Good morning, everybody. Good
to see everybody here. Visitors and those I hadn't seen
for a while, good to see you here. This morning, as you can
see in my title here, we're going to be discussing two representatives,
Christ and Adam. We're going to have a lot of
scriptures that we're going to look at. I hope that I didn't get
too many. but we are gonna look at quite
a few scriptures this morning. These two representatives that
we're gonna talk about, Christ and Adam, the one representative
brought death, Adam. The other brought life, who was
Christ. And I know you might have thought
that You didn't commit sin until you were born into this world,
and one day you did something bad, something you thought was
bad, and you sinned. And maybe that's when God saw
you as a sinner. But that's not right. Back at
the first man in the beginning, Adam, we're gonna read a lot
of this in these scriptures here this morning. When he disobeyed
God in sin, you sin. You sin in him. And so we're
going to look at these scriptures having to do with death in Adam
and life in Christ. You can turn in your Bibles to
Romans 5, and we're going to begin at verse 12 here. But before I do, I want to talk
about a couple of words that as I went through the study that
caught my attention and thought I'd deal with them. One of them
having to do with sin. Where its origin, where is its
origin, where did it first began to exist? Now this morning, I'm
mainly going to be talking about sin as it exists in this world
and not in heaven where it first existed. with Lucifer. To find
answers to some of these questions, let's turn to Genesis 2, beginning
at verse 15. It says, And the Lord God took
the man and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and
to keep it. And 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 continuing
here in Genesis 3 in verse 1, after God had given this command,
it says, now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of
the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the
woman, which was Eve, the woman that God give Adam, yea, hath
God said, you shall not eat of every tree of the garden. And
the woman said unto the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the
trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree, which is in
the midst of the garden, God had said, you shall not eat of
it, neither shall you touch it, lest you die. And the serpent
said unto the woman, You shall not surely die. Now, I know all
of you have experienced some of these things having to do
with you talk with individuals about this gospel that we believe.
And in that process, you told them about God, the true God,
true living God in Christ, the true Christ, and how he saved
the sinner. And so as you told it to them,
it's something they've never heard before. We know that. And
so they leave you and they go to their pastor or they go to
another preacher and they start inquiring, what about this that
they're telling me? And of course, we know what these
preachers or pastors, we've heard about this in the past, are you
okay? You're gonna be okay. And they speak peace to them.
And in that process, they satisfy them, unless God has done a work
and he causes them to continue to seek him out. But anyhow,
this is what the serpent told Eve. He said, you shall not surely
die, for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then
your eyes will be open and you shall be as gods, knowing good
and evil. And when the woman saw that the
tree was good for food and that it was pleasant to the eyes,
and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit
thereof and did eat. and gave also to her husband
Adam with her, and he did eat. And that's when he disobeyed
God, a command of God. And that's when sin entered,
when he disobeyed God, and he did eat. And he disobeyed a command
that God had given him. And in that process, right here,
friends, this is where the first man, Adam, sinned and brought
us to where we are today in this world. The next thing we'll discuss
is the nature of sin. Sin in its nature, it's a principle,
a corrupt principle, a condemning principle, a principle that's
totally bent towards self and pride. Now, this self and pride,
all of it stems from self. Let's look at some words that
are used in scripture to better understand this sin principle
that we're talking about, or this standard of decision-making. The first word that we'll look
at is offense, a crime or an insult. In Romans 5, we're going
to look at some verses here, 15, 17, 18, and 20. Verse 15
says, but not as the offense, so also is the free gift, for
if through the offense of one, many be dead. 17 says, for if
by one man's offense, death reign by one, Verse 18, therefore,
as by the offense of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation. And verse 20, moreover, the law
entered that the offense might abound. Another word to refer
to sin is disobedience, breaking the rules, defiance, and subordination. In Romans 5, 19, for as by one
man's disobedience, many were made sinners. And then another
word that is used quite often is transgression. Wrongdoing,
again, disobedience. Romans 5.14 says, nevertheless,
death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned
after the similitude, or in the same way, of Adam's transgression. Another word that we're gonna
take a look at before we start looking at verse 12 here is world. The word world in the English
translation of the Greek, the word is cosmos, or it constitutes
order, or an ordered system, or harmonious whole. The word
world in the scriptures must always be interpreted by its
context in the scriptures. The Armenian are those that teach
free will or free will religion, makes its great mistake because
the word world is not used in any uniform meaning. It cannot
mean the same thing each time it's used in scripture. It must
always be interpreted by the context in which it's used in
scripture. Some examples of this are the
word, the word world is used in Ephesians one and verse four.
where it says according as he has chosen us in him before the
foundation of the world to mean of the earth. And again in Romans
11 verse 12, now if the fall of them be the riches of the
world, and in 15 verse 15, for if the casting away of them be
the reconciling of the world, the meaning of the word world
is of the Gentiles being distinct or being different from the Jews.
Okay? And we've seen that misused so
many times by Armenians. In Romans, also in Romans 3,
19, now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith
to them that are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped
and all the world may become guilty before God. Now, the meaning
would be the whole of mankind in this case. In 1 John 2.15,
it says, love not the world, meaning the world system. In
James 3.6, it says, and the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity,
meaning hyperbole, or this is an exaggeration, the way it's
used in this case. And in Ecclesiastes 3.11, he
hath made everything beautiful in his time, also he hath set
the world in their heart, meaning a figure of speech. So as we
see here, as our former pastor used to say to us, is context,
context. So as we, any scripture that
we read, whether it be, were you talking about world or all
or any of these other words or scripture that we look at, always,
always look at them in their proper context. Our last study
ended in Romans 5.11, where Paul talked about Christ's blood,
atoning sacrifice on the cross, and the comfort that God's elect
have as they view this great salvation by faith. Now, let's
begin this morning with verse 12 in Romans 5, where the apostle
begins to compare the two representative heads, Christ and Adam. As we
read verse 12 here, it says, whereof, wherefore rather, As
by one man sin entered the world, and death by sin, and so death
passed upon all men that all have sinned. The wherefore as
by one man, it says sin and death came by Adam, as he was the representative
of the whole human race. This representative union was
so real that all men are considered of God to have sinned when Adam
sinned, as I said earlier. Sin does not begin with us as
we grow from infancy to some age of accountability where we
make a conscious decision to sin. Our sin began with the first
man, the first man Adam. Romans 5.18 reads, therefore, as by the offense
of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation. And Romans
5.19 says, for as by one man's disobedience Many were made sinners. Also, in 1 Corinthians 15, 21,
for since by man came death, speaking of Adam, 1 Corinthians
15, 22, for as in Adam all die, we all sin in and by Adam. He
was our representative. The next part of the verse 12
reads, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men.
Death is the just penalty for sin. Genesis 2.17 says this,
it says, 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. That's the penalty for sin. And
in Ezekiel 18.4, beholds all souls of mine as the soul of
the father, so also the soul of the son is mine. The soul
that sinneth, it shall surely die. And in Romans 6, 23, we're
all familiar with, for the wages of sin is death. As you can see,
all whom Adam represented came under the sentence of death.
This includes physical and spiritual death. Even though Adam himself
did not die immediately, the process of physical dying began
at that time. It also means spiritual death.
Adam and his whole posterity have no spiritual life. By nature,
no capacity, no will or desire to believe, to worship, and to
serve the true and living God. This death passed upon all men,
or literally spread to all men, or to all whom Adam represented.
Death passed from father, Adam, to son, the whole human race. To the last part of verse 5,
Romans 5, 12, it says that all have sin. This could be translated
in whom all have sin or in whom all sin and shows how real representation
and imputation are inside of God. All men are accounted by
God as having actually sinned in Adam. Some may object as to
how this applies to God's elect whose sins have been imputed
to Christ. God's elect were in Christ before the foundation
of the world, but they were also represented by Adam in his fall. According to the terms of the
covenant of works in Adam, God's elect are just as condemned as
the rest of the fallen humanity. However, according to the covenant
of redemption in Christ, that covenant of grace that our brother
Bill talked about this morning, God's elect are justified, and
this covenant overrules all covenants. God's elect did fall in Adam,
but the elect did not fall out of Christ, their covenant head,
their representative, their surety. In our next verse, Paul argues
that there must have been a law before the law of Moses in verse
13. It says, for until the law, sin
was in the world, but sin is not imputed where there is no
law. God's law is as eternal as God
himself, and for mankind, it's as old as creation. Sin was in
the world, it says here. Before God gave his law by Moses
to Israel, sin was in the world. This proves that God's law was
in the world because sin is not imputed or not charged where
there is no law. The law is the standard of righteousness
by which God holds men accountable. God is not arbitrary. He always
acts according to his glorious nature. And he is just in all
that he does. You all are familiar with our
next verse that we're gonna look at that gives an account of Abraham
as he talked with the Lord concerning the destruction of Sodom and
Gomorrah. Abraham knew that God was a just God. And let's look
at Genesis 18.25. where Abraham says, that be far
from thee to do after this manner, to slay the righteous with the
wicked, and that the righteous should be as the wicked, that
be far from thee, shall not the judge of all the earth do right.
And in Romans two, in verse two, says, but we are sure that the
judgment of God is according to truth against them that commit
such thing. He must be just. God must be
just when he condemns, and he must be just when he justifies
the ungodly. Paul's reasoning here is for
the Jews, who would say that men are not guilty or condemned, that they are guilty and condemned,
not because of Adam's one sin, but as a direct effect of their
own personal sin by breaking the Ten Commandments. So in that
process, they would do away with representation and amputation
if they went about saying that and believing that. The fact
that death was universal from Adam to Moses cannot be accounted
for on the basis of the violation of the law of Moses, because
it had not been given, but there were many who died who lived
between the time from Adam to Moses. They still died way before
the law was given, the Ten Commandments. Paul, in our next verse, shows
that sin existed, which resulted in death before the law of Moses.
Verse 14 of Romans 5 says, nevertheless, death rang from Adam to Moses,
even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's
transgression, who was a figure of him that was to come. Death
was universal to all men, even those who lived before the law
of Moses. This is proven also by the death
of them that had not sinned at the similitude or in the same
way, in the same way of Adam's transgression and his sin. There's
much debate over who this describes, but it seems the only logical
explanation would be those who died in infancy. Even though they did not sin
in the same way as Adam sinned, which was a conscience, and a
willful and a rebellious sin, nevertheless, they still died.
And death is the just punishment of sin. This is another proof
of the universal guilt and depravity of all men, all born of Adam.
Infants are not innocent. They have Adam's guilt imputed
and Adam's sinful, depraved nature imparted to them. Look at Psalm
51, 5. It says, Behold, I was shaken,
shapen in iniquity, And in sin did my mother conceive me. And
in Psalm 58, 3, the wicked are estranged from the womb. They
go astray as soon as they are born, speaking lies. Even though
those who die in infancy have not sinned against God in a specific
way, the same way that Adam sinned, which was a willful, as I said
before, and a rebellious sin, they are still born in sin with
a fallen, sinful human nature. And if they lived long enough,
they would surely follow Adam in a deliberate and a thought-out
rebellion against God. It would be only natural to them,
as 1 Corinthians 2.14 says. It says, but the natural man
receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God. For they are foolishness
unto him, neither can he know them, because they are spiritually
discerned. This in no way implies what I'm talking about, that
those who die in infancy perish eternally. Infants are in need
of Christ's shed blood and imputed righteousness, as well as the
new birth by the Holy Spirit in order to enter heaven itself.
I don't have time to go into the different scriptures, which
are few, that deal with this subject, but I believe the scripture
teaches that those who die in infancy are saved and go to heaven
by God's grace based on the blood and the righteousness of Christ
alone, just the same as all the other elect. Now, in the last
part, Romans 5.14 says, Adam was a figure of him that was
to come. Here, Paul makes the transition
from death in Adam to life in Christ. Adam was a type of Christ. Adam was a representative of
the whole human race, and we all fell in him. When he fell,
we fell. Christ is a representative of
the holy election of grace. Those that God elected from eternity
and give to him in that everlasting covenant. And he became their
surety. Surety to come and pay a debt
that they owe because of Adam's sin. And in time, he did it. As he came here, lived that perfect
life, went to the cross, shed his blood as payment for sin,
and ascended to heaven. Now, as I said, Christ is representative
of the whole election of grace, which are justified in him. And
because of what he did, we're justified, justified in him,
as he being our representative. All of God's elect, all who have
Christ as their representative and federal head are justified
in him. Now, Romans 5.15 is our next
verse. It says, but not as the offense,
so also is the free gift. For if through the offense of
one many be dead, much more the grace of God and the gift of
grace, which is by one Jesus Christ hath abounded unto many. Now the free gift here of God's
salvation in Christ is not exactly the same as the offense, as we
talk about representation, the offense of Adam, which brought
death. In fact, God's gift of salvation
by Christ is so glorious it cannot be compared to the sin of Adam,
which is the offense. As Adam was a representative
of his race, which are all men without exception, the destiny
of all who Adam represented was conditioned on his conduct in
that garden. So Christ is representative of
his people, all whom God chose from eternity and give to Christ,
called his sheep, his elect, whose destiny is conditioned
and was conditioned on Christ's conduct and what he did as he
came to this earth. Paul referred to this in 1 Corinthians
15, 45. It says, when he called Christ
the last Adam, Paul says, and so it is written, the first man
Adam was made a living soul, the last Adam was made a quickening
spirit. Adam typified Christ by both
comparison and by contrast. Adam communicated to all whom
he represented what belonged to him, which is sin, guilt,
and condemnation. And by contrast, Christ communicates
to all whom he represents what belonged to him, which is righteousness,
spiritual, and eternal life. Adam was the author of natural
life to his posterity, and Christ is the author of spiritual life
to all whom he represented. In Adam, we lost all things,
but in Christ, we gained much, much more than we lost. Look
at Romans 5.9, a verse we went over in our last study. Much
more than, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved
from wrath through him. Speaking of Christ. So, the elect
gained much, much more in Christ. I'm going to venture off on the
main subject here, representation, a little bit, as you that deliver
messages know as you go through scripture from time to time,
you see something in a verse that you just want to find out
what more about it. And I did that this time. And let's go back and talk about
1 Corinthians 15, 45, that we talked about having to do with
where it says the last Adam was made a quickening spirit. There
are different interpretations of exactly what is meant by quickening
spirit. Some understand this to be the
Holy Spirit which filled the human nature of Christ, raised
him from the dead and will quicken our mortal bodies at the last
day. While others believe it means
the divine nature of Christ to which his flesh or human nature
was united and which gave life and virtue to all his actions
and sufferings as man. and by which he was quickened
when put to death in the flesh, and by which he will quicken
others when he returns. Now, and then again, John Gill,
however, says, and I quote, it is to be understood of Christ's
spiritual body, his body that was raised from the dead after
his resurrection. When it was made a spiritual
body, for which reason it is called a spirit, not that it
changed into a spirit, for it still remained flesh and blood,
but because it was no more supported in that natural way, nor subject
to those weaknesses that natural bodies are, but lives as spirits
or as angels do. And as a quickening one, not
only because it has life itself, but because by virtue of the
saint's union to it, as it can subsist in the divine person
of the son of God, their bodies will be quickened at the last
day. and may liken to it a spiritual body. Also because he lives in
his body, speaking of Christ, as a spiritual one, they shall
live in theirs as spiritual ones. And so the apostle shows that
there is a spiritual as well as a natural body, that as the
first man's body, even before the fall, was a natural one,
the last Adam's body upon resurrection is a spiritual, a life-giving
one. Now let's go on to our next verse
16 here. It reads, and not as it was by
one that sin, so is the gift for the judgment was by one to
condemnation, but the free gift is a many offenses unto justification. As the one sin of Adam brought
all sin and sins into the world and brought the whole world into
condemnation. The gift of God's grace in Christ
covers all the sins of all his people, or all that Christ represented. The gift of God's grace in Christ
covers many offenses and justifies all his people by giving them
a righteousness that can never be tainted and never be lost,
the very righteousness of God in and by the Lord Jesus Christ. As Romans 5.21 states, that as
sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through
righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord. The
righteousness which Adam had in the garden was perfect, but
it was the righteousness of a mere man. Human righteousness failed,
but the believer has a divine righteousness. which can never
fail, even the righteousness of Christ, the God-man. That
righteousness that we're able to view and able to experience
as God gives us faith to see what Christ has done for us,
see how that righteousness has been imputed and charged to our
account. Now, our next verse points out
that due to the one sin of Adam, death reign. Then he uses the
word much more to describe the gift of righteousness worked
out by Christ. Now, in verse 517 of Romans,
which is our last verse this morning that we'll look at, for
if by one's offense death reign by one much more, they which
receive abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness shall
reign in life by one, Jesus Christ. As death reigned by Adam, much
more, we who come to faith in Christ, sinners saved by the
abundance of grace, and who have been justified by the gift of
righteousness in Christ, shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ. Those who come to Christ for
all salvation shall live forever and never perish because of Jesus
Christ, their representative. Notice how our reign in life
is absolute and certain. Why? Because it's not based on
what we do, it's based on the righteousness of our representative,
Jesus Christ. Notice how our reign in life
is absolute, as I said, not based on us, but based on Christ, based
on his righteousness alone. The apostle shows us here in
Romans 5, 17, the abundance of life and glory which comes through
Christ, our representative, our Savior. All who believe God's
promise of salvation conditioned on Christ alone were there partakers
of this abundance of grace. They have been given this abundance
of grace from eternity, and it is certain to be possessed experientially
by every heir of grace in every generation. This is stated here
in Ephesians 1 in verse 3, verse 3, the last verses that we'll
look at. And this is, I love these scriptures
here. They're a blessing. It says,
blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who
has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places
in Christ, according as he's chosen us in him before the foundation
of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before
him in love. having predestinated us into
the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according
to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of
his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the below, in
whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of
sins, according to the richness of his grace. May God bless the
study of his word, the reading of his word.