The Death-Dealing Sin, the Life-Giving Gift
12-14You
know the story of how Adam landed us in the dilemma we're in— first
sin, then death, and no one exempt from either sin or death. That sin
disturbed relations with God in everything and everyone, but the extent
of the disturbance was not clear until God spelled it out in detail to
Moses. So death, this huge abyss separating us from God, dominated the
landscape from Adam to Moses. Even those who didn't sin precisely as
Adam did by disobeying a specific command of God still had to experience
this termination of life, this separation from God. But Adam, who got
us into this, also points ahead to the One who will get us out of it.
15-17Yet
the rescuing gift is not exactly parallel to the death-dealing sin. If
one man's sin put crowds of people at the dead-end abyss of separation
from God, just think what God's gift poured through one man, Jesus
Christ, will do! There's no comparison between that death-dealing sin
and this generous, life-giving gift. The verdict on that one sin was the
death sentence; the verdict on the many sins that followed was this
wonderful life sentence. If death got the upper hand through one man's
wrongdoing, can you imagine the breathtaking recovery life makes,
sovereign life, in those who grasp with both hands this wildly
extravagant life-gift, this grand setting-everything-right, that the one
man Jesus Christ provides?
18-19Here
it is in a nutshell: Just as one person did it wrong and got us in all
this trouble with sin and death, another person did it right and got us
out of it. But more than just getting us out of trouble, he got us into
life! One man said no to God and put many people in the wrong; one man
said yes to God and put many in the right.
20-21All
that passing laws against sin did was produce more lawbreakers. But sin
didn't, and doesn't, have a chance in competition with the aggressive
forgiveness we call grace. When it's sin versus grace, grace wins hands
down. All sin can do is threaten us with death, and that's the end of
it. Grace, because God is putting everything together again through the
Messiah, invites us into life—a life that goes on and on and on, world
without end.