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The River ChurchSermons

Righteousness

Through One Man

Gary Wright · Sunday, 29 June 2025 · Romans 5:12-21 · 30:02 · 3,750 words

Romans S10 · 5:12-21 Burton

There is no public page for this message yet — the transcript below is the whole of it.

The sermon explains how one man's disobedience brought sin and death to all humanity, while one man's obedience offers grace, justification and eternal life. It describes the inherited sin nature that separates us from God and leads to spiritual, physical and eternal death. The speaker urges listeners to recognize their need for Christ, believe in his death and resurrection, and confess him as Lord. By living for Jesus and sharing the gospel, believers become part of a ripple effect that can impact families and the world.

What this sermon is about

Ranked by keyness against every other sermon in the corpus. Each one is a word this sermon actually said — nothing here was written by a model.

ripple 15 adam 29 nature 23 effect 16 sin 55 kingdom 14 reign 13 death 27 choice 13 man's 8 affect 8 adam's 5

Topics

Sin 14 Grace 5 Faith 3 Justification 2 The Law 2 The Gospel 2 Obedience 1 Condemnation 1 Righteousness 1 Salvation 1

Scripture referenced 10

Verified against the transcript. A reference the recording does not support is never listed here.

Romans 12 2:13 Romans 12:12 2:57 Genesis 2:17 4:04 Psalms 51:5 6:19 Romans 5:13-14 11:14 Romans 5 12:58 Romans 5:17-19 16:41 Romans 5:20-21 22:53 Romans 5:20 25:03 Romans 10:9 29:19

Transcript

Every word, as spoken, with the second it was said. Each word links to its own entry in the index.

So if you know me, you probably already know this about me.

I worked for the Genesee County Road Commission.

Please don't complain about your roads to me.

But I worked for the Genesee County Road Commission for 25 years.

I retired from there.

But every winter, it was a grind, right, if you can imagine.

So anytime it snowed at all, we got called in to work.

I mean, if it was snowing, we got called in.

Middle of the night, it didn't matter.

We had to go in.

It was always funny.

The boss would call.

Sometimes 3, 4 o'clock in the morning, he would say, Gary, I'm like, yeah.

He's like, you want to come in?

I'm like, well, do I have a choice?

Every boss I ever had asked the same question.

It must have been like something they got taught as foremans.

I don't know.

But you want to come in?

Yeah, yeah, I'll be in.

But anyways, each guy on the crew had a salt route.

They had roads that they were responsible for.

So if somebody didn't show up, the work still had to be done, right?

Somebody had to pick it up.

And sometimes we would have multiple guys not show up.

It was a drag.

So the choices that people made that I worked with affected the whole crew.

And sometimes those choices, I'm not going to say sometimes,

when people didn't show up and we had to do like four extra salt routes,

there was some hostility there sometimes, right?

People weren't happy.

So the choices we make affect other people.

You agree?

I mean, have you ever had the choices that you make affect other people?

I definitely have.

Positive and negative.

Have you ever had the choices that others make affect you?

And that can be a drag.

But today, that's what Paul's talking about.

He's talking about two men and talking about their choices

and how their choices,

affect many people.

In Romans 12, Paul starts off and he says this.

He says,

Look, Paul's telling us that one man's disobedience,

through one man's disobedience, we're all affected.

And he doesn't mention the guy's name, but he's talking about Adam.

Okay?

God created Adam and Eve.

He was the first man and they sinned.

And it affected all of us.

The word one, one, is mentioned, I counted 12 times in this passage

from verse 12 to verse, I believe, 21.

Twelve times Paul uses the word one.

One is repeated and he calls Jesus the one

and he calls Adam the one.

All right?

God gave one command.

There's another word.

Actually, that's not in our passage, right?

But God gave one command to Adam.

He says, let me explain in case you don't understand.

God created the earth.

He created Adam and Eve, put them in the Garden of Eden.

And he gave them one command.

He says, you can eat anything in the garden,

except for this one tree I don't want you to eat from.

The tree of knowledge.

The tree of knowledge of good and evil.

By doing that, he gave folks the opportunity to have free will.

He said, you know, you can follow me and follow my commands

or you can disobey.

That's the reason I believe for that tree.

But in Genesis 2.17, I want to read you the command that he gives to Adam.

It says, but of the tree of knowledge, this is God talking,

but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil,

you shall not eat.

For in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.

So Adam could not keep this one command.

And we look at Adam and we're like,

I can't believe that he didn't, that they ate from that one tree.

They only had one thing they couldn't do and they did it.

But I'm going to tell you, Adam represents all of us.

If we would have been in the garden, we ate from the tree too.

I truly believe that.

This one act of disobedience,

Paul tells us that sin entered the world.

Sin entered the world.

Sin entering the world doesn't necessarily mean,

it's a nature, like a rebellious nature is what he's talking about,

that we receive because Adam sinned.

All of us received this rebellious nature.

That's the sin he's talking about that enters the world,

this rebellious nature.

And Adam, he received this,

this rebellious nature and he passed this on, right?

He was in his image, in his likeness,

including the sin nature, passed it on to his children.

Matter of fact, his son, Cain, was the first murderer, right?

If you remember, or maybe you don't know this,

but Cain killed his brother Abel, okay?

He was the first murderer.

This nature of sin passed on.

And it's been passed along from generation to generation.

And guess what?

We have it.

We are naturally rebellious against God.

David writes about it in the book of Psalms.

He said, he says, this is Psalm 51, verse 5.

Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity.

That means sin.

And sin did my mother, and in sin did my mother conceive me.

Now, when he says,

my mother conceived me in sin,

he's not saying that my mother sinned.

He's saying, I was a sinner from birth, okay?

There was no sin from his mom.

She just passed that along to him, okay?

The sin nature is this.

When we have a choice to do God's will,

but we naturally want to do our own.

That's the sin nature.

And we don't sin, we're not sinners because we sin.

We sin.

We sin because we're sinners.

We have this nature in us.

And through, and honestly, I always say this.

Excuse me for one second.

I always say this.

If you want to know that the sin nature exists,

all you have to do is look at your grandchildren and children, right?

Because we don't teach them to lie.

We don't teach them to not to be selfish.

We have to teach them the opposite.

They naturally do that.

That's the sin nature, right?

And we're all sinners.

We're all selfish.

We all have that.

But Paul says through this sin nature comes death.

Comes death.

God never intended for us to die when he created us.

I believe that's why when somebody passes away in our family,

it's so difficult.

We don't know how to deal with it.

It's hard because God never intended it.

Death means actually three things here.

First of all, it means spiritual death.

When Adam and Eve sinned,

they immediately died spiritually.

That means they were separated from God.

They walked in the garden and had a relationship with God.

Now that was gone, right?

They didn't have that relationship anymore.

So sin, the spiritual death, separates us from God.

Sin separates us from God.

The second death that we see here is physical death.

We are all, because of this nature of sin,

we all will die physically.

I would like to think that I'm going to live forever,

but I know the day is coming when it's going to be over

because I have that nature of sin in me

and it's going to take me down someday.

The last one is really kind of like the spiritual one.

It is eternal death.

Look, if we die in sin without turning to Christ,

we are going to be eternally,

eternally dead.

It's called the second death in the Bible.

We are going to be eternally separated from God

in a place of torture called hell.

And I know people don't like to talk about that,

but I have to tell you the truth.

That is what the scripture teaches, okay?

The eternal death is the second death,

is separation from God and eternal punishment in hell.

I don't wish that on anybody, right?

I want all to come together.

I want all of us to come to the Lord.

And actually, the scripture says

that God don't want any to end up there.

He wants them all, all of us to come to the Lord.

Us receiving this nature of sin from Adam

sometimes doesn't make sense.

Do you get that?

I mean, sometimes it's hard to grasp it.

And honestly, sometimes we don't want to believe it.

And we argue and say,

how could we inherit that all the way from,

from a guy from thousands of years ago?

And of course, that's the next thing

Paul's going to address in his passage here.

Now, I'm going to warn you right now.

The scripture, the rest of the way is wordy

and it's hard to follow,

but I'm going to do my best to explain it to you as we go, okay?

So in Romans 5, 13 and 14,

Paul proves, I believe he proves

that the sin nature is passed on

from generation to generation.

Let's read that passage.

It says,

for sin indeed was in the world

before the law was given,

but sin was not counted where there is no law.

Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses,

even over those whose sinning

was not like the transgression of Adam,

who was a type of the one who was to come.

So Paul is not saying that since people,

uh, from Adam and Moses didn't have the law

that their sin didn't count.

They were still sinning.

They just didn't really realize it.

They didn't have like the command that Adam had

not to eat from the knowledge of tree of good and evil.

And the law didn't come for years later.

So they didn't have God's law,

his commands for us to follow.

Yet death still reigns.

In their life.

Why?

Because they had the nature of sin, right?

They didn't have the commands of God,

but they still died because they inherited

that nature of sin from Adam.

If you, we're not going to turn there today,

but if you look at Genesis chapter five,

it gives like the genealogy, I think of Noah.

And it lists like, it talks about Adam.

He lived this long and he died.

Then it says,

it goes to another person and it tells how long he lived.

And then he says he died.

Guess what?

Every person in that passage died.

Why?

Because they had the sin nature.

That's the proof that it exists besides our grandkids.

Adam in the one to come,

the one to come,

if you haven't figured out is Jesus.

We're the same type, Paul says.

They were similar.

They were similar because the,

the choices they made affected many people.

And really that's the main reason they were similar.

Let's look at the next passage.

The next couple of verses, Romans five, 15 and 16.

It says, but the free gift is not like the trespass.

For if many died through one man's trespass,

much more have the grace of God and the free gift by God.

By the grace of that one man or that one man,

Jesus Christ abounded for many.

And the free gift is not like the result of the one man's sin.

For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation.

That's death.

But the free gift following many trespasses brought justification.

Okay.

So Paul here,

he's making a contrast between,

between Adam and Jesus.

Okay.

So Adam committed one sin and it separated the entire human race from God.

We, we die now, right?

That that's what he means by the condemnation.

Paul uses this phrase here.

And this phrase is repeated multiple times, much more, right?

When he's talking about Jesus, he's saying much more.

He's saying we, you know, through Adam,

we all have death,

but through Jesus, we have much more.

We have gained much more than we ever could have lost through Adam.

Much more.

And Jesus Christ, because of his death, burial, and resurrection,

not only provided redemption for the one sin that Adam committed,

but it brought redemption for all of mankind, for all sin.

That's the,

much more we're talking about here.

That is awesome news.

That, that is the gospel.

That's the reason the one man Christ came.

And that's the reason it abounded for many.

When we put our faith in Jesus,

we receive this free gift of grace.

And it's much more than the death we received,

the condemnation from Adam.

Romans 5, 17 to 19 goes on,

and he continues the thought of much more.

"For if because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man,

much more will those,"

let me start over, I missed my comma here.

"For if because of one man's trespass, death reigned through one man,

much more will those," that's our phrase again,

"much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness

reign in life through the one man."

"Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men,

so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.

For as by the one man's disobedience, the many were made sinners,

so by the one man's obedience, the many were made righteous."

I told you it was a little wordy.

And we received the sin nature, so death reigns in our life.

And we've talked about that.

But through the one man, Jesus, here's our word again, our phrase,

much more we have abundant grace.

Through faith in Jesus, much more we are considered right with God, righteous.

Instead of reigning in death, much more we reign in life.

That means eternal life.

And instead of condemnation, death, much more we have justification.

Just as if.

I've never sinned.

Everything about Jesus is much more.

I love that phrase.

And I think it's amazing how Paul uses that.

But by Jesus' obedience, many were saved.

Jesus' obedience had a ripple effect on mankind.

He died on the cross.

And he raised up, or he taught up, before that, he taught 12 men to teach the good news.

How to preach the gospel.

And he used these 12 men as a ripple effect.

The gospel went across the whole world.

If you know Jesus, it's part of that ripple effect from these 12.

I read an article this week talking about Billy Graham, talking about a ripple effect.

The choices we make as Christians cause a ripple effect too, just like it did with the disciples.

There's praise and worship.

Worship, singer and songwriter.

I'm not familiar with this fellow, but his name is Don Moen.

And he shared that his father-in-law was an Amish man.

And somehow, as a boy, working in the fields, he heard Billy Graham preach a message, a simple message of salvation on a transistor radio.

And by the way, a transistor radio was forbidden by the Amish.

So this whole thing was just like a miracle.

But his father-in-law, the young man, when he heard this, he said,

He knelt down in the field, and he gave his life to Christ.

Don Moen writes this.

Because of that moment, the entire family was saved, including Moen's wife, Laura.

He gave his life to Christ, and it had a ripple effect through his whole family.

And who knows how far it went, right?

Billy Graham preached the gospel his whole life.

How many people came to the Lord?

Because of that ripple effect, because he was obedient to Christ.

Who knows?

Thousands, I would guess.

It's no different.

We know Christ.

Jesus used these 12 disciples to change the world.

He used this Amish young man to change his family and beyond.

He can use us.

He can use us.

We're part of the ripple effect.

If we know Christ, we're part of the ripple effect.

Imagine how he could...

Imagine how he could...

He could use us if we would let him, Christians.

Imagine how he could use us.

Imagine how we could reach our family with this ripple effect if we would be obedient,

if we would share the good news when we had the opportunity,

if we would live the lifestyle that we're supposed to be living.

Now, I'm not saying you're going to be perfect, but when we do that, there's a ripple effect.

I want my family to be saved.

I want my friends to be saved.

So what do I need?

What do I need to do?

I need to live for the Lord.

I need to speak about the Lord.

I need to talk about what the Lord's doing in my life.

And when I have the opportunity, I need to share this good news about the gospel, right?

That is the ripple effect.

Continues in the next couple verses.

Romans 5, 20 and 21.

He says,

So that as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness,

leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Look, the law, you know, we talked about how the people between Adam and Moses didn't have the law,

but when the law did come, when we've seen the character of God and his standards,

we realize, oh my word, we are so far from Christ, right?

We've really seen it.

We've really seen, you know, our sin as what it was.

Actually, I read a thing about, Chuck Swindoll said that when he was a young man,

he had a paper route, and he would cut the corner,

like there was a house on the corner, and he would cut through the lawn on his bike.

And he did it every day, and it wore a trail, right?

And he thought, nobody notices, right?

So it must be okay.

One day he came along, and it says, keep, there was a sign there that says,

keep off the grass, especially bikes, right?

He ignored it, and he rode right through, and guess what?

He found the author.

And they had some heart-to-heart conversation, he said.

But listen, that's what the law did for us, right?

We realize that something, that what God's standard is,

and it shows us how much we need Jesus.

But here's the good news.

Grace abounded all the more.

Grace abounded.

Grace abounded all the more.

There's no sin so great that God can't forgive it.

There's not, there's no sin, so too many sins,

that God can't apply his grace to, that he can't forgive.

In verse 20, or 17 and 21,

this is another word that's mentioned multiple times.

Reign or reigned.

Like a reigning king is what it's talking about.

But it's mentioned five times.

And Paul says this.

He's basically saying,

You have a choice of two kingdoms.

You're already in the kingdom.

We're born into Adam's kingdom of condemnation and death.

Or we can choose to stay there.

Or we can choose to be part of Jesus' kingdom of justification and eternal life.

We can choose to do that.

And it's through faith.

Will we stay in Adam's kingdom, the kingdom of condemnation and death?

Or will we stay in Adam's kingdom, the kingdom of condemnation and death?

Or will we stay in Adam's kingdom, the kingdom of condemnation and death?

Or will we choose Jesus and his justification?

Will we surrender and have eternal life with him?

What will our decision be?

Look, when we can turn our life over to Christ,

but our actions from then on can have a positive or negative effect.

So if we choose to be in the kingdom of Christ,

and we choose to be in that kingdom,

we still have a choice whether our actions are going to have a positive or negative ripple effect.

I hope that makes sense.

I believe that all of us in here want to have a positive ripple effect on our friends and family.

I truly believe that.

And those in our life.

And if we're believers,

ripple effect starts with living a life that honors God.

We've talked about that.

But it starts with choosing the kingdom.

Righteousness and eternal life.

We are not going to be an example in the world and to our family

unless we know the Savior.

You may be here this morning and you're like,

how do I become a follower of Jesus?

And honestly, you can do it right in your seat.

Really, what we need to understand is that we're in Adam's kingdom.

We have the sin nature and we're hopeless without Jesus.

Jesus says, I'm the way, the truth, and the life.

Nobody's coming to the Father except through me.

Right?

It's all about faith.

Jesus went to the cross and he died.

And we're going to celebrate that in a few minutes.

He died for our sin.

He was our sacrifice.

He was our perfect lamb.

He paid for the sin, for our nature of sin,

so we could have a relationship.

He died.

And guess what?

He rose from the dead.

He's alive.

He's alive.

And when we understand we're sinners,

and we understand we need Jesus,

and we believe he died for our sins,

and we believe he rose again,

we can be saved.

And now I can't tell you,

I don't know if you believe.

You may tell me you believe,

but it's truly in your heart.

I don't know if you know the Lord.

That is faith that you must come to.

Listen, when we come to that place where we believe

and we want Jesus as our Savior,

actually, I'm going to tell you this verse.

Romans 10, 9 says,

because if you confess with your mouth,

that Jesus is Lord,

believe in your heart,

God raised him from the dead,

you will be saved.

Right?

It's this heart change.

But in your seats,

if you believe that,

believe those things in your heart.

I don't think this prayer is going to save you.

I think the faith is what's going to save you.

But you should have a conversation with the Lord

and ask him to forgive you.

Acknowledge you're a sinner.

Acknowledge that he died on the cross for you.

And acknowledge that he rose from the dead.

He will.