How does Adam’s sin show Christ’s supremacy? (Romans 5:14; Romans 5:17)“This book is also meant to show that everything that exists—including evil—is ordained by an infinitely holy and all-wise God to make the glory of Christ shine more brightly. ”
John Piper explains that the Bible shows God bringing things about by either directly causing something or by permitting something for his wise purposes (i.e. a kind of indirect causing). Jesus gave permission for the demons to enter the pigs (Mark 5:12-13). Paul would spend time with the Corinthians, if the Lord would permit (1 Corinthians 16:7). God sent Joseph into Egypt (via slavery) to preserve the remnant (Genesis 45:7). God hardened Pharaoh’s heart to not let the people go (Exodus 4:21).
Calamities? He takes credit (or blame) for those, too (Ezekiel 5:17; Amos 8:11).
But how do these things magnify Christ’s glory?
Start with Adam. God could have stopped the first sin. But he didn’t; he allowed it. And God allows nothing without a reason. And God’s reasons are not afterthoughts. He is never caught off-guard by our sin. He doesn’t have to play catch-up because we mess up.
Before the foundation of the world, the “book of the life of the Lamb that was slain” was already written (Revelation 13:8). Before the ages began, we were given grace in Christ Jesus (2 Timothy 1:9; Ephesians 1:4-6). Why? “To the praise of his glorious grace” (Ephesians 1:4-6).
Christ’s sacrifice was planned for us before we were created. It was glorious, beautiful, and spectacular.
Therefore, when the sin of Adam happens, God is not surprised by it, but has already made it part of his plan—namely, a plan to display his amazing patience and grace and justice and wrath in the history of redemption, and then, climatically, to reveal the greatness of his Son as the second Adam superior in every way to the first Adam.
