Lent 1 Romans 5:12-19
March 9, 2014

Sons and daughters of Adam,

One question that's asked most about anewborn baby is, "Who does he/she look like?" And then come the comments: "She has hermother's eyes; he has long arms just like hisfather; look at that head of hair- just likeher grandmother; he's the spit & image of hisold man.

"In the teen years some of those inheritedqualities lose their luster as that young boyor girl wrestles with peer pressure. "How comeI have such big feet? Why do I have so many freckles? Why did I get my father's nose?How come I got stuck with my mother's curlyhair?" In a fit of frustration they may turn to their parents and say, "I didn't ask for this!"

Later in life we may find frightening things we’ve inheritedfrom our parents, likediabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure,hearing loss, or cancer. In a moment of fear and angerwe may turn to our doctor and say, "I didn'task for this!"

Finally there's that moment when we're standingbefore the grave of a beloved family member orfriend to witness the last item on the listof inherited things, the sting of death. It’s a grim reminder of our own last hour, when we, too, will taste the inheritance of deathourselves. And those words haunt us again andagain: "I didn't ask for this!"

Medical science has done a lot of study of genetics to determine how onegeneration passes on traits to another.Topping the list is the question, “Why do people ageand finally die?”There's no naturalreason why aging and death should occur. But God, the Creator, knows why, and his Word supplies themissing piece of evidence. "Sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men because all sinned."

  1. My inherited condition

Through his apostle, our Creatortakes us back to the roots of our family tree and to that moment when the human race – all two of them – changed the course of life forevery single person after them. In the peaceful setting of a garden paradise theman and the woman whom God had created tobe like him- perfect and holy- committed asingle, quiet act of disobedience. Butthat formidable desire that led to that one act against God's expressedcommand, “you shall not eat of it,”screamed more loudly and its effectswere more disastrous than anything mankindhas ever done.Sin infected andperverted the very nature of man, disrupted the entire universe, andbrought life to a screeching halt – a lifethat was supposed to last forever.

The first man, Adam, was mankind's representative beforeGod in that terrible moment when God’s curse came to pass:"Dust you are and to dust you will return."You were there, too, in Adam'sbody. So was I.One day we would be born inAdam's sin-infected image. And here we are!Reading Genesis 3 is likestudying your family’s genetic tree and discovering thatheart disease, cancer, or diabetes have runin the family for generations, and chances aregood that you'll have it, too.Only in this case, yourchances of inheriting it are 100%!WhatAdam and Eve had, you and I also have. Adam’s sin anddeath are our inheritance. In fact, before you or I took our first breath we were sentenced to die and, far more serious, to face God's judgment for sin."Throughthe disobedience of the one man the many weremade sinners...and the result of one trespasswas condemnation for all men."

So when an infantis conceived in his mother's womb, before hecan do anything, that child is guilty of sin. He will die “because allsinned."It is an inherited catastrophe. But sin isn't a flaw we can correct with practice or avoid with a healthy diet.In fact, sin isn’t even something we do. Sin is what we are by nature, and we can’t change it. It infects everything about us. It’s at the root of every thought, word, and deed,whether we realize it or not, whether we likeit or not, WHETHER WE ASKED FOR IT OR NOT. To prove it, Paultakes us back in history to the time between Adam andMoses. The people who lived during those thousands of years were not guilty ofdisobeying a direct command from God, as Adamand Eve had done, yet "death reigned fromthe time of Adam to the time of Moses, evenover those who did not sin by breaking acommand, as Adam did." Even without a direct commandment to sin against,they still died! Why?BECAUSETHEY INHERITED DEATH BY INHERITING ADAM'S SINFUL CONDITION. His disobedience became theirdisobedience; his death became their death; his hell became their hell.And it’s all ours, too!

I didn't ask for this, and neither did you. Who would?!!Yethere we are, and we’ve brought along plenty of evidence that we have inherited Adam’s sin. We may not have asked for it, but there’s no way we can deny we have it. Unlike the people between Adam and Moses, we know better. God has given us very specific commands, and we have violated them. I came here todaywith regrets from the past week. How about you? Careless words spoken in a moment of anger, ugly thoughts, incriminating actions. That will be true every day of our life until we finally die. Adam's sin was like a spark that ignited the world in disobedience against God. Now tell me: if you wereviewing it from God's eternal viewpoint, watching that fire rage out of control, what would you do? Wouldn’t your anger and indignation mountwith every nonchalant, flippant, carelesstransgressionuntil your anger exploded withconsuming fury?

  1. A second chance

That’s what I would do, and that’s what I have coming from God. But that isn’t what God did.With jaw-dropping love and tender mercy God instead gave us asecond chance. He gave us another Adam to stand inour place before him,another representative of the humanrace. In Eden God promised Adam and Eve that he would send that man to be their Savior and the Savior for all their descendants. That man was Jesus, God's second chance to the world. A second Adam would come, and now has come, to change the outcome of our inherited genetic code and bring us back to a place where God can say of us, as he did in the beginning, “Behold, it is very good.”No, we didn't ask for our inherited sinful condition, but we didn’t ask for this, either. Listen to these amazing words: "Just as through thedisobedience of the one man the many were madesinners, so also through the obedience of theone man the many will be made righteous."

Jesus was the first and only one in the familytree who did not inherit Adam's sin and guilt.He was not born in bondage to death nor was he under God's condemnation from birth. He was born without sin. As true man, hecame to “do over”the lives of all Adam’s descendants.

  • Hewas our representative before the devil,"tempted in every way, just as we were, yetwas without sin."
  • He was our representativebefore Godas he lived in perfect, cheerful,willing obedience in our place.
  • He representedus on the crossby offering his life for ours as a willingsacrifice under God'sjudgment.

Jesus did what Adam didnot doandundid everything Adamhad done. He rubbed out our sin from the pagesof God's memory with his perfect life and innocent death.He could do all that because he also was representing God.Jesus, the almighty, eternal God, brought his mercy and love all the way to the cross for us.And here’s the most amazing thing. You and I didn’t ask to be born sinners, but Jesus asked to become sin for us. Jesus asked to be become fully human, tolive, to suffer, and to die to redeem us from our sins. He did it for no other reason than that he loved us.

So if a single manbrought such great devastation to this world,how much more could the God-mando to freeus from it?If onesin by one man could produce so many sinners, how much more couldonerighteous life – the life of God’s own Son –cover history’sbillions of sinners and all their sins?What is more certain:acalamity started by a mere man, or a solutionprovided by the almighty, eternal God? "If the many diedby the transgression of the one man, how muchmore did God's grace and the gift that came bythe grace of the one man, Jesus Christ,overflow to the many!" If it is certain that youare guilty because of sin, in Christ it is even more certainthatyou are not guilty because of his righteousness!It is man who produces theguilt; it is God who declares us innocent of guilt!
Dear friends, God’s Word is the place where we’ll findthe missing piece of evidence, the truth about sin. Itexplains why life is so disappointing, painful, filled with regrets, terminal. God’s Word also has the missing piece of evidence,the truth about Jesus, who gives back what sin has stolen from us. Jesus gives real, lasting peace with God to all who believe in him as Savior.He is our "second chance" from God. Jesus gives us lifein place of death– a life of forgiveness, peace, and hope. Instead of plugging our ears and denying the truth about ourselves, Jesus opens our hearts to face the truth and hear the rest of the story about his saving promises. Then heopens our lives to serve him in his kingdom and opens our arms to receivethe eternal joys he has prepared for us when thislife is over.

We didn’t ask for this, either, but through faith in Jesus, here we are, living that “second chance” right now.Thank you, Lord Jesus! Amen.