The Gift of Grace

Romans 5.12. Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. For until the law sin was in the world, but sin was not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come.

But not as the offense, so also is the free gift. For if through the offense of one, many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many. Father, we thank you for your word.

And Lord, as we read these words of Paul, we ask that as we would meditate on them this evening, that your Holy Spirit would bring this tremendous truth home to every one of us. Lord, our relationship to Adam and our relationship to Christ. Makes all the difference in the world.

And so as we study it, may you open our hearts and minister it to us. For we ask it in Jesus name. Amen.

Wonderful. Romans chapter five, as we've already read a portion of it, we'll see how far we get this evening. I'm going to attempt to finish the chapter.

We'll see. But he who aims at nothing hits it every time. So aim at something and see what happens.

But here, once again, in Romans chapter five, we have this chapter. If you've been with us the last few weeks, particularly as we've been in Romans chapter five, we have this chapter where Paul explains to us that Jesus Christ, once we have come to him, he introduces us to God as royalty. Back there, he tells us that we have access by faith and that word access prosagogue, where we get the word protocol or introduced as royalty to God.

And as we are brought before God as royalty, it isn't because of anything within us. Paul goes on to explain. There's nothing innately good or great or wonderful or attractive about us, particularly that God has chosen us and allowed us to become his own and has brought us in before him as royalty.

But as a matter of fact, Paul goes on to explain that God was fully aware when he did choose us exactly who he chose and all of the weaknesses, all of the problems and the difficulties innate within every one of us. He explains to us that we were without strength, that we were ungodly, that we were sinners. And then if that wasn't enough, we were actually enemies of heaven itself, the nature of God, the character, the person of God.

We were everything that he wasn't. But yet God was fully cognizant of all of this when he chose us, when he loved us, when he redeemed us, there was nothing so much within us. All there was was something unbelievably glorious within him.

This nature of love unknown to us, this agape love of God that is being shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who's given to us. The more we grow in him, the more we understand this love. As the years go by, you know, we start off as a Christian oftentimes thinking that God loved us, and we're grateful for that.

But that love, I believe, in reality only grows as time goes on. The greater the realization of God's patient, merciful, kind love with us for all of our lifetime, the way that he watches over and cares for us, and that love is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. But here now, if I am in fact introduced as royalty, I'm brought before God, I'm accepted before him.

He loves me this way, fully aware of all of my difficulties, my inconsistencies, my sinfulness, and my problems that are within me. That sort of brings up another problem, in a sense, another struggle there. If I'm so loved and God knows that I am this person without strength, that I am this person there who is ungodly and a sinner, and somebody there that is an enemy of the state, essentially, and yet there I am forgiven, I am loved, I'm accepted in his sight.

Why is it, though, that I'm having so many problems in battles along this journey that I'm on, on the way to heaven? What is it that's going on? Why am I not just the royalty that I supposedly am? Why don't I seem to know this very well? Why doesn't everybody know I'm royalty? And what's going on? If God states these things about me, why am I having such a terrible time embracing them and understanding them? And here Paul, he goes on in the remainder of the chapter to want to explain some fundamental truths to us. Because you see, it has an awfully lot to do with sin itself. And so he wants to go into a discussion on this.

He tells us in verse 12, he says, wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world. Here Paul, he wants to tell us there, he says, the problem that we're struggling with here is the fact that sin entered the world. You know, something that I don't think we think much about, and probably be good if we did a little bit more, but we don't seem to.

And that is that the world we're living in is a far cry from what God created, and what God designed. Have you ever been in a place that is so serene, so beautiful, so magnificent, something there that just has God's fingerprint all over it, has God's handiwork all over it, so glorious, and it's as if it's never been touched. It is something almost perhaps maybe like the Yosemite.

Maybe you've been to Yosemite, or you've been up on the mountains looking down at the Yosemite Valley in some place where you just see these gorgeous waterfalls. You see the river, you see animals, you know, walking around, and you see something that is so serene, so gorgeous, so beautiful, so magnificent. I think, you know, we live in a world that everything has just been so touched by man.

We're born in cities, and grow up in cities, and all around cities, and everything man has built, man has structures, and man's fingerprint is everywhere, but it'll never touch the serenity, and the beauty, and the magnificence of what it was that God created, and so breathtaking, so magnificent, something that we can only imagine how glorious the Garden of Eden had to be. This place, there were God literally there as He prepared it by His own hand. As He there, you know, planted it, and as He there initiated all of this, as He put Adam and Eve there in this garden, as glorious, and as beautiful, and as magnificent as was.

The Bible makes it clear there was such a place. There's no doubt in the Bible's mind, of course, whatsoever about it, and something so beautiful and so wonderful, there was one such a place, and it was creation that was simply there before sin entered. There was a time that sin was not.

It had not happened here in creation, but since that awful day, that we know through the rest of the Bible essentially, is the fall of man when sin simply entered. With that came all of the other problems of mankind, political, social, moral, physical, health, famine, pestilence. They're all a direct consequence of sin in entering into the world.

Here, when God created man, He put him there into the garden. He gave him dominion over the fowl of the air and the fish of the sea. Here, in a sense, when God created this something so magnificent, and then God had, where man was to tend it and to care for it.

Well, then Satan came into the garden, the Bible tells us. When he came, he came in as an usurper, the Bible calls him. He usurped an authority that was not his.

Through deception, the father of all liars there came in and masked himself as somebody there that could offer to Adam something that he, of course, had no equipment to fulfill, no capacity to do. But through his great lie, sin entered. And at that point, really the whole of creation, the Bible tells us, waiteth and travaileth in pain, waiting for the full redemption.

Not only did man fall, but creation fell with it. The next thing you know, literally the animal kingdom is in fear of the very ones that called them by name. And where there was this wonderful affection and harmony, no fear whatsoever anywhere in it.

And the next thing you know, the earth is bringing forth thorns and thistles and weeds are taking over and we're fighting it with DDT and everything else. And there's earthquakes and famines and pestilence. The whole world is outside of being regulated at all.

Not just simply the heart of man, but the simple fact is that sin entered into the world. And that is something there that we've got to constantly realize that is the fact of history. That's the central fact.

That is the central problem at all. Do whatever else you want to politically, morally, socially, scientifically, medically, for man or for the world, solve any of its problems. And as long as you still have sin that is entered, you've really solved nothing at all.

Paul goes on here and he tells us in verse 14, after he says sin entered, he then goes on and calls it in verse 14, Adam's transgression. In verse 15, he says he calls sin the offense. In verse 19, he says by one man's disobedience.

And here we have something that there is absolutely no way to minimize this fundamental truth. This is the great problem of all, you know, and out of this one occurrence, sin entering came all of man's problems. Every one of them.

And you take that away and history is entirely different. What a thrill and magnificent place the world would be if you could simply take out sin. And I think sometimes even we as Christians, we fail to recognize this simple fact.

All of the world's problems, all of the things that need to be done, no matter what it is that if you could do for the world, as long as there is sin in it, you can't help it in essentially as a unit, in a sense. And unless the sin that is in it is cured, to only hope for it. It's just imagine, for example, if there was a person who were cancer entered into the body, and then that cancer with time was allowed to grow.

And the next thing you know, there's brain cancer or heart cancer or lung cancer, and it's in the kidneys, and it's in, you know, the liver and spleen and, and it's, you know, throughout the body, it's in the bones, it's in the blood. And if you came along to that person that had this cancer that was throughout their body, and you were able to offer them an absolutely perfect heart or a perfect set of lungs, entirely untouched by cancer, but if you could open them up and put in a whole new set of lungs for this person that was couldn't breathe because of the, the lung cancer, you'd realize, well, that it's a waste of lungs. Until you, as long as cancer is entered, just the same thing as with mankind, sin entered.

And it is, you know, gone throughout the whole body. And no matter what transplants you do in the world, no matter what you may do with it, I mean, we, you know, something happens with Saddam Hussein, we catch him or, you know, anybody else, and we replace them with a brand new, wonderful person, you know, or something there and a fine, good old capitalist, you know, or something there. Or there probably is one somewhere, I don't know.

But anyway, but we did, but it wouldn't be long that in terms of saying, have we solved the world's problems? You'd say, of course not. And, and that's essentially here is Paul as he's looking there at whether an individual or in mankind, the result is with us individually or corporately, sin entered, it came in. And sin there, it has a terrible and a devastating result.

In verse 18, you know, Paul says, by one man's offense, many died. And he says, by one man's offense, judgment came upon all men. One person sinned.

And the result of it is, is that many died, all died essentially with him. In first Corinthians 1522, Paul adds to this, he says, all die in Adam. Here sin entered there in Adam and the moment that entered there, you know, all that were in Adam's loins, all that were yet to be born now picked up the disease.

It's now passed on to everyone that would ever come out of his loins, everyone that would ever be reproduced out of the loins of Adam and Eve. There, there were people that would have the same disease within them. Sin entered and it entered all mankind as a consequence of it.

The Bible makes that clear, very, very clear. And whether it's individually or corporately, that's what's happened to the world. Now that anger, some people, some say that isn't fair.

Some people, you know, want to go around and say, why do I have to suffer the consequences of somebody else's sin thousands of years ago? Why is it? I wasn't there. I didn't do it. I didn't have any choice in the matter, you know, and I didn't fear that I should have to suffer the consequences of it.

But we can go around and round on that, I suppose, all night long or month or year long, I suppose. And some people have done it, I suppose. But at any rate, the simple truth is after you're all said and done, far bigger than our ability to discuss it or understand it or evaluate it or analyze it, the Bible says it happened, period.

It occurred, you know, in it. And that's how it happened. One man did it and the whole world suffered the consequence.

You know, not, I don't know how many decades ago it was, but there was a fellow pretty well famous now named Albert Einstein who came up with the theory of relativity and E equals MC2 and going into the discussion out of this comes the atom and nuclear things and all sorts of other ramifications of it. And supposedly this theory was so brilliant that at the time that it came out, there was only 12 people in the world that could even understand it. And, but there it sat.

And then with time as more studied it, they came up, they thought there was about 100 who understood it. And then some of those 100 got together and began to work with it and found ways to create a weapon with some of this understanding and some of his theories. And the next thing you know, these few hundred people put together something that in 1949, 45, over Hiroshima, they dropped an atom bomb.

And the next thing you know, hundreds of millions of people were affected by what one man had entered into his mind. The whole world now had to deal with it. And to this very day, nuclear and, you know, I mean, and now the whole world has to deal with the nuclear issues, whether you want to look at any place on the planet, you want to go to the Middle East and nuclear threats, you want to go, you know, to Pakistan or throughout Asia or India.

And you want to look at North and South Korea and the nuclear thing. But it happened. It's it entered by one man.

It started there. But now the whole world, whether it likes it or doesn't like it, whether it says it isn't fair, or whatever else they want to think about it, one man brought some things upon and then somebody maybe did other things with it than he originally ever dreamed. But nonetheless, it entered.

And there it is. And now the whole world essentially has to deal with it. And essentially, as somebody once said, no man's an island.

And that's no more true than when it came down to sin. We've all sinned, sin entered into the world and affected an entire race, yet unborn. And if somebody on one hand wants to be upset about that, they can, I suppose, won't do you any good, I don't think, but you can talk about it and everything else.

But we were there. Now, the other thing is, though, even we want to be mad at Adam, but we also might realize I wouldn't have any choice or any life at all, if I wasn't in the loins of Adam as well. And therefore, I was there.

There's tremendous benefits of being there. Potentially, there's also tremendous agony, I suppose you might say. But nonetheless, here the Bible says that's it.

Those are the cards that are dealt to you, in a sense. And if you play Old Maid, then those are the cards. But at any rate, it's something where here sin entered into the world.

Well, it no sooner entered than as far as Paul is concerned, though, sin has this way of, once it gets there, I suppose, like a cancer, he tells us that it went on from there because sin abounds. And it has this way of growing. It has a progression, you know, about it.

In verse 20, it says, there moreover the law entered, and that the offense might abound. But where sin abounded. Here he tells us sin entered, and the next thing you know, after sin entering, it abounds.

That is, it exploits itself. It grows in devastating ways. And here he tells us exactly how sin abounded, in a sense, how it grew.

He says, moreover, the law entered. And in verse 20, there had always been sin, as Paul tells us, that even those that had not, you know, that had sinned in Adam, though, and he said in verse 14, nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression. Other people, you know, they're all sinners, though their sins may be different.

But here he tells us there, in verse 20, that as soon as the law entered, the law came, when God gave to Moses and to the children of Israel, when he entrusted unto them the laws of God, that caused sin to abound. And, in other words, what happened? When God gave the law to man, he says, this is what man was designed to be. These were his values towards God, his values towards one another, his values towards society.

This was his heart, this was his nature, this was his character. Throughout the Old Testament there, whether it's in the ceremonial law, the Levitical law, the judicial law, in relating one to another, and established in societies, and, of course, that's what God entrusted unto the Jewish race. All of these wonderful identities of what God created and wanted man to be in the standard that he set.

Well, as soon as you set up those standards and the law enters, immediately, he says, now sin abounded. Sin entered, but now the law even made it abound, made it much, made it stand out much more intensely, essentially is what it means there. Maybe if you, for example, you know, maybe you have a car that's, you know, five, six, seven, eight, nine years old, and it kind of looks okay, but could you imagine maybe if you took your car down to a car dealer that they were very good at what they did, and you had them paint half of your car, what would that do to the other half? Your other half would look okay, maybe, when you drove it in.

But the sin abounded, you might say, the moment perfection was laid next to it. And this is, in a sense, what happened. When man there, when he sinned, he knew he was a sinner, he knew sin had entered, but the consciousness of how devastating it was, was magnified when the law came.

It's like maybe we grow up and we know we're, you know, we're, all right, I'm a sinner, I'm a naughty kid, or I mess up, or I do whatever else, but it is something that as we grow, if we all grow with any sense of righteousness and correct living in the world, our knowledge of our sinfulness intensifies, it abounds. As soon as there's a regulatory system of how we ought to live and behave and think and function, and the more we enter into a maturity and we realize what we ought to be, we therefore realize what we're not, and sin abounds within us. And here, this is what Paul has to say, what this is, what he's telling is, here's the things you've got to recognize.

Yes, you're royalty, yes, you're to reign in Christ, yes, you're loved, yes, you're forgiven, but there are forces out there, he says, I want to explain them to you. Sin entered into the world and sin abounded there. It's something that it progresses, it took off, it became an epidemic, it's almost like, you know, again, a flu, you know, where these flus come from every year and how they get started, but they have this way of, well, the flu just doesn't just stay by itself, it just seems to like to abound, or diseases.

Now, we may not like the flu or the black plague or polio or any of the AIDS or anything else, but once they seem to get into the system of man, once they enter, they abound, they grow. So also is the same thing essentially that happens with sin. But then when sin enters and then it abounds, in verse 21, he says, as sin hath reigned, he looks now and he says, sin first had entered, then it abounded, and then it reigned.

It literally took over the throne of creation. It took over, you know, the reigns over the world. And we live, of course, in today, you know, and there never been a time, I'm sure, in all of history where sin has reigned as it is now.

The Bible tells us in the last days that the sin, you know, that will be going on in the world, the hopelessness in a sense, everywhere you go, the planet seems to be covered with political, the sin reigning as king, morally, you know, financially. It's like wherever you go, there is so much corruption that's permeated society. The hatred, the envy, the strife, the famines, the pestilence, the whole fall, the whole devastation of sin literally reigning over the world.

And Paul is saying you've got to see this to begin to better understand who you are and the battles that are around you. You got to realize this is in the world. It's not just in the world, this didn't enter.

It's abounding in the world and it is reigning in the world. And that's the way that sin is. And once it starts, somebody once said about sin, that sin will always take you where you don't want to go.

It'll keep you longer than you want to stay and it'll cost you more than you wanted to pay. And sin has this way, once we let it enter and then it has this force that just like a disease, it grows, it abounds. As it enters, then it abounds and then after it abounds, it is determined to reign.

And the same thing whether you want to look at a nation, you watch a nation go under, where sin begins to enter. We're living in a country right now where many of us that are, you know, have many years at all. There was a time when it's as if, not that we were ever a sinless country by any means, but it's as if there was a sense of the sinfulness of man or the righteousness of God and of a godly desire to be a godly nation within us.

And it had this preserving effect upon us as a country. But it seemed as if, you know, with a lot of the things going back into the 50s and in the 60s, and you can read all sorts of books on, but essentially sin entered this country in awesome ways. We took prayer out of the school, we took the Bibles out of the school, we gave abortion, let it begin to go, and we unleashed these forces of just letting something enter.

I don't believe anybody had any dream when they were just thinking they were just letting certain forces enter on how that they would abound, and then one day they would reign. We right now, we are living in a country where sin is reigning. It just isn't, hasn't just entered, it isn't abounding to where it's kind of around, hey, it's really moving.

No, it has virtually taken over most areas and segments of our political life, of our moral life, of our economic life, the selfishness, the greed, the corruption. You can't turn on a TV without watching something we're not, it just isn't entering. It is like somebody's just talking maybe about sinning on TV.

What do you think about it, folks? It's not just abounding, it reigns. It reigns on the radio. It reigns in virtually all literature.

It's with the corruption that has gone on, it's devastating in a sense of what has happened, and whether you want to look nationally or you want to evaluate it individually. When something, when we let it enter, somebody just decides, well, I'm just going to have a little alcohol, and then next thing you know, it has a way about it that as soon as it gets in, it's determined, it wants to abound, and it'll never be happy until it reigns. When somebody decides they just like a little pornography, I mean just a little, just a little peep show here and there, there they've unleashed a force that once it enters, it is going to abound, and it's going to reign within an individual life.

And here is somebody is sitting there, they're loved, they're forgiven, they're accepted by Christ, they are introduced as royalty in the midst of all of our weaknesses, and we're wondering, why am I not doing well? Paul says, well, here, I've got to tell you, there are these forces out there that called sin, and it enters, and it abounds, and it is determined to reign within your life, within the world, wherever else it possibly can. And not only, of course, does it want to get in, does it want to reign, but the consequence of that as well is that sin has a terrible consequence about it. In verse 12, he says, sin entered, and death entered through sin.

Sin has a consequence. It doesn't just simply take somebody out there, and here, just let them be an alcoholic, or let them be caught up in pornography, or let them where they're just for inevitably, eternally, caught up in sinfulness, where sin reigns. The ultimate devastation of sin entering, abounding, and reigning is it kills.

It is there to bring death. It says, death spread unto all men. In verse 14, he said, death reigned.

Interestingly enough, sin entered, sin abounded, sin reigned. He says, now, death entered, death abounded, death reigns. Right with it.

These are the consequences when somebody decides and they get around this sort of a thing. So obviously, one led clearly to the other. And you might say in one sense that this is the nature of Adam.

When Adam sinned and passed it on, every one of us were born in this scenario, where sin had entered, sin reigned, or abounded, and sin reigned, and we were totally under its power. The result, the consequence of it, it had made us there without strength, ungodly, sinners, enemies. But God, who is rich in mercy, he looks at us and says, I still have an answer for you.

You're born on death row, essentially, every one of us. We're all, you might say, just born there on death row because sin causes death. And God told Adam in the garden, the day you eat of it, you'll die.

With the sin will come the penalty, and the penalty will be death. And every child has been born, as I said, on death row. And meantime, we so often, we go through this life, we don't even think about death.

Oftentimes, that's the amazing thing about human beings. We just think, how many years do I get before I die? I want my 70 years, three score and 10. And if somebody doesn't get 70, we're upset.

Hey, they got cheated out of a few years. You get a few years more than 70, you think, hey, I'm doing all right. But the result is, you still die.

Whenever it's happened, you're going to die. Is this exciting study tonight or what? Are you glad you came? I mean, is this, you say, this is what I came here tonight to hear. And I mean, if you're over 30 or 40 years old, you're dying right now.

Right? There are forces at work within your body. They're abounding towards your death. They're waiting to reign over your death and finally, you know, pronounce you dead.

That's what's going on. It's just, I mean, but that is what's happening. But here's the amazing thing is, Paul now wants to say, but happily, wonderfully, in a sense, we don't have to go this way.

We don't have to, because he tells us in verse 15, to go back here, he says, but not as the offense, so also is the free gift. For if through the offense of one, many be dead, will much more the grace of God and the gift of grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many. Here he says now, he says sin entered, but now enter grace.

Enter. Here's Adam. Here's who he is.

Here's what he does. Here's what he's all about. Sin enters, sin abounds, and sin reigns.

Period. Death will come to Adam and all of his race. But, you know, as he says there in verse 15, but, this wonderful, you know, there, the three-letter word there, so not as the offense, so also is a free gift.

Absolutely free, this thing that enters in. If through the offense of one, many be dead, much more the grace of God and the gift of grace. He says grace enters.

And here it's something there, did another had thing entered. You know, about the same time Albert Einstein, incidentally, was doing his little thing there, and working on his theory with the atom, there was another man walking around the planet named Alexander Fleming. And Alexander Fleming was a fella who, while he was walking around, a very famous microbiologist he ends up to be, because he discovered in 1928 this thing we today, or they called it then penicillin, same thing of course, you know, but also revolutionized the world.

One man came and had a theory that was abused that brought destruction into it. Another man came that had some information that brought healing to it. Two men, in a sense there, the one of them with the atomic and nuclear capacities, another one who's probably preserved far more lives than have been lost through the atomic devastations.

Penicillin, through his offering to the world. Adam came, sin and death with him. Jesus came on the other, and along with him came something to which you can inoculate yourself with to deal with the problems essentially with Adam.

And here Paul says, and this outweighs Adam. This takes over. This he says there, for if through the offense of one many be dead, much more.

In other words, as devastating it is to be caught in this, as hopeless as it is, as terrible as it is, I've got something that's much more than that. There's a remedy that is out there. Grace has entered through Jesus Christ.

In verse 14, Paul calls, you know, here Jesus, a type of him that was to come. You know, in a sense there, that one brought death and another brought grace. One invented sin.

The other invented salvation. As Paul very simply lays it out. They're very simple.

There's two heads in history as far as the Bible is concerned. There's the head of sin and death department, and there is the head of grace and life department. And through life, I now have the opportunity to choose which one I want to identify with.

I know I can just simply be angry at this and say, I don't believe that. I don't like that. Yeah, it doesn't exist because I don't agree with it.

And it doesn't make any sense to me. Well, you can argue AIDS or polio or the flu or the bubonic plague. It isn't fair.

It isn't right. I don't like it. Or you can take and be inoculated with a cure.

And you can argue about one and all you want to, or very simply, you either take the cure or you don't. One headed up the sin department and through here in Romans five, he calls it offense, death, disobedience. And through him, all were made sinners.

And the other heads up the righteousness department, essentially, and the free gift of justification and of righteousness, as Paul writes about him, Jesus. And here he interesting and wonderfully says there, in a sense that as terrible as sin and death are, you know, they're in as hopeless and as bleak as they seem more wonderful than that. Even more, he says there, much more there, the grace of God and the gift of grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many for every sin that robs and ruins and attacks and maims and cripples.

There, there is a grace to deliver and to bless and to heal and to restore. And here Paul is simply saying now, as he's going to be taking us here into Roman six, when we get into it there on dealing with now my nature and how to deal with Adam here in chapter five, he's just simply saying, I want you to realize before we even deal with Adam and we deal with Christ and we talk about crucifying the old life being done with Adam and how to enter into a deep and abiding relationship with Christ. I get you first, we got to know they're there.

We got to realize these two men, one God man, the other fallen man are with whom we have to do in this life and who we identify with is going to be the key. Now we are going to, you know, reject one and accept the other and live as royalty in him. But first we've got to understand it.

We've got to recognize it. And that's what he's doing here and wanting to lay out for them that while on one hand sin had entered into the world as terrible as it was, you know, there are 2000 years ago, grace entered. And while sin was doing its worst thing that it possible doing grace was entering into it.

While sin was abounding and saying, crucify him. Grace was abounding and saying, father, forgive them. They know not what they do.

And here is on one hand, even look at the two thieves next to Jesus Christ. You see the effects of both one of them, two of them in Adam, both of them born in Adam, grew up in Adam, rebelled in Adam, you know, live, you know, where sin had entered sin and abound and sin reigned. And now they're dying for their sins for, you know, death is now raining within them.

And they're one of them there at a moment. He's mocking Jesus. They're not interested in identify with him.

Another one realized you came from another world. And I don't think he understood the word grace. He understood the love of God.

He understood mercy, understood forgiveness in any form of discussion theologically. But as a little child, he could look there into the face of Jesus and realize he loves me. And he can forgive me.

And what in there some, there is a piece of business that I can do with him where his love and mercy and grace can enter in and abound and reign in me. And somehow or another, with no background or understanding, in a moment's there of hanging on a cross next to Jesus, one of them where sin entered and abounded and reigned and took him to his tomb at the last moment, grace snatched. The other man is he chose not to identify with Adam when he sat there and looked over the other says, leave him alone.

He's done nothing wrong. There's something amazingly right about him. And he had to, he could look at Jesus, say, I, will you remember me when you come into your own? And he says, today you'll be with me.

The guy was a phenomenal theologian and probably didn't even know the word, but he, the greatest truth in all the world, he understood it. And he responded, grace entered, grace abounded, grace reigned and took him to heaven. That's the amazing thing.

What's Paul was somebody who spent his whole life amazed by God's grace. Paul, literally, you know, he, he said about Jesus in Corinthians, he says, Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners of whom I am the chief. He said, you want to see sin enter and abound and reign.

He said, it did in me, absolutely devastated my life entirely. In first Corinthians, even it's interestingly enough in first Corinthians 15, eight, Paul writes, and he says, and last of all, he was seen to me also as one born out of due time. The word there that he uses as one born out of due time is a word at chroma, the Greek word.

And it's where we get the word abortion. Paul said, you know, my life, I was, I was an abortion in a sense there as he, as he looked, he says, but by the grace of God, he goes in the next verse. He says, I am what I am.

And his grace, which was bestowed upon me was not in vain. He there looked at me and all of my hopelessness, my sinfulness. And I, I understood it.

I realized I died in Adam. I live in Christ. And I took him up on it.

My life was transformed. And when we realized that, that the ultimate thing, and here's where we'll hold it here this evening, that the wonderful thing is, is here. He says in verse 17, he says, for if by one man's offense, death reigned by one much more than they, which received abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one Jesus Christ.

Here he says, listen, grace, yes, sin entered, abounded and reigned, and with it death entered and abounded and reigned. But now he says grace entered and abound and reigned. And then if you go through these verses, you'll find him also say that when grace entered and abound and reigned, life entered and abounded and it reigns in Christ.

And here, the wonderful power of grace is righteousness shall reign in life by one Jesus Christ. He says, now, when I identify with Christ, and I begin to look at him, I see Adam over here. That's who he is.

That's what he did. I understand that. I was born in it.

I know I was in his loins. I'm a sinner. Don't need any education or help or training in that.

I did it. But then also to realize as I look over at Christ, there's another that stands, he looks at me. He there that and who wants to be the head by choice of my life and where he can reign in my life.

And it can be a much more as he looks there. He says much more there. He says there and receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness, which shall reign in life by one Jesus Christ.

I can reign not in death, but in life through Christ. And it's this wonderful thing there of where grace can reign in me as well. Paul's going to go on.

This is what in chapter six, seven and eight are all about. How does grace reign now that if I understand this and I realize I see it, I see it. I understand what you're talking about, Paul.

I realize there that there is a capacity for something to so reign within me of your power, of your spirit, of your grace, of your life, that I can be introduced one day as royalty. All by your work. All by you.

And this is much more wonderful than sin is terrible. Sorry about Adam. Sorry about my sin.

Extremely regretful and repentant of it. But. Through all of this, this became the threshold that introduces me to the life and the love of God.

That is magnified is, I believe, is whatever Adam and Eve. And, you know, to me again, I mean, whatever degree you might want to look at their sin. On one hand, it's it's nowhere near as wonderful or intense as the degree of I realize how great God's love is.

What Adam thought of God's love, who knows what he thought of after it sinned and God forgave him, I think was much more intense. And so also with you and me had the sin never happened. The love would never have been so glorious.

The redemption, the grace, the mercy that can reign in life. And that's something where God wants for me. He wants to bring me to a place I'll reign.

We're going to be looking at this more, but just in closing, there is a wonderful and interesting story in Judges chapter one. And in there there's after Joshua's leadership ended, there is confusion there initially in the book of Joshua about, you know, who should go and deal with the Canaanites. And the Lord chose Judah.

And then Judah went and he got Simeon along and to go help to defeat the people of Bezik. And they captured the king, Adonai Bezik. And then when they captured him, they cut off his thumbs and his toes, big toes there.

And after they did that, he commented himself in Judges 117, he says, 70 kings with their thumbs and big toes have picked up scraps under my table. Now God has paid me back for what I did to them. And big toes, as you maybe know, I mean, they give the balance and the thumb gives grip.

Here's a man, he's never going to be able to march in anything. He's never going to be able to lead anybody anywhere. And he's never going to be able to grip a sword anymore.

He's just going to kind of wobble around. But it's something there on one hand, here now is a king by name, but he's getting scraps under a table. And now he's looking there and he says, this seems to be what has happened to me.

He's still king over though a nation that isn't there to rule over. But how sad in a sense that how many of God's redeemed spend so much of their life, though on one hand, grace may have entered. One of the things that is different, and we'll see this more as we go on.

As soon as sin enters, it has a force and an evil, wicked force all of its own that it is absolutely determined no matter who you are and how strong you are and how much you try to oppose it. Sin, like a disease, it will go on to abound and it will go on to reign and it will go on to kill. Grace, on the other hand, it enters, abounds and reigns by choice.

No force. Once you accept Christ is going to make you reign with him. You can't just say, I've accepted Jesus and now I'm just going to sit here and just sit and just wait for this all the force to come over.

And my God's going to force me to abound in grace and he's going to force me to reign with him. No. Love doesn't force.

It lets you choose and it leaves the choice to you. And we'll pick that up next week. But here Paul, and we'll leave it with verse 10 where he says, for if when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son.

Well, much more. He's being reconciled. Shall we be saved by his life? Paul is about to introduce us to Christ in a, the most glorious way that we can look over and realize he's fully cognizant of the battle, fully aware of me, fully aware of my inabilities.

And he's, and he looks at me and he says, you know, in one of the interesting thing, Paul says, for if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son will much more. Now you may think, think on that verse for me. If when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son.

What could ever be more than that? What could ever be more than being reconciled to God by the death of his son? But Paul says, there is something more than that. Much more being reconciled. Shall we be saved by his life? Here, Paul looks there and he says, you know, you thought it was wonderful being saved by a dying Jesus on the cross.

And that's wonderful. But you thought that was wonderful. Much more than that.

Wait till you meet the living resurrected one in your life. That's more, much more being reconciled. You're being saved by his life.

When you know how to make those choices, Jesus reigned in me, reigned in me. That's what he longs to do. Lord, we thank you for your word.

And though we've perhaps been awfully technical and theological tonight, Lord, I pray that we would understand what Paul wanted to bring home here in these, this final part of the, of chapter five, and that you look and say, here are these two heads of history, Adam and Jesus in one all died, in another you'll live, in another sin abounds, in another grace enters, abounds and reigns. And Jesus, I thank you that you long to enter and abound and reign in us. Lord, I pray that tonight, if maybe there's any here that doesn't, they don't know it's the grace of God as Jesus Christ ever entered my life.

Have I ever looked over to him and said, Lord, save me. I don't have to know a lot and don't even have to know any more than the thief on the cross to look over and realize, Jesus, I need you. Lord, I pray that right now that anyone like that could just open their heart and say, come in.

And even as we're praying, perhaps there is someone here tonight going to say, I want him to enter. I want Christ to enter my life, to save me. And if that's your prayer, that's your longing, that your desire, like you, wherever you are, just to raise your hand.

I want to pray for you just to lift your hand in a sense, say, Lord, come into my life, enter into my life. I want to give it to you. Perhaps that's where you are.

God bless you here and you over there, middle, any others tonight, Jesus come into my life, enter, take over. I want you to enter and forgive me. I realize who you are.

Any others before we go on? God bless you in the back. Lord, I just thank you. And I just pray that right now, that just by faith, those who just respond and open their heart, Jesus enter.

And Lord also made the rest of us. May we look and say, may your grace abound. Teach me more of this.

And Lord, may it rain. May you so reign as King by your power and by your grace, teach us these glorious truths. Lord, may we understand them.

We choose Adam. We choose Christ by love, by faith. May we grow in this and may this just prepare our heart and wet our appetite for chapter six, chapter seven, chapter eight, these glorious chapters that are ahead and how we reckon Adam to be dead and Jesus alive.

Teach us these things. We want it more than anything in the world. We ask it in Jesus' wonderful name.

Amen.