Romans 5:12-14 - 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. Mary inherited the sinful seed because she had a human father. The son nature is inherited to children born of men. That's why Jesus had to be born of a virgin and not of Joseph so that He didn't inherit a sin nature. Again. Romans 5:12-21. Through one MAN sin entered the world... If ever a human were to be born like Christ, w/o a male. They wouldn't inherit a sin nature. But they can't be born that way. Only Jesus could. Thus the miracle of His birth
Christ had to be born of a virgin so as not to inherit a sin nature by being a direct descendant of Adam. So, sin entered the world through Adam… next part… v12c - and death through sin – Now, church, after having dealt with the issue of suffering in the early part of Romans 5 and now the issue of sin, we ought to be adequately equipped to explain both and understand both… Why do people die? Why does ANYONE die? Because, death entered into this world through sin. There is a fact about sin in that… Sin brings nothing but death and destruction… that’s all. It brings nothing positive.
Sin never intends to bring anything good in and of itself and even though God uses sinful acts to sometimes accomplish His purposes, still, in their root. Sin is equal to death. It always causes some type of death. Death of a person’s innocence… death of us in the spiritual sense as we see in Genesis 3, and ultimately physical death.
Genesis 2:16-17 - The Lord God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; 17 but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.”
God said, if you eat of this tree… you will surely die… In Hebrew it means, dieing you shall die. And that’s exactly what happened. Adam began to age from that moment forward and his body began to wear out. His heart began its countdown to its final beat. And when he reached that age of 930, die is exactly what he did do.
The only restriction that God gave to Adam. Don’t eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He had such freedom and yet it wasn’t enough. He coveted more. And before you get too angry at Adam, please know that none of us would have reacted any differently. We act on our sin nature even now. We covet the things and positions that others have…
God promised him he would die, and die he did. Spiritually that day and eventually physically… just like all of humanity. Now let’s pause for a moment… I’ve told you before that it is not possible to call yourself a Bible believing Christian and also hold to any sort of belief in evolution. Let me explain that from this passage.
If you believe in some sort of evolution or millions of years as our origin of life… then you have to scratch out Romans 5:12 from your Bible that explains how death entered into the world. If you do that then you don’t truly believe that the Bible is inerrant and sufficient so you may as well turn over, among other places, to John 14:6 and 2 Timothy 3:16 and scratch them out as well. Both those texts reveal Jesus to be the Word of truth and not only that but the perfect and sufficient Word of truth that brings eternal life!
If you’ve gone that far then you’re believing that your own knowledge of truth supercedes God’s knowledge of truth, which is known as Gnosticism… If that’s the case then you are left with only your belief in evolution and in fact you don’t believe on Christ at all…
You see, when you believe in millions of years you have to accept the idea that death was in the world, millions of years of it, before Adam. If that was true, then death didn’t enter through sin as Scripture says and the Bible is wrong. Do you see the problem and why we cannot compromise the truth? It isn’t just a matter of holding different opinions or theological nitpicking. It has far reaching implications on the totality of Scripture.
Next part of verse 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— - Before the fall, Adam and Eve enjoyed unity with God. But after the fall the spiritual death occurred and man was left spiritually dead from birth.
Ezekiel 36:26 – says that without Christ we have a heart of stone. Uncaring about the truths of God and the true love that only God can demonstrate to us through Christ.
Let’s be clear… death is an enemy… an enemy to us all. We will all die. No one is exempt and God, in His Sovereignty, has prescribed the time and way of all our deaths. Death is an enemy. It’s not romantic or glamorous as Hollywood so often tries to portray it… it is simply a reality.
We were not created by God to die. Death is a curse. Death, which has been defeated by Christ. We can’t defeat it or cheat it. Lazarus was raised from the dead and given a little more life, but eventually he died and his physical body stayed dead.
So that’s the results of sin… that’s how destructive it was then and is now. If anyone was ever able to live a life completely perfect and sin free, then they wouldn’t die… but in fact they’d be eternal in the human form.
Now, the questions usually arises... ‘Isn’t that unfair of God?’ Isn’t that unfair of God to punish all of humanity because of Adam? Isn’t that cruel? Far from it, it is actually the most fair and kind ways of dealing with sin. As we will see next week, God deals with justification in the same way… In Adam all sinned, but in Christ all can live. No one complains that everyone is saved solely by Christ’s merits alone.
