he was raised again. because of or for our justification. It was because. It was the result. God accepted the sacrifice. God imputed righteousness to his people. God raised him from the dead and God justified his people in him. He dealt with all of his people in the one man Christ.

Verse nine makes it very clear, as by one man's disobedience, Adam's one sin, Many were made sinners, imputed to be sinners. His sin imputed to them. So, even so, the same way, by the obedience of one, Christ, shall many be made constituted, made righteous by God's accounting.

Moreover, getting back to Romans 3 where the law was given and all were guilty, The law entered that the offense, Adam's sin, and our sin, our guilt, might abound because we were guilty and death reigned. It not only reigned to our bodily death, it reigned to our spiritual death. Our souls were dead to God. We couldn't live to God. The things of God were strange to us. We couldn't perceive them. We're spiritually dead. We had to be created in Christ Jesus, raised from spiritual death, born of God in order for us to live and have faith, he says.

The law entered that the offense might abound, but where sin abounded and did abound, didn't it? Grace, notice, did much more abound. That's incredible, isn't it? Now that's glory. He restored what he took not away. And the last verse says, here's the summary, as sin reigned to death, and we know how, by Adam's transgression, Unbreakable, could not fail, death, death, death. Infants who never did any sin between Adam and Moses all died because of that transgression. And so did anyone else who didn't commit a forbidden transgression in the law that was before Moses.

As sin reigned to death, even so might grace reign like a king through righteousness, this is God's glory, unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord. You see the connection? Grace as a king reigns in triumph, glorious triumph over sin and death through the righteousness of Christ in his obedience unto death. and for us eternal life by him, Jesus Christ our Lord. What amazing grace, isn't that amazing?

I was telling, I think it was Brad last week, I remember what the leper said to Jesus, if you will, you can make me clean. This is how, this is how, he will.

How do I know that God imputed Adam's sin to me? Because I was born to Adam and because I died because of his sin that was passed on to me by that act of God when he imputed that sin. How do I know my sins were imputed to Christ, that he bore them and that his righteousness is imputed to me? Because I believe him. Resting on him as my sin bearing, curse bearing, righteous surety. My faith in him by the gospel is the evidence of his life in me by the birth of his spirit as a child of God because of his justification unto life.

Imputation is as real as it gets. A lot of times you hear people slight Imputation because, well, that's not really as real as something else. You have to be transformed into it in order for it to be real. No, no. Imputation is the answer to all these questions. How did sin become mine? How did I die? And how did Christ, how was God just in condemning the Lord Jesus? And how is God just in justifying me, the ungodly sinner?

because God joined us to Adam in an analogy of how he joined us to Christ. Before the world was, he chose us in him and he obligated himself willingly in love to be our surety and to fulfill the law and then answer for our sins against the law in satisfaction to God's justice as the propitiation for our sins. It was by that contract, that covenant, And when he died the testator, it was put into force. And so our standing before God in Christ is not because we thought righteousness. It's not because we did righteousness. It's because Christ fulfilled all righteousness.

And this is so essential. when the sins by the high priest were laid on that scapegoat. He transferred them to the goat.

I was thinking about this last night. One time, I'm embarrassed to say this, but I'm going to tell you anyway. It's probably one of the least embarrassing things in my life, but it's embarrassing. When I was in the fifth grade, the teacher assigned us a report in the health subject. We had one teacher's many subjects, and they had a report card for each subject. There was math, and they probably called it arithmetic, and they called it spelling, and writing, and then there was citizenship, and there's health, and so on.

I don't know why, but for some reason I was intimidated, or I was lazy, or something happened. My report card always had A's and B's on it. And my mom and dad were always very happy. But I didn't do the report in health. And the teacher probably was generous. He put a D. D stands for disastrous or something, devilish, I don't know what. And in those days, you had to take your report card home to your parents, and they had to sign it, and then you take it back. That's accounting, isn't it? Here it is, Mom.

And so I went home, and there was one thing that I feared more than anything was my dad's consequences But there's something that I hated worse than that. It was my mom's frown. And so I went to the store and I bought a pen. Tried to find one about the same color. and I wrote B where there was a D on my report card. My parents signed it and I took it back to school.

Unfortunately, every quarter they did the same thing and they gave you the grade from the previous quarter and there it was only in a different color of pen. I faithfully sinned until that was taken care of. But the point in me mentioning that to you, you can forget about it, but was I felt that guilt because I knew what it would do to my mom's face. Because her disappointment in me was more painful than my dad's application of discipline. And that was very real to me.

The Lord Jesus Christ knew that our sins were imputed to him. That was real. He knew that God did it. And he knew, therefore, it was just and it was real. He obligated himself to do that. And that's why Psalm 69 is poured forth. They hated me without a cause. They were my enemies wrongfully to try and destroy me, and yet I restored what I took not away. You know my sins, my foolishness. He's talking about those things that were made his by imputation. It was real. It was real. He felt it. There's nothing worse to the Lord Jesus Christ than being made sin for us and standing before his Father as a sinner.

Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your grace that it abounds even over sin and death to your glory through the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ, who bore our sins in his own body on the tree, and answered justice in the full satisfaction of infinite delight to God himself, so that by his blood we now boldly enter into the holiest, because it's by his blood alone, and though we cannot be justified by our works, we are justified by Christ's works. And the resurrection of our Lord Jesus is the proof that he fulfilled all righteousness and that his people, for whom he came and lived and died, were justified in him, just as we were condemned in Adam, only much, much, much more glorious.

What a grace, what grace, what a gift, what triumph, what glory, what love, what wisdom. What righteousness. Thank you, Lord, for our Savior. In His name we pray. Amen.