“Live and Let Die”

Scripture: Romans 5:12-21

As we approach Easter, we are filled with a mix of emotions. On the day that Jesus entered the City of Jerusalem, the streets were lined with people who were straining to catch a glimpse of the celebrated Rabbi. There were thunderous shouts of praise and adoration, but there were others who wanted nothing less than to end his “blasphemous” teaching. That final week of Jesus’ humanity would be fraught with contradictions and conspiracies, and yet, they all played directly into the Plan that had been in place since before time began.

But what about that Plan? If God had really put it together, why did it have to include all that animosity and arrogance and vile rhetoric? Why did he have to allow so much unbelief and pain and death? Couldn’t there have been a much more direct, and far less brutal way to show us how much we were loved?

Apparently not! If there had been, wouldn’t our all-knowing God have done it that way? Of course he would!
But would we have accepted it? Would we have believed it? Probably not!

But why? Why wouldn’t we believe without Jesus having to suffer and die before he returned to his glory?

Read Romans 5:12-14

Sin is not a collective event – sin is individual. Our sin can never be blamed on the actions or teaching of others – it is by our own, personal decision. Sin is not inherited from our parents, sin is not genetic, sin is not God’s fault – it is ours, and we have to deal with our own failures.

We sometimes understand this passage to mean that we sin because Adam sinned – that it is his fault, not ours! That “first man” had as much free will as we do, and until the temptation of Satan, in the form of the serpent, he never knew that any other life existed except that which he had with God. And when he came to the realization that he could choose between that which God had told him, and what Satan was offering him, he took the more interesting path, he took the easy way out.

It isn’t so much that Adam sinned first, it’s just that he was the first to uncover the problem with “choice”! If the only way we knew was the way of our Almighty God, we would never have to decide between the ways of earth and the way of the Lord, either. IF – and that’s a huge if - because this “IF” doesn’t exist anymore. It isn’t so much that sin has entered the world, it’s that the temptation to go against the Divine Way has become as integral a part of our lives, as God’s perfect way has. But only one of those ways can exist within us at any given moment.

The second part of this passage speaks about death, and we have to wonder what Adam’s life would have been like if he had resisted the serpent’s suggestion, that if he ate the forbidden fruit, he would understand all that God did!
And we have to wonder just why those two unique trees (the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and the tree of life) were in the Garden in the first place? Were they there to cause death? If creation wasn’t supposed to enjoy them, what was their purpose?

We aren’t actually told, until later – that these trees would be an integral part of eternity. The Tree of Knowledge became ours in the Garden, but it would come to us again in the form of Jesus Christ, who brought the full truth of God to our lives so that we could choose wisely between good and evil. The Tree of Life – it also existed at creation (Genesis 2:8-9), but we weren’t to enjoy it’s nourishment until Christ returned and the Judgment was complete, as it will provide all of the food that the saved will ever need (Revelation 2:7 and Revelation 22:1-2), with its production of a different harvest every month.

And without the Tree of Life that exists solely in the Garden of God, only death could prevail over us. But Jesus Christ has become our Life, and with him, death is defeated now and for eternity. But why, you may ask, why Jesus?

Read Romans 5:15-17

The penalty for our sin is, obviously, death. By Adam’s sin, we have come to know the difference between God’s goodness and the world’s evil, and still we prefer the world’s temporary pleasures over the eternal joy of the Lord. Death has become our choice.

But God’s plan for creation was that we, those who alone were created in his image (Genesis 1:26-27), would live with him in eternity! But how could he live with those who denied the relationship that he had created for us? He can’t, so somehow, the relationship had to be reestablished, and the life that the Lord had planned for us had to be restored.
Unfortunately, we are incapable of ever accomplishing that on our own! As long as the world’s attraction is before us, as long as the only visible life we know is that which is in the world, as long as our only knowledge of God is limited to the story of Adam walking with the Creator in the beauty of his Garden, we will continue to make poor choices for our life, and death will continue to be our legacy.

But since the penalty for all who sin and ignore the goodness of God is death, only death can satisfy the sin, and without Jesus, we are trapped in our own choices. Since the sin of humanity demands death, and since Jesus was the only man who was without sin, his Godliness would take on our sin, and his humanity would pay the penalty that we so richly deserve. Only human death could satisfy the sin, and only the grace of God could provide the forgiveness. And it is only by faith and trust in Jesus and his teaching that we will ever know the righteous life.

Read Romans 5:18-21

“so grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” I think the main point that Paul was trying to make is that it was sin that brought death into the world, and it was by the death that Christ suffered that made righteousness available to us. But once again, the problem that we are forced to deal with is that, once more, we have to make a choice – a choice between faith in the life that Jesus calls us to live, and the life that we are constantly being exposed to in the world! And there are still so many in this world who continue to choose poorly.

Faith in Jesus Christ doesn’t mean that we suddenly live the perfect life, that we no longer make those choices that result in sin. What faith actually does for us, though, is to make us aware of whether our life’s decisions are for the good, or for the evil, and it reminds us of what we have learned from Jesus, about how our choices are important for a relationship with him. And in those times that we still fail, it is by faith that we can go to the Lord, to seek his strength and forgiveness, and trust that he will make our life right again.

As we begin this season of Lent, we are called to be in a time of reflection, to consider the ways we live, to examine the depth of our faith in Jesus, of whether we are walking and serving and loving in his way, and what we need to do to live closer to the life that God has laid out for us.

But how are we ever going to know what the Lord wants from us, how will we learn what he would have us give up, and what he would have us add? And in the context of our passage for today, what is there in those decisions that we have made, that we should let go of and condemn to death, and what is there of Jesus that we should be adding to our life?

We need to return to the spiritual disciplines that John Wesley celebrated. In the book written by Dr. Henry Knight, “The Presence of God in the Christian Life: John Wesley and the Means of Grace” he lists 9 disciplines that helped John stay focused on his life and service with Christ. The list includes:
- Prayer
- Fasting
- Journaling (keeping a record of both your Christian experiences and failures)
- Solitude (finding a quiet and private place to reflect on your faith)
- Silence (using a time of quiet to listen for what the Lord wants us to know)
- Bible Reading, or study
- “Feeding” the Poor – service
- “Christian Conferencing” (spending time in sharing your faith through fellowship and conversation with other Christians)

During Lent, I want to encourage each of us to choose 1 or 2, or maybe even more of the above, and faithfully engage in them each day. By Easter morning, I believe that we will have discovered some of the things that Jesus would have us surrender to death, and other ways that he would have us begin to live within. These disciplines are never intended to be a burden, but rather as a means to draw closer to our Almighty God.

May you be richly blessed during this Lent!