Here we are on Friday morning and we’re finishing up Chapter 5 of Paul’s letter to the Romans. I’ll finish up with the last two verses first and then do a quick review of what we’ve seen in this chapter. May God give me the words to speak and you ears to hear, to His glory, through the name of Jesus Christ- Amen.

Here’s a little bit of yesterday’s passage to get the context and then today’s and the end of the chapter:

Now, yesterday, I discussed the interesting parallelism in v. 18-19 in which Paul says "judgment came to all men…the free gift came to all men" and "many were made sinners…many will be made righteous." This can be a confusing section and it’s very easy to take one of the verses out of context and use it to show either that all men are saved or that not all men are sinners. But taken as a whole, as it was written, we see what’s going on. The first phrase "judgment came to all men…and the free gift came to all men" is written in the context of "all regions of men" or "all kinds of men." In other words, judgment has come to the Jews and the Gentiles, to those in Rome and to those all over the world- all men. And likewise, the free gift has come to these same groups. The message of the cross is universal. The second phrase, "…many were made sinners…many will be made righteous" refers to the number of people involved. It’s not like we’re talking about a couple hundred people here, but many, many people- a large number, the entire population actually. And likewise, "by one Man’s obedience, many will be made righteous." Not necessarily all of the first "many" but "many" nevertheless. I’ll be the first to admit that this can be a confusing parallelism but in the context of the letter as a whole it makes sense. This is what Paul’s been showing all through the text leading up to this point.

When Paul says "Moreover the law entered that the offense might abound. But where sin abounded, grace abounded much more…" he’s pushing this point further. The law was given to convict and show our transgressions. Everyone sins and the worse the sins the greater the grace required to cover those sins. Some people will immediately say "Well, then, I should sin as bad as I can so that God’s grace will be magnified even more!" Paul’s got you covered in the next chapter:

And Peter echoes this:

Paul now concludes his train of thought:

And there’s the gospel message- "grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." It is by grace that God even offers the free gift of salvation. He doesn’t have to. God owes us nothing and He might very well just say "All sinners die. End of story." But thank God that He is merciful and full of grace. As a result, He’s provided atonement for us. Instead of us dying forever and ever, Jesus Christ died in our place for us. As Paul says "…righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." Again, I note that Paul offers no other option here- this eternal life comes only through Jesus Christ. And I also note his qualification- "our Lord." Jesus can’t be simply someone from whom we take the free gift and then go about life as we previously did. I just quoted from the next chapter when I said:

Just a few sentences after that statement Paul says:

And so, if we are truly delivered from sin, then we no longer obey sin, but obey righteousness. To be sure, your obedience is imperfect. You will still listen to sin and you may follow it’s directions, but if Jesus is your Lord, you’ll also quickly realize the error and return back to your real master. Sin is deceptive and its goal is to trap us. Watch what these passages say about sin:

And watch what Paul himself says a few chapters later:

But, as Paul says here:

Sin shall not have dominion over you. It’ll try to trap us and we’ll sometimes fall into the trap, but it can’t hold the one whom Christ has claimed. Sin shall not win because grace has triumphed over it and Christians are under grace. As Paul says "I thank God- through Jesus Christ our Lord!"

Well, that’s the end of Chapter 5 in Paul’s letter to the Romans. As I’ve said before these chapter and verse divisions are a fairly recently added thing to help us reference sections of the Bible. Don’t lose sight of the fact that this is a letter and should be taken as a whole. But anyway, we’ve come to the end of this section and now I’d like to summarize what we’ve seen.

Possibly the single most important statement in this chapter is the one that was started with:

From this, we saw that we are justified by faith. From other readings we see that faith itself is a gift of God, not of works. No man can earn, buy, or sell faith- it is given by God’s mercy, according to how He sees fit. Having been justified by faith, we have peace with God. Prior to this peace, we were at war with God, we were enemies of him- we saw this concept expanded later in Romans 5 where Paul says "For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son…" This peace comes not through our own discoveries or our own efforts but "through our Lord Jesus Christ." Here again, we see that Jesus is Lord. We see that it is through Jesus that we access- again, by faith- into God’s grace. We see that in His grace we will stand- that is, stand against the dominion of sin, as I just discussed. And finally, realizing all this, we rejoice in hope and our hope is in the glory of God.

After this opening statement, we saw Paul explaining the spread of sin into the world through Adam’s transgression. Just as Adam’s transgression opened the door for sin, so will Christ’s perfect obedience shut the door to that sin. You really can’t have one without the other. I have seen people deny that Adam’s transgression is imputed to them, but at the same time try to claim the righteousness of Christ. I don’t see how you can have Christ’s righteousness imputed and yet deny the imputation of sin from Adam. We see that Adam’s sin spread to the entire world, but Christ’s righteousness is able to cover those transgressions.

And there’s a quick summary of Romans Chapter 5! Consider carefully what Paul’s saying here and ask yourself honestly if Christ’s righteousness has been laid to your account. Does sin still have dominion over you, or are you able to call Jesus Lord and thus break the hold of sin on your life. Do you still like sin, or can you say with Paul "with the mind I myself serve the law of God." These things don’t produce salvation, but they are evidence of it. If you answer "No" to these questions, then I urge you to ask God to apply the atonement of Jesus Christ to your sins. Accept that atonement and begin a new life. God commands all men everywhere to repent and you need no more warrant than that to reach out and grasp the righteousness of Christ.

That concludes our study of Romans 5. If you missed any of the messages, feel free to visit the church website at www.fbcdesmoines.org or call us at 575.278.2421 for a free CD. Thanks again for listening, thanks to KLMX radio for giving the Ministerial Alliance air time. May God bless you and open your ears and heart to the truth of Jesus Christ- Amen.

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