Romans Chapter 5 Verse 14: 'The Bibles Biggest Problem'

Notes on the Epistle to the Romans from a message preached by J Stewart Gillespie on: Romans Chapter 5 Verse 14: 'The Bibles Biggest Problem'

1. Representation as a Problem and a Power (v12,15-19)
2. Relationship as a Pattern (v11,12,17)
3. Death as a Product (v12)
4. Sin as a Principle: “sin entered...” (5:12)
5. Adam as a Picture: “who is the figure...” (5:14)

Adam as a Picture: “who is the figure...” (5:14)

Sometime ago I was asked by one of my boys, one of the most basic and perplexing questions which can be asked concerning Gods revelation of His plan of redemption in the scripture, a question which recurs from time to time and which is very rarely ever answered.

The question or series of questions go like this:

1. Did God make Adam and Eve and the garden of Eden? – Answer Yes – God is Creator.
2. Did God know what was going to happen when He made Adam and Eve in the garden? - Answer Yes – God is Omniscient.
3. Why did God make the tree of knowledge of good and evil and why did He let the serpent in? - Hard question –
4. Is He really all knowing and is He really all powerful?
5. If God allowed Adam and Eve to fall, for sin to enter into the world and then by the work of Christ God saved them what exactly is the point to it all? Are we not just back where we started?

I have referred to this as the Bible's biggest problem. It is sometimes referred to as the Problem of Evil! The problem lies in this, if I claim that God is creator and if I claim that God is omniscient and that God is omnipotent then at some point then at the very least God allowed evil to enter in with the full knowledge of the consequences of that sin entering into the world! Furthermore it may well seem that the production of a plan of salvation is either admission of failure on the part of God or an indicator that His universe is somehow out of control and needs a rescue package to bring it back. Worse still sometimes our gospel preaching can almost indicate that! If there is one chapter of the Bible which would tackle this question head on I would believe that it would be Romans chapter 5 and the answers are quite surprising! In Romans chapter 5 Paul will take 3 areas of human experience that appear to have gone wrong and are out of control:

1. The Problems of Life (5:1-5)
2. The Plan of Salvation (5:6-11)
3. The Plight of Humanity (5:12-21)

In these 3 areas of 'life gone wrong' we will discover that:

• God is in control – we need not compromise on Gods omnipotence nor on His omniscience.
• God does not react to the problem God pre-empts the problem
• Gods purpose in the problem is not to bring as back to the beginning again, Gods purpose is not to permit a problem simply to solve a problem as the question inferred but God has a glorious purpose in all of lifes problems from the microcosm of every day life in vs 1 to 5 to the macrocosm of the plight of the whole of humanity in vs 12 to 21.
• Salvation does not take us back to Eden, it takes us beyond Eden. Eden was a wonderful place – from it flowed out 4 rivers. God does not take me back to Eden, in salvation He takes me beyond Eden to the source of that water that flowed through Edens paradise: “There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the most High. God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved: God shall help her, and that right early.” (Psa 46:4-5) Revelation closes, and your problems dear believer will conclude, not with man back in Edens garden but with redeemed humanity at the very source of that river that flowed through Eden and in a paradise where there is no serpent and where there is no tree of knowledge of good and evil and where there is nought that defileth that enters therein, and you know what – we don't want that kind of version of freedom anymore, that version of freedom that leaves man the slave of sin and of self and of Satan we want the kind of freedom which renders man forever the willing servant of God.

It took God 6 days to create the universe as you and I know it and understand it. On the 5th day He created man in His own image – 5 days to make natural man – Adam. It has taken God over 6000 years, about 40 prophets, 66 books, the global preaching of the gospel message ….. Bibles, over 300 prophecies concerning the perosn of Christ, the careful orderinga nd appointing of human history, and supremely above all of that, the death of His Son on the Cross at Calvary, it has cost God all of that, why? To get us back to what we were? No! Not a bit of it!

• It took God 5 days to make natural man
• It has taken the mighty work of Christ and the plan and purposes of redemption to make spiritual man!

“And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.” (1Co 15:45)

You have pictures of it of course with Jacob and Esau:

The earth could produce an Esau (Gen 25:25ff) but only the workings of the Spirit of God could produce a Jacob: “And he blessed Joseph, and said, God, before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk, the God which fed me all my life long unto this day, The Angel which redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads; and let my name be named on them, and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac; and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth.” (Gen 48:15-16)

Having passed through the experiences of Romans 5:

1. The Problems of Life (5:1-5)
2. The Plan of Salvation (5:6-11)
3. The Plight of Humanity (5:12-21)

Humanity is not what it once was! Just as Gods dealings in the life of Jacob did anything but bring him back to what he originally had been! If Gods work simply took humanity back to what it had been there would have been no point to redemption, nor to the work of Christ nor to the total revelation of God from genesis to Revelation! Whilst my first concern in the problems of life is so often to get back to where I once was: to the peace I once enjoyed, to the paradise of Eden, that is the last thing in Gods agenda, God desires to take me beyond where I have ever been before, beyond His paradise to His Presence and to His Person and to have a Passion for Him as I have never had before. For all is for His Glory (Rom5:2,21) even when that Glory is achieved at the cost of the death of His Son on the cross at Calvary. It took God 5 days to produce Adam, but it has taken God 6000 years and the mighty work of Christ, His revelations in scripture, His work in us by His Spirit to produce Spiritual men, men fashioned not after Adam but after Christ! What sets such an individual apart? It strikes me that after all of Gods dealings with us and after His work of redemption and salvation, the scriptures consistently testify that we have, since the fall of Adam and the redemption in Christ we have gained in those 6000 years of turmoil and tragedy something that Adam never had.

We often refer to it as resemblance – resemblance to Christ that is.

Specifically 3 abiding features of Christ likeness seem to be to imprinted into the character of the believer as a result of all of this mighty work of Christ. Let us not miss the import of this, that what we are saying is that the reason that God has done all that He has done is produce in me:

1. Faith – (5:1,2) – faith - A faith unlike Adams faith, for this is a faith that is prepared to trust God completely, to take Him at His word, to trust Him even where I cannot trace Him, and to trust His plans and His purposes completely, unquestioningly, not because I am brain washed but because I know that He is completely trustworthy, even when Satan would infer doubts to the contrary, I trust Him! That kind of implicit trust has been bought by the blood of His Son: “He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?” (Rom 8:32).
2. Love – (5:5) – love – a love for God like Adam never had! We love Him, not only as creator but as redeemer.
3. Hope – (5:4) – hope – unlike any hope that Adam might have had! For we have seen that no matter how trying our circumstances and how difficult the way, hope that is in Him is never, NEVER, disappointed!

These 3 Christ like features that stamp the man or woman who has passed through Christ's mighty work of redemption, echo and recur throughout the NT scriptures and elsewhere, as features of Gods work, performed in time by the work of Christ and the activity of the Holy Spirit, that are eternal and enduring and which we will take with us into eternity:

1. First prayer of 1 Thessalonians: “Remembering without ceasing your work of faith, and labour of love, and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, in the sight of God and our Father” (1Th 1:3)
2. Second prayer of 1 Thessalonians: 1 Thess 3:10 Faith (3:12) Love (3:13) Hope (3:13)
3. What endures after all service is finished (1 Co 13:3) ? After all sacrifice has been made (1 Co 13:3)? After all spiritual gifts have been used (1 Co 13:1-2, 1 Co 12; 1 Co 14) – faith, love and hope (1 Co 13:13).
4. In 1 Peter 1:7 – the “trial of your faith” produces a product of far greater value than of gold, a faith of enduring and of eternal worth
5. In 2 Peter 1 the “knowledge” of God in relationship brings about resemblance to Christ beginning with faith (2Peter1:5) and ending in Love (2 Peter1:7)
6. In Romans 5: Faith (5:1,2); Love (5:5,8) and Hope (5:4).

If these features are not seen in my life then God has done nothing in my life! Is that His work and His purpose complete? Not quite, for having equipped us with a faith deeper than Adam ever had and a love for Him deeper than Adam could have experienced and a Hope that went beyond Eden's boundaries, God has equipped us, through the trials and difficulties of life with a joy and rejoicing in His Glory like Adam never knew (Rom 5:2) God delights to reveal His Glory in all that He does The only way that God can reveal the fullness of His sufficiency is against the background of the depths of man's greatest need. The only way by which God can reveal the depths of His love is in the fullness of His giving.

So it is that at the beginning of Romans 5 the believer can not only

1. “rejoice in hope of the glory of God” (5:2) but the believer can also
2. “rejoice in tribulation” (5:3)

because that tribulation works to the same end – it brings us to a practical experience of that Glory we hope for: “because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us” (5:5) In that experience of trial and tribulation God forges into us those very marks of His Glorious character: faith, love (5:5) and hope (5:4) The reality of our salvation is experienced in the trial: “δοκιμή” (5:4) - “experience” or “proof” - our salvation is real and we experience that through the tribulation.

1. Gods purposes are sovereign over the Problems of Life
2. Gods purposes are also sovereign in the Plan of Salvation (5:6-11)

His plan of Salvation was constructed not as a reaction to our problems but pre-empting our problems:

1. “For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.” (Rom 5:6)
2. “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” (Rom 5:8)
3. “For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.” (Rom 5:10)

Gods purposes are also sovereign in the Plight of Man (5:12-21):

Here is a very important statement of scripture, easily missed: “who is the figure of Him that was to come” (v14b) Gods work in Christ was not a reaction to Adams failure! Adams sin set the scene for Gods salvation in Christ! In other words God didn't save us because of Adam's fall! Adam fell that God might save us! Adam was the “figure”, the “type” of the person of Christ, ie. Adam was the lesser and Christ the greater, cf. Heb 9:9,23 – the tabernacle fashioned after the reality in heaven. Sometimes we get the question back to front: Is Christ up to dealing with Adams problem? Actually Adam is only a 'type' – a lesser shadow of one who performs a greater work (5:14). Gods work is far greater than this! Gods plan and purposes preceded our problem Adam and his failure was foundational to Christ and His triumph! This is a different way of looking at my problems and man's plight than they reasoning I might apply!

Recently the car hand brake broke, so I took it to the garage to get it fixed. Human logic and order says I fixed the car because it was broken. The order and logic of Romans 5 goes somewhat different, the breaks were broken that they might be fixed and so that I might discover the character of the mechanic as the one who fixes!

The purpose lies not in problem but in the process of solving the problem! The solution precedes the problem! The Glory of Christ was the reason for Adams failure! The Glory of Christ and His work were not simply a reaction to Adams failure!

https://graceinchrist.org/romans