Let's pray together. Heavenly
Father, we pray that as we come to thy word this evening that
thou wilt be pleased to open our eyes and our ears and our
hearts and our understanding to the promptings of thy spirit
and the glorious gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. We confess,
our God, that we come with so many preconceptions, we come
with our ideas, we come with our thoughts, our wisdom, our
awareness of the way things are, and invariably, our God, we are
sadly mistaken. Thou art the God of this world. Thou art the God of this creation. Thou art the God to whom we all
are answerable. And we pray that thou wilt lift
up the Lord Jesus Christ in our midst this day as that one alone. unto whom all of the mercies
of God have been granted for thy people, and in whom alone
we have acceptance with thee. We pray that this will be a blessed
time, and we pray that thou wilt feed our souls with the things
of truth, and the things of God, and the things of heaven, and
the things of thy grace and mercy. For Jesus' sake we ask it, amen. Imagine for a moment if it were
possible to say, with me, God has nothing to be
angry about. Imagine we could think that,
imagine we could say that, that with me, God has nothing to be
annoyed about. God has nothing to be angry about. Well, we need not imagine that
because the Word of God teaches us that it is an actual fact
to those who have found Jesus Christ to be their Saviour. Indeed, the fact that God is
no longer angry with us is set down in Paul's writing to the
Romans as the end and accomplishment of the work of atonement. We have received the atonement,
says the apostle. We have received the atonement,
which means that we have been made at one with God. that which previously separated
us has been dealt with and removed. The sin for which we are guilty,
the sin which we have enacted, the sin and the passions of that
sinful nature that we have followed in our lives have been dealt
with by the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross. to such a degree
that he has taken those sins away and placated God's anger
against us. The anger of God has been propitiated. He has been made to be favourably
disposed to us because the Lord Jesus Christ has taken away that
which caused him previously to look upon us judgmentally and
with condemnation. We can say upon the authority
of the word of God, God has nothing to be angry about with me if
we have Jesus Christ as our saviour and our representative. God is
reconciled to us because the Lord Jesus Christ has taken away
our sin. And there is no more wrath, no
more anger, no more displeasure, because the reason for that wrath
and displeasure has been removed. That is our sin. It has been
taken away. Now the point about that is this. God has been just in the removal
of our sin. Paul has proved in these early
chapters of Romans that justification, that is the making righteous
of a people, making acceptable that people, reconciling that
people of his choice and purpose, that is an act of God's sovereign
grace. Making us righteous is not something
which we do for ourselves. Making us fit for the presence
of God is not contingent upon our activities and our labours,
but rather is a work which God himself has completed. That's
what makes it a gracious work. It is an act of God's sovereign
grace. Sovereign because he has taken
as king and as judge and as ruler and as majesty that unilateral
decision to remove our sins upon the basis of the substitution
of Jesus Christ. And that is called justification. We're justified before God by
the work of Jesus Christ. And that act does not in any
way compromise or deny the justice of God. It would compromise his holiness
if he did not punish sin. But because the Lord Jesus Christ
has satisfied justice by taking the wrath and the anger of our
sin, or of our sin upon himself, God's holiness, God's rightness,
God's justice, has been upheld. And therefore there is no impugning
God because he has overlooked sin, but rather we see in the
Lord Jesus Christ that he has satisfied the demands of a holy
God. And hereby we can attest that
the divine attributes of God's love and his justice, his mercy,
and his holiness have been exalted, have been honored, and have been
glorified. This Paul has taught us in these
earliest chapters of the book of Romans. And having established
this doctrine of justification by grace, and I'm choosing my
words carefully, having established this doctrine of our justification
by grace, Paul goes on to speak about the believer's blessings
and benefits through justification by faith. God justifies us by
his grace in the Lord Jesus Christ, and we receive the benefits of
that work by justification through faith. We see the blessings that
Christ has obtained for us as we are brought into a relationship
with God by the Holy Spirit. God's work is His work. Our salvation is His work. He has planned it. He has set
in place the parameters of that work. He has called for the Lord
Jesus Christ to step forward, which he voluntarily and willingly
did in order to represent his people and stand as substitute
for them. And he has declared himself just,
and the justifier of him who believes in the Lord Jesus Christ. God's holiness is perfect in
all this work because the Lord Jesus Christ satisfied every
demand. And then the blessings of that
great work begin to flow to those for whom Christ died, those who
were represented, those who were stood for in that great council
of God's peace and purpose. And believing and being brought
to that place of faith allows us to enter into the experience
of what the Lord has accomplished for us. Our salvation did not
begin when we first believed. Our salvation did not even begin
when the Lord Jesus Christ died on the cross. Our salvation began
in the eternal purposes of God, and that which was needful to
accomplish every requirement was dealt with by God. And in
time, God the Holy Spirit brings the message of God's work and
Christ's work and the work of the Holy Spirit is applied to
the hearts and lives of individuals and we come into the experience
of these things that God has accomplished for us. And we were
reading in Romans chapter 5 just over the past few weeks about
something of the entrance into the experience of our justification
before God, our being made righteous by God. And we read in chapter
five, verse one, therefore being justified by faith, we have peace
with God. See, our faith brings us into
the experience of peace with God. once we walked under judgment,
once we walked aware of the fact that we were condemnable, that
we were guilty before a holy God, and we feared that, and
we were anxious about that, and we were worried about that. Then
God, the Holy Spirit, opened our eyes and our understanding
to see the Lord Jesus Christ in all of his glory, standing
in our place, receiving those stripes at our expense, and the
Lord Jesus Christ as our representative and our saviour. And we entered
by faith into the experience of God's love and his mercy and
his peace towards us. We have peace with God through
our Lord Jesus Christ. And we went on to think about
the way in which other blessings begin to flow to believers. Believers, believing brings believers
into the experience of peace with God, into the experience
of joy. We can have a sense of joy even
amidst the troubles of this life. The apostle says in verse 5 of
chapter 5 of Romans that we joy in God through our Lord Jesus
Christ. That's not the verse, I'm sorry.
but that we can in our tribulations. And hope maketh not a shame,
because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy
Ghost, which is given unto us. And so we glory in our tribulations. There, verse three. And not only
so, but we glory in tribulations also, knowing that tribulation
worketh patience. So here we can see that we enter
into the experience of the goodness and the grace of God, that completed
work of salvation by faith as we believe. Now, why am I saying
this? I'm saying this because I want
us to have a sense of the relevance of the verses that we have before
us. Sometimes when we get into the
theology, into the doctrine, sometimes when we read these
verses, we sometimes think to ourself, this is hard to understand. This is complex. Is this really
necessary? The point of our revelation,
the point of our doctrine and our teaching in these matters
is to bring us into the comfort of the truth that God has for
his people. We are to read these things with
a desire to Draw from them, experience in them something of the blessings
that the Lord God has for his people in Christ. And in the
verses that we have before us this evening, which I'm about
to read from Romans chapter five, we will see that the Apostle
Paul is coming time and time again to explain to us how we
are properly to understand the work of the Lord Jesus Christ
and the context of that work in our lives and in our practical
circumstances, because it is in that knowledge that we are
able to have faith, we are able to believe in the revelation
that God has given us. He doesn't ask us to believe
in a vacuum. He doesn't ask us to simply believe
ignorantly. He has set out in the Word of
God a full revelation of the things that have been done, the
things that have been accomplished, so that we, in reading those,
in hearing those, in coming to them with the eye of faith, ear
of faith might draw from them that nourishment, that comfort,
that succor which will enable and help us to live in this world,
to serve our God, to comfort one another, to praise his holy
name and to live in the experience and light of his presence. These
are our possessions. These are our inheritances. And
so when we come to the Word of God, let us come to that Word
with an eagerness and an anticipation that we might glean something
from it. that will encourage us, that
will build us up, that will give us a strengthening for the challenges
and the difficulties and the trials that we are called to
face day by day. Let's read Romans chapter five
and verse 12. In these verses, the Apostle
Paul is returning again to the Old Testament scriptures. We've
seen how he spent a lot of time speaking about Abraham and the
faith of Abraham in the early chapters of Romans. And he is
turning again. Remember, of course, that At
the time that Paul was writing, the only scriptures that people
had were the Old Testament scriptures. The New Testament had not yet
been brought together, so they may well have had Paul's epistle. It had been written, addressed
to them, and conveyed, sent to them, and they were reading that.
But he is drawing the foundation of his theology, his apostolic
theology, from the Old Testament scriptures. And he is showing
us from the Old Testament scriptures how the revelation of God has
been built up to that place where we can see the fullness of the
accomplishments of Jesus Christ for us, and how these truths
prove to be our comfort and our confidence and the ground of
our hope as we see the Lord Jesus Christ fulfilling all the requirements
of a holy God. So the apostle is going to trace
the origin of our need, our sin, to Adam and the fall. And he is going to explain in
these verses from verse 12 to the end of chapter 5, something
very important of the doctrine of Adam's headship. over his race, his people, his
children, whether it's his children or his children's children or
his children's children's children. Every one of us have come from
Adam and that flow of life down through the ages has come from
Adam who was the first father of us. And he is going to speak
about what we sometimes call the headship or the federal headship
of Adam. And he's going to speak also
about another headship, which we find in the Lord Jesus Christ. So let's read from verse 12 of
Romans chapter five. 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. 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. But not as the offence, so also
is the free gift. For if through the offence of
one many be dead, much more the grace of God and the gift by
grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ hath abounded unto many. And not as it was by one that
sinned, so is the gift. For the judgment was by one to
condemnation, but the free gift is of many offences unto justification. For if by one man's offence death
reigned by one, much more they which receive abundance of grace
and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one Jesus
Christ. Therefore, as by the offence
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. Moreover the law entered that
the offence might abound, but where sin abounded, grace did
much more abound, that as sin hath reigned unto death, even
so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life
by Jesus Christ our Lord. In verse 12, the opening of this
passage that we have before us here, we read that death passed
upon all men. And this is taking us back to
the sin of Adam in the Garden of Eden. And Adam, in his role
as the head, or the federal head, the head of his family, Although
Eve was first to sin, Adam joined with her. And this shows us that
Adam was the one who was regarded of God as the head of his race. So here we're going back right
to the very beginning of the world, right to the very garden
of Eden. And the apostle Paul is showing
us here that the problem that we have, the problem that we
have with God, the problem of our sin, originated here in the
Garden of Eden. And because of the sin of Adam,
death passed upon all men. Now I'm not going to take the
time to explain that too much this evening beyond the fact
that we have to recognise that this is what God says happened. Okay? If you want an explanation
of this, Some of you are taking notes, I know. So Hebrews 7 is
a useful chapter to get an explanation of this. And I'll tell you roughly
what Hebrews 7 will tell you. It will show you that there was
once a priest called Melchizedek. Okay, that's quite a big name. But this man was called Melchizedek
and he met Abraham. And when he met Abraham, Abraham
bowed down to him and offered him a gift, offered him tithes. Abraham acknowledged the greatness
and the superiority of Melchizedek by bowing down to him. Now the
apostle in Hebrews takes that incident and he shows that because
Abraham bowed to Melchizedek, Abraham was acknowledging that
Melchizedek was greater than him. That's fair, isn't it? Now, Melchizedek was representative
of a priesthood. and the priesthood which came
from Abraham was called the Levitical priesthood. That was the priests
that used to serve in the temple and at the altar in the Old Testament
Jewish religious system. And what the writer to the Hebrews
shows us by the fact that Abraham bowed down to Melchizedek is
that Abraham's progeny, so Abraham had Isaac, Isaac had Jacob, Jacob
had Levi, so what is that great-grandson? The great-grandson who became
the head of the Levitical priesthood himself had acknowledged the
greater priesthood of Melchizedek because his great-great-grandfather
had bowed down to Melchizedek. Okay, so that's the point, that's
an example from the Old Testament of this headship question that
we find being referred to here in Romans chapter five. Because
Adam sinned, the sin came upon his children. Because Adam sinned,
that sin passed down to every generation from Adam. We sinned
in Adam in the same way as Levi bowed down to Melchizedek and
that the priesthood of Melchizedek was shown to be greater than
the Levitical priesthood because Abraham had bowed down. Levi never personally bowed down
to Melchizedek, never did. but his priesthood was subject,
subordinate to Melchizedek's priesthood because his great-grandfather
had bowed down. So that's the picture that we
have in Scripture of this headship question. Because Adam sinned,
we are all regarded as sinners. Now this picture that we have
given to us is the picture that the Apostle Paul is picking up
and running with in these verses before us. In verse 14 for example. He says, Nevertheless death reigned
from Adam to Moses. So in verse 12 he says, By one
man sin entered into the world, and death by sin. So death passed
upon all men, for that all have sinned. All of us had that sin
principle in our nature. All of us were regarded as guilty
before God because Adam sinned and we are regarded as having
sinned in him and death therefore passed upon all people. For until the law, sin was not
in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law."
That's not saying that people didn't sin up until the law came. In fact, what he goes on to say
is that the fact that people were regarded as sinners was
proven by the fact that they died. The fact that people died
showed that they were sinners. If you look at verse 14, therefore,
it says, Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses. Even although God hadn't given
the law, nevertheless, men and women were sinners. Not only
were men and women sinners, But little babies were sinners too,
because little babies died. And that's the reference there,
even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's
transgression. They never actually sinned the
sin that Adam sinned. They never actually ate the piece
of fruit. They never actually did the wrongdoing
that adults or whatever it was might do, but they were all regarded
as sinners because they all came from Adam. And that's the point
that the Apostle is making here. Our sinnership, our culpability,
our condemnation isn't first of all predicated upon the fact
that we sin, but because we are guilty in Adam. And that's the
message that the Apostle is bringing to us. He goes on to say, In
verse 15, but not as the offence, so also is the free gift. Now, what on earth does that
sentence mean? What on earth does that sentence
mean? I guess we don't speak like that
these days. We don't use our phrases like
that. What we might say, if I were
to paraphrase the apostle here, is we might say something like
this. in a similar way, but with a completely opposite effect. All right, that's what Paul is
saying here. In a similar way, so here's an
example that I'm quoting here, the example of Adam and the fact
that death passed upon all men because Adam sinned. In a similar
way, but with an opposite effect, we're now going to look at the
Lord Jesus Christ. When I was at school, I used
to dislike intensely when the teacher would give us an essay
question. And the beginning of the essay,
it would say, compare and contrast. And then they would put something
at the end of it. Compare and contrast, whatever it might be. The First World War and the Second
World War. Okay, well, you could do what
you could do. You had to show that you knew
what they were both about, and then you had to compare the things
that were the same, and you were to explain the things that were
different. And that's just exactly what
the Apostle Paul is doing here. So when he says, but not as the
offence, that is the sin of Adam, so also is the free gift. What is the free gift? It is
the righteousness of God that he has given to his chosen people
in the Lord Jesus Christ, that he has bestowed upon his elect
when he justified them, when he declared them to be righteous
in the eternal covenant of God. And just as Adam was the head
of his people, his family of men and women in this world by
nature, so the Lord Jesus Christ, we're comparing and contrasting,
he also is the head of his people. The Lord Jesus Christ has that
federal headship the same way as Adam had for his people. Now the actual group of people
are not the same. The group of people that the
Lord Jesus Christ is head over is a subset of that group of
people that Adam was head of. Because not all people have the
gift of righteousness which God has given the free gift that
is spoken about here in this verse. The offence is Adam's
first single act of disobedience. And when he committed that offence,
when he disobeyed God, the actual event was the taking of the piece
of fruit and the eating of it when they had been told not to
do so. But it bespoke a rebelliousness
against God. A fact that he wasn't happy with
the way things were going. He wasn't happy with what God
had done, and he wanted another way for himself. It was an act
of rebellion. And that act of rebellion that
Adam enacted, he did so as our representative. And that representation
is the point that the apostle is making here. We are comparing
and contrasting. Adam sinned and it brought his
people into condemnation and it brought death upon all his
posterity. Christ obeyed. Compare and contrast. Christ obeyed and his obedience
unto death brought life and peace and grace and mercy on all his
posterity. So here these two are being set
up side by side and we are seeing what happened when Adam fell
and what happened when Christ obeyed. Verse 16, we're told, and not
as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift. For the judgment
was by one to condemnation, but the free gift is of many offenses
unto justification. One sin brought judgment on many. That one sin, that one sin in
the garment, in the garden, brought death and condemnation on every
single living soul that ever was in this world, save for the
Lord Jesus Christ. One sin infected and polluted
us all. One sin brought us under that
condemnation and judgment. And somebody might say, but I
didn't commit the sin. It doesn't matter. Adam was our
representative. That's the point. You were in
Adam. And it might have been a great,
great, great, great, great granddaddy many, many times removed. But
you were in him. And that's how God views us. One sin brought condemnation
on many. Contrast and compare. So what
does the apostle say? But one gift of grace, one gift
of grace that the Lord Jesus Christ accomplished, that has
covered a multitude of sins. So that while there are so many
sins in this world, Those for whom Christ died have their sins
covered by the power of His blood. They have that cleansing given
to them. Although it was only one act
of obedience, one act of disobedience brought all the sin into the
world. One act of obedience blotted out all the sin for those people
that the Lord Jesus Christ was the head for. Death, verse 17, came on all
by one man's offence. That's that federal headship
again. One man's offence brought death upon us all. And make no
mistake, all of us are going to die. It is appointed unto
men once to die. That is the consequence and the
result of our union together with Adam. Now you can complain
about that all you like. You can complain till your deathbed. but you will die. And that's
because this is how God views it. You're guilty before a holy
God in Adam, under his headship. Death came on all men by one
man's offense. But then he goes on to say, much
more by abundant grace, by the gift of righteousness, We have
life, we have received abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness,
and we shall reign in life by one Christ Jesus. Contrasting
and comparing, showing that death came by Adam, but life is to
be found in the Lord Jesus Christ. Where Adam's legacy is death
upon those that he represented, Christ has become new life to
those for whom he stands and represents before God. Now I want to show you something
very interesting here, at least I think it's very interesting,
whether you do or not remains to be seen, but I think verse
18 and 19, when taken together, speak about something which I
want to draw out and to note. I see verse 18 and 19 here as
being sort of like a summary, a conclusion to the examples
that the apostle has been drawing when he's speaking about Abraham
and Christ being compared and contrasted. And he uses the word
therefore to begin these verses. And that's showing us that he's
drawing his ideas, his thoughts to a conclusion here, summarising
what he has said. Therefore, by the offence of
one, judgment came upon all men. Now, I ask myself, let me read
these verses to you. And let me ask you to think,
as I'm reading them, whether Paul is repeating himself in
both verses. Is he saying the same thing in
18 as he says in 19? Let me read them to you again.
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. Now, we could read these verses
and say, well, yeah, the apostle is repeating himself here, and
he must be doing so to reinforce the point that he's making. Let
me show you something. I don't know whether any of you
have got marginal references in your Bibles. Does anyone have
a margin? If you look in the margin, you
see that the reference there, by the offence of one, can also
be read as one offence. It can be read as one offence.
So if we were to translate that passage there, this verse, as
one offence, then what we're saying in verse 18 becomes slightly
different from what we're saying in 19. What we're saying in 18
is that by one offence, that is by the sin that Adam perpetrated
in the garden, Therefore, by the offence of one, or by one
offence, judgment came upon all men to condemnation. Even so,
by one act of righteousness, the free gift came upon all men
unto justification of life. So rather than having Adam and
Christ in view there, we have what Adam and Christ did in view. and it's Adam and Christ themselves
as individuals which we see spoken of in verse 19. Now why is that
important? Why am I making a point about
this? Well because I think that rather than seeing this simply
as a duplication of the point It seems clear to me that there's
something to be gained in understanding this one act that we have referred
to in verse 18, rather than one person, one act, the one act
which they did. Because by the single act of
the disobedience of Adam, which we have already mentioned was
seen in the eating of that piece of fruit, the fruit of the tree
of the knowledge of good and evil. Judgment came on all men
to condemnation. But it's the righteousness of
one, or rather that one act of righteousness by which the free
gift has come upon all men for whom the Lord Jesus Christ stood
as surety. And this is speaking about that
federal headship and that covenant union that we have with the Lord
Jesus Christ. Because that one act of the Lord
Jesus Christ by which the free gift of righteousness or our
justification comes to us was the death of the Lord Jesus Christ
upon the cross. That's the act. That's the point. It was that he was obedient unto
death at that point, at that moment. Philippians chapter 2
verse 8 says, That was the one act of righteousness by which
our justification was achieved and accomplished. That one act
of righteousness, the Saviour's death upon the cross, enabled, facilitated, accomplished
the ability of God to maintain his justice and his holiness
and yet bestow the free gift of grace and mercy and life upon
those for whom Christ died and those that he represented. So
that verse 19 is not speaking of the respective single acts,
but the respective heads themselves, Adam and Christ. One disobedient
man, that's Adam. One obedient is Christ, who thereby
makes many righteous. Okay, I've stressed my point. Why is it important? Why is that
important? Well, simply this. There are
many, many people today who will tell us that we are to look to
Christ's obedience to the law as our reason for believing that
we have a righteousness in him. They call that his active obedience. But that's not what this verse
is telling us. And it becomes so clear if we
see these two verses linked together with this marginal reading, that
it's the one act of obedience, the death of the Lord Jesus Christ
on the cross, that allows and enables God to bestow this free
gift of justification, the making of his people righteous. not
Christ's obedience to the law. That gives the law far too high
a status, far too high a position. I'm not looking for a legal righteousness
from Christ. I'm looking for the righteousness
of my Savior himself imputed to me, the Lord our righteousness,
not Moses' righteousness. We confess with the apostle that
all our righteousness, all our righteousness is a free gift
from God. It wasn't paid for by the Lord
Jesus Christ by his obedience to the law. It wasn't earned
for us by the Lord Jesus Christ. This is God's righteousness gifted
to us freely. because the Lord Jesus Christ
performed obediently one act and he went to the cross on our
behalf. Paul asks in Galatians 3, verse
19, Wherefore then serveth the law? It was added because of
transgressions, or as the same apostle here writes, that the
offence might abound. Why was the law given? It wasn't
there from Adam to Moses. The apostle has already established
that. And yet sin reigned and death reigned. Why was the law
given? It was to expose sin ever more
clearly. That's the reason why it was
given. But Paul makes a point about this. He says that even
although sin has been shown to be what it is by the bringing
in of a law, nevertheless, the accomplishments of Christ will
always overcome, overwhelm, superabound, abound beyond the power of sin
in the life of his people. Greater sin never overwhelmed
the power of grace. Grace always overwhelms the power
of sin for those who are under Christ's headship and represented
by him. So the apostle says, where sin
abounded, grace did much more abound. No matter how much sin
is in an individual's life, You hear me? You hear me? No matter
how much sin is in an individual's life, If Christ is their head,
if they're under that headship of the Lord Jesus Christ, that
one act of obedience blots it all out, takes it all away. We've received the atonement.
There's no anger against us from God. We are clean and we are
holy in the Lord Jesus Christ by that one act of obedience.
We have union with Him. and grace superabounds more than
any unworthiness and any sinfulness in our life. That one act of
Adam, right away back at the very beginning, that polluted
every generation hitherto, because of the work of the Lord Jesus
Christ, for those who were placed by God the Holy Spirit in Christ,
in the eternal covenant, find that their head has blotted out
by that one act of obedience on the cross, every writing of
condemnation that was against them. If we have union with the
Lord Jesus Christ, we have grace to cover all our sins and take
them all away. Look at verse 20. Moreover, the
law entered that the offence might abound. But where sin abounds, grace
did much more abound. That as sin hath reigned unto
death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal
life by Jesus Christ our Lord. Not one of those who are under
the headship of the Lord Jesus Christ will be lost because grace
is more powerful than sin. Not one will fail to reach heaven
because grace reigns. It rules and it accomplishes
that which God sent it to do. It was designed to blot out our
sins and it was successful in that end. sin and death and hell
and everything that flowed from that one act of Adam in the garden
has been defeated by that one act of the Lord Jesus Christ
upon the cross. And we who are his, we who are
under his headship, under his representation, under his work
on our behalf, We shall reign eternally with him because God
isn't angry at our sins anymore. May the Lord bless us and these
thoughts to us as we reflect upon what the Apostle has taught
us in this word. Amen.