First Adam or Second Adam

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First Adam or Second Adam

(Romans 5:12-21)

Introduction:

The title of our lesson this morning is . . . . and for those who might not know, the second Adam is none other than Jesus Christ Himself. This section of the letter to the Romans is generally considered to be one of the more difficult and profound passages in the Bible. And the truth of this passage will often provoke anger in modern readers. We rail against the perceived unfairness of what Paul seems to be telling us. Because what Paul is saying here is so wrapped up in the idea of identification, it appears to lessen our modern notions of complete and unfettered freedom. And our personal freedom, along with a tolerance of any and all behavior, is seen by most Americans as being what life is all about. But Paul lumps all of humanity in one man, Adam, and his actions, or the other man, Jesus, and his actions. And it might appear from what he is saying here that we have little choice in which camp we land.

That this is a difficult passage of Scripture will become evident as we delve into the passage. Some commentators say that the Apostle Paul’s thoughts in this passage leap forth like a torrential mountain stream after a hard rain. They rush on with such force that they do not always come to carefully formed expression.” As a result, when we read this section it is difficult to stay with the flow of thought. But as we read and study this important part of God’s Word, if we will keep the idea of identification in mind, we can perhaps follow what God is telling us. If we can keep the idea in mind that God has designated the first Adam as the head of the entire human family, and of us as being identified in him with our sin, then the glory of God’s identifying us as being in the second Adam and in His righteousness will become all the sweeter to us.

This morning we are going to begin a discussion on one of the most troubling, and sometimes divisive, doctrines in the Bible: Original Sin. What has been called the ruin of mankind in the Fall is a difficult subject, no doubt. The inevitable question of fairness comes up, doesn’t it? Why am I being punished for something Adam did? One of the problems is really the way you and I in the modern world approach everything. It seems to always, and in all circumstances, be all about me, me, me, doesn’t it? Our individualism makes many reject, with little thought, the idea that we could possibly share in Adam’s sin.

But in order to understand Scripture, we often have to put our modern presuppositions aside. You and I are not living in a cocoon. Even though we are walking through this life encased in our own flesh, seemingly alone, God does not view us as merely isolated individuals totally disconnected from the mass of humanity. God does love each of us as individuals, but He also sees each one of us as connected parts of the creation that He originally made very good. And we must keep these two ideas in a tension of thought when we come to the doctrine of original sin. God identifies all of us, as individuals, in the overarching category of being in Adam. All of humanity. But the glory of our faith is this: by grace, God identifies all believers as being in the second Adam, Jesus!

I. The First Adam (Romans 5:12-14)

(1 What does the word Adam mean? Is it merely the name of the first human? Or is it both his personal name and a word that has broader application? Adam is the Hebrew word for man, isn’t it? But really it doesn’t mean just one man, but all of mankind. So, I believe there was both a real individual named Adam, and that his name and his person had implications that affected all of us. But let’s look back at our first three verses. Look at verses, 12-14.

(2 Now, I am not sure that you could find three more difficult verses in the Bible than the three we just read. One of the things that make it more difficult for us is that Paul does not end the thought he begins in verse 12 until all the way in verse 18. You will notice a parenthetical phrase that begins in verse 13 and ends in verse 17. Before Paul draws the parallel between the first Adam and the second Adam, he recognized the need to more fully explain what he meant in verse 12. Verse 12 begins with the word wherefore, doesn’t it? That word is a compound Greek word that means because of this. Because of what?

(3 The first eleven verses of chapter five lay out for us some the glorious results of our justification. We have peace with God; access to God; we rejoice in the glory of God; even though we might suffer, we have the patience to endure the trials of life, which build experience, or character, which causes us to have hope.

(4 And then Paul tells us that Christ died for the ungodly, and that God demonstrated His love for us, in that while we were still sinners, still rebels against our sovereign Lord, Christ died for us. God has reconciled us to Himself. He has made the peace with us. And the defining moment in God’s redemptive plan was the death of His Son on the cross, wasn’t it? And then Paul writes that because of this–because of the great love God showed to us on Calvary, and because of sin entering into the world through the sin of the first man, we are identified with Adam, but have the hope of being identified with Christ. Look at 5:18-19. Follow me? No? Let’s go back and look at verse 12 again.

(5 So, we are back again to the question of fairness, aren’t we? We are also back again to the question of identity, identification. And it might just be because of this perceived unfairness about God counting us as being in Adam when Adam sinned that all the theories seeking to cast doubt on the creation account in Genesis got started to begin with. So, as we try to answer the question of God’s fairness and of our identification in the first Adam or the second Adam, let’s try to answer a more fundamental set of questions. Was there one original man? Did God create only one pair, and are all descended from them? Were Adam and Eve real historical people, or were they merely myth? How we answer these fundamental questions will, in large part, determine how we answer the question of salvation, won’t it? If we reject original creation, we will reject the Biblical account of man’s relation to God, won’t we? And if we reject how we are related to our Creator–we are the created beings, not accidents of chance plus an impossible amount of time–we will reject any idea of our rebelling against that Creator. And if we have not rebelled, then why do we need salvation.

(6 So first, we must return to the Garden to gain a full understanding of the Fall. We must believe that the creation account is true and not legend. Go back to Genesis 1:26-27; 2:15-25; 3:1-6, 15, 21. Look at your Bibles, first at 1:26-27, then 2:15-25.

(7 First, what does it mean when the Bible tells us that man is made in God’s image, after His likeness? Without going into genuinely controversial areas, or areas that are simply unbiblical, let me say at the outset that everyone involved in the great debates of our time regarding the creation accounts in Genesis desperately need to develop some Christian charity. The matter of a young earth or an old earth, in my mind has nothing much to do with the truth of our being made in the image and likeness of our God. The time factor has much to do with other aspects of creation, but little to do with our being God’s image-bearers. And that is where I want to focus right now. I am not going to solve the young earth versus the old earth controversy this morning. I am not even going to try.

(8 But Scripture is very clear that man is made in the image of his Creator, right? And so, what does this mean? It doesn’t mean that we physically look like God, does it? The Father exists as spirit, doesn’t He? The Son now exists permanently as man, the God-man; the Holy Spirit can be represented, if need be, as a dove, because the Bible does so at Christ’s baptism; but nowhere in the Bible is it stated that the Father, this Creator-God, exists in any other form but spirit. So we don’t look like God, do we?

(9 What the Bible is telling us is that man has personality, doesn’t he? Just as God does, we have emotions, intellects, and will. God is infinite, of course, and we are not; but we possess the same elements of personality as God does. We have the ability to think, feel, and make moral choices. Listen, we are not the products of chance, with everything already decided for us. We are free creatures of God, with the ability to think rationally, and to choose to worship and love our Creator. That is how we were made. And if that is not true then the entire Biblical drama of Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Restoration is just incomprehensible. It makes no sense. And listen, the Bible gives no wiggle room here for theories that contradict the very real truth of, In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. Regardless of the amount of time you might think this universe has been around, that is still not enough time for something to come from nothing. There had to have been something to kick-start everything, right? Even if the big bang happened, what came before the bang? The answer of an eternal God always having existed fits the evidence. And the Bible, very stunningly, announces that the crown of God’s creation, man, is made in His image. So we are created beings, made in our Creator’s own image. Then what happened? Look at your Bibles, 3:1-6.

(10 In fairly simple and unembellished words, we have the first major event after the creation, don’t we? Man disobeyed His Creator.You see, Adam and Eve already knew what was right and wrong, didn’t they? But they wanted to determine for themselves what was right and wrong, didn’t they? They wanted to define their own identity, didn’t they? They wanted their identity not to be in the God who created them, who gave them life, but they wanted to define their lives however they saw fit. The same thing applies to us today. And by the way, the same applies to the time when Lucifer fell. Satan wanted God’s authority and so did Adam and Eve and so do we.

(11 What happened here? What happened here that caused such a tremendous shaking of God’s universe? There was a rending and tearing of the fabric of God’s good creation.Was this just about the eating of some fruit? No! This was a catastrophe, a cataclysm, wasn’t it? And we can clearly see the results today, can’t we? Look carefully at all the wickedness in the world round about you, and then look back to the Garden with fresh eyes, carefully examining the consequences of this disaster. More to the point, look very carefully at your own sin with a fresh eye backward to the Fall of Adam, tossing aside all the psychobabble of triggers and the need to eliminate and deal with the psycho-nonsense of those triggers when dealing with addictive behavior. We all sin and fall into patterns of destructive behavior when we look at what we know to be God’s commandments for us, when we know what God’s Word reveals to us, and then we kind of shrug our shoulders and say to ourselves, “I don’t care! I am not going to obey! I’m gonna do what I want!”

(12 We wander through our lives blaming the pretty girl passing us by on the street for our lustful desires, for her triggering those lusts within us, and never blaming our own sin-darkened hearts for it. And substitute any other thing that you might be struggling with and the answer is the same. The trigger doesn’t cause the sins we commit, it is merely an excuse to be used to rationalize that sin.

(13 And we use any excuse we can find to avoid the reality of original sin, don’t we? Adam and Eve knew what God’s will was, didn’t they? They knew they weren’t supposed to eat from that tree, didn’t they? And yet the allure of personal freedom, the lie from the serpent that they would be like gods, led to, did not cause, but led to, their fall. And by the way, did Adam fall as a result of temptation from Satan? No, he didn’t, did he? Eve was deceived. She wanted the perceived blessings that the devil tempted her with. As serious as this was, it was not as serious as Adam’s sin. He just rebelled against God, didn’t he? No triggers, just sin!

(14 But have we answered the question of fairness? Have we discovered how it is that God considers the entire human race as being identified in Adam? It seems to me that there are only two basic views that we can have about mankind. Either he is born with a blank slate and environmental factors decide for him what kind of person he will grow up to be, or he is born with an inherited nature that lends itself to his behaving in certain ways. In other words, he is either born with a sin nature or he is born with nothing but a clean slate that his parents and society can mold into whatever type of person they wish. Now, I know that there are many variations on these two theories, and I know that many might view my analysis as simplistic; but I really can’t see any compelling reason not to reduce all the theories about mankind and his active propensity toward evil to these two.

(15 But I have noticed that it seems only when Christians begin talking about our inheriting a sin nature that the unfairness of God is shouted out. You will even hear professed atheists vilify God for His seeming unfairness. Which is pretty weird, being as they say they don’t believe in God anyway. But you will never hear anyone complain about the blank slate thing, will you? They will say, “That’s just the way it is!”

(16 Either way you look at this thing, though, it appears we have no choice in the matter, does it? Or do we? Under the nature theory of mankind’s existence, it is true that you and I have absolutely no freedom. If it is true that we are born with a blank slate then we are completely at the mercy of our parents and the society in which we are born. Under the Biblical model of creation, however, you might not have a choice about being born in sin, but you do have a choice about whether you remain there. Never forget that when you consider God’s fairness.

(17 How are we born in sin? What is up with this? How can God view us, who weren’t even born, as being in Adam? Well, think about it. And as you think about it, you should begin to see how critical a literal Adam and Eve is to entire story of redemption. If they never really existed, none of the Christian faith makes a lick of sense. If Adam was the first man, then he carried the potential for every other man and woman who came after him. Just as you carry the gene package of your own mothers and fathers, so you carry the genes of every ancestor going back to antiquity. And the Bible teaches that those genes go back to the first Adam.

(18 The truth is often hard to accept, isn’t it? The truth that we do not measure up to our own standards, let alone God’s, is a bitter pill for most of us to swallow. We are born in sin, and we willfully pursue sin, don’t we? Let me quote some Scripture to back up what I have been saying: David wrote this, Psalm 51:5 (KJV)

5 Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceivea me. It wasn’t that David’s mother sinned when we she had sex with her husband and conceived a son, but that she passed on the sin nature of Adam to her son. Proverbs 22:15 (KJV)

15 Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him. This is clear Biblical evidence that a child is not a blank slate just waiting for someone to imprint a personality on him or her. We are born in sin. Job 15:14 (KJV)

14 What is man, that he should be clean? and he which is born of a woman, that he should be righteous? Jeremiah 17:9 (KJV)

9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? This verse assumes original sin, telling us that wickedness is the property of the human heart.

(19 I believe that the doctrine of original sin makes sense of truly senseless world. Evil becomes not some mysterious force out there that God cannot control, but becomes the result of man’s freedom, doesn’t it? Let me further define what is meant by original sin: Original sin, meaning sin derived from our origin, is not a biblical phrase (Augustine coined it), but it is one that brings into fruitful focus the reality of sin in our spiritual system. The assertion of original sin means not that sin belongs to human nature as God made it (God made mankind upright, Eccles. 7:29), nor that sin is involved in the processes of reproduction and birth (the uncleanness connected with menstruation, semen, and childbirth in Leviticus 12 and 15 was typical and ceremonial only, not moral and real), but that (a) sinfulness marks everyone from birth, and is there in the form of a motivationally twisted heart, prior to any actual sins; (b) this inner sinfulness is the root and source of all actual sins; (c) it derives to us in a real though mysterious way from Adam, our first representative before God. The assertion of original sin makes the point that we are not sinners because we sin, but rather we sin because we are sinners, born with a nature enslaved to sin.

(20 That is, I believe, the Bible truth of the condition of man. And I have expended a whole lot of words in an attempt to explain what Paul meant back in Romans. Let’s go back there and look at Rom. 5:12 once more. Before sin entered into God’s creation there was no death. It was sin that caused evil to erupt and ravage God’s universe, wasn’t it? And the first Adam passed that sin nature down to all of his progeny, his offspring, of which we are all a part. Our condition, then, is a serious one, isn’t it? But yet another truth that you and I must take away from the Fall is this: It did not take God by surprise. It is clear that when Adam sinned, a sovereign God wasn’t sitting in heaven wringing His hands in worry over what He was going to do next. God didn’t have to suddenly devise plan B now that plan A had failed, did He? Far from it! Listen to these verses from Ephesians. Ephesians 1:3-6 (KJV)

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: 4 According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: 5 Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, 6 To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved. If God knew before the foundation of the world that Jesus would be sent into the world to save sinners, then He knew that Adam would sin, didn’t He? So, why did God do what He did? Why did He create to begin with? Here is a stunning reality about this awesome God with whom we have to do: He doesn’t need anyone of us to complete His existence. But God chose to create because it glorified Him to do so. And it glorified Him because He could demonstrate His amazing grace and love toward His adopted children. In the eternal counsel and overflowing love that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit had, He chose to create you so that He might love you! God doesn’t need you, but far more wonderful and glorious, He loves you!

(21 I believe that we have adequately proven the reality of original sin, and the tragic consequences of that sin upon the universe God created very good. While there are other ways of explaining how sin entered into God’s creation, it seems to me that God’s identifying us as being in Adam when Adam sinned, fits both the Biblical evidence and also fits the evidence of our world. There is something radically wrong with this old world, isn’t there? War, disease, poverty, injustice, all the evils in the world aren’t just the result of bad political or economic systems. After all, who created those political and economic systems to begin with? Sinful men and women, right? Sin, rightly understood, is the single problem of humanity. It is the darkness of the human heart that creates the evil in the world. And listen, the devil is the architect of this world system, but people we will not be able blame it on the devil, will we? Eve tried, God didn’t allow it.

(22 And instead of immediately launching into a revelation of the second Adam, who is the glorious answer to the predicament of sin, Paul announces the somewhat frightening fact of the ruin of man being universal. Paul seeks to demonstrate that this solidarity of sin and death through Adam has remained constant throughout man’s history. Look at history! It has been one long misadventure of violence with brief periods of peace, hasn’t it? We are not really progressing to a future utopia with an eradication of war, poverty, injustice, and the like, but we seem to be rushing headlong into the very pit of despair. Individuals, and even great civilizations, rise and fall, get back up, and then fall again! Why? Sin! Right? In verses 13 and 14 Paul begins the fairly long parenthetical thought that leads up to the revelation of the second Adam. Look at verses 13 and 14 again.

(23 The great questions of our age can be reduced to one simple answer. The great problems that we face in our personal lives, and in our national life, really have a simple explanation, don’t they? But it is an answer and an explanation that we don’t like. For some reason when sin is mentioned, the walls come up, dont’t they? A barrier is erected to protect us from having to come to terms with our sin natures. Why? The devil doesn’t want you to come to the truth. He doesn’t want you to be saved. He doesn’t want you to follow the Lord. And that’s not an answer that we like either, is it?

(24 We like to keep our devil in the movies, don't we? We don’t want him prowling around like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. We don’t want Satan to be an angel of light, blinding us to the reality of our sin nature. We want–we desire–the sin he tempts us with! Right? We like to sin! And that’s the real truth! Because there is pleasure in sin for a season, isn’t there? But James said this in James 1:13-15 (KJV)

13 Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evilc, neither tempteth he any man: 14 But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. 15 Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.

(25 And we are all in the same boat! All of us sin because we are sinners. The predicament of mankind is that we don’t become sinners when we sin, we sin because we are sinners. And that was true even before God gave Moses The Ten Commandments, right?

(26 What does Paul mean, though, by verse 13? In v. 12 two crucial points are made: one, that death is the result of sin; and two, that the death everyone experiences is the result of the sin of one man, Adam. And the truth that death is the result of the sin of one man can be seen in the fact that some people die even though they have never sinned personally, including babies, young children, and some with mental handicaps. Thus if sin is indeed the cause of death, the fact that such people sometimes die proves that the one representative sin of Adam must be that cause.

(27 But verse 13 and 14 present some really difficult challenges for us. What is Paul talking about when he writes that sin is not imputed when there is no law? Impute means to count, to reckon, to put to one’s account. Can he mean, for instance, that God will not judge the sins of people who came before the giving of the law to Moses? That’s not possible, is it? After all, God certainly judged the world during the great flood of Noah, didn’t He? And he certainly judged Adam and Eve. The answer, of course, is to found in defining what the law was for to begin with. The law was designed, not to show us that sin was in the world and that we should be good and not sin, but the law was delivered to Moses to make it a legal offense, to codify God’s moral commandments in a written form, to clearly demonstrate to all the world that we are all guilty, and to finally and completely drive each and every one of us to the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ!

(28 Sin and judgement existed before the law, but God did not take personal sin into account when He judged sinners until the law. He did not credit sin to one’s account. He couldn’t because there was no written law for them to transgress. But there was knowledge of wrongdoing because God had imprinted that knowledge on their hearts. And all sinned in Adam! And we all sin by choice! And death, the consequences of sin, passed upon all men, in that all are in Adam and all have sinned. The law merely revealed our utter sinfulness to us. In the beginning, when God placed man on this earth, he knew his Creator, didn’t He? Romans 1:21 (KJV)

21 Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.

(29 What do we have here? We have some powerful truth here, don’t we? Truth that is very difficult, truth that isn’t all that pleasing to us, but truth nonetheless. Each one of us in this room has an inherited sin nature. That is very bad news, isn’t it? All of us sin because we are sinners! We are not sinners because we sin. God identifies the crown of His creation, man, has being in Adam, as having a crippled and corrupted nature.

(30 But here is the glory of God’s solution: even though you cannot possibly come to God and clean yourself up, making your ownself acceptable, God has provided a way, hasn’t He? And listen guys, we need to think this one through. We are going to return to original sin in future lessons. We aren’t through with this by a long shot. But if you still think it unfair of God to identify you in the sin of Adam, how unfair is it to give sinners like ourselves the righteousness of Jesus! Because that is precisely what God did. Instead of identifying believers in the sin of the first Adam, God has identified us in the righteousness of the second Adam, Jesus. Look down at Rom. 5:17-19.

(31 Look, parts of what we have been discussing are very difficult and troubling. I know that. They are as troubling to me as they might be to some of you. But God has provided a way, hasn’t He? What is that way? Jesus! Can you see how glorious the Gospel is? Can you understand the marvelous nature of the good news? Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, came into this sin-soaked world, lived a perfect life, thereby becoming the perfect sacrifice for sin, died a horrible death on the cross for our sin, not His, rose in glory on the third day, overcoming both sin and death, and then ascended back to the Father where He ever makes intercession for all those who have placed their trust on Him! And it is all given as a gift!

(32 Do you know Jesus this morning? John 14:6 (KJV)

6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

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