It’s All About Grace

This is an exegetical sermon on Romans 5:20-21 titled, It’s All About Grace and explains how our attempts to impress others and impress God ultimately lead to our destruction and how only God’s grace can free us from the law. This sermon was originally preached by Pastor Duane Smets on Sunday, September 10th in San Diego, CA. Audio unavailable.

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:: The Resolved :: Sunday, September 10, 2006

Duane Matthew Smets (elder)

Romans 5:20-21
20 Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, 21 so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

It’s all about grace
Romans 5:20-21

Introduction

We have been learning about bible’s story of the first man, Adam and about how all of mankind has been affected from him on because of what happened in garden called Eden. What happened was not good and has left us a confused, broken, angry, depressed, corrupt, and guilty people. But we have been learning how Jesus Christ and the gospel changes all that and makes a way for something different and far better. Today we continue that theme that Jesus Christ is the greatest thing that has ever happened in history and is the greatest thing that can happen in our lives.

today’s text probes into the course of history and God’s working with humans and it probes into the psychology of what we experience and gives an answer for how our troubled souls might find rest both now and in days and weeks and months and years to come.

The main point of these two verses is grace. You see in verse 20 grace abounds and in verse 21 grace reigns. My prayer for us today is that we would learn some things today, that we would feel grace, and that we would walk away with a conviction that everything is about grace.

Grace is favor…a kindness toward us, an undeserved gift, an approval and support from a holy God unto us…grace. Many bible teachers throughout time have said that there are two main powerful forces in the world: one being sin and darkness and requirement and work…everything that is distasteful that we despise. The other being grace…acceptance and freedom and love and welcome and favor.
This is not an unfamiliar concept to us…I think there is something about two powerful forces fighting against each other. That is something we know and feel. When I was a religion major in college I had to study all kinds of world religions. One ancient religion I studied is called Zoroastrianism. One of Zoroastrianism’s chief beliefs is that there are two, equally powerful, opposing forces in the world, good and evil and that these two powers have been waging war against each other since the beginning of time.

I can remember being probably 7 or 8 years old and getting up early in the morning while my parents were still sleeping and I’d watch he-man battle against skeletor, and I’d watch lion-o of the thundercats war against mumm-ra of plun-darr. And today the star wars saga is alive and well in the fight between the force and the dark side.

today’s text throws us right into the midst of this struggle and this question about the powers of good and evil and what the outcome really is. There is law and there is grace and there is sin and there is righteousness and there is death and there is life. two main forces, that from the bible’s perspective, resulted from a tragedy in a garden paradise where Adam trespassed and unleashed a dark and depressing consequence upon all who were in him and would come from him but in Christ there is what we have longed for, a path that returns to the garden where grace is unleashed and light and happiness comes upon all who put their faith in him.

The increase of the law – historically

Let’s begin today by looking at the first phrase in verse 20, “now the law came in to increase the trespass.” There are two main questions I want to answer concerning this phrase. One, what law are we talking about and how does it increase the trespass?

Consider the first question, of what law we are talking about? we do not have to look very far to know that Paul has the law from Moses in mind because he told us so back in verse 13-14, “for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given…yet death reigned from Adam to Moses…”

The law from Moses. if the history of the bible is true then what happened is that after Adam the human race began to build and to build in its numbers and as it grew in size so it grew in its gods and the ways that mankind continued to try and establish its own religion. Yet through the years, God, YHWH, the god before any of this began, kept revealing himself to various individuals called his chosen people, which began with one family, ended up as thousands. but after 430 years of living in Egypt this chosen people had become the Egyptian’s slaves and they cry out to YHWH, and he ends up delivering them out of Egypt with all these miracles, each aimed at challenging the power and truth of one of the current gods of the day, and then has Moses lead them into the desert for forty years to camp out. Three years after they leave Egypt Moses goes up on this mountain, Mount Sinai and this is what happens.

If you want to follow with me, I am picking the story up in the bible in exodus 19:18, “18 now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke because the Lord had descended on it in fire. The smoke of it went up like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain trembled greatly. 19 And as the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke, and God answered him in thunder. 20 The Lord came down on Mount Sinai, to the top of the mountain. And the Lord called Moses to the top of the mountain, and Moses went up…(20:1-2) And God spoke all these words, saying, 2 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” And God gives Moses the law and from that day on the law became central to the Jewish faith.

So when we read in Romans, “now the law came…” this is what all the Jews reading this letter would have in mind. But here is my question, what does that have to do with us? How does the coming of that law into the world increase trespass, which affects all of us? if you read this law, some of it is basic stuff we know even if it wasn’t stated, like not murdering or stealing, but a lot of it is really technical stuff, like what to sacrifice and when and how and what procedures to follow for lending money or how worship services unto God should go.

Two things. one, because it says “increase the trespass” we know that the law is then introduced into a world where sin already holds sway in the hearts of men, trespass is already present. It is already there and it increases. Thus the trespass that is already there is a condition. The trespass is the experience we all have of our universal human moral depravity. It is the state of our hearts which very quickly and very easily assumes that we are either okay, not responsible, or that God is surely not the answer to our desire for joy. it is that thing we learned about earlier in Romans in chapter one where we all see the what the world is, what has been made and rather then giving our life to God and glorifying him and thanking him for it all…we continue looking for happiness in many other things.

The increase of the law – experientially

So the law came and it comes where sin already holds sway in our being and it comes and it causes our trespass to increase. But how? How does it increase? It seems it must increase in quality not quantity. if it were quantity then an increase of trespass would not make sense because we have learned that trespass is a condition we have…that trespass is what we are, we are humans who have a bent toward doing things we know are wrong. We are trespassers.

So I think the increase here is in quality. Law increases the intensity of our sin, our trespassing, the increase is in showing the seriousness of the condition, thus it shows how utterly sinful sin is.

Let me illustrate. The law is meticulous in its instruction and I don’t believe that everything that is in the Mosaic Law is on the same level of those universal morals but I do believe that it comes from a perfect God who sent the law as a reflection of his perfect character. So follow me here, I think God gave the law so that it would take away all grounds for excuse. God wants us to learn that what we need is him, that we cannot fix ourselves no matter how many perfect things we do, so in order to teach us that he sends a law that we cannot possible keep.

Listen to the words of Charles Spurgeon on this…

Natural men dream that by a strict performance of duty they shall obtain favor, but God saith thus: “I will show them their folly by proclaiming a law so high that they will despair of attaining unto it. They think that works will be sufficient to save them. They think falsely, and they will be ruined by their mistake. I will send them a law so terrible in its censures, so unflinching it its demands, that they cannot possibly obey it, and they will be driven even to desperation, and come and accept my mercy through Jesus Christ. They cannot be saved by the law—not by the law of nature. As it is, they have sinned against it. But yet, I know, they have foolishly hoped to keep my law, and think by works of the law they may be justified; whereas I have said, ‘By the works of the law no flesh living can be justified;’ therefore I will write a law—it shall be a black and heavy one—a burden which they cannot carry; and then they will turn away and say, ‘I will not attempt to perform it; I will ask my Saviour to bear it for me.’” Imagine a case—Some young men are about to go to sea, where I foresee they will meet with a storm. Suppose you put me in a position where I may cause a tempest before the other shall arise. Well, by the time the natural storm comes on, those young men will be a long way out at sea, and they will be wrecked and ruined before they can put back and be safe. But what do I? Why, when they are just at the mouth of the river, I send a storm, putting them in the greatest danger, and precipitating them ashore, so that they are saved. Thus did God. He sends a law which shows them the roughness of the journey. The tempest of law compels them to put back to the harbour of free grace, and saves them from a most terrible destruction, which would otherwise overwhelm them. The law never came to save men. It never was its intention at all. It came on purpose to make the evidence complete that salvation by works is impossible, and thus to drive the elect of God to rely wholly on the finished salvation of the gospel.

That God gives us a written law shows us how corrupt and uncapable we are. Like children who are told that they cannot do something and then they cannot help but think of doing that thing so we when are specifically told what we can and cannot do there is something in us, or at least in me, that hates being told what to do and I deliberately want to defy it. Like when I read Ephesians 5:18 that says, “Do not get drunk on wine.” there is something in me that says who are you to tell me that and my mind starts to bring up all these reasons about how and why I am on my own and have my own relationship with God and can do what I want, or what if it isn’t wine but whiskey, or what if it just means not to get drunk very often… but notice in our heart the rebellion. The immediate move to justify and give excuse. That is what the law does…it increases our trespass by bringing out the worst in us, showing us how God defying we really are. Law shows us our hearts that there is something antagonistic and evil and rebellious deep in us.

So I believe that the increase of the law is an increase of intensity so that we realize the seriousness of our situation and then come begging for the amazing grace of God. So let’s talk about grace.

Grace abounds – grace foundation: God comes to us

Our text today says… “But where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” and “as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through…eternal life.” Grace abounds and grace reigns. Grace, the loving favor of God toward us, despite the intensity of our ever increasing trespass. There are two parts to grace mentioned here: one is past tense and one is future.

First, look at the past tense, “grace abounded.” The past tense is in reference to the historical coming of the law that we talked about. The biblical picture of time is that God has been working in history and in different ages and periods of time. there was the time of the beginning in the garden of Eden we talked about, then there was the time of Abraham and his developing of a people, then there was the time of the law coming from Moses, then there was the time of the kingdom of Israel, then there was the time of the messiah when Jesus came, and now there is the time of the church and the spreading of the gospel.

But the grace abounded, past tense, is a reference to the coming of Jesus Christ, he is the grace. The law teaches us our inability and in Jesus God comes to us and does what we cannot do. He fulfills the law perfectly from the beginning of his life all the way to death. That is what we learned about last week that we are incapable of good and that any good we do is the life of Christ being re-lived out through us as he changes us from the inside out.

Now let’s take to an individual level. grace abounded and came in Jesus historically and likewise for those of us who have come to believe that Jesus Christ is the glorious God of the universe who saves us, his grace has abounded for us individually because no matter how messed up we may be or may have been he accepts us and offers himself to us.

A friend of mine was visiting from out of town the last few days and yesterday we went to black’s beach, just north of La Jolla. If you have never been there it is a nude beach with really good surf at the bottom of this huge cliff that hang-gliders and para-gliders jump off. So we hiked down there threw a Frisbee around and watched the sun set. We started hiking back up and we stopped half way up the cliff and decided to sit and read the bible and pray for awhile. As we stood there and looked out you just see water for miles and miles and you see the beach and the sand for miles up and down the coast and we could see billows and billows of clouds hovering above the water off in the distance. As I was looking at all this I could not help but think of the expanse of God and how big he is and how is stands above all of this and I started thinking about how powerful God must be to make all of what I could see. And I started to feel overwhelmed by the immensity of the hugeness of it all but then I started to think about something else and started to have quite a different feeling.

I started to think about how God has chosen to love me; even though I continually am such a screw up that God has chosen to extend grace to me and continues to extend grace upon grace upon grace toward me. And I started to feel completely humbled and overwhelmed by the power of God in my heart. You would think that God’s ability to physically demonstrate his power in making an ocean and waves and cliffs and people would be the most magnificent display of his power but I realized that the most amazing display of God’s power is his extending of himself in the form of grace to our hearts. That he stands above everything we have ever seen and we are infinitesimally small like a grain of sand, and yet he communicates himself to our hearts in a way that we know that he loves us and accepts us just the way that we are is grace.

No matter how much we have sinned and how much we continue to sin…he favors us even over all the other things he has made. Grace. Abounding grace. Amazing grace. We need to hear about our sin for sure and the wrath that comes because of it, but what really compels me toward God is not fear but his abounding grace for me. It is completely unhuman. Like Romans 2:4 says, it is the “kindness of God that leads us to repentance.” The reason I love Christ, my God and savior, is not so much my fear but his kindness toward me. Grace. Grace, grace, grace. The foundation of the gospel is grace. You must have a grace foundation or you have not understood what Christianity is all about.

Grace abounds – grace future: a dominion of death to a dominion of life

Grace is our foundation, and not only is it our foundation but it is our future. The last part of our text today is future aspect of grace. Verse 21 says that grace abounds to us, “so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

I get that this part of grace is future because of the words, “might reign” and “leading to.” Those are words looking ahead, future. Grace is something that not only comes to us but it carries us.

Give me just a few more minutes to explain. Look at the word, “reign” here. We have “sin reigned in death” and “grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life.” This word “reign” is a word that brings up images of kings who reign in a kingdom. And what this type of language is picturing is kingdom or a dominion and the two kingdoms or dominion here are death and life.

The kingdom of death is power of sin in human lives throughout all of history since Adam. And this kingdom of death is dark and powerful and evil and corrupt. The imaginations of cartoon writers don’t even come close to visualizing the hellish vile of the depravity that rules in the kingdom of death.

And this death has two parts; there is a physical part and a spiritual part. You can see it in the contrast because of the alternatives that are present. Death here corresponds to righteousness and eternal life. Righteousness is a spiritual things and that tells us that there is not just a physical component to death but spiritual component.

Death is the consequence. God told Adam and eve in the garden that if they ate of the tree they would surely die. And they did but they realized right away that the death was not only a physical consequence that their bodies would eventually fail and terminate but that it was a separation from God. They died spiritually right away and hid from God. And our lives our same, from the times babies are born we know too well that a day will come when they will die and we hope it will be a long time. And there is a spiritual death where we are numb to God, we get depressed, confused, angry, and know not the loving-kindness of an almighty God extending grace to us. We wander and doubt and try to make our own way and life comes to us as perpetual frustration and dissatisfaction.

Death is a dominion, like a cloud it hangs over us and presses us down into the dirt. But the wonder of grace and the beauty of the gospel is that death is not the end of the story. There is a new dominion, a new kingdom out there that offers something different and overcomes the dark dominion of sin and death. The dominion of grace from God in Jesus.

Death has come from Adam and has been magnified by the increase of the law, but grace has abounded and Jesus has come and he showed up preaching, “repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.” Through Jesus a new kingdom has been initiated and in this kingdom up is down and down is up and life and light. Jesus is Lord of this kingdom and in it grace reigns. It is a grace that gives us a new quality of life, an eternal quality and quantity of righteousness.

In the kingdom of Christ where Jesus the king rules grace is extended and he gives us all the treasures of his monarchy. Ephesians 1:3 says, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.” And in Romans 14:17 Paul says, “The kingdom of God is… (One of) righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.”

in this kingdom of Christ where grace reigns, forgiveness and acceptance is extended and over again to us no matter who we are or what we have down or how many times we do it and in exchange for our sin God gives us deep rooted experiences of satisfaction and faith by giving us Christ over and over again.

Okay. I hope that makes some sense. We don’t live in a kingdom but a democracy so the whole thing is a little hard to get and if you feel like the kingdom of God sort of sounds like this lofty sort of mystical thing that’s okay. I feel like that too and I think that there is something important and good and wonderful about that.

I’ve tried to understand in practical ways how to picture this because I know there are still questions. Like, okay the kingdom of God is future, but when, is it not until we die that we get this grace leading to eternal life? Or is there something of it now? And what happens to the old kingdom of death, it still seems to be alive and well?

Here is where I am at… I don’t think that everything we have been learning is all just for some day when we die. Like we believe all this stuff but it doesn’t take effect until we die and then we get eternal life and go to heaven.

I’ve tried and searched for some sort of analogy to understand what happens and this I what I think it is kind of like: I think our hearts or lives are like a big piece of land and the kingdom of death has been reigning in them in various cities and town where there are all these little battles going on. I think that Jesus is Lord because he was victorious over sin on the cross and made a way out so that we can receive grace from God and that is the gospel, the good news. I think that in the land of our hearts there the kingdom of grace comes to us one of the towns where there has been sin hears it and loves it and stops fighting and finds forgiveness and the love of God and receives the gift of eternal life. But I think there are still tons of cities inside the land of our hearts that have yet to hear the good news that there is a new kingdom at work that has gained victory over the kingdom of death. and I think that the point when we die is when the last battleground in our heart will receive the news of eternal life and we who have put faith in Jesus Christ will go to be with him in heaven.

By picturing it this way eternal life is both a quality of righteousness that we get and it is a quantity of time, forever, that we experience after physical death. You ask then well why do we still die if those who put faith in Jesus are transferred to the kingdom of life? here is my answer, I think that what happens is that for those who are in the new kingdom, the point of physical death becomes the final door or pathway to new life instead of a the final door or pathway to eternal death.

James 1:15 says that sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death. I think in the same way that when grace is full grown it gives birth to eternal life. Those in the kingdom of death have been tasting death all along and in the end reach its eternal fulfillment. Those who are transferred to the kingdom of life taste life all along and in the end reach its eternal fulfillment.

The practical application of this that we are ever dependent upon future grace for our life. What we want and what we need is the grace that lead to eternal life.

Conclusion

I feel like that sounds complicated. So here is how I want to conclude. I think that there is something within everyone of us that longs for some sort of explanation, to know what is really going on…and I think that the story of there being good and there being evil and that good wins in the end is a story we like a lot, even those who are not fascinated with science fiction books and movies.

Today’s sermon has been all about grace. That grace is the greatest power in the universe and is what we all need. Sin and death and the law are all powerful but grace is greater than it all. Grace is where we begin as Christians and its how we continue as Christians. Grace abounds and abounds and abounds for our every need.

So here is some application. I don’t know how we get to the sin behind the sin. But ask yourself that. Ask what areas in your life where you are having trouble and then ask why.

As one of the elders of this church I feel frustrated at times in how slow and hard this process has been in starting this church. And when I ask myself why I feel that way, past all the practical answers and reasons of what has happened and why, past all of that way down deep where my feelings spring from…I think I feel that I deserve something. because I love you and I put time into sermons and people and we are committed to preaching the way we do and being fissional and all those things I start to think that God must then do his part and make things go well for us, I deserve it because I have worked hard and done it the “right” way.

But then I read a text like today’s. The law comes and sin increases. The law, work to earn, deserve. It shows my rebelliousness. I think I am owed. It is just plain sinful pride. When I see that for what it really is, me worshipping myself, I feel sick. I feel unqualified to be a pastor. I feel completely ignorant of how or what to do. But then I read but “grace abounds” “grace reigns” there is “righteousness and eternal life”. And I come to believe in and love the gospel all over again. That God accepts me and loves me and commits himself to me in grace, promising his righteousness, giving me new life. And I become a Christian and melt before the mercy of Jesus Christ.

I don’t know what areas in your life where God wants to teach you his grace. But I’m sure they are there. Here is a visible extension of God’s grace, bread and wine. Let’s come to the kindness of God here at the table today. Let’s come in repentance and in joy for what a great God and savior we have who died for us and gives us his eternal life. Let’s give our money joyfully as a token of thanks and adoration. Let’s worship God as we trust through faith in future grace.

Let’s pray.