How Much More

Romans, in brief, is about the incomparable significance of life in Christ, resurrection life.  Paul at the time was writing both to fellow Jewish Christians, who need to be reminded of a thing or two, and to Gentiles (those who did not formerly know God, those who had been living for what was not God )—Gentiles who by grace have come to faith in the saving work of Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit.  God found them, called them, claimed them: but what does it mean, and what must we do, now?

Rome was famous, and still is, for many things: Roman engineering remains a marvel.  Those arches!  Roman roads and even some aqueducts are still used to this day; many others are still usable, even if not in regular daily use.  Greeks were fond of philosophy, as Luke helps us to see when Paul visits Athens.  Romans were fond of law.  Roman law was the basis of European law, in some areas, through the 18^th century: the enduring legacy of Rome.

Laws—it seems as if there should be few, yet there are many.  Good laws make for smoother, safer living.  Bad laws . . . well bad laws are just bad.  Paul is addressing people who come from a law-abiding mindset, where law shapes thinking and attitudes about society, relationships, even blessedness.  For such people, life without law would be unthinkable.  For Paul’s audience, the idea that there was no longer any law, that in Christ there was no longer any need for law, was very strange and a bit terrifying.  Law declares limits on behaviors.  In a strictly legal sense, a sin is a breach of a law.  If one clings to that definition, that understanding, then it’s impossible to talk about sin where there is no law.  Before there was any law, we can’t talk about sin as we just defined it, because under that definition sin happens only when there is law, only under the law.  Where there is no law, there can be no sin.

The Swiss-French philosopher of the 18^th century, Jean Jacques Rousseau, latched onto that insight.  For Rousseau, the best society was man in a state of nature, by which Rousseau (unlike Thomas Hobbes a century before him) had in mind pastoral peace, the innocence of the garden, gathering berries together laughing in the sunshine.  Rousseau was one of those who lifted up native peoples in other areas of the world as paragons of virtue and innocence, by way of unfavorable comparison to corrupt, vicious Europe.  We’re still familiar with this sort of thinking—what many love best about Native Americans is their past, the past we imagine they enjoyed before we ruined them.  But whose past are we actually imagining?

So, Paul is trying to reason with people who cannot conceive how Adam could have sinned or any of those up until the Israelites in the wilderness receiving the law, since until that time there was no law, as Paul himself admits.  No law, no sin.  This sort of argument doesn’t exactly interest or engage us, until we begin to consider the consequences of such thinking for our faith and for the church situated in the world, called to be separate from, not of the world.  On the one hand, it was clear that only law could fence off God’s people from sin—we weren’t going to limit ourselves.  We still transgress without much thought, sometimes even after thinking it over.  Law protected people, even if one person and another broke the law.  Law protected people against themselves.

The problem was that, in some cases, one offense rippled out, consequences spreading out very far, indeed.  If one company in the business of producing food adulterates its product, many may suffer the consequences.  One bomb can hurt many people.  One maniac behind the wheel in a crowd can harm many.  One person cheating on a test emboldens others to try to get away with it, too.  There have been cheating scandals at some of our most prestigious institutions, institutions whose mission is to reenforce the foundation of character, duty, honor.

The law, all imperfectly, kept us safe—so keep the law; do the law.  No law, no safety!  On the other hand, if there was no sin when there was no law, because sin was like a by-product of law, then the sooner we can get rid of law—all law, every law, any law—the better!  Libertarians are going, “Yay!”  And people were hearing, even from Paul, that the law was useless and Jesus came to set us free from the law.  Some said, “Yay!”  If there is no law, then I can do whatever I want, whatever it is that whatever in me, driving me, causes me to do.  And none of it is sin, anymore, because there is no longer any law, in Christ.  Freedom!  Freedom, as we know, means we are able to do whatever we want.  And if we were all perfectly good, that freedom would be a joy, but since we are not perfectly good, such freedom turns out to be a problem.  The church in our culture continues to struggle with grace, freedom, law, and sin.

From Adam to Moses, there was no law, yet there was sin, as we know from even a beginner’s acquaintance with Scripture.  Abraham, whom Paul has just been praising and pointing out to us—Abraham had been given no law, yet he needed the righteousness only God could give.  Why?  Paul tells us it’s because there is death.  Because the act of one had ripple effects for the rest.  The law tells us what sin is, but sinfulness, transgression, disobedience . . . that had been around much longer, almost from the start.

It was as if—only as if, this is all figurative: it can’t convey the process, just the effect—it’s as if Adam (with a little assist from Eve) uncorked a deadly toxin.  It didn’t kill immediately, but it was lethal, and everyone exposed to it, even in the smallest measurable amount, would die because of that exposure.  Although the exact amount of fentanyl needed to kill one person or another varies, as much as a few grains is still sufficient in almost every case, like breathing in a little dust.  We know, some of us all too well, what a difficult time babies have who are born to addict mothers.

Here in Brazoria County, we are very aware of accidents at the plants.  I fear that, in a significant number of cases, maybe even the majority, the accidents can be traced to human error.  One guy didn’t do one thing, and six guys were hurt . . . or worse.  Now, raise that exponentially to encompass humanity.  Because one did, all suffered; because one did, all die.  We hear, all too often, and all too saccharinely, all too sentimentally, that “we’re all God’s children.”  The Reformed teaching says no, just as Jesus said no.  We’re all Adam’s children, sin-poisoned and on our way to death.  But—but—but—people can become sons and daughters of God, through Jesus.  It’s Jesus, our gentle, lovey-dovey Jesus, who tells those arguing with him that they’re children of their father, the Devil: “Jesus said to them, ‘If God were your Father, you would love me, for I have come here from God.  I have not come on my own; God sent me.  Why is my language not clear to you?  Because you are unable to hear what I say.  You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires” (Jn 8:42-44).

No one sins only once.  We hear of “evil desires” in several places throughout Scripture, including the first chapter of Romans.  In several more instances, we see what indulging these desires entails; we see them indulged, all around us, even today.  There are places today where Christians are subject to arrest and prosecution for criticizing the indulgence of those evil desires, and there are more places where we soon may be subject to arrest, prosecution, and penalty.

Later in Romans, Paul will urge us to “Hate what is evil; cling to what is good” (12:9); we see the enduring truth of Psalms at work around us: “In their own eyes they flatter themselves too much to detect or hate their sin” (Ps 36:2).

Through one man, Adam, we’ve all come to ruin—we die, we know sin; sin is rooted rather deeply in us all, as we will acknowledge so soon as we do a candid, comprehensive self-inventory by the light of God’s Word.  We’ve all been exposed to a lethal dose, and it will end up killing us.  But—But—But—that’s not the end of the story, if we’ll turn to Jesus, cry out for Jesus.  Ruin came through Adam.  Rescue comes through Jesus.  Trespass came through Adam.  A gift comes to us in Jesus: life for the dying.

Paul writes the Corinthians, “since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man” (1 Cor 15:21).  God doesn’t need resurrection; God does not die.  People need resurrection, which comes from God and begins with a man, Jesus, who is also God, God with us, God for us, who “radiates God’s own glory and expresses the very character of God” (Heb 1:3).  When death is overcome, we can know with sure conviction that sin is overcome, vanquished, done.  Paul tells us that death was in fact overcome by the death of one man, Jesus, who didn’t stay dead.

Any man or woman on this earth can live a decent enough life without knowing Jesus—there are moral Buddhists out there, after all—but none of us can have salvation without knowing Christ.  It isn’t goodness God is looking for.  One can be good as far as the world conceives and measures it.  What is “good” is not therefore holy.  God wants holy: set apart for Him.  Live this way, not that way.  What is holy is good, in God’s sight.  The problem people have to come to terms with is that, dying sinners as we all are, people give God absolutely zero reason to have any interest in giving us salvation.  Actually, all the momentum is going the other way: we all too often give God ample reason to see to it that His curse is carried out.  And we say, oh, no, no, but God knows oh, yes, yes.

And He gives us a way.  It’s His way, not our way.  It’s on His terms; we don’t get to negotiate: take it or leave it, final offer.  It is a gift He is offering; it’s a free gift, because we have no way of purchasing it from Him, and a purchased gift is really no gift at all: “Look at this gift I bought for myself!  I gave it to me, with money.”  Sure, it’s a treat, a splurge; it’s special, and it’s a purchase.  So, it’s not really a gift.  When someone does something for us, gives us something, and we insist on giving the giver money for the gift, that isn’t courtesy or consideration: we are saying we want no gifts; we do not want to owe anyone anything, and certainly not any gratitude.  Gratitude is a burden upon our freedom.  We’re in charge.  We say.  Our way.  I’ll pay.

Just take the God-blessed gift, and be glad, for God’s sake!

Paul is trying to help us take in the magnitude of what God freely chooses to do: in one and the same act winning the glory due to Him, demonstrating the glorious truth of His character, and getting the long-delayed justice due to Him.  If we feel as if we’ve suffered injustice over the course of our lives, just consider what God has had to put up with from humanity for thousands of years, not to mention what He’s had to put up with, done right in His face, from us.

So, the trespass was dire, fatal, and remains so.  Paul tells us that Adam (with a little help from Eve) has put us all in a bad way, “But the gift is not like the trespass.  For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many!” (5:15).  Grace greater than sin, greater than our sin.  It’s not merely that God wonderfully worked grace exactly proportional to the trespass.  The grace is greater.  It’s greater because it is God’s love, God’s nature, God’s light.  God is greater.  Jesus talks about faith as much as a mustard seed being able to do unimaginable things—and there’s our trouble.  Beloved, the tiniest things can pack the biggest power: consider one atom of Uranium 235.  And we pout about needing more faith—if only we had more!

The crucifixion was a dark, desperate spiritual jab, in which Satan gambled that the power of sin—concentrated, focused, made dense as the largest, hardest wrecking ball, might just be enough to demolish grace, the love of God, the power of God . . . or at least demolish human hope in God.  We know the demolition work of sin in our own lives, on the receiving as well as the giving end.  We here also know, now, that we have a mighty, brilliant, victorious Savior.  We don’t win the victory over sin, beloved: God wins it, for us, decisively and entirely, eternally, in Christ, from the cross to the empty tomb.  God then applies His victory to us, through the Holy Spirit; we are thereby changed, according to God’s schedule.

None of this is very flattering for us: God is treating us like infants who can’t do a thing for themselves except feed and mess their diapers!  It isn’t about our glory; it isn’t about our pride; it’s about our salvation.  Let us glorify our God; if we will boast, let us boast of our God.

All it took was one sin, one act of disobedience, to bring ruin upon all.  We know sin didn’t stop at just one.  Sin is congenital, contagious, catastrophic.  We’re being told here that God, who by all rights ought to have scraped the earth clean and started over again, as He had before—God chooses instead, after millennia of generations of disobedience, disregard, ingratitude, bloodshed, sexual sin the likes of which would make Hugh Hefner look away, ashamed—instead of throwing all of us in the trash can, God chooses to offer a gift.

A woman spent years ridiculing and berating the man next door: never had a kind word for him.  Most of the time, happily for him, she just ignored him, wouldn’t acknowledge him, made it plain that, so far as she was concerned, he did not exist: not in her life, not in her world!

She came home one day from the doctor’s with the confirmation of her worst fear: cancer.  Advanced.  Spreading.  She had waited too long!  She didn’t want to know; now she knew, and there was nothing she could do.  She couldn’t believe this was happening to her.  It was so unfair.  Why was this happening to her?  Well, word got around; she wasn’t one to keep news like this to herself—she’d lament to anyone within hearing, looking for sympathy.  She always did want to be the center of attention; she wasn’t about to let this opportunity slip.

The man next door heard about her diagnosis.  He actually came to her door, to tell her he had heard and to let her know that if she needed anything, just to ask him.  She never felt so angry in her life, and she let him have it.  But he would continue, regularly, to remind her that he really was available if she wanted any help.  He never did feel foolish about it or ashamed; he honestly pitied her.  Now, that story could turn out in one of two ways, couldn’t it?  Either she eventually accepted the offered help, or she never did.  Either way, she died.

“For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ!” (5:17).  How much more.  God’s abundant provision.  We can never go so far that God can’t find us.  We can never go so far that we can’t turn to God: He’s always right next to us, as close as our breath.  You and I, we’ve received that grace, God’s gift: that’s why we’re here; it’s remembering and treasuring the gift that encourages us, spurs us, to come, week after week, as often as we’re able.  Yes, there’s death.  But there is also life, more life, greater life, a greater life being prepared for us.

We will die, and that’s not the end of the story, thank God.  Sin stained us, and it’s a permanent stain, as we know.  The grace of God is that He overlooks the stain; more, he applies His life-power to us, He claims you and me for Himself, in Christ, through the Spirit.  The resurrection is pure, brilliant light in the dark place, dispelling the darkness, and the darkness, the stain, is powerless to extinguish or even dim the light.  “[T]hrough the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous” (5:19).  A promise, a certainty, a blessing.   Alleluia, amen.