Death in Adam, Life in Christ

Uh Romans 5.

So here's what we're talking about this morning is that there's a couple big doctrinal uh uh things or or or or principles that we have to kind of examine and look at in this text.

This text is gonna make us and force us to look at some things that really would be pretty uncomfortable for us, right?

Especially because we live in a culture uh that we celebrate and pursue individualism, right?

We we love this sense of autonomy, we love this sense of individualism, that you're accountable for your own actions, that anything that would happen to you, uh whether good or bad, is based upon the own decisions that you make and the actions that you take.

We we like this spirit of individualism that we have in our culture.

But but the gospel and the Bible is an extreme contradiction to that concept.

Uh and it's going to press us this morning to understand how do we know ourselves under the context of what the Bible calls headship?

Or how are we counted among many, not as an individual?

See, we we even adopt some of this language within the church.

We'll say, Well, Jesus loves you.

Yes, that's true.

Jesus does love you, but Jesus does not love you apart from the reality that Jesus loves his church.

This collective group of people that are known and identified by his saving grace.

So Jesus does not love you apart from loving a bigger reality of what you fit into, which is the church.

Uh and so we have to understand this to be able to see how we fall short, how we have sinned and cause God's judgment to fall upon us, but then how we are saved also through the grace gift of the cross, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.

And so I've got a ton of stuff to work through.

I'm really excited to be diving back into Romans.

So we're just gonna get our hands dirty and get to work, okay?

So verses 12 through 14, if we started to kind of open up this passage, what we're gonna see is a summary is that the reigning rule of death through Adam, the reigning rule of death through Adam.

Also, if you want to side note, if you want to follow along on our app, we have fill-in-the-blank notes that you can take.

You can also add some of your own commentary uh to those and then archive them so that you can be able to study in your own personal time and devotion later in the week.

So download the app, follow along there, all those highlighted words actually do mean something.

So here's what we see.

Right in the beginning of this passage, it says, Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man.

So here's what we have to realize: sin pre-existed before the creation of the world.

So sin came in to the world through one man, but it existed before the creation of the world.

And we see this in the fall of Satan, right?

So Satan was this angel, uh, and he uh was one of the most beautiful angels of all uh heaven, and and so he fell.

God cursed him and threw him out of heaven because he wanted to try and usurp uh the authority of God, and he wanted to steal the glory that was due to God, and so he cast him out of heaven, and a third of the angels with him.

And so sin had existed before the creation of the world, but it was through this one man.

Paul's gonna help us understand that through Adam, sin entered our existence, right?

Our time and space, the experience of humanity, it came through this one man.

It was brought into the world through the transgression of Adam.

You see, we're gonna talk about the difference between sin and transgression in just a moment, but what we have to see is that with this sin was brought death.

So sin entered the world through this one man, and with it came death.

Let's look at Genesis 2, 15 through 17, because this is the transgression that Adam broke.

See, there was no law as we know it.

Ten commandments, the commands of God of what you shall and shall not do, uh, this over 600 laws that we see throughout the Old Testament.

Uh that this wasn't here yet, but there was a spoken law.

There was a spoken law from the mouth of God the Father, who spoke to his cre uh creatures, his image bearers, and he gave them a law of which Adam transgressed against.

Genesis 2, 15 through 17 says, The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.

And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat.

So that's the command, right?

For in the day that you eat it, you shall surely die.

So we have a command.

We have a consequence.

Command and consequence.

Uh what God is speaking to Adam here is that this death that you're going to experience is going to be a spiritual death.

That's greater than a physical death.

See, most people look at that and they say, well, Adam and Eve didn't die once they actually ate the fruit.

No, they did.

They hadn't experienced a physical death, this uh very lower level of consequence.

They experienced a spiritual death.

Physical death is simply a sign of spiritual death's reality.

Through this action, through this transgression, this breaking of a law, death spread to all men because all sinned.

Uh, this is the scope of Adam's transgression, right?

So when we want to understand how bad was this that Adam broke God's law, that he transgressed and brought sin and death into the world, the scope of the consequence is that it affects all of humanity.

It created for us an inheritance of sin and a disposition to sin.

So it created for us two things.

One, an inheritance of sin, sin that was now on our nature.

Uh right, we we we have we inherited this sin from Adam, this death from Adam, but it also created in us a disposition towards sin to actually live and act that out.

So there's a difference which we're gonna try and navigate here in just a little bit, between the fact that we are sinners and the fact that we sin.

Now, they are tightly connected, but they are not one in the same thing.

So it created for us an inheritance of sin and a disposition towards sin.

The psalmist David, King David, in Psalm 51, he kind of summarizes this reality: that we are born in sin as an inheritance from our father Adam.

It says, Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.

That's Psalm 51, 5.

So from hit from the womb, David understands that he's brought forth in sin and iniquity, that he is a sinner by birth and nature.

This is one of our this introduces one of our big first doctrinal principles, and that's the doctrine of total depravity.

Total depravity.

This is the foundation of this doctrine.

We're gonna try and work through it to understand it more clearly.

You see, we are by nature children of iniquity, cut off in death from God, and both unable and unwilling to bring ourselves back.

I I love the hymn that we just sang, because that there was stanzas within that hymn that told us that we didn't want God, we didn't feel affection for him, we we had no cov we had no acclaim to his covenant promises, but then grace, right?

That that's the faithfulness of God, that grace comes in where we are by nature children of iniquity, cut off in death from him, and unable and unwilling to bring ourselves back.

This is total depravity.

Depravity means this: the innate corruption of human nature due to original sin.

So when we use the word depravity, what we're saying is that there's an innate corruption of our very nature due to Adam's sin, his transgression.

But when we say the word total, we mean this in a few different ways.

And I think John Piper, he's a uh author and speaker, former pastor, uh, he wrote a book called An Introduction Tulip, an introduction.

And in this he gives five ways that totalness of depravity fits into the human experience.

They're gonna be on the screen here.

The first way that he says this is that depravity affects every human.

So it is total in that there is not one human who who does not suffer under the reality that they are depraved from birth, that their nature is corrupt, right?

So every human ever born experiences this truth.

So it's total in the scope of humanity.

Number two, our rebellion or hardness against God is total.

Our rebellion or hardness against God is total.

This means that we don't love God, we don't desire God, uh, we we we do nothing righteous, nothing good.

Apart from the saving work of Jesus, apart from the renewing life of the Holy Spirit, there is none who are good, no, not one.

This is what Romans uh 3 started to walk us through, right?

That none are righteous, none are good, none seek after God.

Uh we are all sinners who who rebel against Him.

This is the state and condition of our nature.

Without the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, we will not desire God.

Number three, he says, in his total rebellion, everything man does is sin.

So it's also total in the fact that everything got that we do as human beings is sin apart from the saving work of Jesus and the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

So, so so before we're saved, before the Holy Spirit works in us, everything that we do is sin.

Even good things, perceivingly good things are sin in the eyes of God, because there's this reality, right, where we can look at this horizontal goodness, right?

Let's say you um uh help someone with uh a need that they have.

Maybe you uh supply them with food or you give them shelter or some of these basic needs of the human condition.

However, if we're not doing this for the glory of God and the ultimate good of that person who needs the gospel truth more than they need their stomachs filled, it's sin.

You see, there's not just a horizontal good between man and man, there's also this vertical good that has to happen in our behavior and action.

It is for the glory of God and the good of others.

This is the great two commandments.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.

If you do these two things, then you fulfill the whole law.

However, what we just understood is that in our total depravity, we cannot fulfill the first part of that command.

To love God with all of our heart, with all of our soul, with all of our mind, and with all of our strength.

You see, that's a mandatory presupposition to the way we conduct ourselves in this life.

Number four, he goes on to say that man's inability to submit to God and do good is total.

Man's inability to submit to God and do good is total.

So this is this two-part reality of our sin nature.

Not only do we not desire, but we are also unable.

Not only are do we not desire, but we are also unable.

Without the work of the Spirit making us alive and pursuing righteousness in our life, we are unable to do anything good at all.

And lastly, point five, he goes on to say, our rebellion is totally deserving of eternal punishment.

Our rebellion is totally deserving of eternal punishment.

The fact that we are sinners, corrupt in our very nature, unable and unwilling to do any good at all, demands one thing.

God's just wrath poured out on us for all eternity.

We believe in a literal hell.

We believe in literal consequence for our sin.

We believe that the gospel is necessary in the death, birth, uh, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus to bring us to life so that grace may be given to us.

You see, we believe these things because the Bible speaks clearly of these things.

We are image bearers of a holy God, of which our sin nature has fully and totally rebelled against.

And the consequence of that sin is his wrath-filled judgment.

So when we say, what is total depravity?

This is what we mean.

We mean that without God, we are totally and utterly hopeless.

You see, God declared to Adam that if he broke his law, he would surely die.

The transgression brought sin, and the nature of sin brought many transgressions.

So let's look at what this means between transgression versus sin.

See, transgression is a breaking of a law, a clear law.

So when God said, You shall not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and then Adam ate, he broke a law.

He transgressed.

But that's different than sin.

Sin is this posture or nature that is counter to the holiness of God, that still demands his wrath-filled judgment, even though specific law has not been broken or written out for us to understand.

You see, he says this sin is not counted, meaning that without the law there is no account of transgression.

So let's look at uh verse 13.

For sin indeed was in the world before the law was given.

But sin is not counted where there is no law.

What is he trying to say there?

Sin existed.

Whether we had it spelled out, what sin actually was or not.

Whether we had the Ten Commandments or we didn't, sin still existed and it was demanding of God's wrath-filled judgment.

When we got the law, right, when we got the Ten Commandments or the whole council of God's law, then we were made aware of the specifics of what we were doing wrong in our sin.

Therefore, when we failed to live up to those things and when we broke them in conscious rebellion toward God, we transgressed.

Does that make sense?

The difference between transgression and sin?

You see, we are sinners, and because we have the law of God revealed to us, we transgress against it.

You see, we see the total effects of our sin.

What is it?

It's death.

Death is the effect of sin.

And judgment upon sin is evidence before the law was ever even given.

So let's go back into 13.

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 those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam.

So when death is the outcome of our sin, we see this being true in the Old Testament, in Genesis.

So there's all these accounts where there was no law, yet sin was judged by wrath and destruction.

Okay?

So let's look at this.

We have uh Cain and Abel, right?

There was judgment, even though there was no law yet that you shall not murder your brother, right?

That wasn't inscribed on stone anywhere or parchment.

Uh uh still God judged and cast out because of sin.

Let's look at Sodom and Gomorrah.

Again, we didn't have these things written on stone and tablet.

We didn't have the revelation of what God's law was yet that was coming later, but still God judged Sodom and Gomorrah by uh raining down fire on them, right?

And destroying their city because sin still existed.

One of the greatest examples that we can see of this is the flood of Noah.

The flood of Noah is a is a reality for us that sin demands God's wrath-filled judgment, leading to death.

Again, there was no law transcribed, there was no transgression because the law was not understood and known by man, but sin reigned and death with it.

Also, we have the Egyptians in the Exodus.

God hardened the heart of Pharaoh.

It wasn't until later in the Exodus narrative that we're going to see that the Ten Commandments are actually given to us by God through Moses.

However, before Mount Sinai was the angel of death.

And the angel of death judged sin.

Sin has reigned in us apart from the law, spelling out what sin actually is.

Sin reigned in us apart from the law, actually spelling out what sin is.

We have to change the way that we think about sin.

This demands that we do this, right?

Because here's what we do.

We too often only think of sin through the lens of the individual transgression instead of the reality of our sin nature.

This leads to comparisonism at best or a complete dismissal of our inherited depravity at worst.

Here's what I mean by this.

We have to stop thinking about, well, I don't do X, right?

You look at the law of God, right?

There's all kinds of things in there, sexual immorality, uh using his name in vain, uh, adultery.

Uh uh go go down the list, right?

You'll go down the list, and then what you'll say is this Well, I don't do that.

I don't do that, I don't do that.

What you're missing is it doesn't matter whether you have broken one law or all the laws.

We are sinners by nature.

We are an offense, a rebellion toward the holiness of God in the completeness of our humanity.

And then God just helps us spell out the unique ways that we do it.

And so it doesn't matter whether you sin like the person next to you.

Comparisonism is an enemy to the church.

The reality is your very nature demands God's wrath-filled judgment, not whether you did what Sister Susie did or not.

Now, comparisonism is the best outcome of this, but there's also a complete dismissal of our inherited depravity at worst.

We think, well, we're not as bad as so-and-so, so therefore God's judgment must not be upon me, right?

Everyone loves to just uh uh compare yourself to like Hitler.

I don't know why that's the dude.

There was like probably worst dudes in history, but nonetheless, he's just the guy, right?

So so you say, Oh, well, I'm not as bad as this guy, so therefore God's wrath-filled judgment wouldn't be upon me, it'd be upon them.

Look how wicked they are.

So you dismiss the reality that you are so sinful and corrupt in your nature that God's wrath has to be poured out on you for all eternity to uphold the justice of his character.

It doesn't matter what you do, the reality is to the core of your being, you hate God.

Apart from the Holy Spirit.

Stop thinking through the lens of specific sin and start understanding ourselves and our nature of sinful people.

The transgression of Adam has ushered in the reigning rule of death over us all.

Under Adam, we inherit the death vowed by God to him.

Adam failed, and following suit, each of us have become the Adam of our own soul.

Adam brought sin and death, and we need a better Adam to bring blessing and life.

You see, this is this is the reality for us.

We all are Adam, whether we like it or not.

Being in the exact same circumstance in the garden, we would have ate the fruit.

And we prove this daily.

We prove this daily because each and every one of us we wake up and at some point in part of our day, we take a bite.

We take a bite when we don't believe his promises, we take a bite when we when we transgress against.

His law.

We take a bite when the the when when our mind and hearts don't line up with his holiness, we bite.

We've all become the Adam of our own soul.

So not only are we inherited like our father Adam, sin and death, but we participate like our father Adam in sin and death.

Verses 15 through 17 of the same passage would show us that the reigning pos we have the reigning position of life through Jesus.

The reigning position of life through Jesus.

So this is what Paul's gonna do.

He's gonna try and actually measure up against one another or show us this dichotomy of the work of Adam and the inheritance he brings to his children, and the work of Christ and the inheritance that he brings to his.

This dichotomy is what we're working through.

So where there was the ruling reign of death through Adam, now we see the reigning position of life through Jesus.

Jesus is the better Adam.

Unlike Adam's trespass bringing death, Jesus' obedience brings us life.

Also, unlike Adam whose trespass demanded death upon his offspring, the accomplishment of Christ is a free gift of all who he will claim mine over.

The trespass of Adam breaking the law of God brought about condemnation for all humanity.

A punishment of God's wrath against our sin.

But the free gift of Jesus, fulfilling the law of God, brings about justification for those who believe.

It's an acquittal of guilt, making us reconciled to God.

This is grace.

The free gift, unmerited favor of Jesus.

It alone has the power to break the reigning rule of death.

And so this is what Paul keeps doing.

He says, This is Adam, right?

He's the one who transgressed.

And from his offspring, as he was the head over image bearers and the creatures of God who bore his image, that they inherited with them sin nature and the consequence of death that comes with it.

But there's a better Adam because Paul said he was like a type of the one who was to come.

The one who was to come was the one who God himself proclaimed in the garden in Genesis 3.15, when he looked at the serpent on the ground and cursed him and said that you might come.

There's a seed who's coming from this woman, of whom heel you will bruise, but of whom's head he will crush.

Jesus is the better Adam.

He brings us justification where Adam brought us condemnation.

He brings us blessing, where Adam brought us cursing.

He is the fulfillment of God's promises for us.

And this is the beauty of it.

Where our sin demanded death, the free gift of grace owed to Christ through his obedience demands eternal life.

Where death reigned over us, now because of Jesus we reign in life.

This is an important part about this passage that we have to get.

It says that death reigned over us in the beginning part.

Through Adam, death reigned over us.

It was a wicked master who only took from us everything that was supposed to be for us life, blessing, fellowship with God.

It stole from us.

Death was a wicked master that ruled over us.

But then Paul says, not that life rules over us, but that we ourselves reign in a position of life through Christ Jesus.

We aren't simply connected to Jesus who reigns, but we are put in a reigning position ourselves.

The slaves of death have become kings.

Ultimately, it's not us who are reconciled in Christ.

Ultimately, it's us who are reconciled in Christ that will reign, not death over us.

In our reigning, we have dominion, a power to put on display that death has been defeated and life has been imputed into our very being.

Romans chapter 8, 37 says this.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

No, in all things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

What is he talking about?

That we are position of reigning.

When Paul's talking about this in Romans 8, he's saying there's nothing, no physical death that I can experience that will ever separate me from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

Why?

Because death has no reign over me anymore.

I have been seated with Christ in the heavenly places, and now I'm in a position of reigning in life myself.

So I have dominion over death.

I have power over sin.

I can actually express the righteousness of Christ which has been imputed to me through his death, burial, and resurrection.

By grace we have been saved, brought from death into life, and now we must live as such.

Though death seems to conquer, we shall truly reign in everlasting life through Jesus.

Verses 18 through 21 show us that one act brings us from death to life.

One act brings us from death to life.

One act.

One act is the determining factor of curse or blessing.

Judgment or fellowship.

Death or life.

Through the act of transgression, the disobedience of Adam, we were made to be sinners.

We were not simply made to sin, we were made sinners.

It's a vital distinction between action and nature.

God's judgment is not on us because we sin.

God's judgment is on us because we are sinners.

You see, that's just an expression of our nature when we sin.

We're not made sinners because we sin.

We sin because through Adam we've been made sinners.

But the obedience of Jesus changes our very nature.

It says here that we are made righteous.

We are made righteous.

Where Adam made us sinners, Christ Jesus resurrected makes us righteous.

It changes the very nature of who we are.

The very DNA of our being is now transformed and changed.

The former sinner is transformed into the current righteous.

Our nature is changed through the transformative power of grace.

Then he closes out this section of the passage.

He says in verse 20, now the law came to increase the trespass.

But where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.

The law came to increase the trespass.

What does it mean?

That it was numbered at a greater capacity.

Not to increase sin, but to make the lengthy list of our rebellion more clarifying.

The law defined for us, spelled out for us, and clarified how from our sin nature sin is manifested.

But where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.

Grace is the defeater of sin.

One act has brought us from death to life.

It's not an act of our own doing, it's the righteous obedience of the reigning victor, Jesus.

His victorious act has accomplished for us life, and that life is given and applied to us through grace.

So our main idea this morning is this we are under the headship of either death or life.

We are under the headship of either death or life.

What we see at the core of this passage is actually not the doctrine of total depravity, but the doctrine of federal headship.

So this is a core doctrine to our understanding of the gospel itself.

Total depravity is an outworking of the understanding of federal headship.

If federal headship was not a truth of the scripture, then total depravity would not be either.

Here's what I mean by that.

We are totally depraved because we reside apart from Christ under the headship of Adam as our federal representative.

Let me say that again.

So total depravity is true.

Why is total depravity true?

Total depravity is true because federal headship is true.

What is federal headship telling us?

That we are totally depraved because we reside apart from Christ under the headship of Adam as our federal representative.

Federalism has to do with representation, with one person acting on behalf of another.

This is why Paul shows how the one act of each single person has a grand impact on humanity.

You see how Paul's looking through these two atoms, right?

We have the original Adam, whose one act of transgression brought what?

It introduced sin into the world, it brought death along with it, and it spread to all mankind.

It is through one act and one representative head that we are in the state that we find ourselves in now.

Cursed, cut off from God, and deserving of his wrath-filled judgment.

But it's through one act of another man, a true and better Adam, who brought with him blessing, who brought with him reconciliation, who brought with him eternal life.

This is the headship of Christ Jesus our Lord.

God has appointed two representatives in history, Adam and Christ.

Residing under the headship of Adam means that we also reside under the reigning rule of death.

But if we reside under the headship of Jesus, the head of the church, we reign with him in life.

All of mankind, all of mankind has been represented by Adam.

This is what Paul's laboring to help us understand.

All of mankind has been represented as their federal head by Adam.

They are reigned over by death.

They are born sinners, and remaining under such representation will only bring death through God's wrath-filled judgment.

But through grace, we're able to be represented through Christ.

We're able to be transferred out from under the headship of Adam to the headship of Jesus our Lord.

Through grace.

In him we reign in life.

We're reborn righteous.

Remaining under Jesus' representation will bring eternal life through God's blessed fellowship.

As created image bearers, we don't have the liberty of individualism.

We are known through our representative head.

That's good news if we're in Christ.

That's good news if we're in Christ.

Look, God will judge you, but God will judge you through the representation of the head you reside under.

Because under Adam, you're a sinner.

Under Adam, you're cut off from God.

Under Adam, you're dead.

Under Adam, you deserve God's wrath-filled judgment.

But under Christ, because of grace, we're gifted righteousness, right standing with God.

We're gifted justification, acquittal of our guilt.

We're granted blessing rather than cursing.

We're granted eternal life reigning with him forever.

This is the good news of the gospel.

You don't want God judging you for you.

You want God judging Christ for you.

Many of us, though, we don't believe this, right?

We live as though we are autonomous.

If we understand how we fail to live this out, how we fail to understand this truth and apply it to our lives, we live as though we are autonomous.

This is something that some of us are gonna walk out of here still white knuckling, that you have some unique relationship with God that no one else on this planet has, and you and him have things figured out, right?

You have this side deal that you've worked out with the maker of all things, that he's gonna let you in because of what whatever you know stake is to your claim.

Uh that that's that's garbage, that that's nowhere in the scriptures, that's a figment of your own imagination, so that you can sedate your conscience to continue living in the sinful lifestyle that you choose to.

God will either judge you through the head of Adam or He'll judge you through the head of Christ.

There is no autonomy in his kingdom.

But we like to believe that we're autonomous beings.

That we will each be either rewarded or judged based upon our own decisions and actions.

While there is some truth to that ideology, it is removed from the greater truth of federalism.

It becomes heresy.

We're not simply judged by our own decisions and actions, but we are judged through our representative heads.

If in Adam, we shall die, but if in Christ, we shall live.

An outright autonomous ideology dismisses and displaces the gospel completely.

It demands that God's judgment is predicated on our own individual works.

Romans has only proven to us time and time again that if we so desire for that to be the case, to be judged based upon our own individual works, then the outcome will always be death and wrath-filled judgment.

We're not judged through autonomy.

We are judged through our representative.

This is the power of the gospel.

The gospel is about identity.

Jesus was judged as our representative, but through grace we are given his perfect righteousness.

The gospel is about identity, identity among others, not identity through individualism.

When you are reconciled to Jesus, you are also reconciled to his people.

Christ is our head.

It talks about this in 1 Corinthians that he is the head of the church, that we are his body made up of many members.

We aren't just reconciled to Jesus through some personal wonky relationship that we get all weird about.

We're reconciled to his people also, where we have to submit to them, where we have to honor them, we have to build them up, we have to encourage them in their faith.

We have to live out the one-another commands of the gospel.

Our identity in the gospel is not about autonomy, it's about collectivism.

The gospel is our identity, and it's an identity found among others, not through individualism.

We cannot understand nor live out the gospel, the power of the gospel, without submitting ourselves to the reality that through Christ as our head, we are brought into a bigger identity body of reconciled and redeemed people.

Some of us, though, we live as though death still reigns over us.

We live as though death still reigns over us.

Even though the gospel truth is that we have been made righteous in Jesus, we still live as though we are just simply sinners.

Yes, Adam's act of transgression made us sinners, but how much more has Jesus' act of obedience made us righteous?

Why do we live as though we remain under the crushing weight of death?

Too often we run back to the prison cells of our sin, even though Christ has blown the doors off and carried us into freedom.

Let's look at the evidence put forth by the gospel itself.

2 Corinthians 5, 17.

Therefore, if any was is if therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

The old has passed away.

Behold, the new has come.

Let's look at Ephesians 2, 5 through 6.

Even when we were dead in our trespasses, Christ made us alive together with Christ.

By grace you have been saved, and raised us up with him, and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

First Peter 1 23.

For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.

First Peter 2.9.

But you are a cho chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light.

Romans 5 19.

For as by the one man's disobedience they were made sinners, by the one man's obedience, the many will be made righteous.

These are verses.

These verses of the scriptures are but stanzas in heaven's anthem.

We are not sinners anymore.

If we were sinners, we would be cut off from God.

We would be under his wrath-filled judgment, and we would be dead in our iniquity.

That's not who we are anymore.

We are reconciled to God as sons and daughters, beneficiaries of his relentless blessing, alive in righteousness through Christ, reigning and ruling with him, seated in the heavenly places.

To live as though death still reigns over you is to make a mockery of the finished work of Jesus.

You want your identity to be in the things Christ has blood purchased you out of?

Is that what you want?

To remain under the reigning rule of death when Christ's blood has purchased you out of it?

Our identity needs to be in the truth of the gospel.

We have been made alive.

We have been made righteous.

We have been made sons.

We have been made holy.

We have been made reigning.

Our hope of the gospel this morning is this: that Jesus' perfect obedience makes many righteous men.

Jesus' perfect obedience makes many righteous men.

Yes, the scope of Adam's work is total.

It affects every human being.

We are born sinners in our very nature, corrupt in our very being.

But Christ, Christ was obedient where we were not.

Where we were rebellious, he was faithful.

Where we refused and rejected God, he submitted to him.

Jesus was sought to fulfill every dot, every T crossing of the law so that we might be reconciled to God.

And how does he make us righteous?

By imputing his very righteousness into our beings.

No, in our own work and effort, we don't love God.

No, in our own nature are we able to do any good.

No, in our own beings are we able to fulfill any sense of righteousness.

No, but Christ, through grace and through his perfect obedience, has made us righteous men.

This is the true and better Adam that you and I need.

Whether we like it or not, we are known by whom's head we reside under.

You can go ahead believing that that you and God have this personal thing worked out, like we just talked about.

You can go on believing that you're better than the other people, right, in your workplace or in your neighborhood or wherever, in your family tree.

You can go on believing that you're not like that one, but all you are is just like Jesus taught in the parable where where the Pharisee comes in to worship and he sees a sinner next to him and he looks up and says, Thank God I'm not like that one.

We can go on going that way, but blessing does not reside on that posture.

Life is not in that heart stance.

It's not.

A true and accurate understanding of who we are and how we relate to God, our Maker.

You will be known through the representation of whose head you reside under.

Jesus makes us righteous because by grace we're brought out from under the headship of Adam.

We're brought under the headship of Jesus.

This is the perfect obedience of Christ.

That he submitted himself even unto death to be obedient to the Father.

You see, when we look back at the transgression of Adam, many of us might think, well, Eve sinned first.

Right?

And that's true.

On a narrative, historical reality, Eve sinned, right?

The Bible's well aware of that.

It speaks about that.

She was the one who listened to the serpent and believed the questions of deceit that he presented to her.

Did God truly say that if you eat of this fruit, you will die?

Is that really what he said?

And Eve saw that the fruit was desiring and good for taste, so she took and bid it.

But then it says that she turned to her husband who was with her, and he ate also.

And then God comes in the garden and he does what?

He calls Adam to account.

Why?

Because headship matters.

Because headship matters.

Adam was the head of Eve.

Adam sinned because he didn't kill the snake.

He failed to be a pastor.

He failed to protect her.

He failed to provide for her.

And he sat there and watched sin enter the world and death with it.

And he let her eat and then he imbibed also.

But where Adam failed to kill the snake, Christ crushes his head.

This is how Jesus is the true and better Adam.

He's the head crusher.

He's the victorious king.

And he is the one who makes us righteous.

So what do we do?

How do we live this out?

Number one, we need to reign in life.

Reign in life.

This is directly from the passage that Jesus has made us reign in life.

We are no longer under the ruling reign of death, but we are put in a position of reigning ourselves in life.

That means that sin doesn't have a hold of you any longer.

Death has no dominion over you any longer.

This is why we see apostle after apostle and follower after Jesus can go to their death rejoicing and celebrating because they know that this isn't the end.

Because death has not the final word.

We need to reign in life in that.

We need to reign in righteousness.

Life should be pouring out of us.

It should be something that that that flows out of the very existence of our beings because we now are made righteous.

We have been born again.

And so therefore we can walk in holiness.

We can walk in righteousness.

We don't have to be under the shackles and weight of our sin any longer.

We can reign in life.

Many of us are like what the Bible says: a dog who returns to its vomit.

We go back and eat up and lick up that which we spewed out of our mouth.

How shameful of us.

That we believe so much that we can't help but to sin.

Why not believe that the gospel actually has some power in your life and that you can actually not sin now here in this life?

We need to reign in life, church.

We need to reign in the victory of which Christ has given to us.

We need to walk in that power.

We need to walk in that righteousness so that we might actually live missional lives and the culture around us because they're watching us.

They're watching us and they're seeing us be hypocrites.

Because we continually believe that we can't help but to sin.

That's all we are, is wretched sinners.

We can't help it.

That's all that we can ever actually believe that we could do.

But every promise of the gospel, everything that it declares it has accomplished for us is completely contradictive to that statement.

For us as individual believers, amongst the body of Christ, we need to reign in life.

Number two, we need to reside in community.

We need to reside in community.

Your identity is not in individualism.

Your identity is in Jesus, of whom you are part of his body.

Residing in Jesus fundamentally demands residing in gospel community.

That's how we will know and have assurance of our salvation.

That's how we'll be able to use the gifts that the Spirit has given to us.

That's how we'll be able to put sin to death, not fighting in isolation in an open battlefield, but going to war with brothers and sisters at our side and back.

This is how we will live out the truths of the gospel, is when we reside in community.

This Christian life has nothing to do with autonomy.

Autonomy and individualism is in complete contradiction to the gospel that we say we believe in.

Because we are not just reconciled with Christ, but we're reconciled with his people and we are reconciled with his mission.

When we understand ourselves collectively rather than through autonomy, we will then be able to be healthier Christians.

Because we need people who will call out when we do fail to sin, because you and I are going to fall short.

You and I are gonna continually need the grace of Jesus.

We need sanctification and transformation to be active in our life, but we need brothers and sisters who will stand up and put their finger in our chest and tell us when we're not believing the truths and promises of the gospel.

We need brothers and sisters who will help go to war, pick us up when we're weary and feel like we can't go on any longer and drag our bodies across the finish line.

We need people who will resource us and help us so that we can continue trudging along through this journey of faith.

You cannot reign in life if you do not reside in community.

At some point in time, you'll find yourself alone and exposed on an open battlefield.

And the devil will have his way with you.

But when we're in community, when we reside in gospel community in submission to the truth that Christ has not just saved us, but saved us into a people, there's strength in numbers.

We'll be able to live holier lives.

We'll be able to rejoice in the process of sanctification.

We'll be able to celebrate even in the midst of suffering because your burdens have become mine, your joys have become mine, and we share all things together as his people.

Lastly, we have to reflect his grace.

Reflect his grace.

It is by grace that we have been saved.

It is not a working of our own, but it is a working of Christ Jesus our Lord.

And when we reflect that to the world around us, when they see a community of grace, it becomes desirable, it becomes attractive to them.

We have to reflect the very grace that we've been given.

We're not going to be able to enter the kingdom of heaven through our own strivings of work and workings.

We can only enter in through grace, through the strivings and workings of another Jesus.

So as we engage with this world, as we live on mission for the glory of his name and the good of our neighbor, let us be a people who reflect the very grace that we have been recipients of because of Christ Jesus our Lord.

Amen.

Amen.

Let's pray.