In this sermon, the preacher focuses on two key verses from the Bible, Romans 5:18-19. These verses highlight the impact of one man's actions on all of humanity. Through Adam's disobedience, sin and condemnation entered the world, affecting every person. However, through Jesus Christ's righteous act, the free gift of justification and righteousness is made available to all who have faith in Him. The preacher emphasizes that while everyone has the opportunity to become righteous through Christ, it ultimately depends on each individual's choice to accept this gift. The sermon also addresses the topic of death, explaining that it was never part of God's original plan and is seen as an intruder in human existence. The biblical solution to sin and death is not to redefine or ignore them, but rather to receive a new nature through regeneration and to trust in the real solution provided by God.

All right, Romans chapter 5, and we are going to look at the remainder of the fifth chapter, picking up in verse 12. Now in the 11th verse, Paul says that we rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation. And in verse 12, he goes on to basically expound on that whole idea of the reconciliation. That's what he's talking about here. We've received reconciliation, and now Paul is going to explain to us how it is that the reconciliation has taken place. And so let me read you verses 12 to 21, then we'll come back and we'll highlight a few of the verses. So Paul says, 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 until the law, sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned according to the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is a type of him who was to come. But the free gift is not like the offense. For if by 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. And the gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned. For the judgment which came from one offense resulted in condemnation, but the free gift which came from many offenses resulted in justification. For if by one man's offense, death reigned through the one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the one, Jesus Christ. Therefore, 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. Moreover, the law entered that the offense might abound, but where sin abounded, grace abounded much more so that as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Now, these are some real critical verses from the standpoint of theology, and the idea of original sin is actually taken from these verses here, and it's a legitimate idea, but also in these verses and particularly in the 12th verse, we have an explanation of why things are the way they are. Things that have literally been a mystery to man and still remain a mystery to many people today, we have an explanation for those mysteries right here. The two mysteries that are solved in this one verse are, first of all, the mystery of the universality of sin, the universality of sin, meaning that everyone's a sinner. Now, the mysterious part about it is simply that people haven't taken seriously what the scripture said, so they come up with all kinds of theories and ideas as to what's actually going on, but what we learn here from the scripture is that sin is universal. Sin has contaminated everybody, so that's addressed here in this passage, and then secondly, the mystery of the universality of death, and of course, the universality of death is a little more easily recognized. I think it's pretty easy to recognize the universality of sin, but of course, some people live in denial of it and don't want to think that that's actually the case, but you can't really get around death, can you? Death is a universal reality, and nobody escapes it. Now, the question is this, why? Why is there this universal experience that everyone's a sinner, that everyone falls short of a standard that they themselves know is out there, even though they might try to deny its existence, they know it's out there, and at times, they will betray that by saying certain things that indicate that they know it's out there, but they will in themselves experience a sense of guilt and a sense that I ought to have done something that I didn't do or I should not have done something that I did. It's a universal experience. Everyone does something that they themselves believe to be wrong, and they do it consistently. That's a universal fact, and then of course, everyone dies. Now, there are two explanations given for this. There are two categories that you could divide the explanations into. There's the naturalistic category, and then there is the biblical category, and of course, the biblical category would be a scriptural explanation for these things, which we have right before us, but then we have to deal constantly with the attempt from the naturalistic realm to explain these things, and most of us, we grow up being influenced by that and being inundated with that, and there are attempts made to convince us that the naturalistic explanations are the only valid explanations. Now, naturalistic explanations are explanations not based upon the scripture, but rather based upon man's philosophies, including science. So, let me give you a couple of examples of the naturalistic explanations for both the universality of sin and the universality of death. The naturalistic explanation for the universality of sin is simply to say, well, there's two things. On the one hand, there's the attempt to just dismiss the whole idea of sin at all, just to say that there is no such thing, and we see that radically invading our culture and becoming very pervasive in our culture through the philosophy of relativism. Relativism basically, in the end, says there's no sin, because in the end, relativism says there's nothing right or there's nothing absolutely wrong. There are no absolutes. It's all relative. If you think it's right, then it's probably right to you. If you feel it's wrong, then okay, it can be wrong for you, but don't try to impose that view on somebody else. That's just your opinion. So, that's one way of trying to deal with this universal phenomena. Another way is to say that, well, you know, man has never been perfect, and he's in a process of evolving, and he's sort of in a transitional stage now, you know, developed originally from the animal kingdom, and is, you know, progressing, but he's in this mode right now where he still has some of his animalistic tendencies. And they will actually say that you can't say a person is necessarily bad, but what you probably would say is that they simply lack good qualities. That is a philosophical explanation for what we call the universality of sin. Now, when it comes to the universality of death, there is the naturalistic explanation for that as well. It's kind of hard to deny the reality of it. So, what they tend to do is try to downplay the seriousness of it. And so, they put forth the idea that, you know, death is just part of the circle of life. Just like everything around us, we see that life begins, it develops, it grows, it matures, it blossoms. And then, having reached its peak, it begins to then wear and decay until eventually it dies. We see it all around us in nature, and of course, it happens to human beings as well. But don't be dismayed. There's a positive side of it. When you do die, your body decomposes. You go back into the earth and various chemicals are released to help in the life process for other forms of life. And so, it's not that bad of a thing. You get to become fertilizer. You know, it's really not all that bad of a thing. And this is a naturalistic explanation. Death always has been, always will be, and it's just part of the circle of life. And of course, we need to just adjust to it. Now, looking at the naturalistic explanations, I think that serious questions arise when you look at these attempts to answer these questions. In regard to the universality of sin, you have to ask the question, well, if there is no absolute standard, or if man was never in a perfected state and is now in a fallen state, how come every man, woman, and child in every nation, and from every culture, and regardless of their creed, how come everyone has that same sense of having fallen short of a standard? How come everybody has that same sense of, I ought to have done this, or I should not have done that? Now, anthropologists, sociologists, people like that will come along and say, well, all of this is just a result of the cultural influence, or the influence in the home that they experienced as a child. You know, Freud said that what happens to a person in their youngest stages of life sort of determines who they are for the rest of their life. And so, if you teach children that there's absolute right and wrong, then they grow up feeling guilty if they violate those mores that you established, and that's pervasive. That philosophy has been passed on from Freud, and it's very pervasive in our culture today. But again, the reality is, even in cultures, where certain things that are wrong are not believed to be wrong, people who do those things know that they are wrong. You see, the culture teaches them it's perfectly right and legitimate to do this. So, immediately, you have to say, well, it's not the cultural influence, then. There's another factor here. There's something else that's influencing them. When Frank drowns the missionary to Ecuador, shared with us a few weeks back, he told the story of, in that culture that he went to minister in, they were involved in revenge killings. And what would happen is, among the tribes, the witch doctors were, you know, very much a part of that tribal life, and they were believed to have power and be responsible for a lot of things. And when a person in the tribe would die an untimely death, the witch doctor from another tribe would be blamed. And so, they just had this constant, ongoing revenge killing thing, where they would go from one tribe and family and witch doctor to another, and they'd kill these guys. And one particular story that Frank tells is how this certain witch doctor, they believed that he had put a hex on somebody, and that's why they died, so they went out and they killed this guy. And not only did they kill these witch doctors, but they would cut off their heads and shrink their heads and put their heads on their belt. So, Frank's telling us the story about the guy who, after they had killed the witch doctor, the guy who was taking off his head, later described to Frank how terrified he was while he was doing that. And Frank asked him, he said, what were you afraid of? Why were you terrified? There was no one there, you had killed him, you and your band of men, and there was nobody to threaten you. He only had two women helpers and they had fled, so you weren't in any danger. Why were you afraid? And the man said, I was afraid because I knew that what I was doing was wrong. Now, the interesting thing is, that was not part of his upbringing. He was not taught that that was wrong. From the time he was a little child, this has been going on for centuries among these tribes. From the time he was a little child, he was taught this is what you do. You take vengeance, you go out and revenge your family members, you kill these people. But he said he knew inside of him that what he was doing was wicked. You see, that's that the universality of that sense of being wrong and having guilt. You can't really explain that through naturalistic approach to things. And then, of course, when it comes to the universality of death, if it is just part of the circle of life, then here's the big question. Why do people dread death? Why do they fear it? Why do they live in anxiety over the prospect of it? Why do they grieve as they grieve when a person dies? I mean, think about it. People are pretty adaptable. You know, we're able to adjust fairly well. You see people make all kinds of amazing adjustments. You know, once in a while you'll see a show on TV or something where a guy, maybe he's a, you know, I remember seeing a thing a while back where a guy was born without legs and, you know, little stumps for arms and, you know, just an unbelievable situation. But he was number one wrestler in his school and, you know, straight-A student and college graduate. You know, all of these things he did. I mean, it's just unbelievable. But you look at it and think, wow, this is some serious adaptability here. We as people can adapt to things, even very difficult things. But think about it. We've never adapted to death. Doesn't matter who you are, what culture you're from, when somebody dies, that is a bad thing. That is something that shouldn't have happened. And it's something that strikes grief into your heart and it's something that you don't just get over overnight. If it was a natural occurrence, if it was just part of the circle of life, we surely would have been able to accept it by now. But we can't accept it. And to me, that says that the naturalistic explanation is not the explanation. It's not the right answer to the problem. And, you know, the reality is these naturalistic explanations, they might satisfy you if you're sitting in a lecture hall at Harvard or Yale or, you know, Oxford or Cambridge or something. But when you get out into the real world and you start experiencing the reality of sin and you come face-to-face with the reality of death, this is a fact. You want to know something more than the naturalistic-minded people are able to offer you. I had the amazing experience quite a few years ago now of performing a funeral for a professor, a biology professor, from a college down in San Diego where I was living at the time. He had died of cancer. His brother was a good friend of mine and so asked me to do the funeral service for him. They had grown up as believers together, but at a certain point in time, his brother embraced evolution and ultimately embraced sort of an atheism and lived his entire professional life as an atheist. A month before he died, he rededicated his life to Jesus Christ. Well, I again was called upon to do the funeral and the entire faculty of the college attended the funeral. The president, the dean, many of the professors, you know, all of them master degree, PhDs, whatever the case. And so I took advantage of the opportunity and I kind of set the stage by talking about those naturalistic sort of explanations for death. And it was a great opportunity because I said, but you know, right now, I think you would all admit that those don't really satisfy. Because as I look at you, I see tears in your eyes and I see that you're grieved and I see that you're troubled. And I see that you yourself sense that something's not right here. And then I just said, and you know what? You're right. Something is not right here because death never was intended. It was not to be part of the picture. And the reason why we cannot adapt to death is because we were never meant to experience it. It's an intruder. That's what the Bible tells us right here in Romans 5, 12. Death invaded. It came in from the outside. And that is what Paul is talking about here. And so the biblical explanations I think are far more believable than the naturalistic ones. In regard to man's inclination toward evil rather than good, the universality of sin, Paul tells us by one man, sin came into the world. Now, sin here means a new reigning principle has come into the life of man. It's a principle of rebellion. And that's what happened. Therefore, just as through one man, sin entered the world. Sin entered in an active, positive sense. Sin does something. It's not merely the lack of good qualities. That's a naturalistic explanation. No, you can't say that's wrong or that a person's a sinner. You just might say that they lack good qualities. Who in their right mind would say that Adolf Hitler was not an evil man. He just lacked good qualities. But that's what you would have to say if you really embrace this. So Paul tells us that sin came in. Now, there was a time when man lived in the world without sin. God created man. He created in his own image. And you know the story from Genesis. God looked at everything. He said, it's very good. But something happened. Sin invaded through the original sinner. The devil influenced man. Man rebelled against God, submitted to the devil. And immediately this new principle of evil began to work in man. Man became a sinner and then passed that sinful propensity onto his descendants. That's the biblical explanation for why everyone in the human race is more inclined toward evil than good. Now, why do we all die? For the very same reason. Because just as by one man's sin entered into the world, death came through sin. So death is just not part of the cycle of life. Death is an intruder. But we have to understand that death is the penalty of sin. Death came as the penalty for sin. It's the judgment upon sin. Now, I want you to notice something here. This section of scripture, we could literally take three, four weeks on it. Because there's so much stuff here. But we don't have the time to do it. But I do want to draw something to your attention. Now, Paul tells us that it was with one man. And of course, he's speaking of Adam. I think we all realize that. It's with one man that sin came. And then what resulted from sin was death. So here Paul tells us that sin and death are connected to one another. That death is the result of sin. Which then would stand to reason that before sin, there was no death. Now, here's a problem. When Christians, well-meaning, but I think misguided. When Christians embrace naturalistic philosophies and try to incorporate them into the Christian faith and amalgamate them, you know, make them work together, they end up with serious problems. When Christians adapt portions of evolutionary theory and try to accommodate evolution into the biblical picture, it totally messes things up. Because of course, evolution teaches that there's millions and billions of years. And there's all kinds of death in the fossil record and all of that. And then of course, man doesn't even come onto the scene until relatively recently. But if it was through sin that death came, how do you explain all of this death existing in the fossil record, if indeed this goes back millions or billions of years? And the whole thing becomes totally convoluted and totally contradictory to the scriptures. The scriptures say that death is a direct result of sin. So this is what we know. If there's dead things in the fossil record, the fossil record isn't millions or billions of years old. The fossil record can't be any older than the guy who brought death into the world, which was Adam, the first man. And you know, I'm sure that history as we know it, actual history only dates back there. There's some debate, but the closest that secular people will acknowledge is probably 8,000 years. Some will stretch it out to 20,000 years of recorded human history. Most people agree six to 10,000 is about as far back as you can go. Everything else is what you call prehistory. And that goes back according to them, millions or even billions of years. But all you have for actual history is just about what we have in the biblical record. Actual history goes back just about six, 8,000 years. And beyond that, it's all just, it's a guess. I like to read history books and every history book I get, they have the first chapter is prehistory. And it's hilarious to read the first chapter of these books because it will, it depends on the author. Some have a very fertile imagination. Some aren't as, you know, as capable of painting a picture of the prehistoric world, but they all go into all of the speculation and everything. And then they start, you know, somewhere six, eight, 10,000 years ago in the Mesopotamian valley. And then they start their historical record from there. But God's word says that death did not exist before Adam and death is the direct result of Adam's sin. So death and sin are connected to one another. Death is the byproduct of sin. Now, looking at the, the two explanations, the naturalistic and the, and the biblical, I think, and most of you guys would agree with me, I'm sure that the biblical explanation is really just a better explanation. It's, it's really a better explanation for anybody with an open mind. I've been reading this really interesting book. It's fascinating. It's called the question of God and it's written by a Harvard professor and he's a psychiatrist and it's actually, he's an expert on Sigmund Freud and C.S. Lewis. And he's created for the past 15 years, he's done this class at Harvard where he creates a debate between these two men based upon their writings, based upon their letters, based upon interviews with friends and family members and all that. He's created a debate between the two men. The two men never actually met and debated one another, but they, Lewis definitely made references to, to Freud and many of his writings. And perhaps Freud at times would rebut things C.S. Lewis said. But he's, he's put this debate together and it's really fascinating. I don't know anything about the author, whether he's a Christian or not, but he certainly comes out on the side of C.S. Lewis almost on every occasion. And he basically says, Lewis simply has the better explanations. And of course, Lewis's explanations are biblical explanations. That's what he's giving. And I think any, any person who will really look at the issues, I think would have to draw the same conclusion. The biblical explanations are better. Now, not only does the Bible give an explanation, but the Bible gives a solution. Now the naturalists give explanations as well, but the problem with the naturalist is they really don't have any solutions. Now with the naturalistic perspective, if, if you were to ask them, well, what is the solution to the problem say of evil? Well, the philosophical explanation would be two possibilities. I already mentioned the one we just change or redefine things. We do away with things. And in the process we eliminate evil that way, but we don't really eliminate evil. We just change the name of it. We call it good rather than evil. You know, it's funny sometimes having lived in Europe for a while and having traveled in Europe a lot over the years, I will hear people a lot of times talk about, Oh, European culture. And Oh, did you know that in Sweden, they have no crime. But did you know that in Switzerland, they have a perfect society and all of this stuff. And I I've been to those places, you know, and, um, you know, what they've done in many of these places is they've just simply changed the rules. We don't have a drug problem in our country because, uh, we just legalized drugs. And now we have no more drug problem. There's no crime at all here. Come over here. We'll give you the needles. We'll give you the heroin. We'll give you the pot, whatever you want. And we can say that we have, uh, a drug free society. Oh, we don't have any problems with, uh, rape or anything like that. We just legalized prostitution and you know, that's the way they deal with it. Well, that's no solution. That's just whitewashing the issue. The other is to say, well, we're, we're evolving, we're evolving, and we just need to wait. Could take millions of years because evolution is so slow. It's imperceptible. Um, so that doesn't really hold out a whole lot of hope for us and our generation. We, we can't really expect anything to change. So the reality is this is no solution at all. It's ridiculous. And of course, when it comes to the naturalistic or philosophical solutions to death, there's simply no solution whatsoever. Nothing. Just as I said earlier, an attempt to downplay the seriousness of the matter. But when you come to the Bible, the Bible has a solution to sin. Bible has a solution to this problem of human tendency toward evil rather than good. The Bible solution is regeneration. God will give you a new nature and it actually happens. This professor that I was telling you about who wrote this book also has done as part of his class project, he has done an evaluation of several students on his campus who have gone through a conversion experience. And Freud said that conversion was, what was the term that he used? Uh, a person who had a religious conversion it was hallucinatory psychosis. That's what he, you know, anybody who claimed to have a religious conversion was a person who was hallucinating. So this guy takes what Freud says and asks the question, can that really be stated regarding these people? And he went through this, uh, experiment with all of these students that had a conversion experience while they were attending the university there. And he showed how in virtually every case where there was, uh, the, you know, claim to a conversion experience and a following through with that, that in every single area, that person's life improved. They improved morally, they improved academically, they improved relationally. And he basically just said, you know, empirically, the, all of the evidence is in support of the reality of this conversion. And that's of course what the Bible has to offer. The biblical solution to sin is not to redefine it or to ignore it. The biblical solution is to impart a new nature, to regenerate, to give a new life. That's what God does. And then of course the biblical solution for death is a real solution. The Bible never at all attempts to downplay the seriousness of death. It is the most serious issue of all, of course, connected with sin. The Bible says death is the great enemy, the last enemy. The Bible never downplays the seriousness of death, but what it does tell us is this, but now Christ is risen from the dead and he's become the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since by man came death, by man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as an Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive. So I think the Bible offers a far better explanation for these two realities, the universality of sin, the universality of death, a far better explanation and only the scriptures offer a real solution. Humanism, secularism, naturalism, however you want to label it, there is no solution and there are poor to say the least explanations. So here Paul tells us that it was through this one man that sin entered into the world. Now here's a question and people have asked this, how could that be fair? How could one guy sin and everybody else, you know, sort of have to bear the brunt of it? And people have often suggested that there was some unfairness with God in this. Now notice he says just as through one man sin entered the world and death through sin and thus death spread to all men because all sinned, because all sinned. Now when Paul says because all sinned, he does not say because all have sinned, referring to our personal sins, which is true, we all have sinned, but did you know that that's not the reason why you are condemned? It adds to the reason, but the reason that a person is condemned is because of what Adam did. That's what the Bible teaches. And so people have, and I think there's some validity to it, ask the question, well how could that be right or how could that be fair? But you see what we have to understand is that Adam was what we would call the federal head of the human race. Adam was the representative of the entire human family. And so appointed as head or representative of his seed, Adam acts on behalf of his seed. And then his seed, who we happen to all be, inherit or have passed on to us the fruit of his actions. Now you might say, I don't like that. And guess what? Too bad, that's the way it is. That's the way it is. But you know what, that's the way it is in a lot of different areas in life, isn't it? Well you just think of human history. What you've generally had in all of human history is you've had groups of people with somebody ruling over them or leading them or being in a place of authority to some extent. And in those cases, generally speaking, that authority figure acts on behalf of the rest of the people. We have it in our own situation here. Those young guys over in the Middle East fighting did not make the choice themselves to go fight. Somebody made that choice for them. The President and the Congress made a decision, we're going to do this. And these guys happen to have to comply with it because they're part of our military. And if there would come a point when the government would say we need more people in our military, we're going to institute a draft. And then a whole lot of people that didn't want to have anything to do with anything like this would end up over there, but they have no power against it really, because why? Other people in authority are acting on their behalf. That's the way it's always happened throughout all of history. It's just the way life is. And you trace it all the way back to the very beginning and that's exactly what happened back there. Adam is the first man. He is the federal head of the human race. And when Adam acts, he acts on behalf of all of us. So when Adam sinned, we all sinned right along with him. We all sinned in him. We were in his body, so to speak. And in that sense, we partook of his action. But you see, here's the thing, and this is what Paul does throughout the chapter. He shows that it's on that same basis that God undoes what Adam did. You see, Adam did something that none of us could undo. All of us collectively could never undo it. One man acted and it's irreversible, at least from our point of view. What does God do? He sends another man. And now this other man acts as well. And his act is imputed to us, just like the act of Adam was imputed to us. So the act of Christ is imputed to us. But of course, there's the one hitch, and that is belief. We must believe that what Christ did, he did on our behalf. And that's what the apostle is explaining in this sixth chapter. And he's making an interesting contrast and comparison between Adam and Christ. In verses 15 and 16, he basically says, Adam equals death, Christ equals abundance of grace. Both acted on behalf of others. And Paul here, he says an amazing thing. He says, now, condemnation came upon all through one unrighteous act. But justification comes to all through many offenses. Now, notice what he's saying there. He's saying, it's just the one act that God accounted that condemned us all. Just think if God took into account every act. If God took into account every act, we couldn't even imagine the impossibility of the situation. You see, but with Jesus, it's a different thing. God justifies us not for one act, but for every act. You see, because in the end, yes, Adam's sin condemned me initially, but I've made my contribution as well, haven't I? We've all made our contributions as well. We've come into the world in a fallen state as sinners, but we've sinned by choice as well. And even when we came to understand that this was wrong, and we came to realize that we shouldn't do certain things, what did we do? We did them anyway. And often we continue to do them, and some are still continuing to do them. So he's showing that the doctrine of imputation that we've already talked about, God imputing righteousness, is something that applies both ways. It applied from Adam to us and caused us to be sinners, but it applies from Christ to us, and it causes us to be righteous. Verses 18 and 19 are such tremendous verses. Therefore, 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. And verse 19, if you want to have a summary of the gospel, here it is right here. This is the gospel in a nutshell. For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one many will be made righteous. You see, Paul is just again sort of elaborating even further on this whole idea of justification by faith. We're justified by putting our faith in the act of one man, that man being Jesus Christ. He acted on our behalf. And so just as Adam acted and everybody became sinners, Christ acted and everybody can become righteous, but of course not everybody will become righteous because man's left with a choice. Because Adam made a choice. You see, Adam was not made a sinner, was he? He made a choice, and God has arranged it that we would also have to make a choice. Man collectively in Adam made a choice to walk away from God. Men individually have to make a choice to return to him. God has made it possible for all men, just like all men were lost in one, he made it possible for all men to be saved in one, but only through the one, the one man, Christ Jesus. And then Paul goes on, and the last part here is so wonderful, where he says, moreover the law entered that the offense might abound. You see, he's still dealing with the same issues and he's going to continue to deal with them. Remember the Jew, okay, now what about the law? We're still a bit confused about that or we're not sure. The law entered that sin may abound. The law came in to show what sin is, and when the law came in all of a sudden, oh my, there's so much sin. We didn't realize there was as much sin as there is because we didn't know that necessarily specifically that these things were not to be done. But here's the great news, but where sin abounded, grace abounded much more. Where sin abounded, grace abounds much more. So what Paul is saying is that God's grace is greater than sin. God's love is more powerful than sin, and all that was lost to sin can be won back through Christ. And then he says, so that as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Sin has reigned. How do we know sin has reigned? Death. Every tombstone is a monument to sin. Every graveyard is a monument to sin. How do we know sin reigns? Because death is the proof. You see, death is, you know, to me, if you think about this, death itself is a powerful apologetic for the reality of Christ. How do you really explain death? What is this thing called death? There is no naturalistic explanation that satisfies. The only satisfactory answer is that death is an intruder. It's not supposed to be part of this. It doesn't make any sense. You see people cut down in the prime of life or a young life and it's taken. What is that? Everybody knows intuitively that should not have happened. You know, even when a person, even when a person is in their 80s or sometimes 90s and they pass away, you know, there's that grief, there's that sadness. How is that? You think, my goodness, they were almost 100 years old. What do you expect? Oh, I don't know. I just expect them to live longer. Okay. I understand that. That's the way it is. Death has reigned or sin has reigned and death has been the proof of that. But here's the beauty of it all. Grace is now beginning to reign through righteousness. And we see in the transformation of human lives. We see that demonstration righteousness in a life is evidence of God's grace. And one day all the graveyards will be emptied out and there will be no more death and righteousness will reign forever. And so Paul will go on now to explain himself because he says we're sin abounded, grace abounded, much more people think, oh, I guess Paul means that we should sin more and we can get more grace. No, that's not the case. And we'll talk about that in our next study. And in the next couple of studies in the sixth chapter here of Romans, this is going to be a really key and critical time in our study through Romans. I would encourage you guys to make sure you're here. And even some of the stragglers, some of the guys that have dropped off, maybe get them back in here because this we're going to be dealing with, with verses that the potential is here for that kind of transformation that God is really wanting to work in our lives. You know, I've shared this before, but I'll say it again. We just see over and over again. So often we're seeing people who are professing Christ and believing in Christ to a certain degree, but there's no power in their life. There's no transformation. There's no victory over sin. There's no real sense of a new creation. And that's not good. That's wrong. It's not right. And we really need to get back to that place where we're understanding that Jesus came to destroy sin. He came to take me out of sin. He came to make me into a new person. He came to give me a new life. And if that's not what I've got, then I don't have what he came to give me and I need to get it. And Romans 6 will give us the key to that. So we don't want to miss that. Lord, thank you for the truth. And we think of how you said, Jesus, that you would know the truth and the truth would set you free. And Lord, these great truths of why there's sin and why there's death, Lord, they're so liberating. They're so free to know these things, to have these great mysteries solved so beautifully and simply. And Lord, to have that kind of confidence, Lord. And thank you that, Lord, we know more than the ancients. We know more than our teachers because we've taken heed to your word. And a man with a Bible who's serious about you and your word has a much better perspective on reality than a man with 20 letters behind his name. Thank you, Lord, for the truth. And may it resonate in our hearts, we pray in Jesus name. Amen.