Hope

In Romans 5 we confront an issue unlike the issues in the first 4 chapters. The topic up to this point is our sin before God. The point is that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Paul's statement is that those who hear those words will be defensive. 

He overcomes every argument that is raised and uses the word of God in the Old Testament to make clear that there are no exceptions. Romans 5 speaks to human misery. Death has power in our lives, and because death reigns we are not just guilty, but we are miserable too. We live in anguish and fear.

¹² Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world,

and death through sin, and so death spread to all men,

because all sinned-- ¹³ for until the Law sin was in the world,

but sin is not imputed when there is no law. ¹⁴ Nevertheless death

reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned

in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come.

¹⁵ But the free gift is not like the transgression.

For if by the transgression of the one the many died,

much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man,

Jesus Christ, abound to the many.¹⁶ The gift is not like that which came

through the one who sinned; for on the one hand the judgment arose from

one transgression resulting in condemnation, but on the other hand

the free gift arose from many transgressions resulting in justification.

¹⁷ For if by the transgression of the one, death reigned

through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and of

the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.

¹⁸ So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men,

even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification

of life to all men.¹⁹ For as through the one man's disobedience

the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of

the One the many will be made righteous. ²⁰ The Law came in so that the transgression

would increase; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more,

²¹ so that, as sin reigned in death, even so grace would reign through

righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Romans 5:12-21 (NASB)

The reign of death, properly understood, in the Bible represents more than just taking your last breath. Death includes having no purpose in our daily existence, walking aimlessly, and breathing without really functioning, existing with no excitement, hope, joy, beauty or love. It is a kind of emptiness in which there is not anything to look forward to, and there is a pain that is carried everywhere. This is the death Paul is relating to us. Additionally, the Scriptures talk about the reign of death as something that produces bad behavior in us. Hebrews 2 confirms that it is because people are so afraid of death that they are a slave to the devil their entire lives. There are people every day who are imprisoned by uncontrollable, harmful, devastating behavior in which they hurt themselves and others and can't seem to stop; they make the same mistakes over and over again.

The tacit question contained in these verses is this: Is the fact of Jesus' death and resurrection good enough to remove my sin, and leave me in right standing before God, and can it heal my heartache as well? Also, Can it resolve the pain of sadness and isolation that I feel? Can it actually make me right with God?  

The answer to all of these questions is yes it can. Beginning in Romans 5:12 we can begin to understand why the answer is yes,

¹² Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world,

and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned--

This is not just an unwavering, reasoned argument Paul uses to prosecute the guilty. It's the loving answer of the minister who is concerned for the needs of people around him and who wants to let them know there is an answer to the problem of misery and anxiety. 

Verses 13-14 give a glimpse of hope:

¹³ for until the Law sin was in the world,

but sin is not imputed when there is no law. ¹⁴ Nevertheless death

reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come.

So far Paul has said, "death reigned" in verse 14; it is repeated in verse 17 and again in verse 21 as well. The authority of death is the problem we face, and Paul is articulating some essential things to help us understand it.

In the opening chapters of Genesis sin enters the world when Adam rebelled against God. Genesis also reveals how man was made to have the knowledge of God, the intimacy with God, the opportunity to commune with God, and a life indwelt with God. He was placed in an abundant garden. God gave him one restriction to obey, and man rebelled against God with his eyes open, knowing exactly what he was doing. The result was that sin entered his experience, and because of that death reigned. Sin is the companion of death, and everywhere there is sin there is death. Now the particular thing that Paul is pointing out here is not only did Adam's sin affected Adam, but that because of Adam we are all equally culpable of sin. That doesn't necessarily mean that we all have knowingly sinned in our lives, but that we all sinned in Adam somehow, and from God's perspective we were present in Adam. Every one of his descendants was present with him and sinned when he sinned.

There are a few observations about the fact that we sinned in Adam that need to be made. The first observation would have to do with all the arguments that are brought into the world today through the lens of multi-culturalism, a dangerous worldview in which everybody advances their ethnicity, cause, or group, and the broad attempt to arrange people so that equal advantage is given to all groups. It seems that any attempt to do this is predictably going to result in smaller and smaller groups; as soon as some group defines itself versus the rest because it wants equality for itself, then shortly a subgroup within the prior group will define itself the same way and so on, because all of us have the same root problem of sin. The second observation would be the fact that sin pits people against each other. Adam and Eve's first two sons were born quarreling with each other, and Cain killed his brother. 

Another observation could be summed up in the cliché, "There but for the grace of God go I." There are certain people who intensely disgust you and from whom you are prone to withdraw, because their choices, associations, habits, and lifestyle occur to you as remarkably bad. What must be recognized is that they are the way they are because they are victimized by the reign of death and enslaved by the fear of death just like the rest of us. Apart from the grace of God in Christ we are all in Adam and we are who the Scriptures say we are, "Nevertheless, death reigned." Unless something happens to break the reign of death, we are no different from those who repel us.

Finally, Paul comments about the law in verses 13-14. He is trying to make clear to us that the reign of death does not take place because of any particular thing we do. Adam was given an exclusion, a rule to abide by, and he broke it by eating from the tree anyway. Paul writes that there is a long time between Adam and Moses, to whom the law was finally given on Mount Sinai so that we would have a clear direction as to what God said was absolutely right and absolutely wrong. It was not relevant that prior to Moses there was no law; death reigned anyway. It reigned not because people were doing specific acts of rebellion, but because they already had the disease when they were born. 

The law was given to help us see what we couldn't see previously. It's like looking into a mirror and noticing you have pores in your skin, only to discover when you use a magnifying mirror you discover you skin is nothing but a bunch of pores stuck together. Once we use the magnification of the law of God to examine the problem of our sin, we realize it's much worse than we ever thought it was. The law enlarges our understanding of sin. We live in a time that has more in common with the pre-law period than any other age in our nation's history. 

As each year goes by fewer people know what the Bible really says. Fewer people have any awareness that there is a personal God who is in control of our universe and He has made Himself known to us. We live like the people before Moses who didn't know God’s instruction relating to human behavior. People are absolutely ignorant; they are not intentionally disobeying God's law, but they are oblivious to the fact that God has spoken at all. And the fact remains that yet death still reigns. That is why we run into so many people with fundamentally good intentions who are making an awful mess of life. 

They want to be supportive, but in trying to help they are adding to the pain and damage. Very few people purpose to make life bad for everybody around them, but many unintentionally do just that.

"Scripture quotations taken from the New American Standard Bible^®,
Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation Used by permission." (www.Lockman.org)

TJ