Romans 5:12-14 Adam’s Reign -Depravity and Death
The impact of "one...one...one..one...one." Eleven times it's used. Reign," r‑e‑i‑g‑n is used five times. So this one individual has a whole kingdom, he reigns over a whole dominion. Adam reigns, as it were, over the kingdom of sin and death. Christ reigns over the kingdom of righteousness and life. The word or the phrase "much more." is used five times. And it is to say that everything lost in Adam is gained and much more in Christ. We are looking then at the influence of one man so that he dominates a whole flow of human beings by his one act. Because of Adam's sin, all men are condemned. Because of Christ's obedience, all men are offered pardon.
Depravity
Coming of Sin -Sin entered the world through one man. V. 12
Adam did not originate sin. It originated in Satan prior to Adam (1 John 3:8). He learned it from Satan and introduced it into the human realm. That's why it says as by one man sin entered not into existence, but into mankind. By one man sin entered the world...not sins. It's not talking about acts, it's talking about the nature, it's talking about character, not deeds. When Adam sinned the sin principle (sin nature) entered into the human stream. And just like Adam passed on to his posterity a nose, and eyes, and ears and arms and legs, he passed on the inherited corrupting sin nature. God made us as a procreating race so that what we are is passed on to who we bear. And you have Adam and Eve, as well, sinners with a corrupting defiling sin nature in them. And when they procreate, they will procreate sinners and more sinners and more sinners and more sinners and here we are. And it all started when Adam sinned.
Three views of Our Accountable for the Sin of Adam
Realism –We were really there participating in Adam’s act. When Adam sinned he was the whole human race. He was mankind sinning. In his loins was the seed that would bring forth every human life. When he was polluted, it guaranteed that everybody born out of his loins would be polluted. The pollution intensifies through history so evil men get worse and worse. Instead of evolution it's devolution, it gets worse and worse, it's degenerating, it's breaking down. The whole of mankind was in the loins of Adam. Heb 7:9 Melchizedek was a priest of the Most High God in the city of Salem which is the ancient name of Jerusalem. He lived prior to the Israelites. He lived in the day of Abraham before Israel was a nation. Now the Levitical priesthood proceeded out of the loins of Abraham. He was one of the sons of Jacob ... Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and then Levi comes. Levi, yet unborn three generations beyond, is said to be paying tithes in the loins of Abraham. It is a Jewish concept of seeing people bound up in their ancestor's loins. When Adam sinned, just like when Abraham paid tithes to Melchizedek, Levi paid them in his loins, when Adam sinned the entire human race was duly constituted in the loins of Adam, and we sinned in Adam. We were there. 1 Cor 15:22 His is the act of humanity. He is not acting as a man. And so he's the cause of all men becoming sinners. All men inherit corruption from Adam. We were there as it were, as God views it we were there and we might as well have been there because we have inherited, “the seminal transmission” of the sin principle
Federalism Adam was the head of the human race. Adam was God’s chosen representative for all mankind. All human beings were represented in Adam. He was appointed to act on the behalf of all mankind. When Adam sinned, God counted us guilty as well as Adam. God counted Adam’s sin as belonging to us and thus Adam’s guilt belong to us. It was imputed to us or put on our account. We inherit the guilt of Adam’s sin.
Identity Theory (Johnathan Edwards) A combination of Realism and Federalism.
You were present in the mind of God in the garden. What is present in the mind of God is in fact a reality.
One argument: If is unfair for us to be represented by Adam then it would also be unfair for Christ to be our representative. “Adam out first representative sinned- and God counted us guilty. But Christ the representative of all who believe in him, obeyed perfectly- and God counted us righteous.” (Grudem). (if Adam is not a real one man whose one deed corrupted the whole race, then Christ is not a real one man whose one deed gives righteousness to those who believe)
Death
Consequence of Sin- death entered through sin. When the sin nature came so did its penal consequence death. Rom 6:23, Ezek 18:4, Gen 2:17, "You eat, you die." Death is not natural to the constitution of man as created in the image of God. God did not create a man who would die. That came as a penalty, a consequent punishment to sin. We were never made for death. That is why hell was never made for us. It was made for the devil and his angels, not for us. That was never to be our place. But when we sinned in Adam and the evil was passed on through all the generations, along with that evil came its penal consequence, death. If Adam hadn't sinned he would have been taken to heaven without ever dying. And the norm would have been Enoch and Elijah. Death came as the penalty for sin. Death then is the fruit of the poison that entered Adam's heart. And solidarity and guilt involve solidarity and penalty. Sin and death will never be separated. Adam died so everybody who comes out of Adam's loins is going to die. The consequence of sin is death. Death comes not because you commit sins, but because you bear in you a sin nature. Babies die. Why do they die? Because constitutionally they sinned in the loins of Adam and they inherited that sin nature and with it the penalty as well. And that's why death is in the world because we're born to die. You're not a sinner because you sin. You sin because you're a sinner. You're not a liar because you told a lie. You told that lie because in your heart you're a liar. You premeditated it before you ever said it.
Rom 5:19...by one man's act we have been made sinners. We didn't have a choice, we just came into the world and that's the way we were. And so death reigns over sin. Where sin reigns, death reigns. When Adam sinned he immediately died spiritually not physically. It means three types of separation or death. Physical death is separation from the living, spiritual death is separation from the living God, eternal death is eternal separation from the living God and the living who are living in the presence of the living God. When Adam sinned the consequences were passed on to every human ever born and we come into the world spiritually dead. We come into the world heading for physical death and if something doesn't happen to make us spiritually alive, eternal death. That's how it is.
Circulation of Death -death spread to all men. Death passed on all men. Death came to all men. Nobody escapes. Everybody dies because everybody sins because everybody has a sin nature because Adam sinned and introduced the whole thing and passed it on. We sinned in Adam for he was the race, the representative for all of us. Babies die, not because they commit deeds of sin but because they already sinned in Adam and they can be punished justly. We were born dead in trespasses and sin. And if we never lived long enough to commit an act of sin, we would be worthy of death because we sinned in Adam.. Our depravity, our sinfulness, our fallenness is not the result of our sinning, it is the cause of our sinning. When a baby comes into the world you don't teach a baby how to disobey. (Ps 51:5, 58:3, Jer 17:9. Job 14:4) The death of Christ legally and effectively was our death. And the sin of Adam legally and effectively was our sin. (1 Cor 15:22). We were in Adam, we are in Christ. Somehow we were in Adam when he did what he did, somehow we were in Christ when He did what He did.
Angels (1Peter 1:12), they don't fully understand God. They don't. You know what they don't understand about God? There's a whole side of God that they don't understand. This is what they don't understand. Grace, mercy, forgiveness, compassion, tenderness, they don't understand any of that. So here was this whole dimension of God that was never able to be praised and never able to be fully glorified unless God would create some people who having fallen could be redeemed, you see. And then out of their redemption would come an understanding of grace, mercy, compassion, forgiveness, tenderness, and patience We understand those well, very well.
, that's why when having redeemed us He takes the whole church and uses them to teach the angels about His manifold wisdom. Eph 3:10 Because we can fill up for their understanding that which they without us would never understand.
Command of Death -death reigns over all.
If death reigned from Adam to Moses, then death is not a result of sins, it's not a result of breaking a direct commandment, it's not a result of violating a direct statement from God because prior to Moses the law was not there. v 13 says sin can't be charged to one's account when there is no law. In other words, how can you be guilty for breaking a rule if there's no rule? From Adam to Moses there's no law and death reigns and they're not dying because they broke a law, it the sin nature that is the cause of death. So the history from Adam to Moses verifies that men die not because they do acts of sin, but because they bear an inherited sin nature within them. And they're born into the world on the way to hell. God in His marvelous mercy calls them to Himself. Adam's sin was a sin against law. But from Adam to Moses there is not a great revelation of laws. And so everybody didn't sin after the similitude of Adam's kind of sin, violating a known revealed law, but everybody died. And the conclusion then is that we die not because of acts of sin but because we bear the sin nature which ultimately kills us.
God is not doing anything other in this world than trying to call people back from death to life. That's His desire.
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