Jesus, the Key to Unlocking the Scriptures, iii: “Who’s Your Type?” Romans 5:12-19

*- In part two, we saw in Luke 24:25-27 that he presents Jesus as teaching his disciples that the whole of Scripture points to Jesus.

- We've been talking about typology as a key method which Jesus & the New Testament writers used to interpret the Hebrew Scriptures, meaning the Old Testament.

*- In part one of "Jesus, the key to unlocking the Scriptures," we examined John 5:39-40 & in those verses we saw that the Scriptures point to Jesus as the source of Life.

*- Again, typology means our experience of God is typical of how the ancient authors of Scripture experienced God.

*-So, the application of Scripture is timeless & typical to all of human experience.

*- God will act in the future in the way he has acted in the past because his character is unchanging.

*- The persons & events of the Scriptures serve as types or patterns for the present & the future.

*- What is interesting in the Old Testament is that when one person fails to accomplish God's purposes, then God raises up another person to take the former person's place.

- We see this throughout the Hebrew Scriptures: Joshua replaces Moses; David replaces Saul; Elisha replaces Elijah...

- Boaz replaces Chilion as the new husband of Ruth & kinsman redeemer, Naomi's new son-in-law & father of Obed, the father of Jesse, the father of David.

- It is marvelous to read the Scriptures & see the gracious acts of God & how he works all things toward the accomplishment of his rescue plan to save the world.

- Even what we would dismiss as simple or insignificant, God does not overlook.

- God saw the plight of Naomi & Ruth, & provided in Boaz, a man of integrity to act as kinsman redeemer, a man who would be an ancestor of our Lord & Savior Jesus Christ.

- That same grace is available to us today. God is in the small stuff.

- The pattern repeated in the Hebrew Scriptures is when one person fails to accomplish God's purposes God raises up another person to take the former person's place.

- But who could take the place of Adam? Who could replace Adam?

- Only one who was able to undo the effects of Adam's fall & become the author & originator of a new humanity could replace Adam (Bruce, Romans, p. 129).

- The only one who meets those qualifications is Jesus Christ.

*- & in verse 14 of today's passage, Paul tells us plainly that "Adam... was a type of the one who was to come." (v. 14, ESV, emphasis added)

- Adam was a pattern for Jesus.

- For Paul, sin & death entered the world through one man's disobedience, Adam; but new life enters the world through one man's obedience, Jesus Christ.

- Jesus becomes the type and pattern for all, by faith.

- For Paul, Adam is his namesake (Adam in Hebrew means human) because he represents all humanity. Paul sees all humanity as existing in the first Adam.

- Therefore, Adam's disobedience & alienation from God are imputed to us, assigned to the entire human race, that is to say, Adam's sin is charged to everyone's accounts.

- Adam's one act of disobedient failure charted humanity's course, determining the character of the entire world.

- But, as Paul explicitly states, Adam, the first man, is a counterpart, a pattern, "a type of the one who is to come."

- Elsewhere, in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul calls Jesus the last Adam.

*- ⁴⁵ The Scriptures tell us, “The first man, Adam, became a living person.”  But the last Adam—that is, Christ—is a life-giving Spirit. ⁴⁶ What comes first is the natural body, then the spiritual body comes later. ⁴⁷ Adam, the first man, was made from the dust of the earth, while Christ, the second man, came from heaven. ⁴⁸ Earthly people are like the earthly man, and heavenly people are like the heavenly man. ⁴⁹ Just as we are now like the earthly man, we will someday be like the heavenly man.

- Jesus becomes the type & pattern for all, by faith.

- It is fitting for Adam to be a type or pattern representing Christ, but as Paul makes clear, there is as much contrast between them as there is likeness.

- Adam was God's son formed by God's own hands & received his spirit, the breath of his life, by the Spirit of God.

- So often we typically blame Eve for the fall, but Adam was right there with her in her temptation.

- He could have been her Savior & should have been.

- Until the moment before he touched the fruit of the knowledge of good & evil, Adam had the opportunity to step in, to call out to God, but he was as mesmerized by Satan's temptation of Eve as she was herself, so he took & ate.

- Jesus is also God's Son, only begotten, the Scripture tells us. He was conceived because of the special creative act of the Spirit of God, like Adam who received the breath of God's Spirit, but it is here that resemblances come to an end.

* - Whereas Adam disobeyed God, the author of Hebrews tells us that Jesus learned obedience through suffering: Even though Jesus was God’s Son, he learned obedience from the things he suffered. Hebrews 5:8, NLT

* - Whereas Adam's disobedience brought sin into the world, again, the author of Hebrews tells us about Jesus: This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same testings we do, yet he did not sin. Hebrews 4: 15, NLT

- Jesus becomes the type and pattern for all, by faith.

- In Paul's thinking & in the minds of the other New Testament authors, Christ replaces Adam as the archetype, pattern & representative of a new humanity.

- The impact of the gift of God's grace to us in Jesus Christ has an even greater opposite effect than the sin of Adam & its penalties.

- The sin of Adam brought death, disease, decay, & God's curse upon all humanity & all creation.

- Whereas the obedience of Jesus brings to bear upon humanity & upon creation the transforming power of God's grace.

- Because of Adam's sin, all die, but because of Christ's obedience, by the grace that is available through faith, eternal life is available to all.

- As Jesus said, "I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me will live, even after dying. Everyone who lives in me and believes in me will never ever die." John 11: 25-26, NLT

- Jesus becomes the type and pattern for all, by faith.

- That, my friends, is the power of the gospel & the power of God's grace.

- At the beginning of today's message, we saw in the Old Testament that where one person failed to accomplish God's purposes, then God raised up another person to take the former person's place.

- It is very clear that Adam failed God's assignment for him, & it is also very clear that Jesus succeeded in every way, beyond our wildest imaginations.

- Because of the victorious resurrection of Jesus from the grave, God has made the transforming power of his grace available to us by faith in Jesus Christ.

- Jesus becomes the type & pattern for all, by faith.

- As C.S. Lewis puts it in the Chronicles of Narnia, human beings are sons of Adam & daughters of Eve.

- Near the end of the novel Prince Caspian, Caspian states: “I was wishing that I came of a more honorouable lineage.” To which Aslan responds, “You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve,” said Aslan. “And that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor in earth. Be content.”

- We are the children of our spiritual parents & inheritors of their spiritual legacy, but Jesus Christ has established a new legacy.

- We have a choice to make. We can accept the marvelous gift of God's grace to us in Jesus Christ by faith, & live by grace through faith, daily accepting the call of God upon our lives to fulfill his plans by the power of his grace.

- OR we can choose to fail, & God will raise up someone else to take our place.

- It's up to us. When one person fails to accomplish God's purposes God raises up another person to take the former person's place.

- What we must realize as we respond to God's grace in Christ is that God wants to transform us into the likeness & image of Jesus, not just his earthly likeness, which we see in the gospels in the power of his integrity, his miracles, & his teaching, although that might be glory enough, but his transfigured, resurrected, glorified likeness.

- C.S. Lewis puts it another way: “It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.” (Lewis, "Weight of Glory.")

- When one person fails to accomplish God's purposes God raises up another person to take the former person's place.

- We have the choice to live by the legacy of Adam & become immortal horrors or live by the legacy of Jesus & become everlasting splendours.

- "Because one person disobeyed God, many became sinners. But because one other person obeyed God, many will be made righteous." Romans 5:19

- Jesus becomes type & pattern for us all; lived by faith.