Sermon for midweek of Invocavit
Genesis 3:1-24 + Romans 5:12-21
On Sunday, we heard the Gospel of Jesus facing temptation from the devil in the wilderness during His 40-day fast, and we referred to Him as the “Second Adam.” This isn’t a minor doctrine of Scripture; it’s basically a summary of the whole Christian faith. So let’s talk some more about that this evening based on the lessons we heard.
The first three chapters of Genesis tell us the history of the first man, Adam, whose very name means “man, human.” It was Eve who was deceived by the serpent in the Garden of Eden, who first disbelieved God’s word and ate from the forbidden fruit. But as Paul tells us in Romans 5, it was Adam’s disobedience that actually brought sin into the world, because it’s through Adam that sin passed on or spread to his and Eve’s descendants.
This is what we call Original Sin. Not the “original sin” that Adam committed in the Garden, but the sin the originates with Adam’s disobedience and now passes down to all who are descended from him—to those born in the natural way from a mother and a father. Adam’s sin led to death for Adam and Eve, but also for all men, for all people, because his sin, his corrupt, diseased nature, passed down to all who are descended from him, and that’s every human being who has ever lived.
It wasn’t supposed to be that way. Adam was made in the image of God. Here’s a good definition for that: The image of God is the reasonable and virtuous character of the soul, which includes true knowledge of God and true righteousness and holiness. It’s like this perfectly clean, flat piece of paper… That image, that reasonable and virtuous character of the soul is what was supposed to pass down from Adam to his children.
But when he sinned, this is what happened to the image of God in him… Now that’s what passes down, a soul with a twisted nature, a soul that is not perfectly reasonable, that is not inherently virtuous, that doesn’t know God as it should. Our normal definition of Original Sin is this: Original Sin is the disease of our nature, passed down from Adam and Eve, which includes (1) the lack of fear, love, and trust in God, and (2) the presence of evil desires and the inclination toward sin. This is the nature that every one of us was born with. This is the sinful flesh where all our actual sins come from. And this alone is sufficient for a death sentence to be pronounced on a person.
Paul proves the spread of original sin to the human race in Romans 5 by the fact that “all died” between Adam and Moses, even though no one except for Adam had received a spoken or a written law from God. Adam was told by God not to eat of the tree or he would die. He transgressed. That means, he stepped over the line God had drawn for him. And so he died. No one after him transgressed an actual commandment of God, and yet everyone died. Therefore, Adam’s sinful image was passed on to his descendants, making them subject to death, because as the same apostle writes in the next chapter of Romans, “The wages of sin is death.”
But then Paul sets up a comparison of the first man, Adam, and Jesus, who often calls Himself the “Son of Man,” that is, the “Son of Adam.”
Let’s look first at Adam. First, Adam disobeyed. And after one act of disobedience, he became sinful. Second, Adam’s sin, his disobedience, was passed on to all those who are connected to him by birth, by being physically descended from him, so that we’re born with a corrupt, diseased, sinful nature. Third, the result of Adam’s sin being passed on to his descendants is that we all die. Fourth, Adam’s sin passed down to us means not only physical death, but eternal condemnation in hell.
Now let’s compare those four things with Jesus. Whereas Adam disobeyed once and then fell into judgment, Jesus obeyed. And He obeyed not just once, but lived a sinless life. He lived His entire life in perfect obedience to God, culminating in His becoming obedient to death, even death on the cross. Whereas Adam’s sin is passed on by physical birth, the free gift of Jesus’ righteousness is passed on by spiritual rebirth, by faith, by God graciously counting Jesus’ righteousness to all who believe in Him. Whereas the result of Adam’s sin is that death reigns over our race, the result of Jesus’ righteousness is that those who receive the gracious gift of His righteousness through faith reign in life. Death is no longer our master. We don’t live for death. And death can’t hold us except for a short, little while. And finally, whereas Adam’s sin leads to eternal condemnation, Jesus’ righteousness leads to justification and eternal life for all who are connected to Him by faith.
So Adam and Jesus, Man and the Son of Man, are like two trees. The people, the branches that grow from Adam share in his sin, his death, and the condemnation he earned with his sin. All people start out on that tree. We, too, were among those branches. But through Holy Baptism, through the preaching of the Gospel, the Holy Spirit has taken us and grafted us into the tree that is Christ Jesus by bringing us to faith in Him, giving us a new birth, so that we now share in His righteousness, His life, and the justification He earned for us by His own righteousness.
You and I still live with the consequences of Adam’s sin (and our own). We still live with the devil as the prince of this world, given far more freedom now to harass mankind than he had in the Garden of Eden. We still live in the world that is under God’s curse, a world that is falling apart and has been falling apart for some 6,000 years, since the Garden of Eden, falling apart with regard to morality, social norms, sickness and disease, even nature itself. We live with a sinful flesh, inherited from Adam, that still hates God and doesn’t trust in God or cling to His Word, that still wants to jump into every kind of wickedness, with a part of us that wants to be God, just like Adam and Eve did. But we have been called to repentance. We’ve been called to trust, not in man, but in the Son of Man, Jesus Christ, who overcame those bitter enemies for us—the devil, the world, and our flesh. And now, believing in Him, we’ve received the gift of His righteousness, and with it, the forgiveness of sins—justification before God.
That’s the central teaching of the Christian faith, and what better time to review it than during the Lenten season? We’re getting ready to follow Jesus down the ultimate path of obedience, His obedience which was never easy, but was hardest of all during Holy Week. He walked that path because of Adam’s disobedience, which had condemned our race to an eternity in hell. He walked that path so that we could escape God’s judgment and receive the gift of eternal life by hearing His Gospel, by trusting in Him, and by holding onto that trust, with His help, all the way to the end of the road. God grant it to us all, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.
