Or, Our Representatives and Their Reigns
Scripture: Romans 5:12-17
Date: May 15, 2022
Speaker: Sean Higgins
Some things benefit by being balanced. Some are ruined by it. A balanced diet does the body good, but we don’t try to balance time spent breathing with time spent holding our breath.
Relationships have a kind of balance, and the connection between self and tribe is a constant pull. For example, is worship as an assembly or your worship as an individual more important? Does the whole body matter or each part? What do you prioritize? What’s the balance? What happens when it’s out of balance?
Is there any more relentless mass media message today than promoting one’s self? As if we were really having problems with that. We may get caught up in the group excitement of being the 11th man for few hours, but we drive out of the parking lot thinking about numero uno.
Such an atomized culture makes a passage such as Romans 5:12-21 foreign, if not disagreeable. As a church we have tried to correct course, considering our families as units rather than as platforms for personal fulfillment. We’ve worked to stress the goodness of being a church, an assembly of worshipers rather than only a gathering of whatever Christians showed up. Yet even among us, we’re still faster to distance ourselves from the ones we’re connected to, especially when they do something (we think is) stupid.
Of course there is no gospel if there is no shared relationship to a representative. Each man must believe, no dad can believe on behalf of his son, but what we believe is in the work of another that counts for us. Justification occurs when God credits the work of Christ to those connected to Christ. We are reconciled to God through our representative. This is the only way of salvation and it turns out, a representative problem is why we needed salvation.
It’s interesting that Paul didn’t start with this part of our fallen condition. He’s written (what for us are) chapters on the sinfulness and self-righteousness of men. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, all without exception, each and every one. There is none righteous, no not one. A culture can be given over, but we think about that in terms of a majority of individuals given over. And that is partially true, but not entirely true.
In Romans 5:12-21 Paul nails the comfort door shut, and us inside the comfort as we are in Christ. Our peace with God, our rejoicing in God, our hope in His glory, our hope through trials, our certainty of God’s love depend on the work of one applied to the work of many. It wasn’t a group project, it was the work of one for the group. Christ’s righteousness counts for His group. This is good news, but it also not new. One man’s sin is imputed to all who are born. We sin and we deserve death because we were already guilty in Adam.
If we want the peace of having been justified by faith, we should recognize the pattern. For as much sin, death, and condemnation as there was, there is much more grace. Death reigned, but we reign in life by grace. following our Head (Ephesians 5:23).
Verse 12 begins an argument that Paul doesn’t exactly finish, though he does explain it. He answers the comparison eventually, but adds a parenthesis to clarify his conclusion (the KJV actually puts a parenthesis around verses 13-17).
Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned— (Romans 5:12, ESV)
He does not give evidence for his assertion, his assertion is the evidence. Sin entered the world in one act in Genesis 3. This was not the first sin, it was the first sin among men. The one man is Adam, named in verse 14.
Sin brought—and birthed, so to speak—death. The order is significant, particularly in our Darwinian climate. The theory of evolution depends on death, on generations dying and the modifications and adaptations that “happened” to delay death a little longer. There are professing Christians who want to find room for by-the-hand-of-God evolution in Genesis, but millions of years of death before Adam reverses the order in Romans 5. There was one man, Adam, who sinned, and brought death.
Verses 13-14 are sort of a parenthesis that help explain the spread of death.
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. (Romans 5:13–14, ESV)
There are two basic approaches. One: inherited (or “imbued” per John Calvin) sinfulness; Adam sinned and humans became sinful, and everyone who sins deserves death. We are all born in a corrupted state, also called original sin. Two: imputed sinfulness; Adam sinned, and Adam represented all humans, so all humans deserve death like Adam. When Adam sinned we all sinned.
Both approaches are true, but Romans 5 is not about both. To encourage us, Paul writes that Jesus’ representative obedience brings grace that is much more than Adam’s representative disobedience that brings condemnation.
The governing thought is at the end of verse 14: Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come. We are learning what we have in Christ by seeing what we lost in Adam (John Calvin).
What’s more, in the phrase death spread to all men because all sinned, the “all sinned” suggests one act (an aorist tense referring to the simple finished fact), and the focus on one sin continues. The observation is obvious:
We do have Adam’s nature and we do follow Adam’s example, but this paragraph teaches that Adam’s guilt is our guilt, not that he has his and we have ours.
The truth about sin and law and death isn’t about how there really was an unwritten law before Moses, though we do know God’s law is written on the hearts of men (Romans 2:15). It isn’t about how each man sinned for himself and earned the wages of death for himself, though again every sinner sins and no judgment is undeserved. The truth here is that Adam represented mankind, and death reigned among all those he represented. We sin, true, but we already sinned in Adam.
”But I wouldn’t have sinned. That’s unfair.” But God didn’t offer you that role, and you are currently sinning, and the grace of salvation isn’t “fair” either.
“Much more” times two, verses 15 and 17. Adam is a type of Christ, so there is at lease some similarity. But that similarity is limited to representation; they represent different groups and accomplished different things.
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. (Romans 5:15–16, ESV)
The many who died because of one man’s trespass simply establishes the solidarity. Any who died are part of that many, and there aren’t any who don’t die (save Enoch and Elijah). That is inclusive of every man and exhaustive in application. Death is formidable.
Much more though, God’s grace and the free gift of grace and one man Jesus Christ has abounded for many. Grace is more effective in application, and not sparse. Grace overflowed (NIV). Grace did more than reduce the effects of Adam’s sin, grace overpowers, overwhelms, overcomes. As sure as death, much more sure is life.
The differences continue. One trespass brought condemnation for all, but all the many trespasses that follow were covered by one free gift of justification. Adam sinned and all were condemned. We were condemned before we sinned, we were condemned to sin. And all our sins were overcome by grace; “where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (verse 20).
For 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. (Romans 5:17, ESV)
Death has dominion. Death is personified as an actor, and death was the tyrant. Graveyards are his palaces. Death gets what it wants when it wants it. If you thought you could outrun the Persian army, good luck. Even less can anyone outrun death.
But much more will believers reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ. Life isn’t personified, persons are brought to life. In Jesus who is the resurrection and the life (John 11:25), those who are represented by Him live in the kingdom of life and have a dominion much more powerful. Slaves of death become kings of life (Morris).
Our representatives and their reigns: Adam of mankind by birth as slaves to death, Christ of the redeemed by belief to reign in life. The objective nature of our togetherness is established by God, and the subjective application of it out to follow as we love and comfort those who share the same representative, Jesus Christ. We are parts, but never only separate parts.
“In order to partake of the miserable inheritance of sin, it is enough for thee to be a man…but in order to enjoy the righteousness of Christ it is necessary for thee to be a believer.” (John Calvin)
Christ represents you before the Father. You represent Christ to your family, to your neighbors. Live like you’re not dead. Live as those alive to God (Romans 6:11). Live for the will of God (1 Peter 4:2). Because of the one man Jesus Christ and His grace we reign in life.
Finally, brothers, rejoice. Aim for restoration, comfort one another, agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. (2 Corinthians 13:11, 14, ESV)