I know, I know. We just looked this
passage a couple of weeks ago when we discussed the issue of homosexuality a
couple of weeks ago. But I was using that passage to look at homosexuality as
it relates to the common defense of “Well, God made me this way.” It’s really a
deep passage that deals with a lot more than that.
This passage chapter could be placed
under the heading: “Two Heads, Two Destinies.”
As I’ve talked about before,
being an American comes with so many advantages, but it can skew our
understanding of Scripture. We’re very big on the rights and well-being of the
individual. Unlike most cultures and societies in history, we couldn’t care
less who your great-great-granddaddy was, whether he was a street sweeper or a
nobleman. Each person is expected to make it on their own merits, and it
shouldn’t matter where you came from. At least that’s the theory. It’s
something we’re proud of, and for the most part I think it’s a good thing.
But where I think we mess up is that
we go so far in this direction that we neglect this sometimes inconvenient
truth: Where you came from does affect your circumstances in the here and now.
If you pretend like it
doesn’t—which tends to be an affliction of the young and/or naïve—then this
truth doesn’t go away; it merely hides in the background and will affect you
without you even knowing it.
So here we have the first “man,”
Adam (whose name literally is “The Man”). He was the prototype of the new race
called human beings. All people come from him and his wife, so we’re made
in his image, sort of the same way that Adam was made in God’s image. As we
discussed re: homosexuality, in some mysterious way, when Adam sinned, he
gained a propensity to sin (disobey God) which he passed down to us. It
specifically says he sinned, “and in this way death came to all people, because
all sinned.” Not most—all.
This is the point where we have to
shed our thinking (somewhat) as Americans with our notions of individualism. And
this is where my title for this passage comes into play. By “head” here I don’t
mean “person in charge,” although Jesus certainly is that. By the term, as
applied to both Adam and Jesus, I’m referring to the sense as in “source.” Think
of the “head” of a river, where the river actually starts.
It’s a really good illustration.
What if you dumped toxic waste at the head of a river? What would be the
condition of the water downstream? Obviously what happens at the head affects
everything else.
In the same way, Adam’s sin affects
all of his children. This is what vss. 13-14 are talking about. Even though the
generations between Adam and Moses didn’t have the Torah in written form (so
none of them disobeyed it), they still were affected. How could this be? How could
sin affect them when they didn’t have the Mosaic Law to disobey? Remember, all
people everywhere have both the outer witness (creation) and the inner witness
(a sense of morality), and we’ve all disobeyed the witnesses God’s already
placed before us. General revelation is enough to condemn us, and thus is
enough for sin to affect us.
But thank the Lord, there’s more
than one Head of a race here. All of us are Adam’s kin and thus under the power
of sin, with all that entails. Enter Jesus. He's the Second Adam. He's the
Head of the new race. Adam was tested and failed, and thus brought condemnation
and death onto everyone further along his line. But Jesus came, without sin,
was tested and succeeded brilliantly. Everything that Adam was supposed to be,
Jesus was and is.
What are the effects of this new
Head’s person and work? What does he give all of his “children”?
1)
Justification
instead of condemnation
2)
Grace
(undeserved favor) instead of judgment
3)
Righteousness
(his own) instead of sinfulness
4)
Life
instead of death
He ends on an
explanation about the real purpose of the Law. It was there “so that the
trespass
might increase.” He’ll explain this more in chapter seven, but the main reason
(or at least one of them) he gave us the Law was to show us our utter moral
bankruptcy before him. But where our sin increased, his grace increased “all
the more.” We could never “outsin” his grace. No matter what we did or didn’t
do, his grace more than makes up for it, turning mortal enemies of God into beloved children.
Yes, Father, your grace more than
covers my sin. You do more than reconcile your enemies to yourself. You crown them with love and compassion and declare them to be your heirs and fellow heirs with Jesus. You give
abundantly more than we could ever dream of. Thank you.
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