Resurrection and Redemption (Rom. 5:18-19)

Image from Pixabay

Today especially we celebrate the physical resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth from the dead.  It’s important of course to understand just how we are celebrating it.  We don’t celebrate the resurrection of Jesus by taking it as merely a symbol for new beginnings, nor do we take it as a religious myth.  Very simply put, we are celebrating as historical fact the claim that three days after the dead body of Jesus was put in the new tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, Jesus came to life again, stood up on his own two feet, and walked out of the tomb.

Now I can understand why someone who is not a Christian would not want to believe this, because if Jesus rose from the dead, it means that he is who he said he was, namely, the Christ, the Son of the living God (Mt. 16:16).  It means that he is the sovereign over us.  It means, as the apostle Peter put it in his sermon on the day of Pentecost, “God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye crucified, both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36).  

But did he rise from the dead?  What proof is there for that?  Though it is not my purpose in this sermon to deal with this at length, it is good to remind ourselves that we have not, again as Peter put it, “followed cunningly devised fables” (2 Pet. 1:16).  It happened, and there are good reasons to believe it.  By the way, if you haven’t read it, I would recommend to you the book The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel, who recounts his own journey from atheism to faith, a journey that centered around his own personal investigation of the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus.  Part of what makes his story so interesting and compelling is Strobel’s background: educated at Yale Law School, an award-winning journalist for the Chicago Tribune, he was an investigative reporter, and he knew how to hunt down the truth.  The problem for him was that his wife had become a Chrisitan, much to his chagrin, and he therefore decided to prove her wrong.  He was very confident in his ability to do so.  But in the process of his investigation, this educated atheist became a Christian!  The evidence for faith was just too overwhelming for him.  It’s a fascinating book, and I commend it to you if you want to delve into the details of the evidence for the physical resurrection of Jesus.

But let me just make a couple of observations of my own in this regard.  First, it is indisputable that the gospel story of Jesus crucified, buried, and rising again is attested to in the first century by multiple, independent witnesses. We have the four gospels, each an independent testimony to this, each written by an eye-witness or by someone who got his information from eye-witnesses, all written in the first century.  We have the testimony of the apostle Paul who writing to the Corinthians about the mid-50s of the first century, said, “I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; by which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:1-4).  What’s even more interesting about that statement is that Paul declares that this gospel was something he previously received, which probably goes back to his first journey to the church in Jerusalem to meet the other apostles about A.D. 36, just two or three years after the death of Jesus.  So this is not some myth that took years to develop.  This was preached by the church from the very beginning.

Then there is the fact that the gospels were preached in the very places in which the events of the gospels were supposed to have happened.  Think about the significance of that.  The gospels contain tons of detailed information about the names of people, places, and events that happened at those places.  Not to mention the very public trial of Jesus before Pontius Pilate in Jerusalem, a reality that is also testified to by the first century Roman historian Tacitus, there are other events, like the healing of the daughter of Jairus the ruler of the synagogue in Capernaum.  If the gospels were just made up, there is no way they would have been believed by the people in those places where the events took place.  

But that leads to the next observation.  The people in Judea did believe it, and by the thousands.  In fact, the very first Christian church didn’t take root in some land far away from the land of Israel, but in the very city were Jesus was crucified.  Why did they believe it?  It seems to me that the most plausible explanation is that they did so because it was true.  

Now I know some will want to say that people in the first century were just superstitious.  Some will want to say that they were just gullible when it came to the supernatural.  But actually, the culture of the Jew and the culture of the Gentile counted against them believing the gospel.  The world-views swirling around the Greco-Roman world at the time would have programmed people against believing this message, a reality Paul himself admits when he says, “But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness” (1 Cor. 1:23).  Why was it a stumbling block to Jews?  Because Jews had no concept of a crucified Messiah.  To them it was unthinkable that the Messiah should be cursed by hanging on a tree.  Why was it foolishness to the Greek and Roman?  Because to them physical resurrection was unthinkable, which is why the philosophers laughed at Paul on Mars Hill when he started talking about it.  No, you can’t explain the reception of the gospel in terms of the way people thought back then, because that would actually go in the other direction.  So why did people believe it?  Well, maybe it’s because it because it happened, which I think is the most plausible explanation.

There is much more we could say and argue about this.  But the question I really want to consider with you this morning is not, did Jesus rise from the dead, but why did Jesus rise from the dead?  And that’s going to bring us to these two verses in Romans 5, verses 18 and 19.

Why Jesus rose from the dead: the Divine Purpose behind the Resurrection

But before we look at them in detail, I want to remind you of something the apostle Paul has already said a few verses earlier.  In 4:24-25, we are told that, we will be made right with God “if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead; who was delivered [to death] for our offences, and was raised again for our justification.”  Here we have the apostolic appraisal of the purpose for which Jesus rose from the dead.  It was “for our justification.”  Let me remind you that justification here just means the divine act of the acquittal and acceptance of a sinner by God through faith in Christ.

Now we know that Jesus died for our justification.  Paul has already said this: “Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 3:24).  But if it is the death of Jesus that justifies us before God, why does Paul says that Jesus was raised for, or so that, we might be justified?  

The reason he puts it this way is because in order for Christ to redeem us from sin, he must redeem us from all its consequences, and the main consequence of sin is death (cf. 6:23).  But redemption from death means victory over death, and you cannot have victory over death without resurrection.  In other words, the death of Christ is not redemptive unless it is connected to resurrection from death.  Without a risen Christ, you don’t have a redeemer Christ. When God raised his Son from the dead, he was showing us that Christ had truly finished his work and that it had been accepted by heaven.  So the purpose of the resurrection of Jesus is our justification before God.  We can be justified because Jesus Christ rose from the dead.  His resurrection shows that he truly conquered sin and death.

How the death and resurrection of Jesus can bring justification: the Divine Process behind the Resurrection

But that leads to another question.  How in the world can the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ lead to the justification of others before God?  And in particular, how can a holy God acquit sinners without tarnishing his holiness?  You would have no respect for a judge who let a murderer go free because he felt sorry for him.  And yet many people think this is precisely the way God acts.  Far from it!  God is a God of grace, yes, but he is also a God of holiness and justice, and he will not act in a way that causes one attribute to cancel out another.  He must be sovereignly gracious and just and holy at the same time.  But how can God do this?  We are brought back to the age-old question: “How can a man be right with God?” (Job 25:4).

Now you may be wondering, why is this a big deal for God?  What makes the justification of a sinner a problem for God’s justice? There are two reasons.  They have to do with the positive demands of God’s law and the penal demands of God’s law.

Both reasons are rooted in the reality that God’s character is sinlessly holy.  He is of purer eyes than to behold evil and he cannot look on iniquity (Hab. 1:13).  God is light and in him there is no darkness at all (1 Jn. 1:5).  Which means, first, that the positive demands of the law of God can accept no exceptions to obedience.  God cannot accept even the slightest breach of his law.  It’s not just the OT that says this; the NT says it as well.  Here is how the apostle Paul himself puts it to the Galatians: “For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them” (Gal. 3:10).  The apostle James agrees: “For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all” (Jam. 2:10).  

Now this is significant because all of us have sinned.  We can’t even get past the first commandment, whether it is, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me,” or whether it is, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart.”  We are all sinners.  “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23).

That’s bad news because the second thing this means is that when sin occurs, and God’s law is broken, the penal demands of the law must be satisfied.  God’s law has sanctions for those who sin against God, and the justice of God demands that they be carried out.  Death of course, as we’ve been seeing in Paul’s words here in Romans 5, is the great penal demand of the law.  And it’s not just physical death that’s at stake here, but spiritual and eternal death.

Now to show you just how bad this is for us, I want to remind you of a parable that Jesus told his disciples in Matthew 18:23-35, which really was an answer to Peter’s question how many times he had to forgive his brother.  He thought he was being generous when he suggested seven times 21), but Jesus comes back to him and says, “I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven” (22), and then he gives this parable.

So the purpose of the parable is to show us how awful and ugly and shocking it is for one of his disciples to hold another one of his disciples hostage through an unforgiving spirit.  But the backdrop for this parable that made it understandable to the original audience is a theology of God and his salvific work, and this is what I want to focus on to help understand both our plight as well as our hope.

Let me remind you what the parable says.  It tells us that there was a king who had a servant who owed him 10,000 talents.  Now we don’t deal in talents anymore, so to help you understand the significance of this amount, you shouldn’t think in terms of thousands of dollars but billions of dollars.  And when you couple this with the fact that the man is called a doulos, a bondservant, the long and short of it is that this is a debt that this guy is not capable of paying back.  And so to recover some of the loss, the king orders the servant and his family to be sold and payment to be made.  But the servant falls on his knees before the king and pleads with him to give him time to pay off the debt.  The king of course knows that is impossible, but he is moved with compassion, and as a result he just forgives the debt, and the man goes free.

If this is where the parable ended, it would be a really heart-warming story of human compassion.  But that’s not what this is.  The servant, we are told, then goes out and finds another servant who owes him 100 denarii, which would probably today be the equivalent a few thousand dollars, and demands that he pay the debt.  In fact, he doesn’t just demand it, but he “seizing hm . . . began to choke him, saying, ‘Pay me what you owe’” (28, ESV).  His fellow servant does the same thing he did; he begs him to give him time to pay it back.  But unlike the king, we are told, he has no compassion and pity; he will not let him off the hook, and so he “put him in prison until he should pay the debt” (30, ESV).  

Other servants see this happen, and shocked at the callousness and heartlessness of this guy, especially in light of what he had experienced, they inform the king.  The king then brings the servant back and “said unto him, O thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt, because thou desiredst me: Shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy fellowservant, even as I had pity on thee? And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due unto him” (32-34).

Now one of the truths we can glean from this is that we are supposed to put ourselves in the place of the servant who owed 10,000 talents.  In other words, we owe God a debt that we cannot pay back.  We cannot pay him back for two reasons.  For one thing, what are we going to pay him back with?  Future obedience?  But all obedience we give to God is already owed him.  But another reason we cannot pay it back is that the one against whom we have sinned – God – is a Being of infinite worth which means that sin against him is infinitely heinous.  We have racked up a debt we cannot pay back.

But, you say, didn’t the king in the parable just forgive the debt, and can’t God do that too?  Well, yes, God does freely forgive sin.  One of the things that is amazing to me about the king in this parable is that he was so wealthy that he could absorb the equivalent of a multi-billion-dollar loss.  But what the parable doesn’t tell us is how God is able, in a way consistent with his holiness, to freely and graciously forgive sin.  

That is where our text comes in.

Here is what the apostle says: “Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life. For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous” (Rom. 5:18-19). In these two verses, Paul basically says the same thing twice.  We’ve already seen him do this in chapter 5.  Paul knows that we need to hear things more than once, and we do.  In both verses, he is comparing what happened as the result of Adam’s sin – Adam, the first human being and the father and covenant head of the human race, and what happened as the result of Christ’s obedience.  Adam’s offence brought judgment to all men resulting in condemnation (18) and his disobedience resulted in all men being constituted as sinners (19).  On the other hand, by the one righteous act, or the righteousness, of Jesus Christ, the free gift of salvation comes upon all who belong to him resulting in justification of life (18) and by his obedience those who belong to him are constituted as righteous (19).

Now what does Paul mean by this?  Do you remember what I said earlier about the demands of God’s law?  There are positive demands and there are penal demands.  The positive demands are the commandments of God that tell us what God expects of us.  The penal demands of the law are the just penalties which fall upon those who do not keep God’s law but break it and rebel against him.  Now we have not kept the positive demands of God’s law, his commandments – we owe God – and we cannot avoid the penal demands of the law, his judgment, since we owe 10,000 talents.

But here is what Paul is saying.  He talks about the righteous act and the obedience of Christ here.  Unlike us, Jesus kept the positive demands of the law perfectly, and he satisfied the penal demands of the law fully.  When Paul talks about the righteousness of Christ and the obedience of Christ, he doesn’t just have in mind the passion of the Christ; he is talking about his entire life of obedience to God culminating in the cross.  It’s why when Jesus was baptized he told John the Baptist, “Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness” (Mt. 3:15).  It’s why Paul will write to the Philippians, that our Lord “made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Phil. 2:7-8).  It’s why the author of Hebrews would say, “Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered; And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him” (Heb. 5:8-9).

Jesus was the only perfect man who ever lived.  It’s why he could look even his adversaries in the face and ask, “Which of you convinceth me of sin?” (Jn. 8:46).  The word “convinceth” means to bring to light, to expose, reprove, or rebuke.  No one could point to a single thing in Jesus’ life and say, “You’re a sinner.”  Even when they put him on a cross, the charge for which he was crucified was that he said he was the king of the Jews – which he was!  He was crucified for telling the truth.  

But that ought to make you ask the question: why then did God allow Jesus to die?  Why would someone who perfectly obeyed the positive demands of God’s law have to suffer the penal demands of the law that he never broke?  

It’s not because Jesus was sinful.  Here we must remember the analogy that Paul is drawing for us in this text here in Romans. Jesus is like Adam.  Those who are united to Adam by creation and covenant sin in him and die in him.  Those who are united to Christ by new creation and new covenant are righteous in him and live in him.  This is the point in verses 18 and 19.  The Son of God came to fulfill the law of God perfectly for us, and to satisfy its just demands by dying for us.  This is how the King of heaven absorbs the debt we owe to him.  He absorbs it by absorbing in himself the punishment due to guilty sinners by standing in their place.  Or as Paul puts it so clearly to the Corinthians: “Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God. For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Cor. 5:20-21).

Now the question is, how do we become united to Christ?  And the answer is, by faith.  Those who are led by the Spirit of God to entrust themselves to Jesus as Lord and Savior will be saved.  That is what the Bible says.  When a person puts their faith in Christ, they no longer stand before God in their own righteousness, which is like filthy rags, but in the righteousness of Christ, which is perfect.  It is not our righteousness that gives us a right to stand before God, but the righteousness of Christ.  As the prophet Isaiah put it, “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, he hath covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decketh himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth herself with her jewels” (Isa. 61:10).

And this is what we are celebrating on this day.  We are celebrating the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ that becomes the ground upon which we can lift up our heads in the presence of God with joy.  Rest upon the finished work of Christ.  Rejoice in his victory over death, because if you believe that God raised him from the dead for your justification, you too are forgiven and justified.  I am an ambassador for Christ today, as though God was beseeching you by me, and with the apostle I pray you in Christ’s stead, “Be reconciled to God by trusting in the spotless Son of God who gave himself for sins that he might save us from them.”  May the Lord lead all of us to make that confession today, Amen.