But let’s forget about human laws and morality for a moment. Does Jehovah have the authority to change the rules so long as justice and holiness are preserved? I’m not saying that He has, but could the Lord say that obedience in religion is good enough to cover disobedience in the business world? Certainly the Lord could make this sort of rule – because He is God – the sovereign God. But before I go one sentence farther, let me say that no religious denomination has authority to coddle, forgive, support and pamper pedophiles and rapists, declaring that their work as priests is sufficiently good enough to cover their multitude of sins. No single person and no body of human beings on this planet can act in God’s place forgiving sin, covering sin or pretending that sin doesn’t exist. If God wants to change the rules of human morality, He certainly can do so, but the fact is – He has not.
And yet there is one very special and very particular case, where the Lord has come close to doing this. “For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the OBEDIENCE of ONE shall many be made righteous.” What sets this verse apart from what I’ve been talking about is the special One Man and His special obedience. There has never been another such Man and there has never been such obedience.
As we have said quite often over the last few weeks, Adam plunged every one of his children into the abyss of sin. Or perhaps it would be better to say that the abyss of sin was plunged into the heart of all of Adam’s children. He gave them all a sin-nature, which carries with it a propensity to sin. And at the same time, he killed them – Adam spiritually died when he sinned, and all his children and grand-children have been spiritually still-born. But in a very special way Adam was figure of another Man – Jesus Christ. Verse 15 – “But not as the offence, so also is the free gift. For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many.” The experts in such things tell us that in the original Greek of verse 19 there are a couple of definite articles which are hidden in the way that we use English. They tell us that the verse says, “For as by THE one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of THE one shall many be made righteous.” Paul is putting Adam on a pedestal as the father of the human race, but he is also putting Someone else on an even higher pedestal as the Saviour of a race of saints.
It doesn’t take much detective work to discover who this Person is. He is the eternal Son of God. He is the Messiah, the One anointed of God for the purpose of justifying and saving sinners like us. The Bible teaches us that Jesus is the Christ the Son of God. To many of the people in His day, Jesus was known to be the son of Mary and Joseph of Nazareth. But Joseph was in fact only His human stepfather because His actual Father is the Lord God of Heaven and Earth. And this fact, that Jesus is the eternal Son of God, means that He is far beyond the limits of humanity. Our sinful limitations don’t apply to Christ Jesus, and the rules which bind us don’t necessarily bind Him.
Actually there were a number of ways, and not one of them can be said of us. One of my commentators used a word that I can’t find in my dictionary, and yet any Christian can understand it. JFB said that Jesus had an “obediential character.” To me that refers to a character which is completely opposite to our rebellious nature. Grand-daughter, Sahalie is 7½ months old now. The other day she was visited by a brand-new, just-born baby girl, who made Sahalie seem like a giant. With every passing day Sahalie is getting more alert, more active, stronger and more wilful. And even though she is a positive and usually a mild and passive like baby, she does show signs of being a red-headed, grand-daughter of her grand-mother. She’s not always satisfied with the toys that she is given. She is rarely happy with the little exercises and tasks that she is asked to perform. And slowly she is proving herself to be the rebel that we all are in the heart of our hearts. Until it is controlled, most people are more apt to hesitate, rebel and delay obeying commands that are given to us. Even when we obey there is often first a thought to go the other way. It is natural, but it is also thoroughly wicked. When Jeremiah said that “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked,” part of that wickedness is the heart’s desire to have it’s own way. But the heart of Jesus of Nazareth was unlike any other heart ever borne by man. He had an obediential nature rather than the universal rebellious nature. His first and only impulse was to do the right thing and to obey His Heavenly Father. If He didn’t already have a special relationship to Jehovah, this would certainly have created one.
Secondly, Jesus was actually and positively, perfectly obedient to every aspect of the will of God. As I said last week, Jesus did no sin ………..“neither was guile found in His mouth.” In fact, going back to that obediential nature – Jesus could not sin – He was, and still is, impeccable. Not only did he never disobey a single restriction of the Lord, He carried out every command of God. He fulfilled all righteousness. He was obedient to the Law and He was obedient to His Heavenly Father. In John15 Christ was speaking to His disciples and said, “As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love. If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even AS I HAVE KEPT MY FATHER’S COMMANDMENTS, and abide in his love.” And in Hebrews 10 we have an Old Testament quote and Paul’s comments on Jesus’ obedience: “Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God. Above when he said, Sacrifice and offering and burnt offerings and offering for sin thou wouldest not, neither hadst pleasure therein; which are offered by the law; Then said he, Lo, I COME TO DO THY WILL, O GOD.” The Lord Jesus challenged His earthly accusers to come up with some sins or crimes for which He should die, but they failed. At his trial, He claimed complete innocence, and no witnesses could be found to refute the claim.
In addition to these important varieties of obedience there which was another even more important. In eternity past, God chose to create man, chose to let him sin, and chose to save some of those sinners. Some say that the crowning achievement of God was the creation of man, but they are wrong. The crowning achievement of God is the salvation of a few of those whom the Lord permitted to fall. There was an agreement – a covenant – between the three Persons of the Trinity, which ended in the salvation and glorification of a few worthless sinners. And Jesus was obedient to Himself – to the Father and to the Spirit – in willingly going to Calvary. Or as Philippians 2 puts it – Jesus was obedient to death itself. “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.”
There is only one way for sinful man to be delivered from the effects of Adam’s transgression – the sacrificial death of the son of God. And that sacrifice was not an afterthought or reaction of God to man’s surprisingly wicked turn. It was the plan of God even before man was created. Christ was “delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God” into wicked hands to be put to death. But don’t think for a moment that Jesus went reluctantly or unwillingly. He was obedient unto God the Father, unto death, and unto the foreordained plan of God.
I know that the word “many” causes many people to stumble. It is found five times in our context, and it generally means the same thing each time. But then specifically it changes. To have a billion dollars in this room would require a great many hundred dollar bills, but to have $10,000 would also require a great many hundreds. And the word “many” is appropriate in both cases, but they are obviously different “manys.” Verse 15 – “But not as the offence, so also is the free gift. For if through the offence of one MANY be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto MANY.” Verse 19 – “For as by one man’s disobedience MANY were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall MANY be made righteous.”
What this all boils down to is this: Christ Jesus’ thorough obedience results in the salvation of the Lord’s elect. Our Saviour’s obedience is a key part to our salvation.