It is sometimes posed as a philosophical question. Could God create a rock so large that he could not move it? And most people might say, well, who cares? That seems like a pointless philosophical question, but sometimes debated, but thinking of this question a little differently. Could God allow our rebellion, our sin, to become greater than his grace to overcome it? Is it possible that mankind's sin just went beyond what God could cover by his grace? And you know the answer to the question already, having heard it in this passage. Grace is invincible. It can't be conquered. In fact, it conquers all. Grace is so great that sin can't overwhelm it. Not even your sin. Death can't stop it. The law can't restrict it. And so this morning, I hope what we see together is that Christ's gift of eternal life through imputed righteousness to those who trust in him alone enables grace to reign, to reign over sin, over transgression, over death, over judgment. Grace overcomes everything because grace is invincible. And as we consider these things, I want to think for a few minutes about sin, transgression, law, and righteousness. What does that mean? What are all those terms refer to? And as we Consider the word sin, what comes to mind? We use that word a lot, but perhaps we don't define it carefully. And you may have heard of this analogy based on the Greek and Hebrew terms used for sin, that sin is missing the mark or falling short. And How do we think about that? Sin is missing the mark by failing to do what God requires. And if we think even of what our Lord Jesus Christ said, that we can summarize all of God's law, all of his requirements in these two statements, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. and love your neighbor as yourself. And there's a verse you're probably familiar with back in the book of Micah. What does the Lord require but to do justice, to love mercy, to walk humbly with your God? And yet those simple things, loving God with all we have and loving others as ourselves, Those are so difficult for us. None of us can say that we have done that perfectly. We have missed the mark. We have fallen short in terms of doing what God requires. But we've also missed the mark by doing what God forbids. And it's interesting to consider, is it possible to sin That is to miss the mark without knowing what God's standards are. And the answer is, well, of course, people do that all the time. They're unaware of what God requires, perhaps, other than their conscience speaking to them, but they're still sinning even though they're not fully aware of what God requires. But when we consider beyond sin, this word transgression or trespass, transgression occurs when we knowingly go out of bounds with respect to what God requires or forbids. And so In those centuries is between Adam and Moses as the Apostle Paul pointed out earlier in Romans chapter five, they did not sin the same way that Adam did. Adam had a clear commandment, it was obvious and he disobeyed. Others were still sinning, they inherited that sin nature from Adam and they judicially inherited his guilt. But after the law came through Moses, it was even more obvious. Once the law came, then in fact, people could sin the same way that Adam did because they had his commandments, God's commandments. And so as we begin to think about the law, In some ways, it's easier to understand what it is not. The law is not, first of all, a ladder. It's not a way with which we make our way up to God. Oh, if I can just climb up this ladder of holiness, I'll get to God and be saved. No, it doesn't work that way. And the law does not provide that for us. Similarly, the law is not a checklist. You may know that I'm a huge fan of to-do lists, and I have a list all the time. And one of the things I take great delight in is checking things off. And I could do this electronically, but there's something about having a pen and checking off a task. I just love that. We're in some sense wired that way. And we might look at God's law, God's holy standards and say, oh, well here, I just have to do these things. Now I know what they are. I'll just start checking them out. And in fact, you may recall that one young man came to Jesus and said he wanted eternal life. And Jesus asked him, well, what do you read in the law? And he rattled off. some of the commandments. And he said, all these I have kept from my youth up. I'm good at checklists. Boy, tell me what to do and I will do it. But Jesus identified that even with all his check marks, he was still falling short and he could not get to heaven on his own. The law is a pattern of righteousness, not a means of righteousness. And you've heard the expression, the verse, we'll look at it in a few minutes, where the Apostle Paul says the law is holy and righteous and good. It's a high standard, but it does not provide the strength to obey. It's not a way to become righteous. It simply identifies, here's what the standard is. And so the way the law functions is the law increases our awareness of sin and exposes our propensity to sin. Now there's a word we don't use a lot, but the idea is our tendency, our sort of default behavior, our propensity to sin, because we naturally rebel against its righteous standards. And it's so common, it's partially funny, partially quite tragic, that no matter what someone could say, as soon as you make a law out of it, then somebody says, oh yeah, I'm gonna do the opposite. And perhaps some moms have used this in what we typically call reverse psychology, like telling the kids, don't you dare clean up your rooms this afternoon. just to see, well, maybe they'll get tricked into doing what I want because they'll rebel against the command. And it is so dependable. Don't walk on the grass. I had no intention of walking on the grass until I saw that sign that said, don't walk in the grass. Once I worked in Omaha temporarily at a company that had a nice facility, and apparently, head of this corporation was so pleased with the grounds that there was this rule, no one is allowed to walk on the grass and serious consequences might result. In fact, the legend was he had a pair of binoculars up in his office on the top floor and he was looking down to see, is anybody walking on my grass? Now, of course, they had nice sidewalks going through the property. And I bet if there was no rule, people would just go on the sidewalk. Why wouldn't you? No one would want to walk on the grass if there wasn't a law about doing that. And so as a temporary contract worker, On my last day, I headed out the door and the guys who were kind of my buddies there, they were afraid to even be the ones to open the door for me to walk through, to go outside, to walk on the grass. They were just that terrified of the consequences of this law. So of course, In my own depraved way, I went, walked on the grass, walked to my car and drove home. Never been back to that place again. But we have this innate desire to rebel against authority. Where did that come from? That came from dear old dad, not me. your immediate father, but all the way back to Adam. And so we might think, well, if the law has this holy standard and yet we naturally rebel against it, is the law the problem rather than the solution? And I want to turn forward just a bit in Romans and look at a few verses with you in Romans chapter seven. And here the apostle Paul goes into the way the law works and our response to it. Romans chapter seven beginning in verse seven. He says, what should we say then? Is the law sin? It never be, the law is not. Problem, the law is not sinful. On the contrary, Paul writes, I would not have come to know sin except through the law. That's part of what the law does is it makes us aware of our sin. I would not have come to know sin except through the law, for I would not have known about coveting if the law had not said, you shall not covet, 10th commandment. Paul was saying, you know, I wouldn't have even been aware that this was wrong, but the law told me it was wrong. And the righteous response to God's law saying do not covet would be, oh, I want to guard my heart against coveting. But notice how it works. in depraved descendants of Adam. Verse eight, but sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, produced in me coveting of every kind. For apart from the law, sin is dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin became alive and I died. This commandment, which was to result in life, proved to result in death for me. For sin, taking an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me. This is part of what sin does. It's deceptive, and it can use something right like the law, sin taking an opportunity through the commandment deceived me and through it killed me. So then the law is holy and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. And in spite of all that, in spite of the righteousness of the law, we respond to it in ways that are twisted because we ourselves are twisted. It is as though we have glasses that change how we see everything, including God's law. And instead of receiving it gratefully and saying, oh, I want to obey this, Our natural glasses, the way we see things is to say, oh, if that's what I'm supposed to do, I wanna do the opposite. I want to disobey. And Paul has spoken of this in the earlier chapters of Romans. If we go back to Romans three, looking at verses 19 and 20, Paul says, now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law so that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God. So the law sets this standard and the idea of every mouth being closed is that no one can say a word because the standards are so clear. So God is using the law that all the world may become accountable to him. That no soul would say, you know, I'm pretty good on my own actually. I'm kind of, sometimes I surprise myself with how good I am and no, No, every mouth is to be closed and all the world accountable to God because, verse 20, by the works of the law, no flesh will be justified in his sight. For through the law comes the knowledge of sin. So again, the law is not the way that we become righteous. The law just shows that You're not making it. You're not getting the passing grade. You are falling short. By the works of the law, no flesh will be justified because the law shows us our sin. And I'm hammering this nail, you can probably tell, so that it's very clear in our mind that we have no hope in the law. God is using it in a gracious way, which we will see. The law shows us that what we are doing is contrary to God's will, and that makes our continued sin conscious and willful disobedience. Wait a minute. If I was doing things that were actually sinful, but I wasn't aware of it, Now the law comes, now I'm transgressing because now I know the standard, and I still want to disobey. Now I'm consciously, willfully disobeying. And it seems like, well, that's not helping. We're not getting more righteous, are we? If we're sinning, and then the law came to find what sin is, and then now, oh, We're worse off than we were before. But maybe that's not entirely true. Maybe the law is helping because the law should lead us to abandon all hope in our own righteousness and receive the gift of Christ's perfect righteousness. You may know in one of the famous pieces of literature of years gone by, Dante's Inferno, there was a sign that said, abandon all hope, ye who enter here. And in a sense, that's what the law is helping us to do. And it seems like that doesn't feel like helping, but the law is telling us Abandon all hope of self-righteousness. You'll never make it. You're going to have to find righteousness somewhere else. And we don't have to go looking for it. The Lord Jesus Christ is providing righteousness for us. And so, even though it looks like the world in sin, the law comes, Now the world is in transgression, and worse off, God has a benevolent purpose. And you may remember, I keep coming back to Romans 11, 32, for God has shut up all in disobedience. It's like there's a pen, you know, and everybody's being herded into the pen. All right, this is the disobedience pen. Is everybody there? Yes, 100%, everyone is there. God has shut up everyone in disobedience. And I just love to think, well, what would I do if I was vindicated and I had everybody in a big pen and I could say, see, I was right and you were wrong. That would be a sinful response. God, what does he do? He graciously says, all right, now that I've got you all sealed up in disobedience, I wanna show mercy to everyone. Are we like that? Not so much, not until we've been transformed by the grace of God. God has shut up everyone in disobedience so that he may show mercy to all. And he's done that in the Lord Jesus Christ. And this is why we can go to anyone and say, if you will trust in the Lord Jesus Christ alone, you can be saved. It's a genuine offer of salvation to every person. We have to have righteousness. Christ is the only source for it. And as I love to say, God provides for us what he requires of us. He requires perfect righteousness. None of us have it. How are we going to get it? What we must have is a perfect righteousness that is the result of a life lived in total and continual obedience to God's will. Wow, where are we gonna find that? We're gonna find that in the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the only one who has lived this perfect life, total and continual obedience to God's will. And we receive credit for his righteousness by faith. It is a gift, not something we earn, but rather something we receive. He is our righteousness and we simply receive him by faith. We are credited with righteousness granted eternal life, adopted into God's family forever. And so looking at all that, then we can come back to our text in Romans 5, verses 20 and 21, and just briefly think about what the Lord has for us here. Romans 5, verse 20, the law came in, and this, word it's interesting more precisely means the law came in alongside and it's almost as though there's a personification of the law like the law said oh I'm going to join the party but of course we know it is God's work to bring in the law. Another place this word is used in the New Testament and Paul uses it in such a way that it's properly translated, snuck in. Now God didn't sneak in the law, but he brought in the law alongside of our sin so that we could see how sinful we are. God brought in the law so that transgression would increase. And that seems like, no, really? Yes. but it's for a merciful purpose. God brought in the law so we would understand how sinful we are so that we would abandon all hope of our own righteousness and trust in Christ. And here is this wonderful contrast. There's a commentator scholar who said, praise God for these, technically they're called adversitives, like this word bat, You know, mankind is going along, headed to hell, but God intervened, and here it is. But where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. Grace is invincible. Sin increased, but grace outran it, outpaced it. This week, I called Jim. And after she picked up the phone, the first thing I said was, hyper parasuo. And you can pray for grace for Jen that she will learn how to live with her husband in an understanding way. But I explained, I'm just so amazed at this word, which is translated here, abounded all the more. Now we've seen, You didn't realize it, but we've seen part of this word, parasuo, earlier when Paul talked about things abounding, sin abounding, grace abounding, and so forth. But here, he adds an extra prefix to it, huper, which is where we get hyper from. So it's like intensification, turning up the volume, turning up the energy, super abounding, hyper para-su-o. Maybe that's something you wanna put on your bathroom mirror and meditate on, maybe not. But what great news that where sin increased, grace super abounded, way more. Grace outran sin. And that's the way God is. He's not going to allow the sin of humanity. He's not going to allow your sin to run way beyond his grace. No, grace is overwhelming, overflowing all sin because he is so kind and gracious to us. And so again, we saw the law came in. So the transgression would increase, but where sin increased, grace superabounded, hyperparasuo, all the more. So that as sin reigned in death, we saw that from the earlier verses in the chapter, even so, in the same way, something else is gonna reign, grace would reign. through righteousness to eternal life, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. And so, thinking back, we have this pattern of sin that started with Adam, continues through all generations. Everyone died. And so, it certainly looked as though death had the upper hand. Sin won. But no, grace is gonna reign. Grace has a crown and it comes through imputed righteousness, justification, righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Last week, we looked at an illustration like this with a crown labeled death, death reigning. And here in verse 20, the Apostle Paul is saying, sin is actually the one over death. It's sin reigning through death. But that all came from Adam. And that's certainly a dead end, if you will. Sin reigning in death. But praise God, there's another crown. It's grace. Grace is gonna be reigning believers given righteousness. So grace is reigning. The way grace reigns is the gift of righteousness, the imputed righteousness, the justification that Paul's been talking about in chapter five. the crediting of Christ's righteousness to those who trust in him by faith. That enables grace to reign through righteousness. And where is that going? Is that going to death? No, that's going to eternal life. And it's not through Adam. It's through the second, the better, the last Adam, our Lord Jesus Christ. No matter how much sin worked and increased and led to death, more than that, I prepare a super abundant grace. God has ordained that his grace super abounds over our rebellion. We didn't even ask for that. We didn't ask for God's mercy. We didn't know to. We didn't want to. I'm gonna make it on my own. No, God graciously overflows his grace to us in Christ. And so we can say grace is invincible. It can't be conquered. Sin can't overwhelm it. Death can't stop it. The law can't restrict it. Christ's gift of eternal life through imputed righteousness to those who trust in him alone enables grace to reign over sin, transgression, death, and judgment. Grace is reigning through righteousness to eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Please pray with me. Father, we thank you for your overflowing, super abundant grace. Grace that is greater than all our sin. What an amazing kindness you have given to us by crediting us with righteousness that is not our own. that comes from the life of one who lived perfectly in total submission and obedience to your will, our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. And we marvel that we are the recipients of this crediting of righteousness. And we worship and adore you. because you have caused grace to reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord. And in his name we pray, amen.