Death and Life

So I got productive yesterday and posted two blogs, and I'm still posting one today. Be excited at my work for yinz.

Read Romans 5.12-21.

Everything was great after the 6th day of creation. It was even better after the 7th when God created rest. But weeks, months, maybe even years later things got broke. Sin entered into the world, and spiritually death ran rampant throughout the earth, and we've been in a decline ever since.

We see in this passage that Paul talks about this very issue.

Sin came into the world through one man, death came through sin, and death spread to all men, because now all sin. See the circle? And sin was there even fore the Law, because sin is what goes against God's will, and God's will has always been there. But before there was Law, a set list of things to do and not do, sin can't be counted against those who sin because they don't know the Law.

I've been living in PA for a while now, and I know in some ways their traffic laws are different then they are in Ohio. So if I get pulled over for breaking a PA law that's different than Ohio's, and I didn't know it existed, am I able to receive a ticket for it? Personally I say yes, because if I move here I should take the time to look up how things are different than in Ohio. But would a cop let me off with a warning? Well I hope, I don't have money for a ticket and I don't know the law. In the same way, Paul writes that if someone doesn't know the law, or if the law isn't even in existence yet, they their sins against the law can't be counted against them.

So if there was sin before the Law, what does that do for the results of sin? Well death still reigned from Adam on because while there was no Law, there was still God's will, which is to have good relations with him and those around us. Just because we Fell does not mean that the commands that God gave Adam and Eve were made invalid. We were still to subdue the earth and take care of it, that just got harder because of the curse. an we were still to obey God, and we see that means giving him our best as seen in Cain and Abel's sacrifices to him, and that we're supposed to have good relations with those around us, as seen in the punishment of Cain for killing his brother. Because of these things that God wanted us to do, there was still sin in the world. And sin, death has reigned in the lives of men from Adam to Moses.

Something interesting here that's kind of off topic, but really interesting, at the end of 14 we see, "...of Adam, who was a type of the one to come." What does this mean? #icanteven (am I doing this white girl thing right?). Here's what I see in this partial sentence. Looking at the genealogy of Jesus in Luke 3, we see that if ends with "Adam, the son of God." Adam was the first human ever, and being which can be called the son of God. Well Paul says that Adam was a type of the one to come. The one to come I think we can all agree on that this means Jesus. And who is Jesus? The true son of God, the son that God begat, not made, but begat. C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity talks about the word "begat" (most of you will recognize it in the form of "begotten" think John 3.16 KJV), and of it he says that begetting something is making something of the same as the maker of the thing begat. We have a child who has no physical or mental issues that the parents also don't have, they begat that child. So God had created Adam, and Adam can be defined as a son of God, and the one who is to come is a type of a son of God. More accurately, Adam is the type of a son of God, and Jesus is the true son of God, God's only begotten son. That's really all for that...but for me that was interesting and I thought I'd share that with you.

Paul then talks about "the free gift." Well what free gift is he talking about? All we've talked about in this passage thus far is death because of sin. Well looking at the passage before, which is relevant because 1, it's in the same chapter, and 2, it's the same book, so therefore it applies to this, we can assume that this "free gift" can be peace with God, his grace, our justification by the grace of God. So this free gift, this peace, is not like how it worked with the trespass.

One trespass, one sin led to the death of all people, and for many they never repent and this leads to a permanent death. But many more shall be saved by God's grace, his free gift. And this grace came through one man for all, just as death came through one man and effected all. But again, the gift and the trespass are not the same. One sin, one trespass leads to condemnation, leads to a guilty judgment against us. But the free gift will justify us no matter the number of trespasses. This again leads us to the true meaning of grace. One trespass leads to death. Grace outweighs all trespasses. Think about how great that is and what that really means.

One trespass leads to death for all. And one act of righteousness leads to justification for all. But it is not our act of righteousness, because our righteousness does not come from us, as we'll see later, but instead it comes from Jesus. It is Jesus' act of righteousness that leads to justification for all.

Over all this entire passage is about how through Adam death came to all, but through Jesus life came for all.

So I encourage you to die to sin, and come alive in Christ. Which we will be looking at even more tomorrow.