You may not be aware of the influence that a pastor’s wife has on the pastor and even on his preaching. You may have heard about the pastor who had on his sermon notes every Sunday morning a note from his wife. It was KISS, K-I-S-S. Word got out; thought that was sweet. Turns out it just was an acronym: Keep it short and simple. I really do try to keep it short, honest. But I’ve been particularly concerned always to keep it simple. And I say that just to mention my appreciation for Margie Orr. She was an enormous encouragement to me. To have a 92-year-old woman come up to you after the sermon and tell you how clear you make things is just an enormous encouragement. I tell you, preachers are willing to pay people like that to come to church. And we miss her. We miss her.
Romans chapter 5. Romans chapter 5. We’re continuing our series on the Bible story of salvation. For the last many times together, we’ve been tracing out various themes that carry the Bible story of salvation. It’s a story of salvation that’s centered in Christ and his redemptive work. Last week, we looked at the subject of God’s faithful son. We saw that God created Adam as his son. That’s what Luke calls him, the son of God. Adam was a disobedient son, a rebellious son, disobeyed. We saw various other sons that are brought up in the Old Testament. Israel is God’s son, the Davidic king is God’s son, and all of that, of course, pointing to Jesus, who is God’s son par excellence, both in terms of his messianic kingship, and also in his eternal relations with the Father. He is God’s son. So he is God’s son par excellence. And finally then, we saw that God has a faithful son. And in him, we saw that God has many faithful sons and daughters. And we bumped then into the doctrine of adoption—that given our union with Jesus Christ, God’s Son, we are made God’s sons and made faithful by his work in us and for us.
Well, this morning we’re taking up a very closely related theme, and we could have done it all at once, but it would not have been a short sermon if I had, and that is the subject of the new Adam, the new Adam. Go back over some of the same kind of ground, but then some other emphases that we find in the New Testament in particular as well. But again, keep in mind, our overall emphasis has been to show that the Bible is a gospel-shaped story about Jesus, and that there are various themes that carry that story from beginning to end in the Bible. And today, the theme carrying the story is the new Adam.
And of course, an important passage, the most prominent passage in the Bible that deals with that subject, is Romans chapter 5, verses 12 and following:
Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, so death spread to all men because all sinned. For sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come. But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for many. And the free gift is not like the result of that one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation. But the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. If, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.
Let’s bow together for prayer. Our Father, we are grateful for Jesus Christ and we are grateful for this book that is given to tell us about him. We’re thankful for the wonderful message of the gospel. We’re thankful that you have made it so plain for us in the scriptures, and we’re thankful that you have given us these various themes, all given to drive and to rivet our attention and finally our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray that you administer to us this morning to that end. In his name we ask. Amen.
The Consequences of Adam’s Sin
In Genesis chapters 1 and 2, where we have started so often in this series, Adam is created by God as the king of creation. Adam and Eve were created as co-regents, king ruling over creation. They are created in God’s image. Their role is to image God to the world. Their role and their function is to exercise God’s dominion over the world, to reflect God’s rule. And so here they’re given this high status of vice-regents with God to rule over this new world that he created. That, of course, entails responsibility to reflect his character in their rule, and it’s exactly in this area that they failed so miserably.
In Genesis chapter 3, Adam sins in rebellion against God and falls from his high status—still king of creation, but of course now in a ruined kind of way, and not fulfilling his role of exercising dominion over the world as he should. Be fruitful, multiply, and replenish the earth; extend God’s image across the world in a way that is honoring to him. And now, of course, they’re failing in their disobedience to God, and they’re failing in their high calling.
Well, that’s Genesis 1, 2, and 3. Get to Genesis 4, and Moses begins to track out for us the consequences of sin—the consequences of Adam’s sin in particular. In Genesis chapter 4, we see that sin has invaded that first home. We have the murder of Abel by his brother Cain. Death has entered, and then we turn the page to Genesis chapter 5, and that’s the note that’s taken up again and again and again and again. Adam lived so many years, bore children, lived so many years, and he died. And Seth lived so many years, and bore children, lived so many years, and he died. And Enosh lived so many years, bore children, lived so many years, and he died. And Kenan lived so many years, and bore children, lived so many more years, and he died. And the next one died, and the next died, and he died, and he died. And that’s the refrain going through Genesis chapter 5: and he died, and he died.
And as you’ve heard me say before, you don’t have to have six theological degrees to get the point of Genesis chapter 5. Death has entered humanity. We turn the page again, we get to Genesis chapter 6, and now sin has become so rampant and so deep and so awful that God says he will destroy the whole world. He saves Noah and his family, eight total, and wipes out the rest of creation to start over. Sin has entered into humanity. We have the same thing after the flood account. Genesis 10 and 11, we have the table of nations in chapter 10, and then as those nations disperse, we find in Genesis chapter 11 the Tower of Babel and the rebellion against God, God dispersing the nations, disrupting the language between them all, and sin is spreading, and the effects of sin are spreading, the consequences ruining humanity.
One man in particular has written an entire book to demonstrate that the point of Genesis is to show the extensive effects of sin in humanity. I don’t think that’s Moses’ point in the book of Genesis, but that certainly is one of the points in the book of Genesis: how these consequences of sin have tracked out into humanity in every kind of respect. And it looks like in Romans 5 verse 12 that Paul is reading all of that and drawing some conclusions. When he says in verse 12, “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man,” that’s Adam, “and death through sin,” death came as a result of his sin, “so death spread to all men because all sinned.” There’s a headship on Adam’s part and through his sin. The consequences of sin, namely death, have spread to all of humanity. And all of humanity has been affected by Adam’s sin.
And so we have this ever-present, ever-increasing theme running through the Bible of sin, death, and condemnation. Sin, and then death and condemnation as a consequence of sin. Well, all of that because our head, Adam, has sinned. And because he has sinned, all of humanity has fallen into ruin and death and condemnation. And so reading the story as we go through, it would seem that humanity is doomed from the outset. Our first father, Adam, sinned in rebellion against God, and all of humanity is ruined as a result. Adam has failed. He has rebelled. And as a result, all of humanity, and indeed all of the created order, has fallen into ruin.
Hints of a New Adam
Well, early on, very early on in the book of Genesis, we start reading some hints. This is evident particularly after you’ve read the whole book and you come back and you can see it more. You ever watch a movie and then you watch it again? I don’t watch movies twice very often, but if it’s a really good one, I might do that. You watch it a second time and on your way through, “Oh, I never caught that the first time.” You ever do that? You can do that with a good novel as well. I understand I don’t read novels, but that’s what I’m told. I thought that the movie is, you go through, “I never caught that the first time, I never caught that the first time,” but seeing it again from the standpoint of the whole, these things pop up, and a good author, a good movie writer can do that kind of a thing—drop little hints through the way that in light of the whole become very evident.
And we find that in the scriptures quite often. We find it famously in the Gospel of John, but we find it in the Bible as a whole as well, where once we’ve gone through it, we can come back and say, “Oh, I can see where this is going.” And in that sense, there are hints that are dropped in the unfolding narrative of scripture that anticipate a new Adam that will come. Now, you know already that’s pointing to Jesus. If you didn’t know that from our scripture reading this morning in Romans chapter 5, you know it from the series. You know it because you’re in church. It all points to Jesus. That’s always where we’re going. But that is the point here with this subject of the new Adam. It seems from the outset that humanity has been doomed from the start because its first father, Adam, has ruined it. But immediately, almost immediately, we begin to see hints that anticipate a new Adam to come.
One of those hints is in Noah himself in Genesis chapters 6 through 9. The flood is often referred to as the uncreation, or the reversal of creation. In Genesis 1, we read of the waters and the separation of the waters, the waters above the earth, the waters below the earth. We get to Genesis chapter 6 in the account of the flood, and the waters above the earth collapse, and the waters below the earth surge up. There’s an uncreation happening. There’s almost the entire extinction of the human race that was created in Genesis chapter 1. There’s the uncreation theme in the flood story.
But then immediately after the flood in Genesis 8 and 9, where God enters into his covenant with Noah, we find a new creation kind of theme again, in which Noah appears as something of a new kind of Adam. So if in Genesis chapter 1 we have the separation of the waters and the flood, we have the collapse of the waters and so on; in Genesis chapter 8 we have again the separation of the waters (Genesis 8:1–3). If in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 the animals are brought before Adam, in Genesis 8 we have the animals brought out again to repopulate the earth. If in Genesis 1 God establishes the days and the seasons, and that seemed to be destroyed in the flood, again now in chapter 8, verse 22, that cycle of days and seasons is restored again. In Genesis 1, verse 28, humanity is created and it says God blessed them. That is taken up again in Genesis chapter 9 and verse 1. In Genesis 1 verse 28, we have the creation mandate: “Be fruitful, multiply, replenish, multiply and fill the earth.” That is picked up again in God’s command to Noah, again in Genesis chapter 9. In Genesis 1, God provides food for humanity; again now after the flood, in Genesis 9 and verse 6, God provides humanity again with food. And there are several other connections like that between the creation account and now the reestablishing of creation after the flood. And in all of that, Noah is presented as a kind of second Adam, the father of the post-flood world.
But not just Noah; we find another hint. And if you were here last week, this may sound familiar again. We find a hint of it also in Abraham, who’s presented also as the head of a new creation. He’s the new beginning that God will use, and eventually, through Abraham, all of the families of the world will be blessed. The Apostle Paul picks up on this in Romans chapter 4 and presents Genesis 12 and the calling of Abraham as the beginning of a new creation. So in Abraham, Paul says, God calls things that are not existing into existence. That sounds like Genesis 1, doesn’t it? Just as in Genesis chapter 1, God said, “Let there be,” and there was, so now God takes Abraham and through him calls into existence nations and families and blessing that did not exist before—a kind of new Adam, a new beginning.
Israel also, we saw last time, was presented as God’s son. And so, in a sense, Israel takes up Adam’s role in the world with a new beginning. “Israel is my firstborn son. Let my son go.” These are God’s new people, going into a special relationship with God. They are to display God to the world. And, of course, it’s a miserable failure on the part of Israel. David and the Davidic king are presented as something of a new Adam as well. The Davidic king, as we saw last week in 2 Samuel chapter 7, God will call him his son: “I will be his father and he will be my son.” He’s appointed as the head, the leader of God’s people. And in that sense, he’s something of an anticipation of a new Adam.
A New and Better Adam
Well, that’s just a quick thumbnail sketch of that. But of course, you know, as I say, all of this is pointing forward finally to what we find presented for us in the New Testament about Jesus. And here in the New Testament, it makes it very explicit that we have a new and a better Adam who has finally come. I say it makes it explicit, and we’ll see some of those like here in Romans chapter 5. But some of the presentation of the new Adam in the New Testament is a little subtle as well. And again, let me take time just to sketch out some of them for you.
Some of them we looked at last week quickly, so I just can mention it. But for example, in Matthew chapter 1 and verse 1: “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ.” That language is picked up exactly out of the Greek translation of the Old Testament of Genesis 5 and verse 1: “The book of the generation of Adam.” Is he subtly pointing to Jesus as a new Adam? Well, we have that in Luke’s account as well. In Luke chapter 3, as we saw last week, we find Jesus after his baptism and the announcement from God from heaven, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” And we go from there immediately into the genealogy of Jesus, which in Luke’s account is traced all the way back to “Adam, the son of God.” And immediately from that, we move to the temptation story, which itself has reflections and connections back to the Genesis chapters 1 to 3. And so we have Jesus enduring temptation. We have the serpent. We have the threefold temptation. Mark throws in a detail that Jesus was with the wild animals in his temptation. And all of this is to present Jesus as the new Adam. And of course the great difference is that whereas Adam in Genesis 3, facing the temptation of the serpent, fails, Jesus, in the Gospels, facing the temptation of the serpent, succeeds over the tempter.
We have something of this reflected in the designation of Jesus as the Son of Man. That, of course, famously traces back to Daniel chapter 7, with a vision of the Son of Man appearing before the Ancient of Days. But it actually traces back further than that to Psalm 8: “What is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you visit him,” and he’s reflecting on the glory of man as created in Genesis chapters 1 and 2. So the “Son of Man” title is a subtle reflection of Jesus as the new Adam as well. We have it in Matthew 12, where Jesus comes to bind the strong man in the defeat of Satan theme—the idea that he succeeds where Adam failed. And then, of course, in the Gospel of John, where Jesus is presented, as we saw last week, as the faithful Son, who has come always to do the will of the Father and to please Him.
I’ve used the illustration before, and I think it is helpful, and I’ll just remind you of it again, and that is that when we commemorate an event, we make a movie after the fact. God’s way is a bit different in that he stages the play ahead of time. And so throughout the Old Testament, we have the big play, the big event in the Gospels, portrayed ahead of time in a number of people, a number of events, a number of institutions. And these people and events and institutions become symbolic. They become patterns showing ahead of time, glimpsing ahead of time, the big event that is to come. And so we have the priest and the real priest, and the prophet and the real prophet, and the king and the real king. And we have all of these connections. We often call it typology. These are a type of the reality to come.
And that’s what we find here with this Adam theme as well. The Bible treats it exactly that way. And I think one of the interesting ones is, as I say, although it’s subtle, in Luke chapter 3, where Luke traces Jesus’ genealogy all the way back to Adam, the son of God. And this was something that was recognized actually by as far back as the second-century theologian Irenaeus. And he makes an interesting comment there and says that in tracing this genealogy from Jesus all the way back to Adam, connecting the end to the beginning, Christ has summed up, or Luke here for us in that is showing us that Christ has summed up in himself, all nations that have descended from Adam. In fact, in the early centuries, there was one of the explanations as to how Jesus saves us; it was called the recapitulation theory—that Jesus came and he’s doing in his life a redo of Adam and succeeding where Adam failed in order to redeem and restore where Adam brought ruin. Well, I think that is catching exactly what the scriptures are presenting about Adam and then the new Adam, Jesus.
As I say, there’s no passage in the scripture more explicit, although 1 Corinthians 15 is close, there’s no passage more explicit than Romans chapter 5, verses 12 through 19. And I can tell already that in order to keep it short, we’re not going to be able to finish this this morning, but we can look at Romans chapter 5. We won’t make it to 1 Corinthians 15. If you’d like to read ahead for next week, 1 Corinthians 15, then Hebrews chapter 2 as well, where this theme is picked up.
The Imputation of Sin and Righteousness
But this morning then, for the rest of our time, let’s look at Romans chapter 5. In verse 12, Paul makes a broad statement regarding Adam and the effects of Adam and his sin on the rest of humanity. Now this is a very packed statement; I want to make sure you see it. “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man,” Adam is clearly the one man, and through him sin has entered the world. Now what does he mean by that? Does he mean simply that he was the first one to sin? Well, it can’t mean that because actually Eve was the first one, right? But it’s through Adam because he stood in a capacity of headship over humanity. Through Adam, sin came into the world. And then, “death through sin.” What is death? Theologically understood, what is death? Well, according to Genesis chapter 2, death is the punishment for sin. Take that fruit; in that day you die. So through one man, sin came into the world and death through sin came into the world. So why do people die? Well, one answer is ultimately because Adam sinned.
Well, if you’re not clear on that, read the rest of the verse: “Just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, so death spread to all men because all sinned.” And notice the past tense. “All sinned” in the sense seems to be all sinned in Adam—that Adam was considered as the corporate head of the human race, and his actions affected all. And so, because he sinned, all the world bears the results and the consequences of it, and death is passed into humanity as a consequence of Adam’s sin. It is the punishment of God upon Adam and all of humanity. We call this the imputation of sin.
Now notice at the end of verse 12, most all translations do this, at the very end of verse 12 you have a dash. Now that’s not in the original, but it’s the translator’s attempt to show the purpose of verses 13 and 14. Verses 13 and 14 now give explanation of verse 12. In case you didn’t get it all, it was packed into verse 12. Notice the connection in verse 13. “For”—it’s an explanatory conjunction. So death spread to all men. So let’s unpack that and explain it. “For sin indeed was in the world before the law was given.” Now what’s this expression “before the law was given”? What’s that? Moses, right? The law came through Moses. So he’s saying here that sin was in the world before the law of Moses came. But then he says, “sin is not counted where there is no law.” That is to say, if no objective law has been given, there’s a sense in which God does not impute the sin.
Yet—so verse 13, sin indeed was in the world, but sin isn’t counted where there is no law. Yet, verse 14, “death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam.” And as Adam was given an objective law—”don’t do that”—and he violated it, and the death sentence was given, that objective law was not given again until Moses. And yet from Adam to Moses, people died. And they bore the effects of sin, the consequence of sin, the punishment of sin. So how is it that people between Adam and Moses died when death punishment for sin is not given when there’s no law? Answer, verse 12: they sinned in Adam. And so humanity is treated not as a field of corn where every man stands on his own, but humanity is treated as a great tree in which Adam is the trunk. And what happened at the trunk, at the root, spreads to all humanity. So, through one man, sin entered into the world.
Now, before we can move on with the next verses, we’ve got to answer the question, and you’ve heard me do this before, I think deal with this before in this kind of context, but the question comes up, we have to address it: “That’s not fair.” You’re thinking it, aren’t you? And there are several answers to that that we have to consider. One is, it’s a strange objection to say that it’s not fair. It’s a strange objection for Americans to give. We live with this kind of government and we say it’s the best: representative government, right? Where the actions of somebody in Washington affects the rest of us for good or for ill—too often for ill. We say this is good government.
There’s another answer that has to be given and that is just to point out the advantage that Adam had over everyone else. All the cards were stacked in his favor. He had no habit of sin developed. He had no tendency to sin. Not a lot of bad examples around. All the cards were stacked in his favor. It’s like that time I was in an undergraduate class one time and the professor came in for the final exam. He said, “I’m going to give just one of you the exam and the grade that he gets, the rest of you get. It just really depends who’s going to take the test.” If it’s the flunky in the back row, no, I’d rather do it myself. If it’s that A student sitting up there, that’s fine. Well, Adam was that A student. He’s got every advantage. Would you have done better? And that brings to another part of the answer: how are you doing? Do you think you would have done better? Or we could simply say, fine, stand on your own. How’s that going to work for you? And of course, the final answer, I suppose, is simply that God didn’t ask you. He didn’t ask me. And it’s plainly what is said here.
But none of that is the answer that Paul gives here. The answer that Paul gives here is to say that this principle by which we are ruined is the principle by which we are redeemed. So as we are ruined in the old Adam, we’re redeemed in the new Adam. And that, in short, is Paul’s argument from the end of verse 14 through verse 19. And I want you to notice exactly the way he puts it in verse 14, how he sets it up: “Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.” And there’s our word: type. He was a shadow, a prefiguring of a greater Adam to come.
So that’s how he sets it up at the end of verse 14. Adam was a picture of another Adam. There’s Adam and there’s another Adam. And now he begins the contrast, verse 15. There’s something of a parallel that’s drawn out in these verses, but you’ll see that it’s a contrasting parallel. Notice the conjunction is adversative. It’s a contrast. “But” now—there’s Adam and what he did, but now this other Adam—”the free gift is not like the trespass.” How so? I’m glad you asked. Let me explain: “For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for many.” So we have the one Adam and his trespass, and on the other hand we have the other Adam, Jesus Christ, who obeyed and brought grace.
Verse 16: “And the free gift is not like the result of that one man’s sin, for the judgment following one man’s trespass brought condemnation.” Now here’s the contrast: “But the free gift following many trespasses brought justification.” Or again, “If because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man,” here’s the contrast, “much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.” Again, verse 18: “Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.” And then a summary statement, verse 19: “For as by one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.”
You see how he has said the same thing over and over and over and over again to drive it? He’s got this sustained contrasting parallel. You have Adam and Christ, Adam and the new Adam. You have disobedience and obedience, and you have, after that, death and life, or condemnation and justification. Adam, new Adam; disobedience, obedience; death, life; condemnation, justification. That’s Paul’s parallel that he draws. We have an Adam in whom it’s all been ruined, and we have a new Adam in whom we have been redeemed.
You’ll notice how Paul sustains this corporate headship idea in verse 12 with the word “all.” “Therefore, as just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, so death spread to all because all sinned.” Again, verse 18, he uses the word “all.” “Therefore, just as one trespass led to the condemnation for all men, so the act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.” And I think the sense there pretty obviously is all for whom Adam was head and all for whom Christ is head receive the corresponding results. Sometimes the word is not “all,” but the word is “many.” Notice verse 15: “The free gift is not like the trespass, for if many died through the one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus abounded for many.” And again the word “many” in verse 19: “As by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one man’s obedience, the many will be made righteous.”
So one stands for all, or one stands for many, and then again with a new Adam, he stands for all, he stands for many. The point of it all is that in Adam you are lost, and like Adam you have sinned. You can never—you could never, you would never—be able to remedy the problem yourself. Your only hope is that God would somehow provide another Adam to stand as our representative head and stand in our place doing what is required of us and bearing our punishment for our sin.
This, by the way, is the first significance of the temptation account in the Gospels when Jesus is tempted of Satan. The first significance of the temptation account is not to give us principles for withstanding temptation. It does that, and there’s a very important teaching in that. The first significance of the temptation account is not to teach us how to withstand temptation. The first significance is not to teach us of Jesus’ impeccability—that he could not sin. It’s an important question taken up there as well. But the first significance of the temptation account is to show here is the new Adam going up against Satan and, unlike the first Adam, he defeats the tempter. And in our place, representing us, he goes up against him and he wins.
And so there are in scripture three imputations. You see, there’s the imputation of Adam’s sin to humanity. There is, by faith in Christ, an imputation of our sin to Him, where God placed sin on Jesus and He dies bearing our sin and paying the penalty of it. And then, in turn, there’s the imputation of Jesus’ righteousness to us. And all of that is tied up in verse 19: “For as by one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience, the many will be made righteous.”
You see what this is doing? It’s doing what every theme through the Bible does over and over again. It is showing us there is only one hope. And it’s Jesus. He is the one you need. He is all you need. And all of this is given to rivet our attention that all that I need is found in Jesus and that’s enough. Here the theme: I have a new representative head and God treats me, thankfully, not according to what I deserve. He treats me according to what he deserved and what he has earned. We’ll trace this out again further next week.
Let’s bow for prayer. Our Father, this is a wonderful, glorious theme. We are thankful for Jesus, our head, our great representative, our substitute. We’re thankful that he has taken our sin. We’re thankful that we have in him all the righteousness you require of us. Lord, forgive us for nursing attitudes of guilt that don’t belong. Forgive us for not trusting in this one who stood as our representative head. Give us a clear and a firm grasp that we have in him everything that you require of us. May we rest in the great freedom of that, we pray in his name. Amen.