Adam Bomb

Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned... For if by the one man's offense death reigned through the one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.

How could one Man, on one day, doing one work, save all of humanity? Paul answers by pointing back to the man who damned us all.

A Reason to Rejoice

The book of Romans is a powerful book, sometimes called the gospel according to Paul. In our last study we considered three reasons we have to rejoice because of the work Jesus has done for us. The word rejoice appears three times: we rejoice in hope (verse 2), we rejoice in tribulation (verse 3)—the one that's a little hard to swallow—and we rejoice in God (verse 11). Jesus has made it possible for fallen sinners who were once at odds with God, His enemies, to rejoice in the hope of being glorified in His presence one day.

But this message of hope in the finished work of Christ flies in the face of all human religion. Religion, based upon the efforts of man, is always focused on what we can do to make ourselves right with God—some ritual, some good work, some religious observance, at the very least some personal sacrifice so that God accepts us. Yet here in the second half of Romans 5 we are confronted with a glorious reality: one Man, by one work, at one time, makes the way of salvation open to all who believe.

Religious or Spiritual—Still Trying to Earn It

The scheme of human religion has always been, "If I am going to be right with God, it must be by something I have done, or by some list of things I don't do." In our 21st-century Western culture it's no longer hip to be religious, so people have substituted the word spiritual. In the middle of the 20th century, many thought science would answer all the big questions and we wouldn't need religion. But in our Postmodern era people recognize that science and technology, though good, do not answer the deep philosophical questions of life.

So people say, "I'm not really religious, but I'm very spiritual." That spirituality may be no more than a yoga class, or following Oprah. And spiritual people tend to think they're also good people, following some ethic—either their abstinence from something or their adherence to something. But Paul has masterfully shown in the opening chapters of Romans that our abstinence and adherence will never make us right with a holy God.

At Just the Right Time

Look back at verse 6: "For when we were still without strength, in due time"—at just the right time, as the New Living Translation puts it—"Christ died for the ungodly." I love stories where the hero comes in at just the right time, and so does Hollywood, because it's profitable. I couldn't get the opening of Toy Story 3 out of my mind: Woody trying to rescue the little troll dolls as the train careens off the cliff. He pulls the brake too late, the train goes over the edge, and you think all hope is gone—then a blue explosion appears. It's Buzz Lightyear's jet engines. He holds up the train, "To infinity and beyond," and saves the day at just the right time.

Paul shows the scenario is desperate and bleak. "All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." "There is none righteous, no, not one." "The wages of sin is death." We are all on the train headed toward the cliff of death and ultimate doom—and then, at just the right time, "Christ died for the ungodly." That doesn't make sense. Jesus said, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man would lay down his life for his friends." But Jesus died for the ungodly, those who, according to Romans 1:18, are under the wrath of God.

Verse 9 then says, "Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath." Wrath was coming to the ungodly, but Jesus died for the ungodly, so we can be saved from wrath through Him. The last word of Jesus on the cross, tetelestai, "it is finished," is an accounting term meaning Paid In Full. One Man, at one time, by one act has paid the price in full for the sin of humanity.

The Inevitable Question

Paul, a Jewish lawyer, anticipates the question this great news provokes: How can what Jesus did on the cross be so effective for so many? How can the work of one Person have such an impact? Christopher Hitchens—by far my favorite atheist, who died of throat cancer this past year—is most known for his book God Is Not Great. His major issue with the Christian faith was the substitutionary death of Jesus, which he considered absolute foolishness. Twenty centuries after Paul, we are still wrestling with the same question: How could one Person, on one day, doing one work, have an effective impact on all of humanity?

Romans 5:12-21 tackles that question by contrasting the two men who have had the most impact in all human history. Many individuals have affected large segments of the population—inventors like Gutenberg, Bell, Edison, Einstein, or political leaders like Mussolini, Mao, Stalin, Hitler, or Lincoln, whose life transformed our nation. But two individuals have affected human history like no other. You would expect me to say Jesus. But you may not quickly connect that Adam has also had a monumental impact—aside from Jesus, the greatest of all.

The Adam Bomb

We know very little about Adam. He's named and described in the early chapters of Genesis, referenced a couple of times in the New Testament, and appears in genealogies most of us skip. Yet through his one act of disobedience, Adam brought sin into the realm of humanity, and with sin, death. Every single human being is affected by that. Not everyone is affected by Bell or Edison, but every human who has ever lived has been affected by Adam—what we might call the Adam Bomb. With Adam's explosion, sin enters in.

Prior to Adam's sin, there was no such thing as sin. Man was in complete harmonious fellowship with God. After Adam's sin, both sin and death entered the human realm. It's hard for us to comprehend, but there was a time when death was not a normal part of life. Death is normal to us because the statistics are staggering—10 out of 10 people die. And we die because of Adam.

Before we jump into the text, two things should be noted. First, both Paul and Jesus recognized Adam as a historically true individual—important in a day when people question whether Genesis 1-3 actually happened. Second, although this is the most-cited proof text for the Doctrine of Original Sin, the focal point of this passage is actually Jesus, not Adam. Adam is held up only as a case study to show that Jesus, by His one act on Calvary, is both sufficient and effectual in bringing salvation to sinners.

Four Truths in Verse 12

Sin entered the world through one man. "Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world." Why is the world the way it is, with such wickedness beamed to us constantly through the news, the internet, our phones? The answer is Biblical Anthropology 101: all sin came into the human realm through Adam.

Now, Adam is not the inventor of sin. Isaiah 14 reveals sin in the angelic realm before Adam—the sin of Lucifer and a third of the heavenly host. But that was in a different dimension. Physicists tell us there are more dimensions than the few we sense; one even counted at least ten in the book of Genesis. Adam is the route through which sin enters our world. God had given two commandments: "Be fruitful and multiply" (Genesis 1:28), and "of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil... you shall not eat... for the day that you eat of it you shall surely die" (Genesis 2:16-17). In Genesis 3, tempted by the serpent, Eve ate and gave to her husband, and when Adam ate, their eyes were opened, they knew they were naked, and they hid.

Sin brought death into the world. "And death through sin." They did not immediately die physically—that wouldn't come for some 900 years—but death came on many levels at once. There was a death between Adam and Eve, separated now by shame as they sewed fig leaves. There was spiritual death, a separation from God who called, "Adam, where are you?" As Isaiah 59 says, our sins separate us from God. There was the death of an innocent animal whose skins God made to clothe them. And there was death in creation through the curse.

Death is not a punishment for sin so much as the result of sin. Sin is a poison; interacting with it brings death. God's command, "Do not do this," was not Him trying to hold us back. That's exactly the lie the serpent told Eve: "You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it... you will be like God." How many of us have heard that same little voice when tempted—"God must just be trying to keep me back"? That's the devil; he's been doing it since the beginning.

Death spread to all humanity. "And thus death spread to all men." No one is exempt; 10 out of 10 people die. Yes, the astute reader will point to Enoch and Elijah—but that's two out of billions. It's been said the only sure things in life are death and taxes. You might escape taxes, though you may end up in federal prison; but not death. As one undertaker signed his letters, "Eventually yours." We are all sinners, and we all die because of the sin of one man.

This is why, sobering as it is, even some babies die in the womb—not because of their own sin or their parents' sin, but because of the sin that entered through one man. Our first baby died in a miscarriage, as have the children of many here. In Mozambique, where our friend Luke Rider ministers, they don't even name their children for the first year because infant mortality is so high. We invest so much in life, naming and painting nursery walls before birth, but death is a reality—and not because of any little baby's sin. Anyone who says such a thing, you have my permission to smack them; if they get mad, they can call me.

We sin because we are sinners; we are not sinners because we sin. "Because all sinned." All humanity are sinners not because of individual acts, but because sin entered through Adam and spread to all his descendants. The thief was a sinner before he ever stole, stealing out of covetousness and pride. The adulterer was a sinner before adultery, the murderer before murder. David said, "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me" (Psalm 51:5), and, "The wicked are estranged from the womb" (Psalm 58:3). Parents, did you have to teach your children to be deceitful, to take what wasn't theirs? You get in the car and find a toy in the backseat: "Where did you get that?" "So-and-so gave it to me." "Really?" Deception and thievery are already there. We sin because, by nature, we are sinners.

Death Reigned from Adam to Moses

Verse 13: "For until the law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed where there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those that had not sinned according to the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is a type of Him who is to come."

Romans 3:20 says by the law is the knowledge of sin, and Romans 4:15 says where there is no law there is no transgression. From Adam's fall in Genesis 3, there was no explicitly stated written law for about 2,600 years, until Moses received the Law at Sinai. During that time people lived sinful lives—they had a conscience to war against—but God did not impute that sin, because there was no law to break. Yet all of them died, even though none of them ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil as Adam had. Death reigned over all.

This makes Adam "a type of Him who is to come"—a foreshadowing of Jesus. The point is this: one man did one thing at one time that had phenomenal impact—Adam. In the same way, one Man did one righteous act at one time on Calvary's cross—Jesus—and it has phenomenal impact.

The Free Gift Is Not Like the Offense

Verse 15: "But the free gift is not like the offense. For if by the one man's offense many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many." One man, Adam, did a sinful act that affected all humanity. One Man, Jesus, did a righteous act that opens the way for all to believe unto salvation.

Verse 16 contrasts them further: Adam's one offense resulted in condemnation, but the free gift came from many offenses and resulted in justification. In Adam all died; in Jesus we have the opportunity for justification. Verse 18: "as through one man's offense judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation, even so through one Man's righteous act the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life. For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man's obedience many will be made righteous."

Here is the awesome reality of the gospel. We were all sinners before we ever did anything; our sinful acts only prove that we are sinners. Likewise, Jesus' righteous acts only prove that He is righteous—He didn't do righteous acts to become righteous; He did righteous acts from righteousness, just as we do sinful acts from sinful hearts. We are born sinners through Adam, and we are made righteous, born again, through Jesus Christ. As Jesus told Nicodemus, "That which is born of flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit... You must be born again."

Is This Universal Salvation?

So is Paul saying everyone is automatically saved—Adam sinned and all became sinners, Jesus is righteous and all are now made righteous? No. Verse 20: "Moreover the law entered that the offense might abound. But where sin abounded, grace abounded much more"—grace super-abounded. Where sin abounds, grace is greater.

Verse 21: "so that as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." Circle that word might. Here is how we answer the question of universal salvation: it comes only "through Jesus Christ our Lord." This is the third time in Romans 5 Paul uses that phrase—verse 1, verse 11, and now verse 21.

How might grace reign to eternal life? Only through the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus must become not only your Savior but your Lord, by faith. Christ means anointed Savior; Lord means Master or King. If Jesus is not your Lord, your Master and King, He cannot be your Christ, your Savior. But if Jesus, by grace through faith, has become Lord over your life, then He is also your Savior. In these three verses we have in Him justification, peace with God, rejoicing, reconciliation, righteousness, and eternal life.

Just as the one man Adam had impact on all who came after him, the one Man Jesus, by His righteous, obedient act on Calvary's cross, has effectual impact on all who believe. "For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes" (Romans 1:16). There is no other way. In Adam, all died; in Jesus, atonement has been made, righteousness extended, and eternal life lies ahead. Amen.

Closing Prayer

Father, thank You for Your great word—living, powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, a discerner of the thoughts and intents of our hearts. Thank You that You have made the way open for us to obtain righteousness that we certainly don't deserve. We thank You, Jesus, that in You we have eternal life, so we can boldly say, "O death, where is your sting; O death, where is your victory?" Death is swallowed up in Your resurrection. Thank You that we have an eternal hope, an absolute certainty that we will be with You, made citizens of heaven in You. Help us to reflect that glorious hope to those we meet in our neighborhoods, workplaces, and schools this week. Work in us, that we would shine the glories of salvation and be conduits of Your grace to others. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.