The big idea
Paul’s analogy in Romans 5 runs in both directions. If Adam’s sin was not merely similar to ours but actually ours, then Christ’s righteousness is not merely credited to our account from a distance — it is ours in the same way. He did not just die for us in his last hours. He lived an entire life of obedience to the Father, and that life is the gift.
Key takeaways
- When a leader who ministered to you turns out to be false, what God did in you was still real. The grace was Jesus’ grace, not that person’s.
- The church settled this question in the fourth century. Augustine’s answer was that the validity of a baptism rests on Christ, not on the minister — so nobody needs re-baptizing because the man who baptized them failed.
- Biblical hope is not “I hope so.” It is assurance resting on evidence — the resurrection, the down payment of the Spirit — which is why suffering can be a source of joy rather than only endurance.
- God is not doing community service. Heroes die for the good guys; Christ, at his best, died for the worst.
- Adam and Eve were not expelled from God’s presence. Genesis says plainly why they were driven out of the garden: so they could not reach the tree of life. What they lost was immortality.
- Hebrews 7:9 says Levi tithed while still in Abraham’s loins. Read Romans 5 with that logic and Adam’s trespass is not just like ours — it is ours.
- Paul chose a word that means made, not reckoned. We were made sinners in Adam; we are made righteous in Christ.
- If a perfect lifetime of obedience is already yours, bragging rights are gone and so is the debt. What is left is an offering of honor.
Matt set aside what he had planned. “This was kind of like — they don’t tell you to do this at preacher school,” he said, and then opened with something sad in the hope it would land as an encouragement.
When the person who ministered to you turns out to be false
Mandy had brought him the news about another prominent Christian leader: Philip Yancey, who had acknowledged a long affair. Matt admitted the name had not meant much to him — “I think he wrote some books,” he would have said — and then he googled it. “Boy did he write books,” and widely read ones. It is not an isolated case: Matt went on to name Ravi Zacharias and Mike Bickle, and noted that the pattern runs well past the famous. People make a profession and then live another way, and it is depressing.
He raised it for the sake of anyone tempted to go jaded about their own history: God did something in me through that man’s ministry — was any of it real?
It is an old question with a settled answer. In the fourth century the church argued about clergy who had handed over the scriptures or informed on believers under persecution. Was my baptism fake because he was fake? Am I actually married? “I’m not saying it came to blows,” Matt said, “but it came to books.”
Augustine gave the church a way through: it is the grace of Jesus, not that man. Your baptism is legitimate because of Christ. Someone in the room called out the obvious precedent — Judas baptized. Judas laid hands on the sick and they recovered. There is no passage carving out an exception for him.
Two things follow. Don’t idolize the people up front — and don’t assume this is a problem for authors. Matt read Paul’s charge as addressed to the room:
“For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God.”
1 Thessalonians 4:3–8And if the objection is that God should not use imperfect people — “who would be left? If he didn’t use imperfect sinful people, who would minister? Who would preach the gospel?” The person still answers to God. You still stay vigilant. But what God did, God did.
“To fulfill all righteousness”
That turned the message toward Jesus at the Jordan. Imagine being John the Baptist, who had already identified him as the Lamb of God, and now being asked to baptize God in the flesh. He objected; Jesus overruled him — “it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.”
Matt thinks this is the piece we drop because it confuses us. Forgiveness of sin is no small thing, but the gift is more than a blank slate and a neutral standing. “It’s not just those last hours of Christ’s life that he lived for us. He lived an entire life of obedience to the Father.” Last week Paul used Abraham as the analogy (Romans 4); this week it is Adam.
Justified by faith, and a hope worth suffering for
To be justified is to be made righteous — not by circumcision, not by works of the law, but by trusting that God does what he promised. The result is no hostility with God: peace, access, and a standing in grace from which we rejoice in hope of glory.
Which is what makes the next line survivable: suffering produces endurance, endurance character, character hope. In the middle of it, suffering feels endless. The rejoicing is not in the pain but in what it is producing.
Matt stopped to correct the vocabulary. In American English, “I hope so” usually means there is no evidence and it would just be nice — “I hope I win the lottery. I don’t even buy tickets.” Paul means the opposite: “a hope of glory, not a ‘gosh, it’d be nice, probably won’t.’” Biblical hope is assurance standing on testimony and a down payment — the resurrection, the Spirit given to us.
He died for the bad guys
“For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person — though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die — but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Romans 5:6–8People do die for other people, and when you ask them why, they say it was the right thing to do — usually to save the good guys from the bad guys. This is a different category. “God’s doing no community service. He’s not trying to catch up on his taxes.” He is the best, and he is dying for the worst.
Then the argument runs from lesser to greater (Romans 5:9–11). If he did that for enemies, how much more will he follow through for children already grafted in? Matt noticed the couplets: justified by his blood, reconciled by his death — then saved by him, saved by his life. That last phrase is the hinge of the whole message.
Getting the Adam story right
The analogy at Romans 5:12–14 only works if we read Genesis accurately, so Matt backed up. Adam is made from the dirt — adamah, a pun on his name — and Eve is made from him, which means every later human descends from Adam. There is one humanity, and it comes from one man (Genesis 2–3).
Here is where the retelling usually goes wrong, “by people just like me,” he warned. Many assume they were expelled from God’s presence. There is no evidence of that — Cain is still complaining about being driven from God’s presence in Genesis 4, which he could hardly do if his parents had already lost it. “Do you think God was trapped in the garden?”
You do not have to guess at the punishment. God states it:
“Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever —”
Genesis 3:22The Hebrew sentence does not even finish. They are put outside so they cannot reach the tree of life; what they lose is their potential immortality, and every child born after them is born without access to it. Because of one man’s trespass, all die.
In Adam’s loins
Paul calls Adam a type — a template that sets up a later fulfillment. To show how much weight that carries, Matt borrowed a maneuver from Hebrews 7:9, where Levi is said to have paid tithes to Melchizedek — through Abraham, generations before Levi was born, because he was still in his ancestor’s loins.
Apply that to Romans 5:12 and the sentence changes. Adam’s sin is not merely similar to ours. “When Adam took that fruit and ate it, we took that fruit and ate it. When Adam was kicked out of the garden, we were kicked out of the garden.” Matt could feel the room resisting: “Kind of embrace the bummer. Just embrace it, because you want that. You’re going to super duper want it in a minute.” Without that participation, the analogy is shallow and hollow — and Paul does not make shallow analogies.
The two halves are not symmetrical, and that is the point of Romans 5:15–17. Adam had to fail once. Jesus covered countless generations of sin — orders of magnitude harder, and so much more powerful.
Now the payoff. In Christ — who lived a perfect life of obedience to the Father without a break — we are not merely returned to neutral with the debts paid off. His righteousness is ours on exactly the terms by which Adam’s sin was ours.
“Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.”
Romans 5:18–21Two words got weighed. First, “act” in verse 18 is supplied by the ESV and the NIV; the Greek reads through one righteousness. Matt takes it as a who rather than a what — the King James has it, “by the righteousness of one came the free gift” — which fits what Paul just said about being saved by his life. Second, Paul had a perfectly good word available for reckoned; he used it of Abraham a chapter earlier. Here he chose a word that means made. “We’re not just thought of as sinners. We are made righteous.”
So what do you do with a gift like that?
The first casualty is bragging. “So what if you legalistically did a bunch of stuff great this week? What is that compared to a life of obedience to the Father in every way?” And it answers the question of why Jesus was baptized at all, why he was a baby — “why couldn’t he have just showed up the day of his death, fully grown, ready to die?”
The second question is the one Paul anticipates himself: why not keep sinning, since the game is already won? Matt reached ahead to Romans 12:1 and to the word behind “sacrifice.” We tend to read every Old Testament sacrifice as a sin offering; many were offerings of honor, respect, devotion, and the Greek translators had a distinct word for those. That is the word Paul uses about your life.
“You are not paying off a backload of debt. You’re not trying to get his attention. You’re already at the table, seated in heavenly places. What you can do is give yourself for honor — your affection, your devotion, your loyalty to the one who super duper duper deserves it. We’re not buying anything. There’s nothing left to sell. It’s all given in Christ.”
The message ended in silence rather than application, with the congregation asked to let the Spirit say how to live it out, and a prayer: “I think we need your help receiving from you.”