Rev. Tatiana Cantarella

Adam and Messiah: old and new state of man

Romans 5:12-21

In some town there was a sculptor who created a beautiful sculpture - it was lively and looked great at town square. It portrayed a man who lived in a small port town and gained notoriety by creating a Coastal Guard service when he rescued almost single-handedly and with risk to his own life a bunch of people whose boat was smashed against the rocks in a winter storm. By ordering this sculpture the city wanted to express its gratitude to the man. But problems awaited ahead. In the summer some young punks arrived to town. They cheerfully walked, breaking windows, and picking on town people and at the end they got to the statue. Practicing their martial arts they knocked it down from pedestal and as it fell it crumbled into pieces as those boys laughed loudly. City Council took a while to decide what to do and finally asked the sculptor to make the statue again, exactly as it was. But he came up with something better: he would make it but from a much more solid material and will even improve its appearance. Why just go back to what it was! The sculptor will use this opportunity to create even a more wonderful thing.

Apostle Paul is trying to convey something like that in his message, although we often miss it: in Jesus Christ, the Messiah, God did something much bigger than just returning humanity back to its state before the fall. The statue is made anew but now it is even more beautiful than before. It's not just that "they broke it, and God fixed it." It's about something far greater than this. This is what Paul is trying to say to us today. But lets start from the beginning.

Perhaps all of you know about Snoopy. In one episode he says: "Yesterday, I was a dog. Today, I'm a dog. Tomorrow, will probably also be a dog ... how little hope there is for any progress!" Snoopy, without even knowing it, expresses the state of humanity on which many people pondered, including St. Paul. Looking back I realize our human imperfections in my relationships with others that do not work, in my disobedience to God, and my tendency for self-deception and delusion. Today I realize that I'm still a human whose life is full of mistakes, weakness and sin. And worse still, looking into the future, I am afraid that this dark side of human existence is waiting for me tomorrow as well. According to Paul this is the main problem of humanity - we are hopeless sinners who have so "little hope for any progress."

If we transfer the problem from a personal level to all of mankind the problem becomes extremely comprehensive. The history of mankind is a series of sinful cruelty towards one’s brother, nations to other nations. We do not have to look to far to see same old political power games, the same manifestations consumerist idolatry and revelry, the same addictions and bad habits that are passed from generation to generation. Where would any hope for a brighter future for mankind come from? Are people just given to their sin and cruelty, in which they will eventually kill each other and all God's creation?

I. "Disobedience of one man"

Those words of Scripture that we read today in Romans is often used by scholars to explain original sin. Paul says that Adam (which in Hebrew means "humanity" or "man") is a symbol of a closely knitted human lives through which sin causes more and more destruction. The expression "original sin" in not found in the Bible but the concept is worth considering. How is it that through Adam's sin we all are sinful and death has consequences for all of us? St. Augustine in the 5th century answered that question by concluding that original sin is similar to congenital genetic defect, which is part of a person - as if it is incorporated into the DNA of every person. And so Augustine believed that the people quite literally were conceived and born in sin. But this understanding does not leave any place for human freedom and any human responsibility for sin! And then we begin to think whether it is just that God would require us to be responsible for our sin, which we inherited at birth and thus were forced to commit.

However, original sin is better understood in light of complex human relationships rather than as some disease or internal defect that passed on from generation to generation.  Original sin is not something biological but rather something social, something that manifests itself in our relationships with one another.  As Michael Lolahl wrote: "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.”

Look how sin was spreading after Adam's fall. Cain – the son of Adam – inherited from Adam not only his life but also his essence and it resulted in violence when he killed his own brother. Since Lamech (Gen 4:23-24) received his own essence from Adam, he could not be satisfied with justice and desired to pay back his enemies seventy times seven. Since people who lived around Noah also drew their essence from their ancestors, they filled the world with violence and moral decay (Gen 6:11). Since Babylonians (Gen 11) drew their essence from a prideful and egoistic Adam they also divided their lands with questionable borders, which led to wars between people. In the same way, Paul says, human history continues on. Even before God gave Moses the Law, clear guidance that they could follow or reject, humanity was already deeply sinking in sin and decay, stuck in the dying process. And although God gave Israel the Law so that they could be different and manifest a different human essence, different type of relationships than the rest of the world, it didn't quite happen. The Law not only didn't create a new type of humanity but also made the old problems worse – because it brought about a realization that sin is destroying humanity and humans are responsible for it.  So, according to Paul this is the main human problem.  We all are hopeless sinners, descendants of Adam who continue in their rebellion and decay in their relationships with God and with one another.

And if something very radical won't happen in order to take care of this human sinfulness, says Paul, it will continue to destroy itself and the creation around it.  And it is at this point that Paul is saying that humans have a different alternative, have a way out of this deadly existence into which all of us are involved through Adam.

II. "By the Obedience of one Man"

However,  "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." (5:19). The greatest Good News of this text is that God gave us a new Adam, a new type from whom we can draw our new essence.  That is why the early church so strongly emphasized not only that Jesus Christ is not only fully divine but also fully human.  In the person of Jesus God accepted upon Himself everything that is, was and always will be characteristically human in order to destroy the power of sin and death by which humanity is now enslaved. Jesus is the new Adam, new human who represents new creation and in Him we find new humanity.

The weeks of Lent are passing under the shadow of the cross. We need that shadow so that from day to day, week after week we can fix our eyes on Jesus – the pioneer and perfector of our faith.  We need to continue to look at Jesus and to turn to Him because in Him – in this Suffering Servant – we find a new way of life, a type of life and relationships how they should be and can be. In Him we have the source of new life and new relationships with one another.  Many Church Fathers described Christ this way: «In Jesus we see who God is and whom by the grace of God we can become». And this is a great news.  In Adam and in all his descendants we see what God intended humanity to be and how humans failed to be that.  But in Jesus Christ we see what we can become with the help of the grace of God.

III. The gift of God's grace

And the key to all that is God's grace. Sometimes we understand grace too narrowly, only as God's forgiveness. However, grace is not just forgiveness, it is the power of God acting in the world and transforming it. We believe in the transforming work of the Spirit. 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.

And the truth of which Paul talks here is not always easily made effective in our lives. I realize this every time I get angry with someone. Sometimes anger is justified but most of the time as I pour out my anger – which is viler than something justifiable - I'm beginning to recognize in myself a person I vowed to never to become. Many people promise that they will never be as unfair and harsh to their children as their parents were. And very often they realize that those same words fly out their mouths, which they swore to never say to their children. And although these words and feelings are passed on from our parents to us, we understand that it is we who are responsible for saying these words. And so all people are sinners, for they are the descendants of Adam. But the good news of Jesus Christ is that I should no longer draw my essence from Adam, I have the freedom to find my essence of Christ and that essence is the reflection of love and grace of our heavenly Father.

Notice how Paul stresses the fact that the renewal of humanity in Christ involves much more than just addressing the consequences of Adam's sin. "Sin" and "gift" which God gives – are not equal members of the dichotomy. Yes, sin has brought death and has a completely negative essence but the new life that God gave does not compare with death. God where there was nothing but sin, nothing but ruins took the initiative into His own hands to make people something substantially more than what they ever were before. And although we see that death with its expansion still prevails in the world, in Christ God gives the opportunity to the justified by their faith in Christ to take part in the life that future age in which God will establish a new creation and eliminate every kind of evil (Romans 8:18 -25).

And this is the good news. Past life of violence, broken relationships and sin, which help mankind captive from the very beginning was destroyed by the new life given in Jesus Christ. We no longer have to be slaves of our past life but can gain freedom and be God's people the way God created us to be - the people recreated in the image of Jesus Christ. Lent is a time when our path passes under the shadow of the cross, and we challenge our sin and meet God's grace in Jesus Christ. Humanity without Christ is really doomed as Albert Einstein tried to warn us about this many years ago, saying: "The release of the power of atom has changed a lot of things except for our thinking. And so we are moving towards a catastrophe of an immense size." But Paul reminds us today that in Christ God offers us a gift that is much more powerful than the consequences of Adam's sin.

But the question for us is whether we will allow God to deliver us by His powerful grace from the bondage of sin, from the old man and to give us a new way of thinking and a new life, eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior? Are we aware that what is available to us in Christ is much stronger and deeper than something for which we are doomed in Adam? It is up to you to decide: will you lie as a broken statue on the road of your life, or you will trust the Creator who in Jesus Christ will not only put us back together from the pieces in some sort of "recovered" statue but will create in us a completely new image that is more excellent than the one we messed up by sin. He is waiting with the tools of love, grace, mercy, forgiveness, and renewal in His hands, but will we entrust to Him our lives so that we can receive a new life, anew way of thinking and being, leaving our hopelessness in the past?