Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3304
“But where sin abounded, Grace did much more abound.” Romans 5:20.
[Other Sermons by Mr. Spurgeon upon the whole verse are #37, Volume 1 —LAW AND GRACE and #2012, Volume 34— GRACE ABOUNDING OVER ABOUNDING SIN.]
THERE has been a long battle in this world between man’s sin and God’s Grace. If it had been a fight between man’s sin and God’s Justice, it would soon have come to an end. Picture to yourself the flames of Hell and see there what God’s Justice can do when it comes into conflict with human guilt. When God goes forth to war against the ungodly, His might is indeed terrible. Divine Justice makes short work of sin—it treads it under foot and stamps it out—even as men do with sparks of fire, for God hates sin with a perfect hatred. And when His anger is aroused against it, He tears it in pieces as the lion tears his prey in his fury. But, happily for us, the conflict with which we are just now concerned is not that between Justice and sin but that between Grace and sin! God’s milder attribute of Mercy has entered the field and in our text Paul tells us the result of the battle. It looked for a time as if sin would gain the victory, for it abounded more and more, but at the last the banner of Grace waved triumphantly over the battlefield, for “where sin abounded, Grace did much more abound.”
I. Without any further preface I am going to give you several illustrations of the Truth of our text, beginning with those we find in the Chapter itself. Paul has been writing concerning the principle of representation—THE FEDERAL HEADSHIP, FIRST OF ADAM AND THEN OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST. He has been telling us about our fall in the first man and our salvation in the second Man, the Lord from Heaven. He has been describing our ruin under our first federal head and our Redemption by our second Covenant Head, the Lord Jesus Christ—and in both cases, our text is clearly illustrated. It does seem at first sight as if the setting up of Adam as the representative man had been the means of making sin to abound because as soon as sin overcame Adam, it overcame the whole race of mankind! It appears as if it would have been better to have put every man on probation on his own account and to have let him stand or fall according to his own good or ill behavior. It seems as if it must have been a comparatively easy victory for sin to overthrow the whole race by a single blow. Certainly, sin did gain a great victory in the Garden of Eden and therein it abounded. But Paul shows that it was by this very principle of representation that “Grace did much more abound,” for it is through the death of One, even Jesus Christ, our Lord, that all Believers live! It is the righteousness of this One that a multitude whom no man can number shall attain unto everlasting life!
Now it appears to me that if the other system had been adopted, the plan of each one standing or falling by himself, there would have been no hope of salvation for any one of the whole race of mankind! We believe that the angels did so stand or fall, each on his own account. Satan was not the federal head of all the angels and consequently, when he fell, they did not all fall, but a considerable number of them did—and no hope of their restoration to the favor of God is given, but we are told that, “the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, He has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the Great Day.” I think it is more than probable that, had you and I been left to stand or fall on our own account, we would all have fallen—and then we would have fallen to rise no more. But now, as we fell in the person of one representative, it has become possible for us to rise through another Repre-sentative—and as many of us as have believed in Jesus, have risen from the fall of Adam—and are delivered from the death which was the consequence of Adam’s sin and are made alive in Christ Jesus by a new spiritual life in virtue of our
union with our risen Lord! By the federal headship of Adam, sin did indeed abound—the floodgates were pulled up and torrents of iniquity inundated the whole human race! But by the federal headship of Christ, Divine Grace does much more abound, so that all who believe in Him shall be eternally saved! I think this was the meaning of the Apostle when he wrote the words of our text. And this is one illustration of the general Truth of God that “where sin abounded, Grace did much more abound.”
II. A second illustration of this Truth of God can be found in the first part of the verse from which our text is taken. “The Law entered, that the offense might abound.” Through no fault in itself, but through our depravity, THE LAW INCREASES THE GRAVITY OF OUR OFFENSES.
You know that if you give your child no commands, he cannot disobey you. But the moment you give a command, the natural inclination of the child to disobedience turns the command into an occasion for sin. The more commands God gives, the more possible it is for man to sin. When water is cast upon lime there follows great heat and smoke. Yet the water was not hot. Put your lips to it and you will find that it is a sweet and cooling draught, but it produced heat when mixed with the lime because of the inherent heat in the lime. So, when God’s commandment is cast upon a man and he kicks against it, the fault is not in the commandment, but in the man’s wicked heart which rebels against it. Paul says, “I had not known sin, but by the Law.” He would have been just as truly a sinner in himself, but the sinfulness would not have come out if it had not been for the Law’s prohibitions and restrictions against which he rebelled. The Law of God is something like the medicine which a doctor gives to a patient who has some internal disease, but the medicine throws it out upon the skin—yet it is far better that it should be thus thrown out than that it should lie hidden in the system and lead to the patient’s death. The Law acts like this, especially upon those who are under conviction—it throws out the sin that is within them and lets them see it in its true character. The Law comes like a policeman with a search warrant, and says, “There is a criminal concealed here, and I have come to discover him.” Perhaps you say, “There is no criminal here, I never harbor thieves or other bad characters.” But the officer produces his warrant and searches you through and through and at last you have to admit that he is right even though you did not suspect the true state of affairs.