Adam's Sin and Headship

Let's move now to paragraph number three, and if you have your Bibles with you, open to Romans chapter five. And again, my goal and these presentations and our goals collectively as we look through the Confession is, you know, number one, to highlight these theological truths, but also particularly to demonstrate how they're rooted and grounded in the clear teaching of scripture. The confession does not stand on its own. The confession does not have any authority. The scriptures have authority. We judge the confession by its fidelity to the Biblical text. Okay, and the reason that we that we hold through the confession is because we've come to trust and its fidelity to the Biblical text. So in this session, we're going to look at paragraph three. In the next session we're going to look at paragraph four, and they'll again be some overlap because we're talking about the same topic. But specifically, I want us to really walk through Romans chapter five. And as we walk through Romans chapter five, here's our other goal, right, our other goal is to demonstrate the the practical nature of these truths. So many times people, you know, we we we we aren't interested in theology because we think, you know, well, theology, I mean, that's just that's just a lot of you know, arguments and discussion about out you know, these sort of esoteric ideas, you know, but we need some practical stuff. Well, theology is incredibly practical. You will live out your Christianity in accordance with your theological convictions. Let me say that again. You will live out your Christianity in accordance with your theological convictions. The problem is, for most of us, our theological convictions are based on folk theology. Amen, stuff we heard, stuff, we grew up with, stuff we assumed, you know, stuff you find over there and second hesitations, right, And so we live in accordance with those convictions because we haven't done the necessary work to develop a full orbed consistent theology. So that's why you run into things in your own life and in your interactions with others that are completely and utterly inconsistent. And you go, this person is a Christian. I believe this person is a Christian, right, But but then over here on this issue, it's just like. What how how in the world? Okay? And and I think I think we're seeing that. I think we're seeing that right now. Okay, And I don't. I don't want to pick on Georgia. Jay is Jay is Jay in the room. Don't. Jay's not in the room. You know, Jay. Jay is the guy who's with me. And Jay's from Columbus, Georgia. And I've been picking on Georgia lately, right, but listen, I think we're seeing something right now in Georgia that is really telling and it sort of makes this point. You've got Raphael Warnock, right, a senator who's a pastor. He's a pastor of an historic church there, right, he's pastor in the same church that manon Luther King Junior pastored. But he's a pastor of an historic church there in Georgia. And then you've got Stacy Abrams, who's running for governor, Okay, And both of them are running around right now, and you know, they're speaking in churches and you know, on all kinds of public platforms, and they are promoting the idea that you know, limiting abortion is a harmful thing, and we just, I mean, we look at that and we go, wait a minute, Wait a minute. You're claiming allegiance to Christ. Both of them, both of them are claiming allegiance to Christ. They're claiming to be Christians. One of them is a pastor, a pastor, Reverend. Raphael Warnock, and they're arguing that the wicked thing in all of this, and the evil thing in all of this is people who want to limit women's ability to hire doctors to assassinate their children in the womb. And that's what it is. By the way, I don't let people get away with that whole. You know, I'm pro choice, right, No, no, don't give me that, because I am too. But are we talking about pumps versus hell, you know, or flats, or are we talking about what I'm all about? Right, I'm all about I'm all about choice. But you need to finish your sentence. You believe in a woman's right to choose to hire a doctor to assassinate her unborn child in the womb. And so we look at that and we go how, how, I mean really how? And the answer is theology, an inconsistent theology and incomplete theology. And sometimes it's people who you know, theologically, they they I mean again, they've come to saving faith in Christ, but they just are completely inconsistent in these other areas. But other times it's people who are wrong on who Jesus is, and they're wrong on justification, they're wrong on the fall and sin, and then they create a version of Christianity based on those wrong assumptions. And so the rest of their theology is flowing from a poisoned well. And they're not even Christians. They're not even Christians in the name of Christ. Right, And so theology is incredibly important, and it's incredibly practical because you will live in accordance with your theological convictions. And you have theological convictions. You may not be able to articulate them, but you absolutely have them. Now again, let me give you another anchor before we look at this. So I want you to understand how how critically important this is. If you've had conversations with people about Christ, about the gospel of our Christianity, about salvation with thoughtful people, okay, And again if you're if you're raising children and you're teaching them to be thoughtful children, you'll run into this as well. But one of the things that people ask is, Okay, just explain to me, how is it that I'm guilty because of what Adam did? That that just seems fundamentally unfair. It seems it seems fundamentally wrong, right, how is it? And then you know, let's put an even finer point on it. Right, there are people who are arguing, now there's this whole argument about reparations, right, that whole argument about about white guilt. And so some people are saying, okay, okay, okay, fine, you want to say that we're all guilty because of what Adam did, Well, then we can also say that all white people are guilty because of what white people did. Give me money, right, So these are things that we need to understand that we need to tease out because and the other thing is this, people are like, Okay, explain to me how Jesus dying on a cross over, you know, in Jerusalem two thousand years ago, has anything to do with me being forgiven by God. Explain that to me, because now you're punishing someone else for what another person did or for what other people do. To explain it to me. And if you've had conversations about the Gospel with thoughtful people, they've asked you these questions. And that's exactly what we're getting to hear in the next couple of paragraphs. Look at paragraph number three. They talking about Adam and Eve being the root and by God's appointment standing in the room instead of all mankind. Okay, just look at that, they being the root and by God's appointment standing in the room, and the stead of all mankind. There are representatives. The guilt of the sin was imputed and corrupted nature conveyed to all their posterity, descending from them by ordinary generation. Now again, ordinary generation. What does that mean? That means born the normal way, ordinary generation? How how do humans get here? Okay, they get here by ordinary generation. Okay, you've got our kids in here, and some of y'all have had this discussion, and some of you haven't. Some of you have just talked about how you know, well, you know, when a mommy and daddy really, you know, love each other a lot, then then you know. And some of you have had the more technical side of that discussion. But ordinary generation is a man and a woman come together and make a baby and the words of Forrest Gump. That's all I have to say about that. Okay, that's ordinary generation. Why is that important? Well? Being now conceived in sin and by nature, children of wrath, the servants of sin, the subjects of death, and all other miseries spiritual, temporal, and eternal, unless the Lord Jesus set them free. That's everyone, everyone born of ordinary generation. We inherit the sin and guilt of Adam by virtue of being his posterity, and we get that through the process of ordinary generation, which is again why on last night I pointed out the fact that the virgin birth is a non negotiable. It's interesting there are people, for example, who who you know, who want to argue against the virgin birth but still argue for Christianity. If there is no virgin birth, there is no Christianity, because if there is no virgin birth, then Christ was born as guilty as anyone else because he was born by ordinary generation and therefore would have inherited adams guilt. He would have had adams guilt imputed to him, reckoned to him, credited to him, and the sin nature would have been passed on to him, and sinful actions would have arisen from that sin nature had he been born of ordinary generation. So we can then take it a step further. People who want to argue against the virgin birth but then want to argue for Christianity are essentially saying that Jesus is just an example to us of how we in and of ourselves can overcome sin and please God. When Romans eight says, no, you can't get there from here, let's look at that really quickly. Okay, look at Romans chapter eight, and look at let's look beginning verse one. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, for the law of the Spirit of Life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done with the law. Weakened by the flesh, could not do the law. Couldn't do it. By sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin. He condemned sin in the flesh in order that the righteous requirements of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh. But those who live according to the Spirit, set their minds and the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death. But to set the mind on the Spirit life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law. Indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. It's impossible. You can't get there from here. It doesn't work, it's not possible. I remember, you know, when we first moved, and you know, I come back here and and I see the all the just people who were this little when we left and who are just now like married and have kids, and I just I'm not even ready for that, right, And I think about, you know, we've we've been in Zambia for seven years now, and of the of the seven of our children who went with us, five of them have now spent at least half their lives there. Our youngest Simeon, he's nine, he was two, he had just turned two when when when we moved to Lusaka. Look back at pictures and it's just it's amazing. And then whenever we come, you guys have the same experience that I have. Right, you see them after all that timing, You're like, wait a minute, those are not the kids who left here. But I remember in. One discussion it may have been Simon, it may have been Amos, but we were talking about you know, coming back here, and they were they just thought we could just come whenever we wanted, and we were just trying to explain to them, you know, no, we can't just do that, you know, and flights and this and that and the other. And again, I don't know if it was Simeon or it was Amos who said, well, we can just drive. No, no, there's there's there's no, there's there's different ways that, you know, we can accomplish that journey, but driving is not one of them. In terms of driving, you literally cannot get. There from here. So it is with pleasing God in the flesh those who are born of ordinary generation. So again, if we reject the virgin birth, then we're saying that Jesus is an example for us of how to accomplish that which the Bible says cannot be accomplished. So so the virgin birth is it's it's not optional, it's essential. So what we're left with is this idea of imputed guilt and imputed righteousness based on federal headship. And so Romans chapter five is just the clearest presentation of that that We're going to find Romans chapter five and we'll begin it at verse one, and we're just we're going to go through all of this and sort of tease out these theological distinctives. Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Okay, we cannot be justified by the law. That the law can only bring guilt to us the law. We cannot keep the law James two ten. You know, even if we keep the whole love but stumble at one point, we're guilty of all of it. Right, it's not possible. So we've been justified by faith. Because we've been justified by faith, we have faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him, we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. And hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. And we could say much more about the trinitarian nature of our salvation and the work of the Father and the Son and the Spirit in order to bring about our salvation. But for now, just note that all three persons of the Trinity have been mentioned here in this work verse six, for while we were still weak at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. Now hold onto that statement. Okay, Christ died for the ungodly. And again we believe this and we know that this is the message of the gospel that Christ died for sinners. Right. Christ died for sin once for all, the just, for the unjust, in order that he might bring us back to God. Right, we get that that's the picture. That's Jesus on the cross and he's dying for sinners. But that doesn't answer all of our questions because we've still got to understand how it is that that means anything to us or does anything for us. Do you follow? It's important. It's important for us to believe that it's important for us to look at the cross and say, yes, I get that Jesus on the cross dying sin is the reason that Jesus is on the cross dying. Salvation is the result of Jesus on the cross dying. But there's some dots that have to be connected in order for us to settle why that makes sense Verse seven. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die. But God chose his love for us, and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. There's that statement again, Christ died for the ungodly Verse six. Christ died for us verse eight. Since therefore we have now been justified by his blood. Again, we've been justified by his blood, justification to be justified as to be declared righteous. We have been declared declared righteous by his blood, by his death on the cross. So now we're getting Now we're getting more of a picture of the puzzle. Right that we've been declared righteous. We we are not righteous. We've we've learned earlier in Romans Roman chapter three, there's none righteous, No, not even one right. We know that that we are not righteous, that we are, that we are sinners. But now we have been justified, which means that we have been declared righteous. By his blood. That means, by his death. On the cross, by the blood that he shared, we have been declared righteous. Amen. Hallelujah, Praise the Lord. Still, how why, since therefore we have been justified by His blood, much more shall we be saved by Him from the wrath of God? So justification, we've been declared righteous, But there's something else coming. Much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. So that declaration of righteousness means something. I'm a sinner, I'm guilty before a holy and righteous God. God is holy and righteous and he must punish sin. Amen. I mean, like one of the first phrases we learn how to say, is that's not fair. And we know it. We know we know justice demands it. Okay, So we're declared righteous, we're justified. There is that declaration over us. But that declaration over us means something else. That declaration over us means that we are going to be spared from God's wrath. We're sinners who deserve God's wrath. We stand there and by faith in the finished work of Christ, were declared to be righteous and we're promised to be spared. Amen, hallelujah, Praise the Lord. Just good news. Right, But there's still a mechanism there that the questions that we talked about before are still there. Verse ten. For while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son. Much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life again? I'll say more on this, but notice his death and his life. There's a couple of concepts that are going to be fleshed out here, and that is the active and passive obedience of Christ. Okay, we're used to thinking about salvation in terms of the passive obedience of Christ. In the passive obedience of Christ, Christ is put to death on our behalf. He pays the penalty for sin. Okay. Now he's not born of ordinary generation. Therefore the penalty that he's paying is not his own penalty, Amen, the penalty he's vicariously he's paying someone else's penalty. So there's penal substitutionary atonement, penal. There's a penalty substitutionary on behalf of somebody else, atonement reconciling us to God. Okay, penal substitutionary atonement. This is the passive obedience of Christ, where he goes through the cross and dies for sin. Christ died for sin once for all that, just for the unjust, in order that he might bring us back to God right. But then there's the active obedience of Christ. Christ, in his active obedience, is not just born without sin, but he lives without sin. He lives a perfect sinless life. He keeps the whole law. That's his obedience, and both of those are equally important to us. Because of his passive obedience, my sin is nailed to the tree, and God's wrath is satisfied. My sin is imputed to him. There's that word that we talked about, that imputation. It is reckoned to him, it is credited to him. But then in his active obedience, his righteousness then is imputed to me. It's credited to me, so that I stand before God justified. I stand before God righteous. Why because Christ, in his passive obedience, has paid the penalty for my sin, and Christ, in his active obedience, has earned the righteousness in which I stand. There's that double imputation. My sinfulness imputed to him and nailed to the tree, his righteousness imputed, it imputed to me, and credit credited to my account. So versed in For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled. To God by the death of his son. Much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life? More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Christ Jesus, through whom we have now received reconciliation. Again, all of that is good, all of that is incredibly important. Still doesn't answer those questions, the mechanism, the how, the why? Right, I like that, but how, oh why? Now we get the verse twelve, and this is where we get to what we're talking about here in paragraph three. But I wanted you to understand the significance of this from both sides, which is why I believe it's important that we start at the beginning. Therefore, so we're not connecting it to the idea before. Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, there it is, sin came into the world through Adam. We talked about that last night, and death through sin. Death came into the world through Adam because of Adam's sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned. No. Notice, notice what's being said here. Notice what's not being said. What's not being said is that just you know, sin came into the world through one man, so Adam sin, Sin comes into the world and death through sin. Adam Sin's death comes into the world. So death spread to all men because all would eventually sin. That's not what's being said here. So death doesn't spread to me because Adam's sin left something in the ether, right, and and I and I walk into it. Death doesn't spread to me because you know, I'm, I'm, I'm not able to dodge it, right, and then eventually it gets me. And that's the way some people think about it, right, that that the death, that that Adam's sin brought the potential for sin to all mankind. That's not what happened. And so death spread to all men because all men sinned. Well no, he says, Adam sinned. Yes, Well, then if Adam sinned, then how can all men sin? Yes, because all men sinned in Adam. Adam was our federal head, our representative. Look at the confession again, they being the root and by God's appointment, standing in the room instead of all mankind. It's because of that, because of their federal headshift. And this is something that's very difficult for us to understand for a couple of reasons. First, it's difficult to us for us to understand, because as Americans, we pride ourselves on rejecting sovereigns. Amen. In fact, we are who we are as Americans because in seventeen seventy six we said no to sovereigns. Amen, hallelujah, praise the Lord. And then, like you know, those of us who didn't, you know, travel in from another state, we got a double problem. Talk about double imputation. Right, there's this whole American sense of no sovereign and then there's this Texas sense of right. Texans joined the Union because America is almost as committed to no sovereigns as Texans are. It's the only thing close enough. So we said, okay, fine, we'll be part. And so this whole idea is kind of foreign to us. We don't even like to take our minds there the idea of a sovereign right. But then we have this fact that for most of us have never seen a real sovereign, someone who is an actual sovereign, federal head who on their own can make sovereign declarations. But that's what we're talking about here, federal headship. For us, we would think, okay, we don't have a sovereign but We're part of a sovereign republic, amen. And as part of a sovereign republic, we may not be able to point to a single individual and say that individual is our sovereign, that individual is our federal head. But we recognize that as Americans, there is federal headship over us. So if the Congress, for example, exercises federal headship and declares war, Congress is the only one that can declare war. Right. If the Congress declares war, then, because that's our federal head, guess what where at war? Amen? So if Congress, for example, declared war on Zambia, I would hope that they give a brother the heads up so I could leave first. Right, Because the moment Congress declared war on Zambia and I'm there holding the magic passport as an American, all of a sudden I am the enemy of that state. Because my sovereign, my federal head, declared war on my behalf. Whether I hadn't say in it or not, that's federal headship. Okay, Again, we don't like this. We don't. We don't like this, and we don't we don't want to function like this. We don't even like the patriarchy. Right, And it's not patriarchy any anymore. Now it's the patriarchy, right. But it's critical to understanding this doctrine of reality, that Adam is our federal head and that in a sense, Adam declared war on our behalf, and that because we were in Adam, because we are under his federal headship, that declaration is reckoned to us, and that action and all of its consequences, it's passed on to us. We inherit these things, just like you inherit eye color from your parents. We inherit this. Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin verse twelve, so death spread to all men because all sin for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given. But sin is not counted where there is no law. This is a masterful statement. And again, I mean, we could spend forever. Romans Chapter twelve is several months worth of Sundays of preaching, right, so there's no way for us to extract all of this. But even this statement right here, and the way that Paul uses logic to make these arguments. Sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Well, if sin is not counted where there is no law and the law wasn't given, then sin shouldn't have been counted. Right. No, now I'm moving a little bit toward next year, right when we get to the law. But basically what Paul has just demonstrated is the fact that there was a law. Adam did have a law written on his heart. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who's sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come. So there is a law that's written on the heart of Adam. Adam violates this law. But here's the point for the sake of what we're doing today. In paragraph three, Adam was a type, a type of the one who was to come. By the way that one who was to come is who we just heard about in the first part of this chapter, that's Christ. That's Christ now verse fifteen. But the free gift is not like to trespass. For if many died through one man's trespass, much more at the grace of God and the free gift, by the grace of that one man, Jesus Christ abounded to many, And the free gift is not like the result of the one man's sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. For if because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. So there's another federal head. We are guilty because Adam is our federal head again, standing in the room instead of all mankind. The guilt of the sin was imputed, and the corrupted nature conveyed to all this posterity, descending from them by ordinary generation. That's how we got guilty, which means that's how we get forgiven. Now we're answering that question. Therefore, verse eighteen, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. And in verse nineteen the cabstone. For as by the one man's disobedience, the many became sinners, so by the one man's obedience, the many will be made righteous. You see the answer to that question, how is it that this one man's death on the cross all those years ago has anything to do with me? In order to answer that question, you have to answer the other related question, which is, how is it that that one man's disobedience all those thousands of years ago, not millions, thank you very much, all those thousands of years ago, has anything to do with me? And the answer on both accounts is the same federal headship. Adam was our federal head and there was guilt imputed and corruption passed down from our federal head. That is why the same principle applies with Jesus God's playing by the same rules Amen, the rule of federal headship. By the way, that's why one Peter, first Peter, chapter two and verse four, as you come to him a living stone, rejected by men, but in the sight of God, chosen and precious you, yourselves, like living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Let me go down to verse nine, First Peter two nine. But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation of people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Why again, people, priesthood, nation? What is that require? What is being a people and being a priesthood and being a nation? What is that required? Well, I mean, if you're going to be a nation, you got to have you got to have a territory, got to have a kingdom. Amen, we have the Kingdom of God. The kingdom has to have a capital. The capital is the new Jerusalem. And the kingdom has to have a sovereign it has to have a king, It has to have a federal head, and ours does. It's the Lord Jesus Christ himself. That that's how we can be declared and identified as a people and as a nation, because we're under the federal headship of Christ. And it's all. So how we can be declared righteous and escape the wrath of God because our federal head and his passive obedience, pays the penalty that we owe and in his active obedience earns the righteousness that we could not go back with me to Romans. Let's look at chapter three and again we could just look at all of this, but for the sake of time, let's slip beginning at verse nineteen. Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes the knowledge of sin. Again, you can't get there from here. Adam's your federal head You can't fix that verse twenty one. But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. That's how we enter this federal headship by faith, for there is no distinction for all of sin and fall short of the glory of God everybody, because we're all under the federal headship of Adam and are justified by His grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ. Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness because in his divine forbearance he passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he might be just just. God must punish sin and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. How how can that? Because again that's the question, right, that's where we started, that's the question that people ask, how can that be fair? And the answer is number one, God's not running for God, so he didn't have to be fair by your standard. Amen, whatever God does is fair is not even the right word. Whatever God does is fair. No, whatever God does is right, and right is more important than fair. Amen. Whatever God does is right. However, it's also righteous. And here's how how is it righteous for that to have anything to do with me? Federal headship? And then on the side of salvation, how is it right for that to have anything to do with me? And the answer is federal headship. So when Adam ate, I was in Atom, and I'm guilty because I was in Atom. And when Christ died, I was in Christ and I'm justified and reconciled and read deemed because I'm in Christ. Who is my federal head Amen,