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In the musical You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown, Snoopy
remarks, “Yesterday, I was a dog. Today, I am a dog. Tomorrow, I’ll
probably still be a dog… There’s just such little hope of advancement!”
Snoopy expresses the limitations that many honest thinkers about
the human condition – including the apostle Paul have thought about being
human. As I look back at yesterday I am reminded of my utter humanness found
in the failures in relationships, my rebelliousness against God, and my incredible
knack at self-deception. Today I find that I am still human, with all kinds
of brokenness, failings, and sinfulness to my credit. And worst of all, as
I look into the future, I’m afraid that the shadow side of being human
awaits me in my tomorrow as well. For Paul, this is our basic problem. We
are hopeless sinners with “such little hope of advancement.”
If we move the problem from the individual to the whole of humanity
the problem is overwhelming. History is a running record of sinful violence
of brother against brother and nation against nation. One need not look very
far in the world today to discover the same old political power plays, the
same ancient patterns of consumeristic idolatry and debauchery, and the same
patterns of addiction and self-destruction that have been with us from generation
to generation. What reason do we have to hope for a bright future for humanity?
Are we simply destined by our own sin and violence to ultimately destroy each
other and the creation?
The scripture before us on this first Sunday of Lent wants us to be brutally honest about the desperate situation we find creation in because of the nature of human sin. However, as we will be reminded again and again in the Lenten season, in God’s great grace, sin never gets the final word.
The text before us is often a scripture used by theologians
to speak about “original sin.” For Paul, Adam – a name in Hebrew
that literally means “humankind” or “man” - becomes the
symbol of the interconnectedness of humankind that has brought and continues
to bring the destructiveness of sin.
The term “original sin” is a tricky theological concept
that we must think carefully and cautiously about. Many Christians, like the
great 5th century theologian Augustine, came to the conclusion that original
sin was like a genetic defect placed into the very fabric – today we
might call it the DNA – of every human person. For Augustine therefore,
people are literally born (conceived) in an act of sin. We need to be cautious
of this view because it leads to several problems regarding human freedom
and culpability for sin. For example, it isn’t necessarily just of God
to hold us all responsible for sin we were genetically programmed to commit.
Original sin certainly is not easy to define in simple terms. But it is probably
better to understand original sin in the complexity of human relationships
than as a disease or inner defect that we pass along from generation to generation.
Original sin is social not biological. It is found in our relationships to
one another. As Michael Lodahl writes, “Whether we like it or not, our
lives are intertwined in such a way that the sin of one person exercises destructive
effects throughout the human race, like the ripples of a pebble thrown into
a pond.”
To really get at Paul’s argument in Romans chapter 5 we
unfortunately have to do just a little bit of philosophy. The first century
culture Paul was addressing thought about the world primarily in the terms
of the ancient Greek philosophers. For the ancient philosopher Plato all identifiable
things in the world draw their essence – their “what-ness”
– from invisible, eternal realities he called “Forms.” For
example, all dogs – beagles to German shepherds, Chihuahuas to Great
Danes – all can be described as “dogs” because they draw their
being, their “dogness,” from the eternal, invisible, unchanging
form of “DOG.” Likewise, all the various different kinds of cats
in the world can be identified and recognized as “cats” because
they all draw their essence – their “catness” – from the
form of “CAT.”
If you can grasp this idea of “forms” common for first
century folk, you will begin to grasp the problem Paul is addressing. In the
same way that all things in creation draw their essence from their appropriate
form, all humans – Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female –
all draw their life, their essence, their humanness from the form of “Human”
established in Adam. Because humans continue to draw their life and essence
from the rebellious and disobedient form of life established in Adam, we continue
to get farther and farther away from relationship with God.
Because Cain drew not only his life but also his essence from
Adam, he enacted violence against his brother. Because Lamech (Genesis 4:23-24)
draws his essence form Adam he is not content with justice but must pronounce
a seventy-seven-fold retribution upon his enemies. Because the cultures surrounding
Noah drew their essence from Adam they filled the world with corruption and
with violence (Genesis 6:11). And because the people of Babel (Gen. 11) drew
their essence from the self-serving pride of Adam, they ended up dividing
the map with arbitrary boundaries that established wars of nation against
nation. And so, for Paul, it continues throughout human history. Even before
the introduction of the law with Moses, humankind found themselves hopelessly
sinful and broken. All the addition of the law accomplished (5:13) was to
make us aware of and accountable for our sin. This is the fundamental human
problem. We are the unfortunate and sinful children of Adam who continue to
reproduce the brokenness of his rebellion in our relationships with God and
with each other.
If something radical does not alter the condition of human sinfulness, humankind,
Paul believes, will simply continue on sinning against God and against each
other.
However, “just as by the one man’s disobedience the
many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be
made righteous” (5:19). The great and good news of this text is that
God has given us a new Adam, a new pattern, a new form from which we can now
draw the essence of our lives.
This is the reason the early church was so adamant about the
full humanity of Jesus Christ. In the person of Jesus, God took on all that
is, was, and ever will be human in order to break the power of sin and death
that holds us captive. Jesus is the new Adam, the new person who embodies
a new creation.
We spend the season of Lent under the shadow of the cross. We
do that because day after day and week after week we want to keep our eyes
on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. We keep looking at and looking
to Jesus because in this suffering servant of God we see a new pattern for
what life ought to, and miraculously can, look like as we live in relationship
to one another.
Many of the early church fathers used to describe Jesus this way, “In Jesus we see what God is like, and who - by the grace of God - we too might become.” That is good news. In Adam and all of his descendents we see all God wanted humankind to be, but what we have utterly failed to become. But in Jesus we see all that we might be by his grace.
The key factor is grace. Too often we simply think of grace
as a word describing the important truth that God has forgiven us. However,
grace is not simply forgiveness, it is the power of God to work transformation
in the world. We believe in the transforming work of the Spirit in grace.
The form of sin that we continue to draw on does not have to have the final
word in our lives. The essence of Adam can be put to death, and by the gracious
power of the Spirit of God we can begin to draw the essence of our lives from
Christ Jesus.
What Paul is arguing here to be true theologically is not easy
to find fulfilled in our every day life. The truth of this broke in on me
recently when I found myself angry with one of my children. My son deserved
to be disciplined. But in the midst of my tirade - which was more anger than
good parenting – I began to hear the voice of my father in what I was
saying. The times when I used to think my father treated me harshly or unfairly,
those words I swore to myself then that I would never say to my children,
were suddenly coming out of my mouth. I realized that whether I liked it or
not, I had drawn my parenting – my patterns of relationship with my children
– from my parents (who had drawn their parenting from their parents,
etc.).
I had to go back and apologize to my son for the unacceptable
words of my mouth and wrong meditations of my heart. I am certainly responsible
for my words, but I had learned them quite honestly from my good but also
broken parents. They aren’t bad people they are just sinful people, like
me, drawing our essence from Adam (or our many Adams). But I don’t want
to draw my parenting from Adam but from Christ who is a reflection of the
love and mercy of our heavenly Father.
This is the good news. The old life of violence, broken relationships,
and sin that has plagued human persons from the beginning has been victoriously
broken by the new life offered in Jesus Christ. We no longer have to live
as slaves to our former way of life but we can be set free to be the kind
of people God created us to be – people formed in the image of Christ.
Lent is a season in which we walk beneath the shadow of the cross and come face to face with our sin, and face to face with the grace of God revealed in Christ. Paul wants us to look at Jesus and then look at ourselves – and confess the difference.
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