Year A. First Sunday of Lent February 17, 2002
Romans 5: 12-19
Title: “Christ succeeded where Adam failed.”
Paul has been making the case that all humanity has been under the curse and suffering the consequences of sin. He sees sin as having two dimensions. There is the fundamental rebellion against accepting God as God, that is, on his terms and there are all the actions of humans carried out after that rebellion. Since humans are alienated from God, separated from his life and grace, they are “dead,” really dead, even though they might seem to be alive. The connection has been broken between them and God. It needs to be re-established. Paul calls that re-established connection “justification.” It, too, has two dimensions. The basic and first one can only be done by an act of God, that is, forgiving the original rebellion and the subsequent acts done in the state of war declared by and executed against God by humans. The other dimension of justification encompasses all the actions of humans subsequent to that forgiveness and declaration of acquittal and amnesty. In order for those actions to be life-affirming and productive of the re-established relationship with God, God’s grace is also needed, lest humans exceed the divinely established limits of behavior again and fall out of God’s good graces once again.
To make his point Paul discusses Abraham, the father of the Jewish race. He found favor with God, was approved by God, was “justified,” because he trusted in God. But Abraham was ineffective in re-instating those connected to him, in effecting the “justification” of others, fellow Jews, and this for two reasons. First, the problem was bigger than a merely Jewish one as in Romans 1: 18-2:16 demonstrates. The solution needed to encompass all humanity, not just Jewry. The second reason is the Jewish Law. Even if there were a chance that Abraham’s faith might be effective for others, the Law intervened and prevented it. Paul saw the Law as a “parenthesis” in the divine plan. It did not begin until Moses and ended with Christ. What it did was make explicit the sins committed by humans from the time of Adam,. Now, thanks to the Law, they knew they were committing sins, sins piling on top of the “original sin,” of Adam. Moreover, the Law made matters worse. The very spelling out of what constituted a sin gave people even more ideas of how to sin, ideas they might not have thought about if there were no specific law condemning certain behaviors. Even more to the point, the Law gave no grace, no power, to avoid sin. Instead of making a relationship with God better, it made it worse. Humanity needed a savior, not a new set of laws without the accompanying grace to obey them.
To make his case that Christ is just that savior, Paul compares and contrasts him to Adam. He describes Christ in other places as the “Second Adam,” or the “Last Adam,” the founder of an entirely new race. Unlike Abraham and like Adam, Christ’s sphere of influence is humanity-wide, all-inclusive. In the human person of Adam, all humanity is represented. Adam, a word that is really not a name, but the noun for “humanity,” all sinned. In the human person of Christ Jesus, representing all humanity, all are saved, justified, forgiven, re-instated into a relationship with God. In the history of salvation when one person failed in the accomplishment of God’s purpose God would raise up another to take his place. Joshua succeeded where Moses failed. David succeeded where Saul failed. Elisha succeeded where Elijah failed. But who can take the place of Adam? Only one competent enough to undo the ill effects of his fall from grace. Humans needed grace before they could obey. Christ succeeded where Adam failed.
In verse twelve, just as through one person sin entered, to the modern Western mind it seems grossly unfair to hold others responsible for what someone else has done. Paul, however, sees reality as a Semite would. Scholars call this outlook “corporate personality.” He sees humanity as if it were one body with many members. He sees the Church the same way. If a person drinks poison, the hand and throat are not the only members responsible. They might be the only truly guilty members, since they did the actual deeds. But every member is “responsible,” since they all must pay the price. All the members are adversely affected, just as they are positively affected when the hand and throat eat good food, even though they did nothing to bring the food into the body. Paul does not have to explain to his audience mostly Jewish Christians what he means. They get the point. Paul believed that there was an historical person, Adam, who sinned. But, for Paul and his readers, Adam was more than an individual. He was “humanity.” He represented everyman and woman. What he did was typical indeed, archetypal, of what all humans do in their lives. Because he was the first, the founder, the father, all his family members have been both disconnected from God and infected with his disease, a disease he gave himself and passed on to humanity, a disease now in the spiritual genes of the human race, a disease which, until disinfected, prevents the re-establishment of friendly relations with God. To carry the analogy to extremes, God does not want to catch or be infected by the evil we would bring to his table and table-fellowship. We remain ostracized, not because God hates us, but for his own protection, if you will.
And through sin, death: “Sin” here translates the Greek hamartia. It means pretty much what “flesh,” means, that is, life lived on one’s own terms without regard for God. “Sin,” hamartia, emphasizes that this is willful, not merely an accident or consequence of circumstances. It is the decision to do so. Humanity discovered that power, really, no power at all, as far back as the first human being. Sin is the misuse of a divine power in human hands and hearts. However, given the fact that Paul uses two other terms for “sin,” the nuance here seems to be the resultant condition of sin, being alienated from God, life itself, a result all humans share in and, so, are responsible for as well as suffer under. “Death,” here means “dead to God,” not merely physical death. It is true that a teaching developed, subsequent to the account of the fall in Genesis 2-3, which held that God never intended humans on earth to die, that sin caused that. Some think Paul means physical death here and is following that tradition. Even if he is and he is certainly aware of it , if pressed, he would say that the only real death is separation from God.
Inasmuch as all sinned: The Greek phrase eph ho, translated here as “inasmuch as,” has been the subject of much dispute. This translation steers a middle course between two other translations: “on account of Adam,” thus meaning an inherent tendency to sin, inherited from the man Adam, for which a person is responsible but not guilty and “given the fact that,” thus meaning personal sin on the part of all his descendants, “actual sin,” for which a person is both guilty and responsible. While, theoretically, there may be a difference between these nuances of meaning, there is little of consequence in the practical realm.
In verse thirteen, for up to the time of the law, sin was in the world: From the time of Adam up until the time of Moses and the giving of the Law there was sin, the inward exaltation of self over God, the will to live for oneself. Sin is the unavoidable consequence of human existence in a world turned away from God. All the Law really did, in Paul’s view here, is specify the kinds of actions which were clearly sinful. Before the Law sin was there, but vague. After the Law sin became “sins,” quite specific. Now there are positive commandments for humans to break. These behaviors were always wrong, but not “counted,” a bookkeeping term, now it is as if they are entered into the ledger as a debit.
In verse fourteen, who did not sin after the pattern of the trespass of Adam, “Pattern” translates the Greek homoioma, “likeness.” “Trespass” translates another word for sin to distinguish it from “sinful attitude, hamartia, Greek parabasis, the specific forbidden act of sin example, eating the fruit. Paul says that even though all who came after Adam did not eat the fruit of that tree, they nonetheless sinned, if only in that they shared in its deadly effects.
“who is the type of the one who was to come,” “Type” means a visible mark left by some object, an imprint. Adam is the only Old Testament character who is explicitly called a “type,” of Christ. However, there are as many differences between the two as resemblances. Paul really means “analogous to,” or “counterpart.” Adam and Christ were in analogous circumstances and exposed to analogous temptations. Adam fell. Christ did not. Even so, the consequences of their acts were not analogous, as Paul will go on to show.
In verse fifteen, but the gift is not like the transgression, “Gift” translates the Greek charisma, “charisma,” or “grace.” This describes what Christ did. “Transgression,” translates the Greek paraptoma, another word for “sin,” indistinguishable in meaning here from parabasis, a specific act of sin. Adam, then, is guilty of “sin,” on two levels: attitudinally, by his decision to rebel, an attitude passed on to his descendants like a kind of spiritual gene; and actually, by the act of eating the fruit. Even though Adam One and Adam Two Christ are in analogous situations, the consequences of their actions are not really analogous. The analogy breaks down at this point. The beneficial effects of what Christ did far and away outweigh or overbalance the deleterious effects of what Adam did. Adam’s sin brought death to all, not physical death, but spiritual death, separation from God. Christ’s death, physical death, but also his death-to-self, brought life to “many,” in Hebrew “many,” means “all”. What Christ did was not merely an act of human obedience. It was, but so was Abraham’s. It was also an act of God’s grace. It is grace that accounts for the “excess,” of beneficial effects.
Verse sixteen, repeats what has just been said.
In verse seventeen, how much more, the comparison with Adam is over and the contrast between the two is emphasized. Adam’s sin does not mean that all then committed, necessarily and without their consent, particular acts of sin, but that they were born into a race that had separated itself from God. Similarly, Christ’s obedience did not mean that members of his race do nothing but righteous acts, but that in Christ they are related to God in a way similar to the way Christ is related to God. Adam and his heirs are separated from God and Christ and his heirs are related to God.
In verse eighteen, just as through one…so through one, Paul returns to the comparable elements in his analogy in order to repeat his point once again.
In verse nineteen, Yet again, he makes the same point. This is really important and Paul wants to be crystal clear. He says the same thing in as many ways as he can. The words “sinners,” and “righteous,” are words describing the relationship, with God, not the character or “intrinsic nature,” of those on the human side of this equation.
Sermon
No matter the topic, Paul applies the same method. His faith in Christ has opened his eyes to another dimension of reality, the eternal realm. So, he looks at every “thing,” every worldly situation, person, event, feeling and attitude, in the light, by the light, examining it under the light of eternity. Then, he interprets its meaning in that light and expresses in language, then in actions, what he sees. He has one eye of the world, in this case, Adam, and one eye on the eternal world, in this case, Christ. He goes back and forth, to the one, to the other. This opens up for him meaning and message which would escape the one-eyed observer, universal-dimensional man. When all is said and done, Paul really derived his understanding of what Adam, representing all humanity, did from his contemplation of what Christ, representing God, did.
Paul is always teaching us not just about the topic at hand, but how to ruminate over any topic, any life-situation. His letters are exercises in how to apply “the Christian Method,” to everyday life as well as the great questions of life that are the subject matter of philosophy. Of course, he is less interested in the philosophical dimensions, even though his writings have had a profound impact on philosophers and their religious counterparts, theologians. He is much more interested in expressing the abundant grace of Christ and his impact on everyone’s life than he is in explaining Christ in the context of some overriding worldview or philosophy. Though he could doubtless hold his own among the great minds of Western civilization, he would also be much more interested in converting them than impressing them with his reasoning powers. Much of what is said today about original sin and the human predicament owes a debt to Paul, but such was not his intention when he wrote what he wrote.
He wants to tell everyone that the mess we find ourselves in, the frustration which comes from wanting to do right but failing, the chaos, injustice, anger, etc, we find in both the world and in ourselves, was a long time in accumulating to the point where now it is overwhelming, life-threatening, in danger of drowning the helpless individual in a sea of death. No individual can save himself or others from all this. Every individual, simply by being born into this world, is contaminated by it. There’s too much of it to be avoided. Worse, it gets passed on, something like a spiritual, diseased gene, from one generation to the next. Only a power outside the world, yet capable of entering into the world, how else would it be cured?, can save humans. And Christ is that Savior. Only Christ. Only Christ can offer “grace,” the necessary antidote. Humans lost that “grace,” when their grandfather sinned and they cannot get it back on their own powers, merits, or actions. For this “grace,” is not a commodity. It is Christ himself, bringing the eternal quality back to human life, lost by Adam, representative of humanity, and replicated- albeit, in a variety of ways- by every human since Adam, the first or original human.
When Paul looks at the two, at Adam and Christ, at the same time, he concludes that they really cannot be compared. There is no comparison- for all their similarities- between the negative effects of Adam and the positive effects of Christ. Christ did not restore an earthly paradise, but created the possibility for a heavenly one. He exceeded the wildest expectations of humanity by what he accomplished. He did it by dying, to his own self-interests and instincts for survival at all costs, not by trying to cheat, to cross over the boundaries of what is right and wrong, in order to get benefits on his own terms that God intended to give anyway. It is not just the goal, but also the way to it, that counts in God’s eyes and God gave us one of his many eyes by giving us Christ so that we could see what we otherwise could not and so that we can now do what we cannot do without him.
Thanks to Christ, we can now live in this still rather sinful world, knowing and experiencing an alternative life. We can now interpret all our experiences in the larger and stronger light of eternity and see their true meaning or lack of meaning. Even better than that, thanks to Christ, we no longer are shackled to this world and its twisted interpretations. Besides the light we now have the power available to us for the mere asking to change our behavior according to this new interpretation and are no longer slaves to sin.
What Adam, the original man, who had sons did, the Son of Man, the origin of man, undid.
Humans, sons and daughters of Adam, acting like Adam, that is, by their own wills, cause death, not physical death, but the death of a relationship with God.
Being a child of Adam means inheriting the consequences of Adam’s sin.
Being a child of God means inheriting the consequences of Christ’s reversal of sin.
Religious Laws and Commandments have no intrinsic power to save, even though they can make explicit what God’s will is.
Only a power outside of and beyond human power can save humans from themselves. That power is Christ.
Becoming a member of Christ in Baptism connects us to his power and disconnects us from the power of evil, frees us from its slavery.
Medical Analogies: In Paul’s day people did not understand about the laws of heredity. No doubt they realized that characteristics of plants and animals get transferred onto their offspring, that wheat spawns wheat, collies spawn collies, and black-skinned people spawn black-skinned people, unless there is a mix or mix-up, in one of the parents. People could see with their naked eyes that mixing types of wheat seed or mixing breeds of dogs or mixing skin colors produces a variation. Nonetheless that’s as far as they could go. They had little idea about the laws of heredity when it came to transmitting diseases on to the next generation and subsequent generations. They might be able to figure out that the son of a person who died suddenly of a heart attack, at a young age would also die in pretty much the same way, but they would not know that his great-grandson died of an inherited heart disease. Today we can explain and even predict the phenomenon of generationally transmitted diseases on the basis of the laws of heredity. Had Paul had that tool in his workshop of analogies he certainly would have used it to explain both original sin and Baptism. One person Adam contracts a disease. It enters into the genetic code and is passed on through intercourse to the innocent child who, in turn, passes it on to the next generation and so forth. At some point that gene needs to be identified, isolated and removed if the transmission from generation to generation of the disease is to be stopped. While those who contract the disease are totally innocent of any wrongdoing and did noting to deserve the disease, by the very fact that a diseased person conceived them, they must suffer the effects of the disease, unless it is treated, preferably earlier rather than later. Moreover, given the fact that the human body is a more or less closed system and the human mind is intimately and intricately related to the body, the person suffers not only from the inherited disease but also is limited in other areas of life, that is, has the propensity for other illnesses, physical and psychological, because of the debilitating effects of the original disease. Had Paul had the understanding of heredity he would have found almost perfect analogies to explain how the sin of one person and the remedy of one person, Christ can infect the entire race, likewise the “disinfection” of Christ in Baptism effects the entire redeemed race, and how that original sin makes the children born of the original parents(s) more vulnerable to engaging in behaviors or holding attitudes that are equally unhealthy and damaging to well being and growth. Scientifically speaking, we all look the way we do and our bodies are as healthy or unhealthy as they are because of the laws of heredity. Of course, we can make this better or worse by our subsequent behavior, but cannot, on our own without outside intervention like plastic surgery or a transplant, change the fundamentals. The ancient understanding of “corporate personality,” never spelled out as a theory or law, and the modern understanding of the laws of heredity stem from the same fundamental truth, namely, that all behavior affects the behavior of all others, for better or worse, in varying degrees of intensity, depending on the circumstances. One cannot pick a flower without the trembling of a star. Amen.
