Honey from a Lion

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Romans 5:15

But not as the offense, so also is the free gift. For if through the offense of one many be dead, much more the grace of God…

This text affords many openings for controversy. It can be made to bristle with difficulties. It would be easy to set up a thorn hedge and keep the sheep out of the pasture, or to so pelt each other with the stones as to leave the fruit untasted. I feel more inclined to chime in with that ancient father against whom a clamorous disputant shouted, "Hear me! Hear me!" "No," said the father, "I will not hear you, nor shall you hear me, but we will both be quiet and hear what Christ has to say." Note —

I. THE APPOINTED WAY OF OUR SALVATION IS BY THE FREE GIFT OF GOD. Salvation is bestowed —

1. Without regard to any merit, supposed or real. Grace is not a fit gift for the righteous, but for the undeserving. It is according to the nature of God to pity the miserable and forgive the guilty, "for He is good, and His mercy endureth forever."

2. Irrespective of any merit which God foresees will be in man. Foresight of the existence of grace cannot be the cause of grace. God Himself does not foresee that there will be any good thing in any man, except what He foresees that He will put there.

3. Without reference to conditions which imply any desert. But I hear one murmur, "God will not give grace to men who do not repent and believe." I answer, "God gives men grace to repent and believe, and no man does so till first grace is given him." Repentance and faith may be conditions of receiving, but they are not conditions of purchasing, for salvation is without money and without price.

4. Over the head of sin and in the teeth of rebellion, "God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners," etc. Many of us have been saved by grace of the most abounding and extraordinary sort.

5. Through the one man Jesus Christ. People talk about a "one man ministry." I was lost by a one man ministry when father Adam fell in Eden, but I was saved by a one man ministry when Jesus bore my sin in His own body on the tree.

II. IT IS CERTAIN THAT GREAT EVILS HAVE COME TO US BY THE FALL.

1. We have lost the Garden of Eden and all its delights, privileges, and immunities, its communion with God, and its freedom from death.

2. We have been born to a heritage of sorrow.

3. We came into the world with a bias towards evil.

4. We are made liable to death, and are sure to bow our heads beneath the fatal stroke.

5. While we live we know that the sweat of our brow must pay the price of our bread.

6. Our children must be born with pangs and travail.

III. FROM THE FALL WE INFER THE MORE ABUNDANT CERTAINTY THAT SALVATION BY GRACE THROUGH CHRIST JESUS SHALL COME TO BELIEVERS. For —

1. This appears to be more delightful to the heart of God. I can understand that God, having so arranged it that the human race should be regarded as one, should allow the consequences of sin to fall upon succeeding generations of men; but yet I know that He takes no pleasure in the death of any, and finds no delight in afflicting mankind. If God has so arranged it that in the Second Adam men rise and live, it seems to me most gloriously consistent with His gracious nature and infinite love that all who believe in Jesus should be saved through Him.

2. It seems more inevitable that men should be saved by the death of Christ than that men should be lost by the sin of Adam. It might seem possible that, after Adam had sinned, God might have said, "Notwithstanding this covenant of works, I will not lay this burden upon the children of Adam"; but it is not possible that after the eternal Son of God has become man, and has bowed His head to death, God should say, "Yet after all I will not save men for Christ's sake."

3. Look at the difference as to the causes of the two effects. Look at the occasion of our ruin — "the offence of one" — a finite being, who therefore cannot be compared in power with the grace of the infinite God; the sin of a moment, and therefore cannot be compared for force and energy with the everlasting purpose of Divine love. The grace of God is like His nature, omnipotent and unlimited. God is not only gracious to this degree or to that, but He is gracious beyond measure; we read of "the exceeding riches of His grace." He is "the God of all grace."

4. The difference of the channels by which the evil and the good were severally communicated to us. In each case it was "by one," but what a difference in the persons!

(1) Let us not think too little of the head of the human family. Yet what is the first Adam as compared with the Second? He is but of the earth, earthy, but the Second Man is the Lord from heaven. Surely, then, if Adam with that puny hand of his could pull down the house of our humanity, that greater Man, who is also the Son of God, can fully restore us.

(2) Adam commits one fault and spoils us, but Christ's achievements are many as the stars of heaven.

(3) Adam did but eat of the forbidden fruit, but Christ died. Is there any comparison between the one act of rebellion in the garden and the matchless deed of superlative obedience upon the Cross of Calvary which crowned a life of service?

5. From the text you may derive a great deal of comfort.

(1) A babe is born into the world amid great anxiety because of its mother's pains; but while these prove how the consequences of the fall are with us ("in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children"), they also assure us that the Second Adam can abundantly bring us bliss through a second birth.

(2) Inasmuch as we have seen the thorn and the thistle because of one Adam, we may expect to see a blessing on the earth because of the Second Adam. Therefore with unbounded confidence do I believe the promise: "Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle tree," etc.

(3) Did not the Lord say, "In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread"? Ought not your labour to be an argument by which your faith shall prove that in Christ Jesus there remaineth a rest for the people of God.

(4) Did the first Adam through his disobedience lift the latch for death? It is surely so. Therefore I believe with the greater assurance that the Second Adam can give life to these dry bones, can awake all these sleepers, and raise them in newness of life.

IV. IF FROM THE FALL OF ADAM SUCH GREAT RESULTS FLOW, GREATER RESULTS MUST FLOW FROM THE GRACE OF GOD AND THE GIFT BY GRACE, WHICH IS BY ONE MAN, JESUS CHRIST. Suppose that Adam bad never sinned, and we were unfallen beings, yet our standing would have remained in jeopardy. We have now lost everything in Adam, and so the uncertain tenure has come to an end; but we that have believed have obtained an inheritance which we hold by a title which Satan himself cannot dispute: "All things are yours, and ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's." By the great transgression of Adam we lost our life in him; but in Christ we live again with a higher and nobler life. The Lord Jesus has also brought us into a nearer relationship to God than we could have possessed by any other means. We were God's creatures, but now we are His sons. We have lost paradise, but we shall possess that of which the earthly garden was but a lowly type: we might have eaten of the luscious fruits of Eden, but now we eat of the bread which came down from heaven; we might have heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, but now, like Enoch, we may walk with God after a nobler and closer fashion. We are now capable of a joy which unfallen spirits could not have known — the bliss of pardoned sin. The bonds which bind redeemed ones to their God are the strongest which exist.

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