God's Plan

Series: But Now - The Greatest Words Ever Spoken (Romans 2-6)

 “Gods Plan” // Message @ JRCC – Sunday, April 7, 2011

Text: Romans 5:12-21 // Series: “But Now…” The Greatest Words Ever Spoken

 

 

Good morning, welcome here, friends.  I’m going to invite you to grab your beverages and come on back in and take a seat.  As you can see in your info sheet, we have a piece of staffing news to announce this morning.  Robin Nierychlo, who has been a great addition to our staff team in the area of Administration over the past month, has needed to step away from the position.  She has been training – educationally and vocationally – as a unit clerk with the new outpatient clinic in Surrey and it appeared that this and her work at JRCC were able to co-exist happily.  But Fraser Health needs more missionaries and so we bless and affirm her in her commitments there and thank her for her keen sense of organizational systems that she brought to her time with us.  This means, that if you were thinking of applying for the role last time we posted but were unsure. Now is your chance.  Pick up a copy of the Position Profile at the Welcome Centre and connect with me in person or via e-mail. So please join me in thanking Robin and also in praying for the right person to join us on the team. 

 

Well this morning, we are going to tackle one of the most controversial texts in the New Testament...  Every punctuation and the meaning of every word is hot debated by scholars and theologians because of the massive implications for our worldview. But speaking of controversy, how many of you have heard about the one that is brewing over Rob Bell’s new book?  A few.  OK.  Well let me give you a thumbnail sketch.  Normally Christian subculture bumps along but every once in a while, a controversy brews that gains so much momentum that it bubbles over into the mainstream pop culture and media.  Rob Bell’s latest book, entitled “Love Wins: Heaven, Hell and the fate of Every Person who have Ever Lived” has certainly generated just this kind of controversy.  Part of it is Bell’s style…  He asks a lot of questions like “Is Gandhi in hell?” and “How specifically do you get to heaven?  Will only a small group go?” and “what about those who never hear the gospel?” and lots more.  But as the title suggests, and here I should give you a spoiler alert, Bell’s thesis is that in the end, Love Wins.  I Timothy 2 says that God is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to life, so Bell argues that God always gets what He wants.  And therefore, in the end, Love Wins.

 

I think the questions Bell is asking are good questions.  Particularly his thesis question…  In the End, What “Wins”?

  • God’s Mercy?
  • God’s Justice?
  • God’s Love?
  • God’s Judgment & Wrath?

Something or someone else altogether?

In the grand scope of history and eternity, What is God’s plan?  And how has this plan unfolded in salvation history and will it continue to unfold?  And perhaps more practically, how does God’s plan impact you and me today?  Let’s pray as we look into God’s Word together in Romans 5.

 

Well this year through the Lenten season, the 40 days leading up to Easter, we’ve been teaching through the book of Romans.  And we’ve examined various facets of God’s character and action in our world.  We’ve looked at His wrath, His grace, His justice, His patience and mercy, His righteousness, his faithfulness.  Romans raises lots of questions - philosophical and theological.  Things like “what is sin?  Why did God give the Law in the Old Testament?  What about hell?  How to avoid becoming legalistic.  We’ve asked “how good is good enough to get you into heaven?”  But we still have some unanswered questions…  Three questions in particular linger and are addressed in Romans 5:12-21. 

  • How does a dude eating forbidden fruit so long ago affect me? (doctrine & theology) – started into this question in ch 2 but now the writer of Romans, Paul, one of the early theologians and teachers in the early Christian movement, goes right at it.
  • What about people who lived before the OT law was given? (history & morality) – smaller piece of what he addresses, but it helps us think about consequences of Adam & Eve’s actions  
  • In the end, what “wins”? (eschatology) – this is also a question of implications, the implications of Christ’s actions and what’s going to happen in the future and how it affects you and me.

So, with the table set, you’re looking for him to address these 3 questions, and remember, it’s complicated, so let’s dive in.  The text is on the side screens in the New Living translation.  [4 Scripture Slides]  

 

What in the world is he talking about?  Well, if you think back to high school English class, Paul is using a sophisticated compare and contrast technique to assess the impact of the two greatest figures in human history.  The first one is Adam, the first human being and the forbearer of each one of us and every other human being what has ever or will ever live.  And here we are wrestling again that we tackled in our first teaching series of the new year in Genesis.  And the question is “how did sin and death enter our world?  Were those two elements part of God’s plan?”  The quick backstory here from Genesis 3 is that God created Adam and Eve to be co-regents and stewards with Him.  They were given incredible responsibilities and also incredible freedoms with limits.  One limit in particular, Don’t eat of the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil.  They are tempted and they give in and as a result of that action of defiance against God, two new entities enter the world.  Sin.  And Death.  Sin, which Steph did a good job of defining for us two weeks ago is falling short of God’s perfect standard.  And death, it’s good buddy, is even more all-encompassing in its reach.  Here, the text is reminding us that when the Bible talks about “death” it is both a spiritual and a physical concept.  It is physiological, separation from your body and it is spiritual – estrangement from God.  And this understanding helps to answer our first big question: how does Adam & Eve’s choice to defy God influence me?  To many, it seems very unfair that something that happened before I was born has implications for my existence.  So let’s address this.

 

First of all, we need to ask why do we feel that this is unfair?  To do this, we’re going to have to get inside and de-construct our worldview.  And sociologists tell us that one of the most defining marks of our western worldview is individualism. Self-efficacy & self-determination where my choices influence me and no one else – are two of our highest values.  But the original readers of this text would not have thought that way, in fact, most people throughout human history would not have thought that way.  Most cultures have been highly communal in their orientation where they emphasize the group over the individual.  Anthropologists call this corporate solidarity.  The classic example from the Old Testament is the story of Ai, where a man named Achan steals some of the look from an army raid, God punished the whole group, and in fact, in Joshua 7:11 God comes to the leaders and says “Israel has sinned”.  Not Achan.  The individual functions on behalf of and their choices influence the group.  So when Paul says “Adam’s choices influence many” we bristle at this.  But there is an element of truth to it, even genetically speaking.  The decisions and choices of our forbearers DO influence us. 

 

Let me give you a contemporary example.  Later this month there’s going to be a little do over in the UK…  Perhaps you’ve heard that we’re having a royal wedding?  Think of it this way…  If Kate were to have a baby today, there would be a huge scandal, engagement broken off, disavowed knowledge of the child, all the rest of it.  BUT if she has a baby 18 months from now, something incredibly different would happen.  That child would be in line for the future throne.  That baby would be royal.  And here’s the real point of this illustration – that baby would inherit the throne because of the choices of its forbearers.  There was nothing that that baby did to earn the throne.  It was theirs simply by means of its parentage.  Royalty is spoken over that child’s life from the get go because of the family that is will be born into. 

Similarly, Paul is saying each of us is born into a family – Adam’s family, the human family – and because of our parentage, there is an inclusion dynamic that occurs.  I don’t have to do anything…  I just have to be born and the implications of my parentage, stretching all the way back to my first ancestor, become mine.  I don’t have to earn them, they are simply pronounced over my life by virtue of corporate solidarity & inclusion.  And the news doesn’t get any better…  Not only am I and every other person who has ever lived born a sinner, alienated from a perfect and holy God, but because of this alienation, I sin.  This is very bad news.  Steph and Keith both sketched this out for us over the past two weeks.  And so Paul continues in Romans 5 to say because of this, there are two powers that hold sway over my life – sin and death.  Very depressing!

 

But here Paul has to address an immediate objection from his audience.  Remember, there is a group called the Jews who have lived their lives by trying to remedy this sin-death problem but following God’s laws, given to Moses in the Old Testament.  So now they careful student of history says “OK, in order for it to count as ‘sin’ however, there has to be a rule to break.  So I will give you that Adam broke a very specific instruction that God gave, and I get post-Moses because then people have God’s law so they know what to do and not do but there’s a lot of years in between those two guys… what’s up with that that?”  It’s kind of like parenting…  I can give a very specific command like If I say to my little kids, “don’t get the milk out of the fridge.  That’s daddy’s job” or if I don’t ever articulate that, the end result is at some point the same…  Milk on the floor.  Paul takes the same tact, he looks at the implications or the end result or the ultimate consequences of our actions as human beings and says in verse 14 – no matter how we got here, everyone is still under the influence of those two reigning powers – sin and death.  Everyone dies – the milk is on the floor, even if there was no disobedience to a specific command.  He’s arguing statistics, which are still true in our day and time.  As near as I am aware, the global death rate is still holding strong at 100%.  So he is saying because of this, we can work backwards and see that the consequences of Adam’s sin are still in effect and still hold sway over your life and mine.  And it’s here where so many people fall into despair and say “well then, I might as well eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow I’m dead!”  But that would miss his whole argument in chapter 4 and the first part of chapter 5 that there is hope beyond our present circumstances and in fact, beyond the pale of death.   

 

Because that’s not where God’s plan ends.  Sin and death do not have to have the final word over your life and mine.  We can experience our own BUT NOW moment.  That’s what you’ll be hearing about next weekend as people share their stories.  And so here he turns his focus toward the second Adam, Jesus Christ.  What happened to Adam is like foreshadowing what was to come.  God’s plan was never to leave humanity under the eternal sway of sin and death…  Before time began, His plan was to send His Son Jesus Christ, into the world to give us the most gracious and wonderful gift we could ever imagine.  That which will can, in the end, have the final say over your life and mine…  He begins to tease this out by a compare and contrast strategy.  In some ways Adam and Christ are similar, in some ways they are different.  It’s kind of like if I were to put up a photo for you on the first car that Meg and I owned together, truth be told, she owned it and I, when we were dating, mooched rides off her.  Ladies, if you want to attract a man, you need the power of the 89 Ford Escort.  Nothing says romance like a hatchback, friends.  But I digress…  Compare and contrast.  If I were to put up a photo of another car, this time the 2011 Ford C-max, and asked you “In what ways are they alike?  In what ways are they different?”  You could come up with all kinds of responses…  They are both cars, Fords, red, 4 wheels, etc.  But in many ways they are very, very different.  And this is what Paul wants us to do with Adam and Christ, which is at the heart of this passage. 

 

 

His point in all of this is to answer the question in the end, who wins?  What has the final word in my life in our world?  The answer is perhaps surprising… it isn’t strictly love that wins.  The text says that where sin increased, grace increase abundantly.  Or literally, where sin increased, Grace SUPER increased!  And friends, this was always God’s plan.  Creation… Fall… Redemption… Restoration.  After telling us for 5 chapters the bad news of the status of every human being who has ever lived, Romans 5 sounds a note of profound and eternal victory: In the end, Grace wins!  But, and here’s where we return to Rob Bell’s book…  Does grace win for everyone? 

 

The notion that grace wins for everyone all of the time is a doctrine known as universalism.  Simply put, this doctrine asserts that since God is all loving, He couldn’t possibly do something as un-loving as sending someone to hell so in the end, everyone will join Him in heaven because at the end of the day, love wins.  And supporters of this view will go very quickly to Romans 5 to say look at the language in Romans 5:18 – Christ’s saving action brings about new life for all. Everyone will be made righteous so therefore, in the end, love wins. 

 

But this is not what Scripture teaches.  It may seem like arguing over semantics, but to say that GRACE wins is actually quite different than saying that love wins.  Saying that love wins actually de-emphasizes the two previous element of our discussion:  Grace wins because:

1)   Parentage matters – To simply erase or minimize the effects of sin, as Pastor Keith reminded us last week, isn’t being true to either God’s character or to the acknowledged reality of evil in our world. 

2)   Consequences matter – death still reigns in our world.  Bad things happen to good people.  Dictators in the middle east rage against their own people.  There are earthquakes and famine and all kinds of things that are rooted in an lead to death as a ruling power in our world.  The milk is out of the carton and it isn’t goin back in!

But to those who argue in favour of universalism out of Romans 5:18 need to go back and ready Romans 5:17…  For all who receive it will live in triumph over sin and death through Jesus Christ.  Grace wins because 

3)   Choice matters.  You can’t earn grace.  You can’t buy it buy living a god life coming to church.  You enter the place where grace rules by coming in through the door, which is the saving work of Jesus Christ. 

 

So, let’s conclude by looking at the implications of Grace’s triumph for you and me and I’m going to speak to a couple of groups of people here in our Reflection and Application

Firstly, a word to those who are searching and curious but have perhaps never considered the philosophical or theological implications of Grace. 

  • The door is open - Welcome to the place where grace rules instead of sin & death

Jesus is welcoming you to the place where grace reigns.    To leave the territory where sin and death have sway in your life and to have a new word spoken over your life.  A word of hope.  The famous hymn Amazing Grace says it well “I once was lost BUT NOW I am found, was blind, BUT NOW I see”.  Today can be that day for you.  You can have your own But Now moment…  We’ve reconfigured the room so that there is more privacy but accessibility for the prayer team behind the pipe and drape on the far side.  Today is your day – go and talk to them and invite Grace to rule!

The second group I want to address are those who have an image in their mind of what they might say to God as justification for their lives.  I might phrase it as more of a question:

  • What are you hoping carries the day in the end?  (it had better be grace)

You see, for many people, they hope all kinds of things will win…  Their acts of service, or giving money to the poor or living a good life, or any number of other justifications.  But the scripture says “it’s not by works of righteousness that we have done but according to His GRACE He saved us”.  When you and I stand before God, He gets to ask the defining question: ‘are you a son of Adam or a daughter of Eve?’  If the answer is yes, you’d better have a better answer than love wins.  You’d better be clinging to the matches hope and joy and confidence that flows from grace

 

And this is perhaps the last group that I want to address.  Those who have been part of God’s forever family for some time…  Those who, because of this distance from their own grace moment, have lost touch with the amazing and incomprehensible nature of it.  Oh we think ‘yes, others need graced but I’m a pretty decent Christian.  I’m a covenant member of my church.  I do my momentum journaling. I’m coming to pragmatics tonight…  Jesus reminds us that those who have been forgive much, love much.  The get grace.  But sometimes we aren’t moved by it so much any more.  The majestic declaration that grace wins becomes cerebral and dry.  I wonder if some of us have lost touch with grace.  If so, we lose our zeal for reaching out to others around us.  We get concerned about and focused on the wrong things – temporal instead of eternal.  So I invite you this morning,

  • Don’t lose touch with grace

 

As a way of reminding ourselves of the mystery and majesty of grace, we’ve been taking communion together more regularly this Easter season.  So I’m going to invite the team to come, the server to move to their stations, the prayer team to make themselves available at the side and we are going to partake together.  At JRCC, the table is open to all.  You’ll come and take the elements, return to your seat and before you take them, I want you to pray and say “God, I invite you to remind me today that GRACE RULES”  It rules in my life and for that I am eternally grateful.  Sometimes our response is more reflective but today, our response is going to be declarative – and say “grace wins” thank you Lord!  So let me lead us in a prayer of preparation

A hot theological debate these days is around the doctrine of universalism, the idea that God's love ultimately "wins". Proponents are quick to quote Romans 5:18 but what does Romans 5 teach about God's ultimate plan?

Speaker: Brad Sumner

April 10, 2011
Romans 5:12-21

Brad Sumner

Lead Pastor

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