- Overcomer Literature Trust
- Swindon
- Wiltshire
GRACE TRIUMPHANT OVER SIN
By Ruth Paxton.
The most triumphant words ever spoken were those which fell from the lips of the Lord Jesus Christ when on the Cross He said, “It is finished”. It was the divine proclamation that grace had triumphed over sin. It was God’s pronouncement to the world that all that had been lost both to Him and to man through the first Adam had been regained through the last Adam.
Rom. 5 v20, “But where sin increased, grace increased all the more.”
Rom. 5 v12 & 15, “Just as sin entered the world through one man.” “How much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, overflow to many.”
The Challenge of Grace, In Adam or In Christ.
Through the first Adam God established a union with the whole human race. All that Adam was in creation God intended all mankind to be.
But Adam sinned and received a sinful nature, becoming a sinner both in desire and deed. He came into bondage to sin, self and Satan, and entered into the sphere of death, darkness and disorder.
Adam bequeathed to the human race all that became his in the fall. His descendants inherited his sinful nature and shared in the consequences of his sin. Everyone by physical birth is “in Adam”.
In Adam’s creation God had established a union with the human race on the basis of personal communion and co-operation. In Adam’s fall that union was broken and mankind was alienated from God. Sin put a chasm between a righteous, holy God and guilty, sinful people.
But as God dealt representatively with the human race in the first Adam so He did in the last Adam. What was ruined in the fall of the first man God redeemed in the victory of the second Man. The loss that both God and the race sustained by the sinful act of the first Adam was recovered by the righteous act of the last Adam. The union that was broken through His first man God re-established through His second Man. The impassable chasm made by the first Adam’s sin was bridged by the last Adam’s sacrifice.
On the Cross of Calvary Christ Jesus, the divine-human Mediator, took the sinner’s place and became the sinner’s Substitute. The sinner’s guilt was borne, the sinner’s condemnation was removed, and the sinner’s doom was met, by the Sin-bearer. Adam’s sin was put away and all of its consequences were borne by God’s Son.
Christ made available to all everything that became His through the victory of His death and resurrection. As all have been united to the first Adam in creation and in the fall, so all may be united to the last Adam in grace, through faith. As all are “in Adam” so all may be “in Christ”.
Through the death, resurrection, ascension and exaltation of the Lord Jesus Christ mankind was potentially redeemed and God reestablished a relationship with the mankind, “by grace through faith”, so that all may come out of the bondage to sin, self and Satan into the glorious liberty of the children of God, and into the bounteous inheritance of the heirs of God. “In Christ” all may now find a way of escape from the sphere of death, darkness and disorder, and an abundant entrance into the sphere of life, light and liberty, and they may be translated into the Kingdom of God’s dear Son. “In Christ” all may now leave the plane of the natural and rise to the plane of the spiritual. Everyone by spiritual birth may be “in Christ”.
Rom. 5 v18-19, “Just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all, so also the result of the one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all. For just as through the disobedience of one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one Man the many will be made righteous”.
Through these two men God has a personal relationship with every individual on earth because every person is now either in Adam or in Christ, either still alienated from God through sin or accepted by God through His Son.
Sin entered, abounded and reigned (Rom. 5 v12, 20, 21), but on Calvary’s Cross grace entered and did much more abound and now reigns wherever God’s gift is accepted by faith.
Rom. 5 v21, “Just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord”.
From ‘Life on the Highest Plane’.