Romans 5:1-21 | Aaron & James Podcast

Hello, my name is James Rathman.

And I'm Aaron Neff.

And this is the Aaron and James Podcast.

We are covering Romans chapter 5 in this podcast.

Romans 5 · chapter mention

That's correct.

Yes.

Which is about assurance and hope.

Assurance of salvation and hope.

These are great themes.

This is one of my favorite chapters.

It's been great so far.

I love the argument of this chapter of Jesus as the new Adam.

It's very clarifying and it's beautifully symmetrical.

And there's nothing like a symmetrical argument.

Puts everything in place.

That's right.

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All right, let's jump into Romans 5.

Great.

But before we do, I want to talk about hope.

Uh because the beginning of Romans 5 is a is a uh a defense uh or an explanation of Christian hope, why we should have it, where it comes from.

And I've said often before that hope gets uh like you can tell that we're a Christian culture because hope is generally received as just a positive term.

And people expect that their hope uh that that uh we should have hope and that hope is a good thing.

But this is not the case throughout world history, not for the most intelligent people.

Who would be those most intelligent people?

Like the Senecas and the Platoes.

And there are at least dozens of people in history who we aren't still reading, and these are of the few who we are still reading.

Okay.

Which means that they were smarter.

Obviously.

Yeah, for sure.

They were the great geniuses of the world.

And um this is their take on hope.

For example, Thucydides, in his History of the Peloponnesian War, says that those who have hope typically have a poor understanding of their situation, fail to come up with good plans, and things go badly for them in war.

So the way to approach your planning, if you were to be shrewdly planning, is to neglect hope.

Yeah, assume the worst.

Assume the worst.

Do not it hope should not be a part of your planning toolkit.

Yeah.

Seneca, or or I'll do Plato first.

We'll do this in order of events.

Plato writes that the divine beings have given us those mindless advisors, confidence, fear, and a gullible hope.

These are these are like a trick that the gods have played on us.

And hope is the the one that he qualifies by calling it gullible.

Yeah.

Gullible hope.

Like if somebody is trying to cultivate hope in you, they're probably manipulating you in some way.

Yeah.

It's interesting that it seems like that's kind of how Christians are viewed as from the outside in.

Like the world views us as gullible.

Yeah, that's right.

That's right.

And I think hope is uh fundamental to that.

Um and then lastly, Seneca says this he says, fear keeps pace with hope.

So they they go together.

Fear and hope are always together, Seneca says.

Both belong to a mind in suspense, to a mind in a state of anxiety through looking into the future.

Both are mainly due to projecting our thoughts far ahead of us instead of adapting ourselves to the present.

And you can hear, like, especially with the resurgence of Stoicism, and people are reading Seneca again, which is really cool.

Uh Calvin wrote a thesis on Seneca.

I like Seneca.

We can like Seneca, you should like Seneca.

Uh, but we should recognize that he's thinking in a non-Christian paradigm when we're when we're reading him.

But there's this rise in Stoicism now because we're in an age of anxiety.

And in an age of anxiety, it uh your your training for how to cope with it is to not consider the big questions.

It's to not consider the final ends of your life.

Not in any uh objective sense of what they would really mean.

Instead, it's to just focus on the present, neglect those big questions, zero in on the present, and tend to yourself in such a way uh where you're able to cope with the reality that we live in a universe of unanswerable questions.

Yeah.

Which is weird.

I feel like everything that I've experienced seems like when you get so caught up in your present, it's like the tyranny of the urgent.

To me, I feel like that would create more anxiety.

Um, especially with there with there being no hope, if you're constantly trying to keep up with everything that's going on around you, um, or not you don't have those greater explanations um of why things are the way they are, I don't know how you would how you would actually prepare and and be present.

Yeah, I think if you if you live in a world where you think that the that uh true knowledge will always betray you or it will it will reveal catastrophe, then the way that you would seek to train your mind is is uh by ignorance, uh, by the things that you're not thinking about.

Yeah.

Now, of course, there's an element of that which is true because we you can fixate on the wrong things.

And you can be thinking of uh uh you can be thinking wrongly about the dangers of the world that you're in and and fixate on anxieties that are useless.

We have our own tools in Christianity for for dealing with anxiety that are but they're not just forgetting, right?

They're not um ignoring or like cultivating some sort of ignorance in yourself.

Um they're recognition of our finitude, which Seneca's right to point out, that you aren't able to occupy the future.

Um, but they're a it here's the the question that I don't think he gets at is well, why would humans want to do that?

Why, if we only occupy the present, why is it that our inability to occupy the future cultivates fear within us?

Yeah.

Uh or cultivates anxiety within us.

Uh it doesn't seem like, I don't know, like my dog occupies the future very much.

Yeah.

Um doesn't seem bothered, doesn't seem bothered by it, but humans are.

And so there's a question beneath it, which is, well, why would that be uncomfortable in the first place?

Yeah.

And I think that the biblical answer to why that's uncomfortable is because eternity has been set in our hearts.

And so we cannot, without destroying an aspect of our humanity, remove ourselves from future considerations.

We must have something to look forward to in order to be able to participate in the present.

And so then uh so like throughout the ancient world, this what I what I want to demonstrate is that hope does did not feel like hope feels now as a word.

Yeah.

It was related to fear, it was related to anxiety, it was related to imprudence, and it is related to foolishness.

Now, the reason that I think the best, most honest thinkers throughout world history arrived at those conclusions is because they didn't ignore death.

They didn't ignore the fundamental reality that your life ends in death.

Uh and if you live a very long time, then you witness more death of the ones that you were close to and that you loved.

Uh if you live a very short time, then of course your life is your life is cut off.

So in the in the Christian story, we see that there's uh this uh transformation of our view of hope because uh death is dealt with.

Yeah.

And that changes everything.

So with that, let's jump in and look at how Paul uh uh draws us into this this hope.

Um maybe let's start with verses one and two.

Want to go ahead and read those?

Sure.

Romans five, one and two.

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace, in which we stand and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

So this is this wonderful culmination of what he's been describing previously.

And it's a it's a he offers this conclusion.

We have been justified by faith.

Therefore, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

So Jesus has accomplished peace between us and God as he justified us.

And then through him, through Jesus, what he has done, and it's already happened, we have obtained access by this faith into the grace in which we stand.

And so we stand right now, the Christian, their experience of life, their their uh the the most important condition of them, which is how they stand before God.

It's the most important condition of all of any human at any given moment, how you stand before God, is one of standing in his grace.

It means his disposition towards you is to give you good things, to be kind to you, to uh to demonstrate his pleasure in you, to demonstrate that towards you.

This is an this that's where the Christian stands.

Like uh Christians I think uh one of the points that I that I think we should get from this passage is Christians should be happy.

Uh should at least have peace.

Yeah, should at least have peace.

Christians should consider that this is really, really good news.

Right now, the Lord the Lord's disposition towards me is one of pure grace.

Just grace.

That's his disposition towards me in Christ.

And that's why he goes to rejoicing.

We rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

And it's a re uh so rejoicing in hope of the glory of God, if we look to the future and we consider that finally at the very end, when the judge stands, he will be absolutely glorified in his righteous judgment.

When we're outside of Christ, that's only a terrifying image.

Because we know that the righteousness that he must demonstrate towards us is one of eternal wrath and damnation.

Yeah.

But we, when we look forward in hope to the glory of God, we understand that he glorified himself in our salvation and rescue in Jesus Christ.

Yeah.

So when we look forward to it, we're like, man, I can't wait till God glorifies himself and we get to see the what we get to behold the wonder of his glory because that is not a threat to me in any way.

It's just more receiving of his grace towards me when I am able to behold him completely.

I will not be cast off by him because I've been justified by Jesus.

So Paul brings it, it's like this uh this unthinkable conclusion of uh what Christ has accomplished for us, that you look forward in in joy and rejoicing to the glory of God.

I love I love to say uh, and I think this is from Jonathan Edwards, but God has linked his glory to our joy, and we know that God will get his glory.

It's probably from John Piper.

Jonathan Edwards by way of John Piper.

Some John.

Some John out there who said that once.

A lot of a lot of people named John wrote things about the Bible.

Yeah, they did.

Yeah.

We should look into that.

Do a podcast on that.

I think that was what I was thinking about when you were talking through that.

Um, you know, we did the Ephesian study and and we talked about what you know the mindset of men prior to coming to coming to Christ, and it says that they were without hope of God in the world.

Yep.

Um, and you know, it sees here in verse one it says, Since you have been justified, we have peace.

And you're talking about these blessings, you know, we can't have the blessings unless our status is actually changed.

That's right.

And so it can be really easy to be overcome by that tyranny of the urgent, or to think that maybe the um the here and now is all that there is.

Right.

If we're not grasping our status.

Yeah.

Um, like if I don't have my status as a son of God always before me, I'm gonna get caught up in either having gullible hope um or not being able to hope.

Yep.

Um just because I don't I don't understand that yeah, Jesus has introduced me to the Father.

Yeah, totally.

Totally.

And if he's if he's yeah, say more about it, you use that word introduced me to the Father.

Yeah, I mean, so um in in our translation that we read, the ESP, it says, Through him we have also obtained access.

Um that word access there could also be translated as introduced, and it has the idea of um coming into a royal court.

Um so a king or a queen is on the throne, uh, you have uh the opportunity of walking before them, um, you're going to be introduced, or your name is going to be called out, and you're gonna be granted uh entrance uh into their in into their presence, essentially.

Yeah, so it's like Jesus takes our hand, walks us up to the Father, and says, Father, I'd like you to meet someone.

Right.

They will be a part of our family now.

That's right.

Uh that's a pretty good introduction.

Pretty good intro.

I mean, I can't think of a better one.

Yeah.

It's a pretty good intro.

And and once you're introduced, you're you're in.

Yeah.

You're like a made man.

Yeah.

Well, and then the interesting thing is the next part it says, in which we stand.

Um, and I thought the the contrast here that was helpful for me was in Psalm 1, verses 5, where it says, Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment.

Psalms 1:5

Yeah.

Um, so to me, it gave me this image of when Jesus calls and introduces us to Christ, we have the opportunity of actually standing there.

When the wicked are brought forth, they may not be there, it might be an angel or somebody, their their name might just be called out, but they're not getting that same introduction, and they're not going to be able to stand there in the presence of the king at that point in time.

Yeah, pretty crazy.

We're and we're able to because of what Jesus has done.

Yeah.

That that's ours now.

You may be thinking, well, how can that be ours now?

Well, we'll get there.

I think Paul gets there very soon.

So he continues on, he says, and then he he goes into particularly, and you can hear it because he just introduced the word hope.

We rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

And then in verse three, he goes on, not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings.

That's strange.

But we've got to always be thinking of hope as related to death.

Yeah.

And that hope is naive in the in the in its relationship to death.

Okay.

Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance.

And endurance produces character.

And character produces hope.

And hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

Okay, what is the relationship between suffering and hope?

Why can we and joy, why can we rejoice in our sufferings and that lead to hope?

Could you link those?

Sure.

I'll give it a shot.

Okay.

Um so it seems like what we're not being told here is we're not being told to like our suffering.

Right.

Like it's we shouldn't become those people who just seek out suffering and that be the thing that's given us.

Um, or the thing that we we we use as our badge of honor or whatever it might be.

Right.

Um, it seems like the reason that we're rejoicing in our sufferings is because of of ultimately what it produces.

Right.

Um, and so some of the things that I I came across in my reading was um, you know, God chastises or disciplines those he loves.

And so, and part of that is suffering.

And so, one way is like if you're suffering, um, there's proof there that God has actually taken a direct interest in you um to discipline you and to to make sure that he brings his work about to completion.

Um, and I had the the that image of like gold refined by a fire.

Yeah.

Is like we're we're burning away all the impurities and um you know bringing out what should be there.

Yep.

And I think that's what he's calling us to here is that um, you know, because there's this the patient endurance, um, we have character, but I think um uh the other word could also be translated experience, um, but it it means proof or trial or approvedness.

So basically he's saying is that these trials and these sufferings, they're gonna produce this patience and endurance, which is gonna be the ultimate proof here um that God loves you, that he's called you, you've been given the Holy Spirit, um, because you can endure these trials and have this hope.

So if you consider that made me think is if you consider uh this language of this language of what would suffering mean in a in a uh if it didn't cultivate hope.

Uh what what suffering would mean is is um uh it it well it's just loss.

It's just loss.

Like if this life is all there is.

And you uh uh sometimes when we're thinking in these terms, we can start to think arbitrarily.

And I'm glad you you said what you said about um we're not rejoicing in suffering itself, because what it's strange that we need to be told this because it's uh it's very evident in our experience, but when we're talking in theological terms, we we become fools a lot of times.

Suffering is bad.

Yeah, suffering hurts.

Suffering is a it um uh there's a um actually in a uh response to Seneca.

Um man, I just read this yesterday, but I'm gonna forget the name.

But somebody wrote a response to Seneca, and uh Seneca is describing how the Stoic should not be afraid of suffering.

Their whole life should be Semper Beatis.

It should be um like beautiful um all the time, you know, constantly, constantly beautiful.

And it you can picture the Stoic, it's like um, it's like here's a you know wonderful steak.

It's like, oh yes, I'm all here's this steak, good.

This is the a stake for me now.

And by the way, both your parents just passed away a couple hours ago.

Another experience that happens to be passing through my, you know, myself.

Yeah.

But it's all transient and so whatever.

You know, there's so that that's kind of thing.

Just not what we see Job doing.

It's not what we see Job doing.

And it actually the response to Seneca was um uh this is strange because it's not a Christian who's responding.

Uh but he he basically says there's uh uh there's nobody's a stoic on the cross.

That's what he says.

Um I'm reading a book about the book is about crucifixion.

And so it goes through all these textual examples throughout kind of the time around Jesus and and before where people are talking about crucifixion.

They said, doesn't it like what there's he's basically saying there's no philosophy that can assist you if you're hanging on the cross.

Yeah.

Because that's just pain, just suffering.

It's it's an un you can the pain is so intense and present that you can't there is no place in your mind you can retreat to.

Yeah.

That's interesting, because Mart Martin Loyne Jones had a quote that said, Faith, a faith that's not help that does not help us when we most need it at all is not the Christian faith.

Oh, it absolutely.

And and the cross is the per is the like the maximal example of that because you are just in pain and you're about to die.

And the pain is directly related to your death.

And so suffering ordinarily is just loss that leads to death.

It's it's just loss.

And then Paul says, you, we not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings.

Yeah.

Because we see that the putting the death of the flesh within us is only liberating us towards life in the spirit.

Yeah.

And it's actually God's handiwork to cultivate within us the joy that we know he's bringing us towards because he purchased it for us and he promises that he will fully reward us with it.

And so the uh the joy that we are headed towards, we may not be experiencing it right now.

Yeah.

But there's a joy that we're headed towards, which is able to reach back into our present suffering and give it a meaningfulness because it's actually cultivating within us the character that is able to receive and experience the joy that's headed our way.

Yeah.

We uh the way that Paul writes about this oftentimes is it we it's it's strange because it's not, he doesn't the relationship between future joy and present suffering, he doesn't describe qualitatively.

He doesn't really say that like it transforms our present suffering into positive experiences.

That's not the way it works.

A lot of times we we'd like to find that trick.

Trevor Burrus, Jr.

We want to take that verse that says he works all things for the good, meaning that the outcome of this will actually be good.

Yeah, and it that's right.

That's what that verse means.

But it doesn't it doesn't mean that your present experience of it is a good experience.

Yeah.

It's a bad experience.

Suffering is bad.

Yeah.

Um but we're able to rejoice in hope.

And hope is is a future orientation.

So the Christians uh so the finish that thought, Paul will say things like uh the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared to the glory that will be revealed to us in Christ Jesus.

Now, so he deals with it quantitatively.

He says that the suff the joy to come is so far greater than it's so higher, so much higher than the depth of suffering that you're experiencing now.

It's like the the depth of suffering is like you know, the Marianas Trench, or whatever, which is like what, like eight miles deep or something?

I don't know.

Me neither.

I was looking at my uh nautical charts before this in preparation, and I've already forgotten what I was looking at.

But the heights of the glory that we're headed towards is the heavens.

Yeah it's the heavens.

Like what it's immeasurable.

What could be how could you compare the two?

It's like you look at the glory of the heavens of the the wonder of the joy that we're headed towards.

And it's like, you see that little planet over there?

That one over there that you can barely see?

You can't actually see it from here, but it's there, trust me.

Well, there's it has an ocean on it, and there's an ocean that's five miles deep.

That you'd be like, who cares?

I'm not like this, like no, that's very small compared to the scales that we're talking about.

Yeah.

Celestial guide.

Um but but that's uh what's oh um I was thinking when you were talking about this, was it's this chapter is is about assurance.

It's almost one of those things as well that that proves to us that we have faith.

Um so we we can we can rejoice in our sufferings because now I'm not I'm not questioning whether I'm justified or not.

Right.

Um my sufferings are are teaching me that I am just justified.

Yep.

They're teaching me that God loves me, and then every time I come out the other side of a particular suffering, it gives me that uh confidence to know that like I've survived, God was with me, I didn't reject the faith.

Yep, I'm here on the other side, and then you know, the next suffering, we have more endurance um to go through it, um, which is then it's then giving you more of those points that are proving that you have faith.

That's exactly right.

Because you've got to see the cross as like this backstop that's already happened, which is what Paul's arguing from.

So like I am uh uh, you know, uh Zach at the end of the service just said, May the Lord bless you and keep you, may the Lord make his face shine upon you.

Sure doesn't feel like the Lord's face is shining upon me right now.

Feels like it's just a frowning countenance that's that's horrible to receive.

It's the way that life is that life is right now.

But I know he already gave his own son.

I know the the greatest cost has already been paid.

And so whatever I'm experiencing now cannot be, I know that I'm justified by what he's done, and I know the grace and favor that I have from him.

So I know whatever I'm receiving now cannot be for my harm, and it is not a loss, but it will be a gain.

And I will look back and I will count this suffering as a gain.

Therefore I can rejoice in it uh because of what has been accomplished before me and what I have to look forward to.

Yeah.

Uh that he promises.

Yeah, I thought this rejoice word was also interesting, uh, because in the footnotes it has it as boast.

Yeah.

And in the previous chapter So that no one may boast.

Yeah, we're told not to boast.

Yeah.

Um, so it it's and it's weird though that that suffering almost is the thing that we're we're allowed to boast in.

Yep.

Um but I just thought it was an interesting contrast.

There's a in one more thing, and then we'll move on to the next section.

But there's uh there's a so you it wears our boast.

Its boast is in Christ, and therefore we can participate in it.

But there's you you think you also think of hope, and uh everybody says, except for like Gen Z, I guess, or what we say about upcoming generations.

Uh they're not upcoming anymore, I guess they've arrived.

Um But what you what you typically say is like uh hope is young people are hopeful because they haven't experienced the pains of life yet.

And so hope is is naivety.

If you experience hope, it's because of naivety and a lack of suffering.

You just think things will go well.

But Paul is saying that hope comes from suffering.

Yeah.

So it's the total inverse.

That once that through the suffering you cultivate endurance, and endurance produces character, and so you become the type of person that can hope.

And if you think of that in just a process that you would experience as a person, you would see deliverance over and over again.

Through that deliverance, you would say, Hey, I've held on in hope before.

And the Lord has never let me down.

He's he's always carried me through.

Now I'm the type of person who, when suffering comes, I have hope, which means that I can rejoice in things that I can't see right now, because I've learned to trust the one who shows them to me and who has the future.

And the and the ground of that is the cross, that he that he went and was resurrected.

Um, and that's why I think he says our hope does not put us to shame.

Because the the hope that gets put to shame is the uh uh the proverbs say um hope deferred makes the heart sick.

Yeah.

You know, when you hope for something and you don't receive it, it makes your heart sick.

And that's that heart sickness is what Seneca's trying to avoid.

He's like, well, I can solve this problem of hope being deferred.

Don't hope.

What are you doing?

Hoping, thinking about the thinking about the future.

But our hope in Christ will never put us to shame.

We'll always be realized that yes, that was the right thing to do.

Uh I wasn't we will never be disappointed, we'll never be let down by hoping in Christ.

Okay, now let's go through and we'll see.

Uh let's keep going into the next section, which says uh verses uh six through uh eleven.

Uh would you read those?

Sure.

For while we were still weak at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.

For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die.

But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Since therefore we now have been justified by his blood, much more we shall be saved by him from the wrath of God.

For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his son, much more now that we are reconciled shall we be saved by his life.

More than that we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

So Paul goes from this description of Christian hope, and then he moves into this like grounding of it in the assurance that we can have in God's love for us.

And he describes it in this these just beautiful terms of and he and he just lays it out in just like this human analogy.

Who would you die for?

And he says you would perhaps you would die for someone who's good.

Perhaps for a righteous man, someone someone would die and lay their lives down for them.

Because they would see the see the value there.

That's not the way Jesus's love towards us is.

And so this is this is um uh this is one of those uh passages that should just pierce your heart.

That while you were yet a sinner, Christ died for you.

And so, what confidence can that give you in your continued pursuit of the Lord, continued struggle against sin?

If ever there's a moment where you might think that the love of God has slipped off of you somehow, you must recognize that it it can't.

Yeah.

It can't.

Because in your sinful state, he gave himself for you.

He did not wait for you to get out of your sinful state as though that were a possible thing.

It was while you were there, he gave himself for you.

Yeah.

This should just surround you with insurance.

It's like his love is is inescapable.

You know, it'd be like trying to get out of the universe.

It just can't be done.

Like you are you are in in Christ, you are just in his love.

Yeah, this this section I think was uh really encouraging to me.

I I guess I'd never really looked at it like this, at least this chapter this way before, in terms of my assurance of salvation.

Yeah.

Um, and I was just really thankful for the Westminster series that we did last summer um in terms of the categories that gave me around thinking about things like this.

Right.

Um and I I also thought your sermon on Sunday was really timely for like looking at the sufferings of Christ and everything that he'd accomplished.

Uh, and I think you even posed the question to the congregation around like, do you ever question whether you've been forgiven?

Right.

Like, look at all he's done for you and know that it's sufficient.

Yes.

And you know, here he's saying kind of that same sort of thing is like look at everything that he's done for you and know that you're saved.

Um, but not even just that um you're saved, or it's it doesn't it doesn't stop at forgiveness, or we don't get put back kind of on equal standing where Adam was.

Yeah.

Right.

He says, like, much more shall we be saved.

Um think of what that I mean, yeah, because he goes from right there.

He's like, okay, so just consider this principle.

What is the God who gave his son for you while you were yet a sinner out of his love for you?

What's he like?

Well, since he's justified you already at that great cost, much more shall you be delivered from his wrath?

It's like obviously you're delivered from his wrath.

Yeah.

Because he did the work that paid the price, made the sacrifice, endured the suffering for your justification.

Yeah.

Do you think he just did that ad hoc for no reason that he is not going to get the fruits for you of what he's already purchased and accomplished?

Yeah.

So when you look forward, which is what we're talking about with hope and assurance, you look forward and it's like the wrath of God is coming, not for you, not on me, because Jesus justified me.

He's He's the one who did it.

Of course, of course he would.

I love um for for if while we were enemies, in verse 10, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son, much more now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life?

You think that if so if before you were reconciled, he of his own accord went to rescue you.

Now that you are rescued and in him, now that you're you're brought to him and reconciled to him, do you think that you will not be saved finally?

Of course you will.

It wouldn't make any sense that it that wouldn't make any sense to do like this half measure.

Yeah.

There's this there's this good quote that I have um from Martin Joins Jones.

He's saying, if while you were an enemy in God's sight, God's attitude towards you, attitude towards you was such that he sent his son to die for you, is it likely that his attitude towards you is going to change now that he regards you as his own child?

The doctor.

Yeah, so good.

So good.

And we we have to be told that because we can easily think of the truth of Christ as a front door that washes us clean, and then we have all the opportunity in the world again to just dirty ourselves and remove ourselves from the presence of God.

Yeah.

But it's not.

He's like, look, if he already did this thing, do you think he will not see it through?

Yeah.

Certainly he would see it through.

Uh if while you were the dirtiest you could possibly be, when you are brought through uh brought into his salvation, do you think he will not accomplish it to the to the to the uttermost?

He certainly will.

So the Christian, the Christian has to receive that by faith.

Like, okay, these present struggles that I have, and the difficulties that I'm experiencing, the sufferings that I'm experiencing by my sin or by the sins of others, or health, or whatever it may be, uh I I these cannot strip me of my hope.

They can only ground it further because I know I'll become the type of person who's able to hope amidst these things.

Because Christ has already paid the ultimate price.

And there's no take backs.

And of course, if he already did that, then he'll see it through.

Yeah.

Well, it's it's funny.

I mean, I think I've had a lot of these some of these tangential verses kind of memorized as a kid, or you get taught as a kid that you know we are his workmish workmanship created in Christ Jesus, or he who began a good work in you will complete it.

Um I think I've had those in my mind.

Yeah.

Yeah, I don't know, since since Sunday school growing up.

Uh-huh.

But just never, I don't think I ever drew the connection with those between assurance and salvation.

Yeah.

But we like those as kind of like nice little sayings that we might put on a coffee cup or something.

Um but here it's like he's saying the same thing.

Yes.

But he's saying it almost to the maximum in terms of um bringing your status into it, like you are an enemy.

Yeah.

Death was given and needed, like the price that you're paid.

Um, I don't know.

For me, it kind of just made the light bulb go off for the all these other things that I've I've kind of known.

Um it just like elevated those nice statements to see it's not the negative, but it's more like the maximal example of that.

It is, it is because it's like look at Christ Paul is like looking at the cross and he's saying, What are the implications of this type of love?

Well, of course it wouldn't it wouldn't stop.

Yeah.

Um okay, so then he goes into the description of death in Adam and Life in Christ.

I gotta take a bathroom break and we'll be right back.

All right, I'm back.

So now let's go into chap uh the next part starting in verse 12, where he begins to describe our death in Adam and how that relates to Christ.

He starts talking about Adam to describe the our station, which is the question that I was thinking of earlier was like, okay, well, how do we receive this?

How do we participate in this?

Why would why would what this one man did accomplish our justification?

And I think this is like one of the most helpful parts of Scripture to describe how that happens.

Okay.

Uh the imputation of his righteousness.

So starting in verse 12 to 14, it says, 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.

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.

Okay.

That's it's I I could I think that's one of those paragraphs where it's like, okay, my mind just shut down.

You know, it's so much, so much, and it raised so many questions.

But um what he's what he's looking to describe is that sin came into the world through one man, Adam, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.

Yeah.

Now what's interesting about that is he's not saying that sin came into the world through Adam, and then all of his offspring sinned in a like manner to Adam.

Yeah.

In fact, he'll say the opposite, that that's not what happened.

But in Adam, we all sinned.

Yeah.

He's not even just saying that we're just sinful by nature.

That's that's right.

He's saying you Adam's sin in the garden is yours.

It's your sin in the garden.

There's a sense in which it's you did that because you were in Adam while that happened.

And you're like, well, I don't remember being in Adam while that happened.

So, Aaron, explain to us.

Uh what what why is his sin our sin?

Well, I mean, yeah.

Well, so I think there's there's a a couple ways that that you can look at that.

Yes.

One is uh in the natural sense.

Right.

We should think of these as perspectives on the same reality.

Yeah.

Okay, so one perspective is uh just natural sense of in the natural sense of um you know there's a verse in uh Hebrews that talks about um Levi paying ties to Melchizedek because Levi was in the loins of Abraham of Abraham.

Right.

So in that same sense, we are in the loins of Adam when Adam sinned, and so we also sinned.

Yes.

So this what this part of what this shows us is that humanity is organic is an organic relation.

We are related to one another.

And uh so so humanity can be thought of as a whole, as a as a single whole.

We don't like to think of ourselves like that.

We like to think of ourselves as atomized individuals with no history and nothing that we come that we came from, and therefore there's no accountability for anything that happened before us, and there's no relation to anything that happens outside of us.

Um the biblical perspective on humanity is just not that.

Yeah.

Uh that we are we are uh there's a sense of our unity in our humanity.

We all came from Adam.

What are the other sense senses?

Yeah, the other one the other sense is a federal sense.

Um and by federal, you're I don't know if you have a better definition of that word, but it's almost like there's a there's this idea of headship or authority.

Yes.

And and one person assumes that for everybody else.

Right.

Um, so you see that in the way that companies work or the way that the military operates.

Um if someone under your command does something wrong, it's your responsibility.

It's your responsibility, yeah.

And so um the Bible talks about that if you do something wrong, they all bear the consequence.

Yeah.

Yep, the Bible talks about that in multiple different places, but one of those ways is it um is when God says that he will visit the iniquity of the fathers to the children, even to the third and the fourth generation.

Right.

So, like that father's um he's the way he's living in that day will dictate what happens with uh future generations.

So we have this relationship, and it's a the picture of it is the it it's like the way that Eve had a relationship with Adam.

She was the one who would be taught by him what the cut what the shape of the covenant was, don't eat from that tree.

She is the one who would be represented represented by him.

Um and if he neglects her in that, then she's doomed.

And if um and it if he sins, then it it she bears the consequences of that.

Yeah.

Um so that is that is our relationship to Adam.

We his unrighteousness, his sin is ours.

Yeah.

As though we did it.

And he says this.

So what comes in through sin, death.

Death reigns through sin.

Without sin, there is no death.

Yeah.

And he goes on in verse 13, he says, 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 to come.

So he's making this argument, and he's saying, Um, because someone might say, Yeah, but the nobody transgressed in the same way that Adam transgressed, because Adam's transgression was unique, and even his ability to do it is unique, because he's in this circumstance where there's one tree that he was told explicitly by God to not eat from.

And so it's this plain, direct transgression of the law of God.

But nobody else has the opportunity to do that because we're guarded from the Garden of Eden.

We can't even get to that tree.

I don't even know where it is.

Yeah.

And so the question might be, okay, well, there doesn't seem to be a law anymore that these people would be under in the same way that they would be able to transgress in that same way.

Yeah.

And so you might say, Paul, that our transgression is different.

Or at least there's this space before the law comes in, where is there even a possibility?

And he says, but look, they all die.

Yeah.

They all die, and death only comes through sin.

So that means his transgression, his sin was theirs, is ours.

Uh, and likewise, it means that uh just as he had explained in chapter two, that there is this dynamic of sinfulness in our own hearts because of the conscience that he has given us.

And there's a law that's written in our own hearts that can still be violated and still lead to death, which everyone violated.

Yeah.

And so there's Adam's original sin, which we are accountable for, there's our own sins of participation, which we are likewise accountable for.

And the the evidence that Adam's sin, that we all bear the consequences of Adam's sin of Adam's sin, is that everyone dies.

Yeah.

Well, and you could even take that to um it's not even just that we have is like nature and we will sin.

It's not that because there's there's infants that are that are born and die.

Right when they don't have the ability to actually commit sin of their own volition in the same way that we do, but they still they still die.

I think that was the interesting to me in terms of reading this is that um the wages like understand the wages of sin is death.

And so we're all getting what actually is due to us.

Yes.

Um and the only way that it can be due to us is is not just from us committing those acts, otherwise infants wouldn't die.

Right.

Um, it has to be something else.

So it has to be that we're in the loins of Adam or we have or we inherit it from him just based upon his own authority of being the head of the human race.

Yes, exactly.

That's why we that's why we get it from him.

So that's Adam's trespass.

From that one trespass, we are all damned, and we're all bound up in this original sin.

Like original sin is not just a condition, but it is actually the first sin, the first sin that took place.

So he goes on, fifteen, let's do fifteen to seventeen.

Says, 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.

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.

So he's making this comparison.

He's saying there's this first man, this first covenant head, Adam, and he commits one trespass, the original trespass.

And that original trespass leads to death and uh uh sin and you know bad stuff.

Uh and it and it creates multitudes of sins that are in the wake of this trespass.

Yeah.

But as he goes through this, he uh uh he shows that, okay, but there is another man he can be called the second Adam, and he lives this life of righteousness and offers the sacrifice of righteousness.

And so if this is sort of the economy of sin and righteousness, well then and the one transgression produces these things, then what will the one act of righteousness produce?

It will certainly be bear fruit as well.

But they won't be they'll have the they'll operate on the same economy, they'll use the same grammar, but they'll amount to these different words and different meaning.

They'll amount to this wonderful different meaning.

And so if and so he goes through it, even using like the same sort of sentence structure, but then arriving at these different things, that uh from the one comes condemnation.

So from Adam's trespass uh comes judgment and condemnation.

But from the free gift which is given to us in Jesus, then following the many trespasses we get justification.

And abundance of grace.

Abundance of grace.

So if by the one man's trespass death reigned, by the one by the free gift in Jesus Christ, life will reign in us.

Yeah.

He's saying this is the same mechanism.

Now we can be frustrated by the imputation of Adam's unrighteousness to us, but it is by that same mechanism that the second Adam comes in, the other man who is given the right to be the federal head of humanity, who is firstborn from the Father directly, fathered by the Father directly.

There's only two men who hold who hold that status, Adam and Jesus Christ.

In him, because of his righteousness, we receive, we reign with him in life.

Yeah.

We are no longer cursed with him in death.

Yeah.

So his righteousness is imputed to us in the same way that the unrighteousness of Adam was imputed to us.

Yeah.

It's like Paul's basically cutting off the fact of like you can't say that this isn't fair.

Right.

Because that's, I think all of our reaction is to say, you're going to tell me I'm guilty because uh Adam sinned.

That's not fair.

Right.

Um but it also isn't it's not fair in the same way where we get Christ's righteousness.

Right.

Um, because it goes from uh wages of sin is death.

So it goes from us getting what's actually due, our due reward to free gift.

Yes.

Uh, which is out completely outside the realm of wages.

Completely different.

It's just something that what do you do to get a gift?

Yeah.

You know, nothing.

If you do something to get a gift, it's not a gift.

Yeah.

So if we continue on, he puts it brings us to just the finest point he can.

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

Now the law came in to increase the trespass.

So Paul kind of returns to the thought that he started in verse twelve.

He's saying the law comes in and it increases the trespass.

And that's because uh there's something to violate, and it shows us something about our hearts in original sin, which is that if we're given an explicit means to rebel against God, we will take it.

And so the law comes in and it multiplies sin.

It came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness, leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

So there's a couple of we want to cover a couple of pitfalls in those in those passages.

One of which is c is Paul's use of the word all.

Do you want to share a bit about that for those first couple of verses in verse 15 and Yeah.

Yeah, so I think it Excuse me, 18.

I think um maybe we've experienced this, but we can often hear this verse taken out of context and say that Jesus died for everybody and all people, and so now that he died, we are everyone's gonna go to heaven.

Right.

Um, because now we're all covered by his this death.

And um if we take it in context with the chapter and the other things that he said, it's only those that actually believe that are referenced within the all.

So it's like the all is for all of those who believe.

Right.

Um, and so and and there's lots of ways that you can see this all used throughout scripture where you know the all the world is being uh brought to census, um, you know, when when Jesus or Joseph and Mary have to travel to Bethlehem, or when John the Baptist Baptist is baptizing people, it says he's baptizing all men.

So those terms don't really mean all men, and so um you you have to look at the term in the context of the chapter and in context of the book and what's being said.

Um and so what's being said here is that like for all um men, it it can be like all who are in Adam or all who are in Christ, but those who are in Christ are the ones who believe and who have been justified.

Yep, that's right.

And so and we can even think of it in terms of all kinds of people, like Jew and Greek, which has been so thematic throughout all of this.

That's right.

And it it's especially sensible because he's going back to Adam, which just includes the the fullness of humanity.

Yeah.

So there's a uh and then we've we've got to remember that Paul's righteous Paul's argument throughout all of this is a demon is that the the gospel, the sacrifice of Christ, and the grace that he shows towards us is a demonstration of God's righteousness.

His righteousness is revealed in this.

We might think when God introduces the law and that leads to an increase of trespasses, isn't this somehow God just like losing?

Doesn't that mean that he ultimately comes out on the wrong end of this because of look at all the rebellion that's cultivated against him?

But uh what what Paul shows is this this creates a greater opportunity to show the uh the far more abundant grace that God is able to show towards all of these trespasses.

Uh and that's what he because where the sin increased, the grace abounded all the more.

Uh so he's God is is orchestrating everything to show the unfathomable abundance of his grace.

And you've got to get that mechanism of imputation that you receive something from another person, it's it's counted as yours because that's true of Adam.

But the good news is by that same mechanism which bound up the whole world in sin, it is true in Christ.

Yeah.

And so we can be freed by faith in him because of the justification he's given.

Uh so we rejoice in that.

Rejoice in that.

I feel like when you get that mechanism, you know, the sense of like why, uh, you can see, oh, this is real.

So this can be real for me.

I can have that type of assurance.

Yeah.

So as matter of fact as the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Yeah.

So it's something to hold on to.

Yes.

Yes.

So if you and if you take it back to beginning of like what we talked about with hope, like the hope being something for the gullible.

Yeah.

This isn't actually, this isn't blind hope.

No.

It's hope that's grounded in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's exactly right.

All right.

I love that chapter.

Thanks for talking through it, Aaron.

Yeah.

And we will see you all next week.

Thanks, everybody.

Bye.