How can we put into words what Jesus Christ means for human life? Whatever we say, it won't be enough, but we have to try, and we don't have to start from scratch. Here is a statement from the New Testament that captures something of the blockbuster impact of Jesus Christ on our world. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! (2 Corinthians 5:17). The story of Jesus Christ is the story of a new start for humanity and for nature. His life, particularly His death and resurrection, began a new creation.

That is hard to believe when the evil of the world and the evil in our own souls seems overwhelming. On the other hand, when the evil in the world and the evil in our own souls seem overwhelming, that is when our belief in a new creation gives us the one thing without which we can't face evil; it gives us hope.

We can't always get rid of evil. At times we seem helpless in the face of evil. We can't explain evil. In those moments we need hope that evil won't have the last word, hope that goodness will prove to be stronger than evil. Our faith that God raised Jesus from the dead and began a new creation lays the foundation for such hope. In our text today the apostle builds on that foundation and strengthens our hope.

Thus far in Romans, he has said that human nature is ensnared by the force called sin. It contradicts our good intentions. It can mushroom into demonic, global proportions. It is just as true of religious people as it is true of irreligious people. No one can shake off this power just by trying. And God also holds us responsible for it.

The good news is that we can have hope on the day of God's wrath, when He judges us impartially, because the death of Christ atoned for the sins that separated us from God. Because of Christ, God now offers us absolution for our guilt.

These benefits come to bear on human life through faith in Jesus Christ. Our faith releases the power of His atoning death into our experience. God's merciful offer of forgiveness becomes personal. Thanks to the mediation of Christ, we live in a permanent state of grace marked by the sheer generosity of God toward us. For us, it's a new day.

Having set forth this new relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ, I think the apostle was himself searching around for some way to put into words what Jesus Christ means for human life. What came from his heart was Romans 5:12-21.

Hope in the Face of Evil
The way Paul put his thoughts into words here does not always make for easy reading. Would you let me be your guide into his passionate thoughts? They are truly powerful and full of hope. If we want to get a handle on them, the place to begin is not in verse twelve but at the end of the chapter.

So, let's look first at the statement at the end of verse 20. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more. Whenever the evil power that mars human life reaches new depths in its degradation, the sheer generosity of God reaches new heights to counteract the degradation and replace it with holiness. That's the lesson about God the apostle learned from the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Nowhere did the force called sin show its true colors more clearly than in the killing of Jesus Christ. Nowhere did the purpose of God seem so weak and foolish as on the cross. Nowhere did the love of God for frail and fallen humanity shine as on the cross. Nowhere did the power of God show its true colors so clearly than at the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Paul saw all that and said, "That is what God is like. That is how God will win the battle with evil. His grace will always absorb the worst that sin can do and then reassert its supremacy until some day evil is finished." Verses 20-21 put his idea this way.

But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. That is the magnificent conclusion of Romans 1-5. What do verses 12-19 have to do with that conclusion?

Adam and Christ
These verses set up two contrasts between Adam and Christ. Look first at verse 19, which is a contrast between two decisive acts. For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.

The disobedience of the one man refers of course to the sin of Adam in the Garden of Eden, when he disobeyed God's command not to eat forbidden fruit. The obedience of the one man refers to the obedience of Jesus to the will of God that culminated in His death.

The second is a contrast between the consequences of those decisive acts. Paul states the consequences of Adam's disobedience in several ways. Verse 12 pictures Adam's disobedience as a door through which something awful entered human life. Sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned.

Something else fearful came through that door. Verse 16 says, The judgment followed one sin an brought condemnation. Verse 18 says the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men.

On the other hand, the consequences of Christ's obedience are not only different; they also undo the consequences of Adam's disobedience. Verse 15 says first Christ's obedience is just as great as the scope of Adam's disobedience. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God's grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many!

Furthermore, Christ's obedience cancels out the condemnation that resulted from Adam's disobedience. Verse 16 says that the gift of God is not like the result of the one man's sin, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification.

Finally, Christ's obedience guarantees that death will not have the final word. Verse 17: For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God's abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.

Sin, death and condemnation enthrall the old creation through Adam's disobedience. Grace, justification and eternal life enthrall the new creation through Christ's obedience.

The New Creation
Paul does not use here the terms old creation and new creation. I have introduced them, because they express the meaning of Paul's contrast between Adam and Christ and because Paul speaks elsewhere of the new creation. We began this sermon with the statement from 2 Corinthians 5:17: Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! In 1 Corinthians 15:22 the apostle wrote, For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.

That is hard to believe when the evil in the world and the evil in our own souls seem overwhelming. We can't always get rid of evil. At times we seem helpless in the face of evil. We can't explain evil. In those moments we need hope that evil won't have the last word, hope that goodness will prove to be stronger than evil. Our faith that God raised Jesus from the dead and began a new creation lays the foundation for such hope.

But it has been so long since Christ lived on the earth. Two thousand years have passed, and, if anything, human evil seems to be just as great as ever, and the tools at its disposal make that evil more frightening than ever. How do we know this talk about a new creation is not an illusion?

We don't know. We trust. We remember the resurrection and we trust God to be at work right down in the jungle of life, clearing away the undergrowth and draining the stagnant swamps and building his new creation. Jesus told us how to imagine it.

According to Matthew 13:33, Jesus told this little parable. "The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into a large amount of flour until it worked all through the dough."

Two characteristics of yeast give this parable its power. First, when it is mixed into the flour, the yeast is invisible. You can't look at the flour and see the yeast. Second, the yeast affects the whole lump of dough. Jesus said, "That is how God extends His love and authority over all existence. His love and authority are as invisible as yeast in a lump of dough and they will sooner or later affect everything.

But 2000 years are a long time. Yes, but the human family is a huge lump of dough. You wouldn't want Him to leave any part of it untouched, would you> Whether it is the billions of years God has taken to fashion the universe or the four millennia He has used to created Israel and the Church, He operates on a scale that is hard for our impatient souls to comprehend.

Because His scale of things is so vast, it is hard for us at any given moment in time to see what, if anything, He is doing to achieve the new creation. So, we ask again, How do we know this talk about a new creation is not an illusion? And I say again, We don't know. We trust. We remember the resurrection and we trust God to be at work building his new creation. And Jesus not only gave us a parable to help us imagine that; He aslo has given us tangible evidence that He is doing that.

The Pastoral Center of Gravity
That tangible evidence is the Church. I recently read something that I found provocative. "Coming to faith in Jesus involves three successive conversions: conversion to Christ, to the church, and to the world," (Jeffrey Barneson in Finding God at Harvard, 224). I found it provocative, because it rang true in my experience. For many years, people around me taught me that the Church was marginal to a vital faith in Christ. The Church institutionalized the faith into stagnation. The Church kept minutes of meetings and wasted hours of people's lives. Real discipleship happened outside the Church.

It takes years to undo the damage done by such ideas. More years pass before we can see the Church as the Bride-elect of Christ. She is still scruffy, not ready yet for the marriage supper of the Lamb, but already His.

If you want evidence that the divine yeast is working in the human dough, if you want evidence of the new creation right down in the junble of the old creation, the Church is that evidence. I don't mean some ideal Church. I mean the infuriating, flawed, divisive Church as it actually exists on seven continents. If you have eyes to see, the congregations of the Church sprout all across the wintry landscape of the nations like crocuses heralding the coming of eternal springtime. The Church is the unlikely outcropping of the new creation right under the nose of the old creation.

We here and millions of our brothers and sisters around the world are carriers of the divine yeast. But we are not dumb like yeast. We have free will, intelligence and emotion, and we are learning (slowly, but learning) to place them at the disposal of the Lord of the Church. And I'd like to close with a reflection on the Church at the present hour of the old creation.

The old creation is perishing. We who believe that learn to view the old creation with a certain detachment. We don't hate it. We don't withdraw from it, but, like travelers in a strange land, we learn to question its values and temper its utopian claims.

For example, thirty years ago, leading up to the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision, Betty Friedan "promised that legalizing abortion would make women whole," (this and all quotes in this section from "Thirty Years of Empty Promises," Candace C. Crandall, in First Things, Jan. 2003, 14-17). Many Advocacy groups in 1972 and the President's Advisory Council on the Status of Women "stood adamantly opposed to any limits (on abortion), claiming regulation would violate a woman's right to control her body."

How many abortions took place last year? Let's be very conservative and say one million. There were many more. For half those women it was their second abortion. For one woman in five it was her third. Does that sound like women made whole? Do they strike you as women in control of their lives? I remember abortion touted as a private matter between a woman and her doctor. It isn't. Her doctor probably doesn't do abortions. Instead, she goes to an abortion clinic, where she is treated by a complete stranger.

The '60s and '70s were in many ways a low, dishonest time. Robert McNamara and Lyndon Johnson lied to us about Vietnam. Hugh Heffner lied to us about the innocence of casual sex. Betty Friedan and Germaine Greer lied to us about abortion. Tens of millions of people in this country today suffer because of their lies.

In the present day, as humanity stands at the moral boundary of manufacturing human life by cloning, Princeton professor, Peter Singer, with his misbegotten title of Professor of Ethics and his doctrines of infanticide and euthanasia and the Raellians with their smirking claim of cloning children lies to us about the dignity of human beings.

In face of these massive cultural deceptions the Church's ancient title, pillar and foundation of truth (1 Tim. 3:15) has fresh relevance. We have not yet found out  voice in the public square. We scarcely realize the treasure trove of spiritual intellectual resources at our disposal. We have a long way to go to be what Elton Trueblood called "a society of loving souls, set free from the self-seeking struggle for personal prestige and from all unreality," (quoted in Finding God at Harvard, 360).

But the Church, the harbinger of the new creation, is well-positioned to be what the Lord of the Church called her: the salt of the earth (Matt. 5:13) and the light of the world (Matt. 5:14). Christ died; Christ has risen to an indestructible life; the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church; and for us to live is Christ and to die is gain.