Trinitas, over the last several months we've been expounding Romans and we have seen the Apostle Paul draw out the connection between Jesus Christ and all different Old Testament figures. For the last few chapters we have seen that Jesus was the implicit object of Abraham's faith back in Genesis 12 and following. We've seen that Jesus has a relationship to Moses' law. That law condemns all sinners. Jesus bears that condemnation and he fulfills all the righteous requirements of it. We've seen that Jesus relates to David as his promised offspring and that David himself testifies to the depravity of man and to his own need for forgiveness. We've seen that the prophet Habakkuk, he is quoted and marshaled in support of the idea that God has always justified men by faith alone. But today, we see Paul make one of the most important comparisons in all of scripture. He relates Jesus to Adam. In fact, he advances this basic thesis that all mankind can be divided into two groups of people. those who have Adam as their chief representative and father, and those who have Christ as their chief representative and savior. Really here, Paul is beginning to teach us how to read the entire Bible in light of two different covenant heads. This monumental passage sets before us the doctrine of original sin. This, you could say, is the focal point of that doctrine in the Bible. It's a difficult doctrine. It's the concept not only that you were born sinful with sinful appetites, but that you were born guilty, having sinned in and with your first parent, Adam. With that in mind, we're gonna go to the living God in prayer, and we're gonna ask him to open up our hearts and minds to his word. Bow your heads with me. Mighty God, When we consider ourselves with our own natural reason alone, with our own fallen insights alone, we would never arrive at the conclusion that we became sinners before we breathed our first breath. We in truth do not know what we are until and unless we submit to your diagnosis of us in the word, until we submit to your telling of how we came to be in the plight that we are in. Please give us the ability, Lord, to receive your word, and by it to be driven again to a deep sense of our need for Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. And God, through him, may we be lifted up into your presence. May every good spiritual gift flow through us by your Holy Spirit. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. If you've got your Bibles, please open them to Romans chapter 5. We're going to read verses 12 to 14. When I'm done, I'm going to say this is God's Word. We're going to sing a short verse together, the Gloria Patri. Romans 5, 12. Just as through one man, sin entered into the world and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned. For until the law, sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed where there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam. who is a type of Him who was to come." This is God's Word. As noted, the chapter before us lays forth the doctrine of original sin with greater clarity than perhaps anywhere else in the Bible. The passage begins in verse 12 with, therefore, More literally, because of this is what Paul is saying. And the because of this necessarily refers to what we preached on last week. The reality of our reconciliation to God in Christ through one man. Because of this, we can draw a comparison between Christ and another one man. In fact, Jesus is rightly called a second Adam. We're told in our passage in verse 14 that Adam was a type, a tupos in Greek, a pattern or a foreshadowing of what was to come, him who was to come, Jesus Christ. And the point that's gonna be made is that his representation of so many others is comparable to that of Jesus' representation of those whom he has redeemed. Now, this is actually kind of interesting. Paul engages in a grammatical error. He has what you call an incomplete sentence. What Paul does is he begins a comparison that he never completes. He says, just as Adam, and you would expect a likewise at some point, but Paul is so excited to expound Adam in his representation of mankind, he never completes it, and says, just like Adam, so also Jesus. Of course, later in the text, in verse 19, he completes that comparison in one sentence, but I've got an initial piece of good news for you. Young people, have you ever written an incomplete sentence and your parents looked over the writing that you did and said, this makes no sense? Have they ever done that? I know it's happened in my house. Well, take comfort. God the Holy Spirit sometimes writes incomplete sentences too. Maybe next time your parents notice an incomplete sentence in what you've written, you can say, it's not that it makes no sense, mom. Rather, it's an incomplete sentence because it makes too much sense. It's obvious what I was trying to say. This is how Paul writes. A man enraptured in the topic before him, excited, and his point is clear. This doctrine of original sin, you can find all throughout the Bible. We sing Psalm 51, where David sings that, I was brought forth in iniquity and sin. And in this passage, however, though, we have this concept. You're not simply born with sinful appetites. You are indeed so born. You are actually born guilty. And that is a tough thought. Let me tell you what Paul is not saying. Paul is not saying that all men by free will just happen to sin like Adam did once they get an opportunity. What Paul is not saying is that all people sin due to external agitation or bad education. That's not it either. Paul is not even only saying that all of us sin because we inherit a corrupt nature. Paul is actually saying that you and me, all of us, we sinned in and with our first parent, Adam, who functioned as our representative, and we are bound up with him whether we like it or not. Let me expound this and the reasons for this conclusion from the passage. The first reason is just the structure of it. Paul engages in a literary device called a chiasm, where the beginning and the ending and the parts in between parallel one another so that it kind of points to a point in the center. It begins by saying, just as through one man, sin entered the world, point number one, and death spread to all, It goes on to say, and so death spread to all of you because all sinned. That all sinned and Adam sinned parallel one another. Functionally, what Paul is trying to tell you is that you all sinned when Adam sinned. It was the same event. It was one thing. That's what this parallel teaches us. There are two reasons why death extends to all men. It's because one man Adam sinned and all of us were in him sinning. And that's a tough thought. You look at the past tense as well. It says, death spread to all men because all sinned. It's past tense. This is a remarkable way of putting it. You're all gonna have grandchildren, children, young people who you know in the future. And I already know something about all of them. that they sinned. They sinned in and with their first parent, Adam. Are you awaiting a baby or a grandkid? Are you excited about this? Rightly so. But one thing you know, they already sinned. It's noteworthy that Paul puts it this way. A second reason for our conclusion is he notes in verse 14 that in fact, not all people sinned just the way Adam did. And all people die, however. Why is that? You might wanna ask yourself that question. Why is it that from the youngest ages, people are susceptible to death? As Paul puts it, death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of Adam. What does he mean? Adam sinned in a rather special way. He began as a man made perfect and upright. He had access to his God, face-to-face fellowship with him, communion with him. And he sinned in such a way that he took the greatest imaginable gift, communion with his maker, he flouted it, threw it aside, and took a different course. Not one of us sinned in quite that fashion. That initial sin was unique. You could say that the people of Israel, in a similar or analogous way, could sin like Adam. They got to have face-to-face fellowship with God via his tabernacle. And they could sin greatly by sinning against the God in their midst. Paul points out that even between Adam and Moses, when you had two seasons of direct access to God at a point on earth, people still died. And the only explanation for this is that they were all counted transgressors in their first parent, Adam. Think about today, infants, the mentally challenged, those who cannot volitionally sin in the same fashion that even you and I can, They're still subject to death as if under a penalty because counted guilty in their father. You think about even the logic of the passage. It's the third reason for concluding for original sin. For God to allow it to even be the case that you're born corrupt really means that you are already under a penalty, already under his wrath. come into this world with appetites that are contrary to the will of your maker. It's to already be counted guilty. Fourth, the comparison to Christ requires the conclusion that you sinned with and fell with Adam. The entire point is that you can be justified through the work of one man, Jesus Christ, on your behalf, your representative, so that his righteousness is counted to you. But if that's the way we are, that we can be so represented by another, then it follows that it's the way we are that we could sin in and with a person who preceded us as our father and covenant representative before God. The comparison requires this conclusion. I'll note furthermore that all of Scripture confronts you with these sorts of truths, and they're difficult to hear. Maybe you don't think about them. But all throughout the Bible, we see people paying the penalty for other people's sins. Many of you who went to youth camp two years ago will remember when I expounded the book of Joshua. Joshua's army went into the promised land to conquer it. They attacked the city of Ai, and they failed miserably. And Joshua asked the Lord why, and he said, it's because Israel had sinned. And he goes, what are you talking about? In fact, one man had sinned in their midst. His name was Achan. And it compromised the entire battle plan. And that one man's sin affected the entire whole. Just the same, you read verses like this in Hebrews chapter seven, Levi, who was the great grandson of Abraham, Levi, we are told, paid tithes to another man, for he was in the loins of his father, Abraham. In some sense, the argument is being made that those who are the children of a patriarch or father were involved in the actions and deeds of their father. What a strange idea for so many of us. Even Jesus indicted the Pharisees saying that the guilt of all the righteous blood will fall on you, including Zechariah, whom you slayed between the temple and the altar. That happened 600 years before Jesus was speaking. And yet he says to this people, you did that evil crime. The Bible talks about you in ways you don't talk about yourself. That's because you and I, in the world in which we live, we simply do not know what we are or the way we are. To understand Paul's point, you have got to appreciate that Adam from the beginning was created to be and to serve as a covenantal head. That means that he was to be a representative of all those who would be birthed from him or begotten of him. Therefore, Adam's name in the Hebrew Bible becomes a generic name for humanity. It's the name for man. And when Adam is made, you even get a picture of the unity and diversity of the human race. God says, God created man in his own image. That's Adam. Male and female, he created them. Adam is an individual, and he is a representative of a them, a corporate people. This original relationship between God and man is rightly called a covenant. Hebrews 6-7, or rather Hosea 6-7 says, like Adam, the nation of Israel transgressed the covenant. Adam was in covenant with God. And every covenant in the Bible encompasses a man and his children. Adam had these unique privileges as a covenant head. Before anyone else was created, he is given face-to-face fellowship and communication with his God. Positively, he's told to multiply, fill, and take dominion of the earth. Negatively, he's told not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He's given blessings if he should persist in this covenant relationship. Access to the tree of life and hope of eternal rest with God. But the curse of death looms for disobedience and we all die because Adam sinned and incurred this penalty for us all. Adam got to experience something that no one else in human history ever did. He was the only man who got to observe God's creative power firsthand. In fact, he not only got to see God be the creator, He experienced creation of another person from his side, having it utterly clear to him that God is this God who can give life and take it away. This sign of seeing God make another living person was sheer proof that he had the power to take human life, to afflict mankind with death if he should disobey. When it comes to the fall itself, therefore, Adam is uniquely responsible. And this is strange. How many of you know the story of the fall pretty well? It's kind of baseline Bible story knowledge. It's kind of strange that Adam would be the guy who this passage in Romans says is responsible for ushering sin into the world because if you remember the story, Adam wasn't the first one to disobey. His wife Eve was. When you ask the question why it is that the onus is placed on Adam, it's because even Eve was in a certain sort of way among those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam. When the New Testament looks back at Eve, it describes her as deceived and implicitly as unprotected. Eve didn't receive directly from God the requirements of the covenant, the threats that would follow upon it. Eve was represented by another. It's altogether possible that if Adam, after Eve had eaten from the fruit, had said, we ought not to do this, we need to kill that snake, and we need to repent and confess our sins to God, we might have had a very different human history. But in fact, what Adam did was an experiment. And it was the birth of individualism. Adam looked at his wife Eve and said, she is an individual and I am an individual. And if Eve does not die from eating the fruit, simple experiment, I'm not gonna die from eating the fruit. And so what we have is him observing the sinful deed of his wife, evaluating that it's good, and in the most culpable fashion imaginable, seconding it himself, that there would now be two complete witnesses against the human race in their rebellion against their maker. I'm gonna set a warning out there for young men in this room right now. One of the basic, one of the basic ways that the enemy will take hold of you is simply inviting you to experiment. One of the basic experiments that young men engage in is with pornography. And when you engage this experiment, you will figure out that you don't immediately die after you engage in this act. You might even know friends who have been viewing pornography for a long time and notice that they seem to be doing all right. And all of that evidence, all of that evidence, does nothing whatsoever to reveal the actual nature of the case. You are literally killing yourself when you view these things. I'll just give you an example of how bad the situation will be for you one day if you do not go to war with this very problematic sin. What's gonna happen some days, there's gonna be a young lady who you would like to marry. And you're gonna do one of two things when it comes to actually engaging in marriage with this young woman. You're either gonna lie to her and tell her you don't have a problem with pornography and your relationship will be built on a lie. A lie that destroys your relationship from within from the beginning. That's one option. The other option is you're gonna be honest about your actual sin and your problem that you've had darn well near right up to the point of that relationship. And then you're gonna lie in a different way. You're gonna promise you'll never do this again. And that will also be a lie. Because what you've done is you've habituated a problem and an evil that you've experimented with and now you don't know how to get away from. There's no woman whatsoever who ought to engage in a serious pursuit of marriage with a man who has had a problem with pornography three to six months up to the point of engagement. You need to be done with it, young men. Years of your life, true testament to the fact that this is not an entangling sin. Don't wait. Talk to your dads, talk to men who you respect, but don't engage in experimentation only to discover how badly it destroys you. But as I said, two lies arise here in Genesis. The first one is the lie of individualism, that God only deals with mankind as you, yourself, and I. This is essentially what Adam begs in the fall. When God said to him, who told you you were naked after he had sinned, have you eaten from the tree which I commanded you not to eat? Adam invokes a bit of individualism. And the man said, the woman, this monad over here, this totally different thing from me, this woman who you gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree and I ate. She is responsible for this mess. She did it all by herself. The Lord, of course, does not reciprocate this claim. And I will note as well, Eve is the mother of identitarianism. If individualism says it's all me, myself, and I, identitarianism says that my primary identity comes from the group to which I belong, and typically will find for that group some way to construe itself as the victim. And so the Lord God said to the woman, what is this you have done? And the woman said, well, the serpent deceived me. You know, Eve virtually declares herself, her species, her human race to be the victim, the holistic victim of another. It's the demon-possessed serpent. It's this thing outside of us that's afflicting us. It's his problem. The Lord doesn't excuse her. I'll note these responses are both godless. I'll also note to the young people in this room, when God asks you a direct question, answer the direct question, as opposed to immediately imputing guilt to some other person. The Lord asked Adam if he had eaten the fruit, and Adam doesn't reply. He talks about somebody else. The correct answer is, yes, I directly disobeyed you, Lord. But it's not what rolls off of his tongue. The judgment comes on mankind therefore with no doubt a judgment on the woman that she would suffer in childbearing, but the onus for ushering death into this world is placed squarely on the shoulders of Adam and there is no way around it. Trinitas to receive this basic biblical truth, the truth of this story, the truth of original sin is to be hostile. to two dangerous errors that afflict your minds. Hostility to original sin and the individualism and the identitarianism that mankind likes to embrace, they are both the fruit of original sin. These false ways that we like to think about ourselves are actually fruit of the fact that we descend from Adam and Eve, the first sinners. and I'm gonna talk about each in turn. Individualism and Identitarianism. Individualism has some positive emphases. In the civil law, can't execute Scott if I commit murder. You can't execute my kids if I commit murder. That's because men are men. We are not the divine. The only way we can relate to people is, at least in the civil sphere, as individual citizens. And the biblical law says that. There's an emphasis in individualism to take maximal responsibility for yourself and your circumstances. That's actually a good thing. And the more you do that, the less you'll treat yourself like a pure Monad and individual. If you take the most responsibility for yourself and your situation as a dad and a husband, you'll know it's your job to fix the household and the problems in it. But there is a godless sort of individualism. It goes like this. I'm only accountable for my own actions. And in fact, my life, as far as I'm concerned, is a story in which I am the main character. And I'm living this life, very consciously, as if I am the main and most important character. It's actually interesting, this is a distinctly European way of thinking, that we ushered into the world from men like Rene Descartes, through Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and we don't even question it. It's actually the luxury of the modern developed world to even think of yourself in these terms, where it's even possible to be like a lone wage worker, providing for yourself, having your own apartment, doing all your own things and recreations. Tribal societies never even thought to think like this because they didn't have the luxury to. But all of reality contradicts this way of thinking, this sort of rampant self-serving individualism. Reality contradicts it because the fact is things that you love the most actually involve your vicarious living through and in other people. It's actually one of the most wonderful things about being human that we're not mere individuals. Boys, boys love to be proud of their dads and their dad's work. They love to be proud of them, even though they have nothing to do with the work that their dad does. Their dad's work probably long preceded their boys coming into this world. There was this one time where my uncle, who worked for Safeway, invited my whole family to a big Safeway corporate picnic party at some beach. My dad worked for Albertsons as an assistant manager of a store. Some of the men were talking about Safeway. And I remember sitting on the picnic table. These were all workers at Safeways around the area. And they were talking about how great Safeway was. And rage began to well up in me. And I told them, my dad works for Albertsons, and Albertsons better than Safeway. At the Safeway corporate picnic. They immediately looked at me and said, who's your dad? They were wondering which Safeway employee was double dipping in two different grocery stores. I kind of got my uncle in trouble a little bit, but I loved my dad and I loved his work. I loved being represented by it. Every young man does. We love participation in others beyond ourselves. It is the opposite, the antithesis of individualism. Parents, pleasure. and take joy in seeing their kids accomplish things and do meaningful things with their lives. There's gonna come a day, parents, where you really can't do much, but you're busy watching the lives of your young people, like the most important show, taking pride in what they've done, living vicariously through them. We're knit together, friends. That's how God made us. That's why people can be proud to be an American. Proud of our constitution, our war of independence, our religious heritage. And man, it sure is delightful that on the 4th of July, all that I have to do to be proud of it is light off fireworks till the wee hours. Maybe eat a steak and a hot dog. That's all I did. And yet we're proud of things that transpired before we even walked this earth. Now the thing about it, though, is we all know there's a deeply negative side about all of this. We all know what it's like to experience negative consequences because of other sins, and to be counted with a sinful whole. This is really tough as parents, young people. You ever have a privilege, the whole family was gonna do something, but one kid was naughty, and you skipped it? I remember once we were gonna head out to dinner to one of our favorite restaurants, We were driving there and somebody was complaining about going to that restaurant. And I don't know, they just hit a point. They kept complaining. I'm like, that's it, we're done. We're turning around, turn the car around, drive home. Nobody got to eat there. Perhaps three fourths of the kids were just saying, what the, what in the world? We didn't do anything. That's because you were part of a group. And this experience that you may have had, young people, will be with you for the rest of your life. You will work on teams when you work for Microsoft. And you may be fired because of the bad performance of your team. It's the way the world works. It's the way reality works. When Hideki Tojo, Prime Minister of Japan, ordered the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the report was not that Tojo bombed Pearl Harbor. He wasn't even there. The report was that the Japanese did it. And that's the report whenever there's an international conflict. We are connected to one another. This is the way reality works. And I'll just throw this out there directly for husbands and fathers, you are uniquely responsible for your home. It is your job, like a little atom in your little sphere, when you see a threat, when you see a problem, to give that threat and that problem your attention and to be the prime problem solver. This will require from you sacrifice. At the very least, sacrifice of your pleasures, sacrifice of your hobbies. It will require even bigger sacrifices than those. It's never easy for anyone to get counseling when they need it. It's never easy for anyone to reorg the whole family dynamic when it needs it. But it has got to happen. This is one lesson we learn from the reality of original sin. But here's the deal, original sin, it offends because it is not like all those other examples in a certain sort of way. It is the most profound representation in your entire existence and being, so profound that you can forget it because it's everywhere. We sinned in and with Adam. Blaise Pascal wrote in 1670, assuredly, nothing shocks us more than this doctrine of original sin. Yet without this mystery, the most incomprehensible of all mysteries, we are incomprehensible to ourselves. If you don't accept that mystery, I'll ask you, why does everyone have the sense of not quite being right? If not because we lost communion with our creator, so that we're all a little bit off. I'd ask you, why is sin and corruption so pervasive in this world? What's your explanation? If not this, why does sin appear as soon as men and women, young babies begin to use their minds? Sin comes out. But there's another error. You might hear all of this and think that the Bible, therefore, says that our primary identity is not as individuals, but it comes from the group to which we belong. And so we have modern identitarian movements. Along this view, people will say, the group to which I belong, it defines me more than anything else. Now, to be clear, the group to which you belong has a profound influence on you. Your genes, your language, your habits, your assumptions, your cuisine. All of that was given to you. You didn't voluntarily receive any of it. It shapes you utterly. And in fact, the larger groups to which you belong, your ethnicity, or other people really take a stand on their gender, or other people really take a stand on a non-standard gender. There may be certain virtues that accompany these things. Take your ethnicity, there's a sort of cuisine, architecture. There are customs, there are holidays that prevail in your corner of the world. But here's where you have a godless sort of identitarianism. It's to say that my primary identity above anything even that the Bible tells me is my race, my ethnic group, my nation, socioeconomic group, you name it. typically these sorts of identitarian movements, they emphasize the group's accomplishments to the uttermost, spotlight those, and then what it does, it places blame on the group's sins, whatever they may be, on some oppressive entity that's getting them down. This is identitarianism. In fact, because of the plight to the group, they then justify personal crimes committed by its members. You might even say our plight requires that we commit certain crimes. I'm talking about this in part, Trinitas, because I don't want you to be naive, parents. There is a form of white identitarianism that is courting traditional Christians all over the internet. Every single corner of social media, this is a real thing. You would be extremely naive to cut your kids loose, to simply explore every conservative news outlet or bit of political commentary because this is alive and well as much as any progressive left-wing identitarianism based on race, economic status, or sexual identity. But here's the reality. Our ultimate group from whom we get an identity is not white or black, not American or any other nation, it's Adam. That is the primary group to whom we belong, and it's a sinful one. I'm gonna talk there for a moment about white identitarianism. When it looks like today's, you emphasize the great accomplishments of different white cultures, maybe American white culture, the revolution, our form of government, capitalism. Maybe there is the error of engaging in slavery, but we also ended slavery. And sometimes the implications of this are therefore that we need to seal up the border, we can have no foreign influence in this land, and that's it. That's going to save the white identity. Well, first of all, there are perfectly valid arguments for enforcing immigration laws, perfectly good ones. But the idea that we're going to somehow save white humanity and white identity through it is not actually one of them. I would challenge the white identitarians in our culture to tell me where multiculturalism came from. Because it didn't come from the people coming into this country. It came from white progressive thinkers. I would challenge the same white identitarians to answer this question. Where did the sexual revolution come from? Because it didn't come from south of the equator. It came in the most progressive countries, including our own. I would ask the same white identitarians to explain what people are so enraptured with themselves, their own pleasure, their own pursuits, that they honestly don't even care what this country looks like in 50 years. That short-sighted individualism, that's something we, white Western thought, has bequeathed to the world. I would ask the same group, why is it that our nation is quite literally declining in population but for the immigrants who come to it? Why is it? If not because again, our culture is in and of itself deeply flawed at its roots. Deeply smitten with self-worship at its roots. I say this because there is no solution to any ethnicity's plight but Jesus Christ, period. We are our own biggest enemy. We are a contradiction in ourselves. And that's because by nature we are not defined by George Washington or Abraham Lincoln. We are defined by Adam, the covenant breaker. Prior to Roman conquest, I should note that nobody looked at the people from whom I descend as having unique virtues. They actually had a name for people who come from the Germanic region of Europe. It was an ethnic slur. They called us barbarians. It was a way of describing the way we spoke as funny. We talked like bar, bar, bar, bar, bar. What are these guys even saying? That was the conception of cultured Romans and Greeks in regard to us. We didn't have any standing structures, any standing cities. We looked like a big loser society. And look at what the gospel taking root has done with people like us. There is of course a minority form of identitarianism. tends to be that the defining feature is that we're the victim of some powerful majority, and even a bit of superiority complex going on, where because we've endured so much and we're still here, we're maybe even better than that majority. Well, in the epistle to the Romans, there is a distinct group who meets that definition, and it's the Jewish people. A pride that filled this people that gave them this sense that maybe even they're a little bit better than everybody else. And this chapter would come to them as intolerable. What Paul is saying to his own countrymen, Paul himself being a Jew, is that your identity is not Abraham, it is not David, it's not Moses or any of the heroes. Your identity is not even, from what you've suffered, got bad news, your identity is sons of Adam, sinners in and with him. Nothing in between matters. No external privilege that you have had, brothers and sisters, has helped you be righteous or attain justification before God, and not one example of any of those Old Testament heroes has helped you one whit. And this is how he sets up the gospel. There are only two identities There is that which you have by nature as the sons of Adam, and you can try to get away from that guilt and that corruption you have from him by playing games, pretending like it's all me, myself, and I. I'm just an individual, and it's a lie. You sinned in and with Adam. He's actually the one who taught you to think that way. We all have daddy issues. You might try to shield yourself from the sin of Adam another way, making your primary identity American, LGBTQ, poor, whatever it is, so that on all fronts you can just be a victim. Nope, you're sons of Adam who willfully, willfully broke fellowship with your creator, the almighty, holy, loving God. You're his kids. and you have added countless personal sins to his sin so that on the last day of judgment, your whole life will condemn you yourself. But there's another identity. It is not one that any one of us has by nature except for the Savior himself. It is an identity you can only have by faith in Jesus Christ whereby you will become the sons of God in Christ. The gospel that Paul preaches is that the eternal son of God took on human flesh to be a second Adam. Think about the obvious parallel there. A unique creation, unlike any that came before, so that Jesus Christ was fully God and fully man. And he took total responsibility for sins he did not commit. Yours, if you have trusted in him. There is no room for that godless sort of individualism if this is the gospel. As God, he was able to resist sin wholly and completely and to bear the eternal wrath of his father. As man, he took total responsibility for the objects of redemption. It's actually this event that makes you more than just a member of Adam. It supplies a season of time where you must make an individual decision to cut off as your primary identity anything and everything but Jesus Christ. Jesus was so clear that loyalty and love to him has got to supersede everything that he said plainly. You cannot love your mother and father more than me. You can't love your race more than me. You cannot love your ethnic identity more than me. You can't love your subculture more than me. When you trust in me, I am your identity. And you'll be called by my name. You'll be called a Christian. You'll be baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And now everything you do must be for me. This is the gospel Paul preaches. Gospel Paul preaches is that we're justified, heaven bound, have eternal life in Christ, and now we have a mandate to put to death every single appetite in our souls that is contrary to Christ. I hope that as we have meditated on original sin and what we really are, you can begin to appreciate the more. what Jesus is and what a holistic savior and solution he is to humanity's plights, not only to your own personal frustrations and burdens, but to the deepest societal risks, the deepest cultural battles between us. None of them will be solved until we submit ourselves to Jesus Christ. Let's bow our heads. Lord, we are fearfully and wonderfully made. Every single one of us in this room has much to be thankful for that we did not accomplish. Every one of us in this room, we actually have so many sets of parents and forefathers, not simply extending back 250 years, but millennia. And in the faith, Lord God, back to the very beginning, we have so many people to be thankful to. but none so much as you, Lord Jesus Christ, who bought us, who redeemed us by your blood and willingly became a man that you might set us free from the penalty we have justly incurred for ourselves. Living God, I pray that you would please give us peace that you are reconciling all things to yourself Give us peace that as we look at the burdens and problems and rifts and cracks in our societies and between nations, give us peace that You, Lord Jesus Christ, will reign until You have put all enemies under Your feet. You, Lord Jesus Christ, are the Savior of the world. I pray that Your Spirit would be with us to worship You, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and that our worship would be true and acceptable in Your sight. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.