Death Reigned
RO60-01

Romans 5:13-17 are a set of parentheses because the apostle Paul has there stopped to explain a statement which he made at the end of verse 12. That statement was that: "All sinned in Adam." Everybody in the human race somehow is related in Adam, in some way, such that when he sinned, we all became guilty before Almighty God. In order to explain that, Paul enters this set of parentheses at verse 13.

Verse 15, in the process of explaining how all have sinned in Adam, declares that the one sin of Adam brought death to all, but the grace of God by Jesus Christ has brought superabundant blessing to mankind. Verse 15 needs some explanation.

So, in verses 16-17, he gives the details of how verse 15 is true – that the one sin of Adam brought death to all, but the grace of God by Jesus Christ has brought superabundant blessings to all. Verse 16 points out that the judgment of death on mankind was pronounced after just one single original sin by Adam – the imposition of death just for that one, single, small, little sin of Adam's eating the forbidden fruit. Verse 16, is pointing out that the divine grace of justification was given after billions of human sins. Death came for just one single sin through Adam. But the blessings of grace, which God has poured in superabundance upon mankind, came after billions and billions of human sins.

So, the contrast is very great. And verse 16 explains verse 15 by pointing out that the evil from which Jesus Christ saves us is far greater than that which Adam brought upon us. We not only have Adam's evil, but we have all of our own added to it. And Christ handled it all.

So, Adam dealt with one sin only, while Jesus Christ deals with all the sins of mankind.

Principles which Clarify Romans 5

1. God's Holiness

   The integrity of God consists of His absolute righteousness and perfect justice. We call this God's holiness. When we say that God is holy, we mean that He has absolute righteousness and He has perfect justice. So, we speak about this as being the integrity of God.

2. God's Justice

   What the absolute righteousness of God demands, the perfect justice of God executes. Whatever God's absolute righteousness requires, perfect justice says, "Yes, that's correct." and it backs it up.

3. God's Integrity

   Man's point of contact with God is always the integrity of God. So, if you are a law center here today, don't count on the fact that God is a God of love, and therefore, because He is a God of love, He will not send you to such a terrible place as the lake of fire. Don't count on it, because God does not deal with us in love. God deals with us as lost people, always first of all, from the frame of reference of His integrity. So, divine integrity is our point of contact always with God.

4. Sinless Adam Enjoyed God's Blessings

   Sinless Adam enjoyed blessings from the integrity of God, because there was no conflict. God could be perfectly true to Himself. His absolute righteousness was not defended; His perfect justice was not violated; God's holiness was kept intact; and, He could deal with Adam without any problem. And the result was indeed that the love of God poured forth upon the first man and woman. So, sinless Adam enjoyed blessings from the integrity of God. There was no conflict.

5. Sinful Adam Suffered God's Cursings

   However, sinful Adam suffered cursings from the integrity of God because now he was in conflict with divine integrity. So, you want to notice: from God's integrity comes either blessing or cursing, depending on the individual's condition.

6. Adam's One Sin

   The one sin of Adam changed the entire structure of God's relationship to mankind. The one sin of Adam suddenly changed the whole relationship from blessing to cursing.

7. God's Love was Restrained

   The love of God for sinless Adam could not override divine integrity toward sinning Adam. God's love toward sinless Adam could not ignore divine integrity in dealing with sinful Adam.

8. God's Integrity Overrules His Love

   Divine love is not free to bless unless divine integrity is preserved. That is a very important point. Divine love is never free to bless unless divine integrity has been preserved. This is why many people find that prayer to them seems to be a useless exercise. The Bible makes it very clear that one reason for this is because people are praying in a way that violates divine integrity. So, they're looking to God's love for blessing but God cannot bless, because what you are asking for would violate God's integrity were He to respond to your request. So, remember that divine love, which indeed wants to bless us, is never free to bless us when divine integrity is threatened. You must preserve the integrity of God.

9. God's Integrity Brought Both Cursing and Blessing

   The same divine integrity which brought cursing upon mankind also restored blessings to mankind. It was the very integrity of God that necessitated bringing cursing upon Adam and Eve, and thrusting them out of the garden, and placing judgments of a terrible kind upon them – that same integrity then turned and satisfied itself in payment for the sins of Adam and his posterity through Jesus Christ. And now that same integrity that originally brought cursing is free to bring blessing. But integrity was preserved all along the line.

10. God Preserves His Own Integrity

    God preserved His Own integrity, apart from human works. Isn't that a simple statement? A lot of people miss it, though. Listen to it again: God preserves His Own integrity apart from human works. Most people who sit in churches this morning, by far, actually think that their human works and their religious exercises and rituals help preserve the integrity of God. Nothing could be more stupid and ridiculous. God does not look to sinners to preserve His integrity when He deals with us in our lost condition. God says, "I'll take care of My Own integrity because that's the only way it can be taken care of. Only a sinless God can preserve His own holiness. How ridiculous to suggest that sinful man can come up with some kind of religious ritual, or some kind of series of good works, and preserve the integrity of God. If you've made that mistake, I'm going to tell you right now it's going to cost your soul for all eternity.

    For example, if you think that your human efforts are going to keep you saved once you're a Christian, or if you think that your human efforts are going to capture salvation for you in the first place, you're going to end up in the lake of fire, because you're trying to preserve the integrity of God through human doing.

11. God's Integrity Restores Greater Blessings that what was Lost

    Finally, the integrity of God restores sinful man to greater blessings than was lost in Eden. Far more is possessed by us in our relationship to God than Adam ever held. Adam and Eve were never spiritual sons and daughters of God as you and I are. Adam was never preserved from ever being able to sin again, as you and I someday will be. There are many things that we have infinitely superior to what Adam possessed.

Now we're going to look at verse 17. In verse 17, Paul concludes his detailed explanation of verse 15. You remember we said that, in verse 15, Paul made a declarative statement– that the one sin of Adam brought death to all, but the grace of God, by Jesus Christ, has brought superabundant blessing to mankind.

Then he says, "Now let me explain a little more about that." Verses 16-17 are giving a little more detail of how that is true. And we've seen that verse 16 has already pointed out that the judgment of death on mankind was pronounced for but one original sin, but that the blessings of grace come after billions of sins.

Then he continues with that further explanation in verse 17 by saying, "For, if by one man's offense, death reigned by one, much more, they who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ." And he's giving us a little more information of how the blessings of God are infinitely superior to the cursings that we inherited from Adam.

The Reign of Death

Verse 16 says that believers are justified by Jesus Christ, not only from the guilt of Adam's original sin, but from all of the thousands and thousands of their own sins as well. Verse 17 again stresses the superior provisions of God's grace in the face of man's hopelessly guilty moral state. He is going to point out that Christians will reign in life with Jesus Christ, though they were once under the judgment of death. Christians will reign in life with Jesus Christ though once they were under the judgment of the eternal death. He's going to point out how much more is gained by positive volition toward the gospel in comparison to what was lost by Adam's choice.

So, "for" introduces more information. "For if." The word if is the Greek word "ei." This introduces what in the Greek New Testament is known as a conditional clause (a conditional sentence). The word "if" here is not suggesting something which is questionable. When we use the word "if" in English, that's what we always imply – that something is doubtful. Maybe it is, and maybe it isn't. This "if" is a first-class condition. And first-class condition, most of you know, is a condition that expresses a truth (a reality). And we may translate it, therefore, not by the word "if," but by the word "since," because it is something which is true. So, we would say, in effect, "For since it is true that," and then he tells us what is true. So, the word "if" here does not imply any doubt. It is a first-class if, which is a statement of fact (a statement of reality).

"For since it is true that by one man's offense." The word "by" is not a separate word here in the Greek Bible, but it is simply indicated by a case in the Greek grammar that indicates to us that this is a means. This is the instrument. This is telling us the means or the instrument that caused the reign of death of mankind. What in the world happened that caused death to dominate every human being?

"For since it is a fact that by one man." In the Greek, it is simply the word "heis." The word "heis" is simply the number one. In Greek, it has the one because it is referring to a specific individual. And here, of course, by the context, that specific individual is the opposite one that he is comparing to Jesus Christ, who is Adam? So, it is "by the one." Or "of the one" is the idea. Adam is declared to be the one who is the means by which death came upon all mankind.

"For since it is true that by means of one man (the one man, Adam) – by the one man Adam's offense." And the word "offense" is that one we have had several times: "paraptoma." "Paraptoma" is a word for sin. Several different words are used for sin. Here again, you can't tell that from the English Bible. But each of these is a little different slant. This one, you will remember, is the word for sin that says that a person has stepped across the line (stepped out of a straight path). Therefore, the Bible says that he has been guilty of a sin. The particular sin that Adam was guilty of here, in the form of a "paraptoma" (an offense), was that God gave him a straight path to walk – the path of don't eat of the tree. God said, "Here's this tree. Don't eat of that tree. There is terrific fruit all over this tree. Don't touch it." And Adam walked over there and ate it. He stepped out of the path. He was guilty of an offense (of a particular sin – a "paraptoma") that stepped out of line.

It wasn't just that he stumbled into something. It was that he sat, and he thought, and he said, I'm not going to do what God told me." It was a deliberate, willful stepping across the line. And there are many times when you and I are guilty of this kind of sinning, where we know that God says, "Don't do it." God says, "Don't do this sexual immorality." And you think it over. And you say, "I'm going to do it anyhow." God says, "Don't do this marital maladjustment. Don't enter a situation. Don't be guilty of this sort of thing." You think it over, and you say, "Well, I'm going to do it anyhow."

You know that the Bible says, "Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers." If you're going to marry somebody, as a Christian, you must marry another Christian. You say, "No, this is a wonderful person. I'm going to marry him or her anyhow." Along comes the Bible and says, "Treat your children in a certain way: Do not bestir them to anger, but bestir them to godliness." And you say, "No, I'm not going to do that. And you do things that bestir them to anger. You have stepped out of a deliberate, specific thing you know.

The Word of God gives you many guidelines for relationships between human beings: how boys should treat girls; how girls should treat boys; and, how there is a chain reaction of one thing that leads to another. You say, "I don't care. I'm going to do it anyhow because it's fun." And you step out of line ("paraptoma"), and the judgment of God comes down on you. You did exactly what Adam did. You know the specific path. It's clear. But you think it over and you say, "No, I'm not going to do it."

Usually, we don't have the gall to stand up and look to God and say, "I'm not going to do what You said. I'm going to do it my way. I'm going to break that rule." We just kind of do it like maybe He doesn't notice it, and He's off someplace else, and He's not paying attention. We don't really tell ourselves, "I'm a deliberate rebel, and I'm going to do it my way," like the song says.

So, Adam here had a "paraptoma" that has cost us forever. It has cost people their souls. It has cost us nothing but trouble in the human race ever since. This is the word for "sin" for stepping across a prescribed limit or a line. Of course, here it's the fruit that he ate.

Death

Now Adam, of course, knew this. That's why this "paraptoma" was so gross. God said, "Now, Adam, if you do step out of this pathway that I've outlined for you, and if you do walk over here and help yourself to this fruit, you're going to die. You're going to lose the function of your body. It is simply going to cease to function. It is going to deteriorate, and thus you're going to die. Adam knew, therefore, that the judgment was a specific judgment (a specific penalty), and the verdict was death. So, it's the death. It is a specific, identifiable, pre-warned condition.

Death Reigned

"Reigned" is a very informative word: "basileuo." You'll never appreciate this in English. I'll guarantee you. The word means "to be king." It means undisputed sway. Death reigned as the absolute monarch over the human race. This is in the aorist tense, which means that it's a general overview. It's looking at death as a whole. It's active. It means that death was actively dominating mankind. It's indicative – a statement of fact. Here the earth is a point action, but the aorist tense can also be viewed as the emphasis being on the start of that action, or the action as a whole, or the end part of that action. In this case, what we're actually looking at is God looking at death as a whole being imposed on us, but particularly the beginning of that event of death being imposed.

Death Began to Rule

So, there can be no question that the Bible revealed that Adam is the cause of human death. So, we'll translate the first part of verse 17 like this: "For since it is true that, by means of the offense (the stepping out of line) of the one man, Adam, death began to reign as king through that one man, Adam." This is the conditional part of the sentence.

The last part of verse 17 gives us the conclusion (the results). This is setting up, again, one of those arguments from the less to the greater. If this lesser thing is true, that one man's offense brought death upon the whole race, what do you think is going to be true by the action of the God-man, Jesus Christ, which is in the latter part of this first, which is a multitude of grace and of absolute righteousness upon everyone who believes? That's the afortiori argument – that if this lesser thing is true, you know that this greater thing has to be true. The apostle Paul has been following that several times.

Let's think about this thing of death reigning (this "basileuo" of death) over mankind. If there's anything that perfectly sums up life on this earth, I think it can be said that death reigns. Death is a tyrant which uses its power in terrifying effects. Every one of us, each day of our lives, lives daily under the power and the threat of death. It's a merciless tyrant. It comes home to some people very clearly because they are in hazardous situations. But don't you ever forget that death is stalking you every moment of the day, and that that is what this Scripture is telling us – that because of that terrific stepping out of line of Adam, a monstrous condition was created where death took over control over the lives of all of us. So, at any moment of your day, death may leap upon you, and you are absolutely helpless.

It doesn't matter whether you are a pope who is lying in bed reading, as the pope this past week was doing, and death leaped up upon him. He was helpless. A pilot was bringing a plane in for a landing at Lindbergh Field in San Diego, and suddenly a small airplane loomed out of no place, and smashes into the commercial plane, and everybody on board both aircraft sat there helplessly going to death. That's the nature of the monster of death.

Such a thing never existed before Adam's sin. Such a thing never would have existed. Adam never walked around with the slightest concern, or thought, or fear of death. The impact of this probably didn't come home to him until he walked up and saw the bleeding throat of his second-born son, Abel, murdered by his firstborn son, Cain. Only then did he really grasp the full impact that death now stalked them at every turn. And because our lifespan is shorter than it was originally for mankind, our 70 years makes that a very, very present partnership day-by-day.

So, every plan we ever make in life is dependent upon the permission of death. I don't care what you plan to do, it's all dependent upon the permission of death, because death is stalking you. It's moving behind you every moment and every second of the. And one of these days, when you least expect it, it is going to pounce upon you, and in such conditions that you will be totally helpless.

Satan's Power of Death

This is a power which is exercised by Satan. It is a power which Satan has been able to use to terrorize mankind. For the Christian, that terror has been broken. But for the unbeliever, Satan still terrorizes them. Satan obtains the authority of death because of Adam's sin. And none of this was so before Adam sinned. But once he sinned, Satan moved in and captured the authority of death. And he has used to terrorize human beings ever since.

So, today, man is as terrified of death as ever. You remember how Satan gloated in speaking to God about Job, in Job 2:4 – that a man would give anything for his life, and that a man is in terror of death, and that Satan can get people to do anything if he just threatens them with the loss of life. The unbeliever actually fears what lies beyond death. Apart from the Bible, what lies beyond is a great unknown, and indeed cause to be fearful. Many see death as the end of their existence, so they cry out against it in one way or another. They try to preserve their memories. They make arrangements to have tombstones and memorials built to them. In one way or another, they seek to try to escape death.

The ancient Egyptians developed the fantastic capacity to preserve the human body. For what reason? What good is it to preserve a human body? Well, it was their desperate attempt to hope that somehow they could reverse death. They would put under the neck of the mummy a parchment on which had been inscribed in hieroglyphics (or in hieratic writing, which is kind of a cursive type of hieroglyphics) a memorial to the sun god "Ra." And they would draw pictures of the sun god on this. Then they would wrap this up and they would fold it and put it behind the head of the mummy. This little parchment was called the "hypocephalus." "Hypo means "under," and "cephalus" means the head. And the reason they put that there was to keep (they thought) a little warmth in the body. By speaking honor of praise and prayer to the sun god "Ra" on this parchment, they were bringing the sun's warmth into the body, so that someplace along the line, somehow, someway, they hoped that that body could again come to life. Why did the Egyptians do that? Why did they go through all that trouble? It was desperation to reverse (to neutralize) the terrors of death.

We have world peace organizations who are trying to remove war, a major source of death, and being very, very ineffective in trying to do it.

The sad truth of the matter is that most people come to death totally unprepared for it. That's the problem. Most people come to death totally ignorant of its current circumstances. We have indeed found from the book of Romans that death was a terror to mankind. So, people are aware that death lies before them. But this which stalks them every moment of their day, they try to deal with in a variety of ways.

Some people spend their life doing things which helps them to forget the fact that death is stalking them. They work on a career. They work on a lifestyle. They pursue certain success. They pursue fame; they pursue family; they pursue marriage; or, they pursue all kinds of human relationships – all of them to try to sort of ignore death, and to be preoccupied with other things. They amass great wealth. And as the rich man, in Luke 12:20, was asked, "Whose shall all these things be, because I'm taking you in death tonight?"

Some people who amass a great wealth suddenly discover that it does not preclude death snatching them. Some people say, as Psalm 14:1 says, "There is no God." But no matter how you shout, "There is no God," so that you try to take away the terror of death, always in the background, in the depths of the human heart, resound the words of Amos 4:12: "Prepare to meet your God." What Amos sounded forth centuries ago keeps ringing down in the back of man's consciousness: "Prepare to meet your God."

Religion tries to bypass salvation by grace with its own plan. So, they come up with a certain false sense of security. Nothing is so terrible as a human being who has a false sense of security – somebody who is trusting in his religion; in his works; and, in his efforts. Anybody who's trying to be saved by performing certain religious rituals, or by performing certain good works, always comes to death's door in terror. That person, when he faces the fact he's going out, is always uncomfortable. He's always ill at ease. He's always waiting to get to the other side to find out whether it's heaven or hell.

Now, that is horror. That is terror. And every works system imposes that upon its people. It is so alien to the spirit of the New Testament, which says that we've been brought into peace, and we've been brought into a sense of security relative to our destiny.

There is inevitably terror when death is imminent. When King Saul found that God was now through with him, and that he was going to die, we have the sad picture of the response of the first of Israel's kings. In 1 Samuel 28:20 we read, "Then Saul fell immediately full length on the earth, and was very much afraid because of the words of Samuel, that there was no strength in him; for he had eaten no bread all the day, nor all that night." He fell to the ground in terror when Samuel said, "Tomorrow you and your sons will be where I am," meaning, "You will be dead, and you will be in paradise." Saul was under the judgment of death. Saul suffered the sin unto death. Saul had gone so far in sinning that God said, "OK, now I'm going to take your life." But of course, Saul was a believer. Saul was born-again, and Saul could not be anything but born-again once he was born-again. Therefore, he was taken into paradise. His life was taken, and he was taken under the judgment of God.

Mormonism

That is such a great agony to the Mormons that they have come up with the false doctrine (just as the Roman Catholics have) that there's a second chance after death. So, Mormons will teach you that after death you will have a chance to be informed concerning the new and everlasting gospel of Mormonism, and you'll have a chance once more to accept it.

Joseph Smith's Death

The Mormons are fond of telling the story, and of reporting his last words as they were heard by the other two Mormons who were not killed, who were in the cell with him: "Oh Lord, my God." The Mormons view this as very dramatic last words: "Oh Lord, my God." But, you know, I always have the uneasy feeling that these are not the words of a man who is looking forward to entering the presence of the King of Glory, but that they are the words of terror of a man who suddenly realizes that death has lurched out of a corner, unexpectedly, and at 38 or 39 years of age, he's being drawn across the line to face his Maker. And I have the feeling that the words that sprang from Joseph Smith slip, "Oh Lord, my God," were the words of terror. For this man knew, and he knew well, what he had perpetrated as a false prophet upon thousands of people.

The Book of Mormon

As a matter of fact, a man named Solomon Spalding wrote a novel called Manuscript Found, which is the identical story which is found in The Book of Mormon concerning these hidden documents, hidden in this stone box, and so on. Solomon Spalding died in 1816. The Book of Mormon was translated about 1828 or 1829. Well, whether this actually is Solomon Spalding's novel, there's good possibility that it is. Oh, if that's true, you see what a fraud Joseph Smith was. But in any case, the way he translated this was by looking into his hat in which he had a rock that he called his seer stone, where, like a television screen, the hieroglyphics would come on, and right under it would be the writing of the translation into King James Elizabethan English.

Well, the sad thing about this is that many errors and contradictions have been found in The Book of Mormon. I won't weary with relating these to you, but these are well documented. They do not have a Scripture which is inerrant. They have a Scripture which they've had to go back, and they've had to change the words in order to take out the contradictions and the inconsistencies. The Book of Mormon reflects the theological controversies of the day, and it is interesting how Joseph Smith got definitive settlement on all kinds of questions. He had God tell what was wrong with infant baptism; he had God tell what was right with immersion; and, he had God tell what was wrong with this and what was right with that. And everything that people were debating in those days, he got the answers for.

Doctrine and Covenants

The reason they did this was because, as things progressed, he had to correct his revelation, and as he decided to expand his operation, once he got into Masonry, and got all the ritualistic secret operations of Masonry, he wanted to include that into his temple worship, he had to add the high priests and the priesthood, and things which were originally not in the revelation. It is hard to see how a Mormon can look you straight in the face and say, "We have in Doctrine and Covenants our prophet giving us the Word of God to us on current situations, when you look at these originals and see how they constantly were changed in order to make them fit situations and to correct errors. Some of the prophecies proved to be false. Some of the revelations, such as on doctrine section 132 (the one on polygamy) was too gross to be tolerated by Christian-oriented society in the United States, such that even the Mormons were finally forced to discontinue it. And I mean the practice of polygamy in Mormonism in its actual expressions was fantastically gross. It is hard to believe that these people could look you in the eye and suggest that that indeed is the mind of God, but we are bypassing it for the time being.

The Pearl of Great Price

The Book of Abraham

Blacks

Now they've done that. And if Brigham Young is a prophet of God, he cannot lie. So, the Mormons don't have a priesthood anymore because they've done what the prophet Brigham said they must never do – permit Blacks to enter their priesthood. All that, mind you, is revealed in the Book of Abraham. The preexistence of souls is in the Book of Abraham.

The papyri were in the possession of Joseph Smith's family. They eventually ended up in a museum in Chicago. The Chicago fire destroyed the mummies, and presumably the papyri. So, the Mormon Church for years lamented the loss of these papyri and the Book of Abraham manuscripts. Then in recent years, in the late 1960s, lo and behold, the Metropolitan Museum in New York discovered that they have Joseph Smith's original papyri with his handwritten notes on accompanying sheets. And they gave them to the Mormon Church. The Mormon Church said, "Aha, now we're going to prove that our prophet was true, and that he did indeed translate by God supernatural power. This was special, because, in his day, nobody could translate hieroglyphics.

So, along comes the Mormon Church, and they made the mistake of giving this to reputable Egyptologists in this country. And lo and behold, what did they discover? Joseph Smith had pulled off one of the biggest frauds of all times. The Book of Abraham isn't the Book of Abraham at all. These papyri are the Book of Breathings, which is a variation of what is called the Book of the Dead – the hypocephali placed under the mummy's said to keep warm, because what's on these papyri is a praise of the sun god "Ra," one of Satan's agents. And here it had nothing to do with what is translated in the Book of Abraham.

Now their three main Scriptures have been proved to be such a fraud, and that Joseph Smith himself, with the Book of Abraham to have been such a deceiver. No thinking Mormons, who values his eternal soul, will continue in this system that's based on such obvious falsehoods. What did Joseph Smith mean when he screamed, "Oh Lord, my God," when he realized that the terror of death had now captured him?

I think that he knew the deceit he had placed upon thousands, and now millions, and the tragedy of that was that these millions are going to hell. Every Mormon who follows the Mormon system of works is going to hell. He is going no place else. You cannot say, "I trust in Jesus Christ as Savior for my atonement, and . . . The minute you've added your works or your ritual, you have sent yourself to hell.

Get this straight today. If you're the kind of a person who's trusting in the atonement of Christ plus some religious ritual, because somebody has hoodwinked you on that, because you have not been acquainted with the Word of God, such as this passage in Romans that makes it so clear that it's of God and all of God, and you do not understand that God preserves His integrity apart from you're doing, then you're headed for hell, and you are going to lose your soul. And you better do something about it.

Dr. John E. Danish, 1977

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