Grace Super-Abounds Over Adam's Transgression

Well, good morning This is really a cool section and Yeah, I did I listened to Ron Merriman and he it's one of the amazing times, you know He doesn't admit to me not knowing much about I want to say anything, but he said, you know these verses in the King James. I Struggled for years. It just is so hard you read those and what did it say and he you know, it is amazing so I think with actually more translations that helps.

And there's a couple of connectives that actually, in preparing for it, I found another connective that really helps. Hopefully the connectives, plus I've gone to my bubble charts. Hopefully those are helpful to try to do the A versus B, you know, Adam versus Christ. Okay, so I'm calling this section, we're gonna finish out 18 through 21. What I found was, at first I thought, wow, There's going to be a lot of new information in 18 through 21. Well, there's actually not. There are clarifications, there's amplifications, but it's the same basic information about Adam's transgression and Christ giving him his life on the cross and the effect of both those two wonderful acts.

Okay, so I created this definition slide last week and I've kind of added a few more things to it this week just to kind of clarify. Hopefully the definitions help too. Alright, so first definition is free gift. And to my understanding, I would say that free gift, and there's some, not controversy, but some difference of opinion, the free gift in this context is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

The transgression, and we're going to see that almost every verse has the word transgression in it. The transgression is Adam's disobedience in the garden, Adam and Eve's disobedience in the garden, as we see in chapter 3 of Genesis. The one with the lowercase one refers to Adam. The many Is this one of these words, and I mentioned last week before, it's used in Isaiah and other places. They'll use many for all sometimes, and it kind of hurts your head a little bit. The many can refer to all mankind in some verses we'll talk about. It can refer to all believers in another verse, or another part of the verse.

The one with a capital one, a capital O, refers to the Lord Jesus. The sin Nate the sand with a definite article refers to the sin nature But and I I would say another way to say that is the fall Adams fallen nature, which everyone we all have that Whatever you want to call it.

So actually I was talking with Mike a little bit. So here's something from miles I don't want Mike saw this but I I kind of found this. There's a quote from miles He says it is more accurate. I think I agree with him. It's more accurate to think that in the terms of lives rather than natures.

The believer is indwelt by two lives, that of the first Adam and that of the second Adam, Christ. Each life manifests its essential character in its nature. So just kind of a, you know, if you think about it, we have the very life of the Lord Jesus Christ, but we call it, many times we call it the new nature, we'll call it that. We'll call our our Adamic nature.

We'll call the sin nature So it's all these words help us to understand what God's trying to tell us. So that's kind of the bottom line with all this Okay So let's go on. So this is going to be viewed from last week. So I'm going to continue to use my my bubble Declaration here chart.

So the first part of this is the first the first phrase there it says but the free gift is is not like the transgression. So that's the first statement that Paul makes in verse 15. The free gift is not like the transgression. So he's going to contrast the free gift, eternal life, with Adam's transgression.

So, on Adam's side, I colored it in blue. I have blue-green, even the color thing will try to help you out here. For if, or since, by the transgression of the one, Adam, the many died. In this case, the many died. We all, in a sense, died in Adam. We all have the effects of Adam. He's our federal head. We all are subject. The many died. But much more, and this is one of these connectives. There are three connectives that I found in studying these passages. There's the much more, which is basically this over-the-top picture of God's grace.

Then there's an even-so. We'll see that a little bit later in later verses. Even-so is more like, here's Adam's action, then here's Christ's action, and Christ's action offset Adam's action. But it's not quite the much-more. And the Lord knows why He used even-so and much. To my mind, it seems like they're all over the top, but they're the much-mores and the even-sos. There's a third category.

It's like the on the one hand versus on the other hand So those are all the connectives in these verses that connect and the whole reason why am I worried about connectives? The whole reason is I want to compare Adams actions what he did with Christ's actions. That's my whole desire to do that Okay, so we talked about Adams actions that many died in contrast to that did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of God and The one man Jesus Christ abounds to the many so we have this contrast of the transgressions versus God's grace of the one man Adam the one man Christ, and then we have the many died and The the actions of Christ on the cross abounds to the many and the many are there are there all those who put their faith and trust in Christ even though if you look in you know first John 2 1 and He is a propitiation for our sins, for our sins only. He's provided for salvation for every single person on the planet. But only the many, only some will accept that. And that His grace abounds to them. So that's verse 15. And I'm not going to do the deep dive on that. So let's go to 16. Similar thing.

The gift, again eternal life in Christ Jesus, is not like what? That which came through the one who sinned. So he puts the gift first, he puts Christ's action first, then he puts Adam's action. But then he follows that, he puts Adam's action. That's why it gets confusing when you're reading it. On the one hand, and this is the cool thing in the original, you have the men death, it's on this hand versus the other hand.

So he says, on Adam's hand, on the one hand, judgment arose from one transgression resulting in justification. It took just one transgression. Adam disobeyed God. God told him, gave him a command not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And he did. He and Eve did.

So that was the transgression, that one transgression. But on the other hand, The free gift arose from many transgressions, resulting in justification. This is a marvelous one that Vani and I looked at one day and said, wow, this is just neat. One transgression by Adam, but God handles all of man's transgressions. Think about that. He paid for the sins of the entire world, but many transgressions led to the justification of man. So again, the transgressions between Adam's actions and Christ's actions. And he doesn't use the connective here much more. He just has on the one hand and the other. Okay, verse 17. In this case, he doesn't have a general statement. He just divides it. He divides it with a much more here.

On Adam's side, for if or since, by the transgressions of the one Adam, death reigned through the one Adam. So this idea of death reigning comes into the picture. Death reigned and we're going to talk about that more as we there'll be some verses we'll talk about more today on that death reigning Death reigned as a result of of the sin nature. We're going to see that on the other side much but much more over abounding more Those who receive and notice we have to receive it right those who receive it's not just anyone It's those who receive it. They receive the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness will reign in life on their own by their own nickel so to speak no and so many verses through through the one Jesus Christ we reign through our Savior through the Lord Jesus Christ so the comparison again you got the the transgression versus the abundance of grace you got the one Adam the one Christ you got the death raining and you got The believer, if you look carefully, it's those who receive are the ones who are reigning. They're reigning in life through Jesus Christ.

They're just marvelous comparisons. Okay, so now what we're going to see as we move into the remainder of the verses, we're going to see these points kind of amplified and additional things added. So here are the connectives. Here are the remaining verses we're going to talk about today. So let me just read through these again. And notice I put the connectives in blue.

And it's the even so. So he's kind of moved away from the much mores to the even sos. And actually, Macaulay, I didn't see this at first, and I was listening to Macaulay, and he says, we got the much more and the even sos. I said, what? I started looking, oh, look at that. There's some even sos in there. What are those all about? Well, what they do is, they allow you to chop the verse up. Put Adam on the left and Christ on the right. Hallelujah! Wonderful! I love connectives.

So then, as through the one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so, through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men. Then 19, for as through the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, notice the many in here again, even so, to the obedience of the one Christ, capital one, the many were made righteous. What we're going to learn, that word disobedience and obedience, it's going to help us to get a clearer view of what happened in chapter 3 in the garden. That word disobedience is a cool word, and we're going to look at that in detail. And then we come down to what Jim pointed out, really cool verses, actually 20 and 21 are one sentence, if you notice.

It says, the law came in so that the transgression would increase, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. And you know what's interesting is, that was God's will for the law to be an igniter, if you will. It ignited, it made the problem worse. You say, that sounds strange. Why would God do that? Well, He wanted them to get busy and look to Him.

Anyway, that's my... My thought. Okay, so that, the purpose of that, 21, as sin reigned in death, here's a connective, even so, grace would reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Okay, so I'm going to use the same approach here.

Okay, we start with Adam's actions on the left again in blue. So then, as through, one, Adam's transgressions, almost every verse he knows We talk about Adam's transgressions, Adam's transgressions, Adam's transgressions, and we come back when it's going to be Christ's life, Christ's death, or whatever it is. So through one transgression, they're resulting in condemnation to all men. That's on the Adam side.

And if you notice, if you had verse 16 up, and if I could overlay it somehow, I would do better graphics. 16 and 18 are very similar. Very similar in what they say. But this time he uses an even so. It means that basically it's sort of a matching or a complementary thing.

Christ did something that was complementary or overcame what Adam did. So here's what Christ did through one act. of Christ, of righteousness that resulted in justification of life. So his one act, his death on the cross, resulted in justification. Man being declared righteous based upon their faith. So we have the condemnation versus the justification. One awful transgression, one marvelous act of righteousness. These are just beautiful comparisons, just beautiful. Okay, so we go on. Now we're going to take a little bit deeper dive here. So let's look at the first part.

So then, or consequently, so this verse is kind of a summary of some of the previous verses I mentioned. It also, actually, I hadn't noticed this, but constable claims, and I didn't actually really spend a lot of time on this, but if you read verse 12, and then you skip over and skip down to verse 18, it seems like the verses in between are a parenthesis, and I didn't really spend a lot of time on that. That's a homework assignment. You guys can look at that and see what you think. And I know it's, you know, hopefully that's helpful in understanding. Okay.

As through, or dia, one transgression, against Adam's disobedience, there resulted, or resulting in, the condemnation of all men, mankind, and condemnation here is a word, a decision against, a condemnatory judgment, and so on, even so, so the definition that I like of even so is that it introduces the corresponding work of Christ, even so, Through one act of righteousness, again it's Jesus, one act of righteousness, they're resulting in justification of life to all men, and to all men here, you have to put your faith and trust in Christ to be justified. And so this is Weiss' translation, to all men, believers, that resulted in a righteousness, a righteous standing that had to do with life. And it brought to mind this verse, We said it earlier in Romans 5 24 4 24 25 He who was delivered over because of our transgression and was raised because of our justification his resurrection Guaranteed our justification Okay, so that's 18 now we go to 19.

So we'll go back to them the picture chart first On the on the blue side on Adam's side on The words are very similar. If you could overlay all these, you'd see. Boy, maybe you could stack them up, all these verses with the A and the B. You could spot even more similarities, but whatever.

For as through one man's, Adam's, disobedience, the many were made sinners. Even so, Through the obedience of the one Christ, the many were made righteous. I did this intentionally. I tried to line up one of the similarities. Actually disobedience occurs in a different part of the sentence. So you've got the disobedience and then the obedience of Christ. Then you've got the many in both cases. In one case they were made sinners. In one case they were made righteous.

But the cool thing about this verse, we're going to see in a minute here, about the definition of disobedience and obedience. Okay, so now this is a deep dive into the verse. For it's through the one man's disobedience. Again, this is Adam's disobedience in the garden. And so here's a word, and this is what I was telling Jim about this. This has got me all excited.

So I'm not sure I can pronounce the word. But anyway, it's the idea to hear amiss. Disobedience is the idea to hear amiss. And it signifies a refusal to hear. So, Weiss kind of talked about this. He quoted Trench, and Trench says it's a notion of active disobedience which flows on inattentive or careless hearing. Inattentive or careless hearing.

And then actually there's some verses that were quoted, that Weiss quoted. One of these is interesting. It's in Jeremiah, and this is a problem if you think about if you read through the Old Testament You're going to see what was one of the major problems that God was complaining about Israel.

What were they not doing? They were not Listening to his word, and that's what this verse says They have turned back to the iniquities of their ancestors who refused to hear my words and So this is this word to refuse to hear. And then if you look at Acts, it got me thinking, and in Acts he quotes that too, he says, and this is the account of Stephen, and it's interesting, I have it here in my, I didn't put it up on the chart, but you know, when Stephen, when they dragged Stephen out, he was speaking about the Lord Jesus, and he had this one thing he said to the crowd that just got them just infuriated. So Stephen said in 756 of Acts he says behold I see the heavens opened up and the son of man standing on the right hand of God So when he said that he's basically saying that this man Christ called himself the son of the son of man This man right here is in the heavens with God the Father when they said that they said You can't say that that's blasphemy.

So what did they do? And here's what they did. I They cried out with a loud voice, and they covered their ears. Whoa! Isn't that a picture? That's a picture. God's Word goes out, and Stephen was speaking God's Word, if you will. He was speaking God's Word, and what does man do? He covers his ear, because it's not what he wants to hear. And that's the issue.

So I went back and I thought, wow! Did I have the wrong view of the disobedience in the garden? I thought that was like a soft disobedience. And that's my terminology. Bonnie kind of turned her nose up at that a little bit and said, soft disobedience, Roger? Isn't disobedience disobedience? But I kind of have a tender heart for Adam and Eve. I don't know. They're our relatives, right? We'll see them. So anyway, but this kind of guy, wow, a refusal to hear.

God spoke to them and said don't don't do that something and they they justified it and You can say they were innocent. Yes, and there's you know, you can they have some things that may Extenuating circumstances, but they still they disobeyed God. So that was interesting So that's one of the the cool things about this verse it amplifies the description in Genesis chapter 3 and as a result of that the many mankind were made sinners so that one disobedience and made all the difference in the world.

And it did make all the difference in the world. We're made, we're constituted. And then, you know, this connects back up with the last statement in 12D. The last statement there is this, Inasmuch as all mankind sinned in Adam when he sinned. That's kind of the expanded translation of that last part. Inasmuch as all mankind sinned in Adam when he sinned.

As Mike pointed out in his message he gave a couple weeks ago, It's so important to understand that we that we send an atom We didn't it's not because we we send today. Yes, but we send an atom our federal head We we know so that's that's very important to realize Okay, and then even then we here's even so so now on the corresponding side from Christ through the obedience of the one Christ And obedience here, it's the flip side, if you will. In fact, it's the same core word, if you will, with a preposition on the front.

It's to listen under. And we talk about, this is one of our favorite words here at Holly Hill, is to listen under. We talk about obedience. You know, obedience comes across, and maybe it's just our culture, I don't know, whatever, or our upbringing. Obedience, you know, we've got to obey, obey, obey, obey. But to listen under, boy, that's a different mindset. I think that's just, and it's beautiful, to listen under, and that's what we're today to do. The idea is that a willing listening to authority, and Thayer has it, obedience, compliance, submission, some synonyms.

And then I like this, and we said this way back, I don't know how long ago it was, a year ago, maybe, Romans 1.5b. bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles for His name's sake. So here obedience is connected up with faith. So what's the obedience of faith? Is it, I'm going to have faith, I'm going to have faith. No. It's listening under. It's listening to God's Word, acting on God's Word, believing God's Word. Obedience of faith is a wonderful thing. And that's what Christ demonstrated. He had demonstrated the obedience of faith. The many believers, so the result of his wonderful obedience, going to the cross, the many believers were made righteous.

And then the last part of this verse in 2 Corinthians 5.21, so that he might become the righteousness of God in him. Because of Christ's actions. Okay. Alright, so now, verse 20. Okay, I'm going to switch away from the bubbles for this verse here. Okay, so now we have this, 20 and 21 is one sentence. It kind of expands some of the previous verses.

Okay, so the law, in this case, I struggled a little bit with this. The law, they capitalize law, but there's no definite article. But people kind of treat it in their commentaries as being the Mosaic Law. And the more I looked at it, the more I studied it, I said, well, I guess you can make a case for that, even though it doesn't have the definite article. enough knowledgeable to speak much beyond that about making that mosaic law. But it does fit with the context.

It came in, so the law came in, it came in alongside. So the picture here is that the, let me go to the next part. So the law is coming in alongside, so it enters alongside, it's entering alongside the sin nature. Because when Adam fell, The sin nature was was propagated if you will and so now the law when the law was introduced it came alongside the sin nature and Did it what did it do the sin nature? And that's the key thing it did something to the sin nature and that's it. That's the whole point here with a purpose that That the transgressions would increase so the law rather than Getting man into shape, so to speak. Well, look at these guys into shape. God gave the law to get Israel into shape.

Well, no, it made things worse. It's like gasoline on a fire. It made things worse. The transgression, Adam's disobedience is to increase, is to abound even more. And it's Aorist tense, so it's a point in time. So that's what makes me kind of think the mosaic law would be a good candidate here. But where sin increased, so sin increased. So the coming alongside the law reveals and highlights the sin nature. It shows it for what it is. When there's a law, it says you transgressed the law. And it highlights that you have your sin nature even more.

It says then 15 first Corinthians 15 56 B. It says the power of sin is the law So so what what did God so when the law came in and the transgressions increased What did God what was God's reaction was he caught unaware? No, he he under he knew that and his grace is sufficient for that but grace abounded more and this is one of these Topping superlatives on superlatives on superlatives. This is hyper. It's not just Abounding or super about is it's beyond that one on top of that abounding more exceedingly and We translate super abounding with more added to that I super bound and I add some more on top So you it just only God can do things like that super bound and more on top of that pretty amazing so you can't as been said you cannot out sin God and Of course, that's going to lead to a problem.

We'll get to Romans 6.1, and the first thing Paul does, what does he do? He has to answer that question. Well, I've heard some people out there saying, I can send all I want. No, time out, you got the wrong message. So his superabounding grace confused people, apparently.

Okay, so this is really cool. Constable had this really cool statement, kind of comparing this Adam and Christ here, their acts. And he says here, about this verse, that the significance of Adam's act and Christ's act, the law showed the significance of sin even more clearly. So when you had a law, then you knew when you sinned. Absolutely. There was no question about it. With no law, you say, well, there's no law. Is that a sin or not? I don't know. With the law there, it is a sin.

It made sin more clear, and also Christ's provisions were even more amplified. The significance of His grace was seen even more clearly. Okay, the 21. So we have a so that, so that, or with a purpose that. So this is Paul's kind of closing discussion here.

He restates the idea of sin reigning in death and death reigning in life for every believer. So the sin reigned in death. Reign here is the basileo. We've covered this last week about the reign as a king. So the picture here is that sin is reign. The sin nature is reign as a king.

And it's an event. So Hal has here that when the sin nature reigns, the result is spiritual death. And that got me thinking, you know, we talk about what is death? Since death is separation, we are separated from God spiritually. while the sin nature reigns.

And it reigns in every unbeliever. The sin nature reigns. So it takes an act of God, putting your faith and trust in Christ, to change that. The sin nature is reigning in every unbeliever. Okay. And then we have an even so. Here comes the comparison. Introduces the work of Christ. Grace would reign through righteousness. So now we had sin reigning, and now we have righteousness reigning. Grace is supplied in superabundance in order that it might reign as king through righteousness. Resulting in eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

To wrap up this section, I've got three Summary so to speak three kind of ways to look at you say, okay, we looked at this section. It's it's hard to understand But are there some key words are there some key ideas that you want to carry away? So here's my I got one from From Chafer which is I have right here Then I have one that I kind of got from Macaulay that I kind of did and I have one from howl So here's the first one Okay, so this is a quote from Chafer, which he quoted from somebody else. So, okay, let me read it and I'll give you a picture.

The picture by this guy named Besser, who was a theologian back in the 1800s. We have sin, death, grace, righteousness, life. You have those five words across here. And they stand thus, he says, grace rises the highest, it's the highest, On the left, we have the two, I would say the two conquered giants, sin and death. They're on my left. On the right of grace, you have the prize. You have the, he calls it, the double prize of victory, righteousness, and life. And at the right, he has, over the name of Adam, the glorious name of Jesus Christ blooms.

Maybe a little bit, you know, let me read it again. Maybe a bit much here. So it's kind of a picture of the five important words we've seen, and how grace is superabounding over all, and grace takes care of sin and death. That's what all man worries about. Sin and death. That's it. That's what all of life to some people are. But grace overcomes that marvelously. Anyway, so I'll just read it again.

So the picture drawn by Besser is... Sin, death, grace, and righteousness. Sin, death, grace, righteousness, life. These fives stand thus. Grace rises the highest in the middle. The two conquering giants, sin and death, at the left. The double prize of victory, righteousness and life, at the right. And over the buried name of Adam, the glory of the name of Jesus Christ blooms.

Interesting. Okay. Alright, so here's my So listen to Macaulay a little bit. He talks about there are five kings reigning. Four kings reigning in these verses. Okay? So here's my picture of this. The first king that's reigning is the sin nature is reigning. Adam's nature is reigning, right? We saw that in early verses. The sin nature is reigning. Well, that just doesn't stand by itself.

Based upon that sin nature reigning, death now reigns. You cannot escape death. death or separation from God. Death reigns, both spiritual and physical death reigns. You cannot escape death. But on the good side, God's grace reigns. And that has a wonderful output. The believer reigns through Jesus Christ.

And then the final one here. Here's a chart from Hal. Actually, Sue typed this up back in 1994. I cut and pasted your typing from the Word document to PowerPoint. It was torturous. But it was good. It was worth it. So once again, it's all about comparison.

This whole section is about comparing Adam and Christ. So Hal's intent here was, he wanted to show you that on the right hand side we've been extolling all the wonderful things of Christ, and we own all those, we possess all those, that's who we are, and that's the foundation of the identification truths. with Christ are rooted in all these. So he took this comparison between Adam and Christ and said, look at what's happening in Christ. That's the beginning of the discussion of the deification truths. Okay, the first. And you're going to recognize all these. We've just talked about all these already. His one offense and disobedience, that's Adam's, and Christ's one righteous act and obedience. Here are the results. Spiritual death reigns through Adam upon all men.

On Christ's side, the believer reigns through Christ, the one receiving grace and righteousness. Condemnation against past sentences upon the penalty of death. No condemnation on the believer's side, the free gift. Righteousness under justification. Christ's life in us. So you begin to see on this other side here, we're reigning with Christ. There's no condemnation. We have all these wonderful assets.

On Adam's side, many were made sinner. On Christ's side, many made righteous. The law reveals and highlights, once again the law, spotlights sin. And this one I didn't quite get. God's grace equals a believer's walk. I was a little confused about that.

But then we have the sin nature superabounds, but God is, that doesn't stop God, God's grace exceedingly superabounds in the forgiveness. We can't out sin God's grace. And then lastly, where the sin nature reigns, the result is spiritual death. Where grace reigns through righteousness, the result is eternal life, Christ's life living in us. All right, so let's close. We thank you, Father. We thank you so much, Lord, for your marvelous grace. We thank you for our time we spent in your word. Thank you for your marvelous grace. In Christ's name, amen.