Sin and Death
by James Lincoln on May 22, 2005
Last Sunday we learned from Romans 5:12 that Adam's betrayal and defection somehow plunged the human race into sin, judgment and death, yet, the Scriptures couldn't be clearer that Adam's sin did just that.
God told Adam that on the day he ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, on that day he would surely "die." Adam's sin infected mankind with a fatal disease of the spirit. Cornelius Plantinga says that sin resulted in a spiritual AIDS. He says that it systemically, progressively and fatally attacked our spiritual immune system. "A bad strain has gotten into the stock so that we now sin with ease and with a readiness of people born to the task." There is an empirical stubborn momentum about this in all of us.
Yet, through faith in Christ what Adam brought into the human race can be reversed. Paul's argues that Jesus and what He has done for those who are in Him is vastly superior to what Adam has done for those who are in him. In Romans 5:12-21, Paul reveals that Jesus' obedience, justification and eternal life is vastly superior to the sin, judgment and death brought into this world through Adam.
If you are in Christ, Paul wants you to know that Jesus is and does these things for you, in your place and on your behalf. In the gospel the beauty, faithfulness and nobility of His obedience is given to you as your own; through the gift of justification you are considered as righteous as Jesus is and in Him you have been given eternal life. Of course each of these glorious blessings is a glad feast for the soul. Also, I find them to be blessings that are full of practical help for our worship, happiness and peace. For many words like justification, death and eternal life seem very abstract and far away from their daily experience. So for the next few Sundays, I want to take a closer look at one of these blessings and ask the question, "What in the world does Paul mean when he says that Adam brought death into the world of mankind and that in Christ you have been given eternal life?" When most Christians think of eternal life I imagine that they project what life will be like after they die. This was my first thought about eternal life. But Jesus says that eternal life is to know God. He defined it primarily as the qualitative relationship of knowing God. And when Paul says that Adam introduced death to the human race he's not just talking about when your heart stops beating. He's talking about death to a right relationship with God, others and nature.
Now, on Monday I thought I could address all three in one sermon but I can't. So, this morning I want us to think about how Adam's sin introduced death into our relationship with God. Next Sunday we'll look at how if affects the way we treat others and on the third Sunday we'll consider how a right relationship with nature/the environment was affected. But this morning I want us to look at the fatal outcome sin has on our relationship with God.
Now again, I find these things enormously practical. But when a culture goes secular, talk about God seems impractical. When talk about God is removed from public discourse it appears irrelevant and theoretical. In a secular culture it is easy to talk about politics, law, education, science art and more without any reference to the God who has created all of these things and sustains them by His grace and for His glory. But talk about God is practical because everything we do is religious before it's anything else. And this is true even when you aren't aware of it. You see, God made Adam in His image before He ever gave him a commandment to obey or a task to fulfill. He made Him for a relationship with Him before anything else. Your relationship with God funds everything else in your life. And nothing is more practical than that. But in a secular culture these things seem impractical. And that's only the case because according to secularism God is inconsequential to our moment-by-moment lives. But, if in reality He is the Source Of Life and if fellowship with Him is the primary relationship in life... then who He is and what He is like and what He thinks about you becomes very practical to your moment by moment existence. It establishes how you think about everything.
So, let's consider how Adam's sin introduced death into the world of men in terms of our relationship with God. God's covenant with Adam went like this,
"And the Lord God commanded the man saying, 'From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die.' "
Genesis 2:16
Notice a couple of things. Notice how generous God is. How many trees did God say they could eat from? It says that God let them eat from any tree. How many trees were they forbidden to eat from? One! God was extravagantly generous. Adam and Eve could enjoy everything in His vast and glorious creation but one thing. God laid out everything before them like some endless banquet table to be enjoyed minus one. And the consequence of breaking faith and violating this one prohibition was "death." God said, "on the day you eat of the tree I forbid on that day you will die."
Now, here's what I expected to read after Adam and Eve ate from the tree the first time I read through this. I expected to read, "And then Adam and Eve dropped dead right there in their tracks." But they didn't ...at least they didn't die physically on that day.
Yes, their bodies began the process of dying. But another kind of death put its cold and bony hands around their necks. They died to their proper relationship to God. They died to the fellowship and favor of God and all the beauty, wonder, love, peace and joy that marked that fellowship before they defected and dishonored God. They became what someone coined in a movie, "dead men walking." The trauma of this is beyond comparison and unimaginable. What did that kind of death look like? How did it show up in the way they would now relate to God?
One of the differences between the Old and New Testaments is that for the most part the New Testament gives you principles whereas the Old gives you pictures. The New Testament defines sin where the Old Testament depicts sin. What can we learn from the depiction in Genesis?
1. First, this death smears our relationship with God.
The old theologians used the word pollution. Adam and Eve polluted or contaminated our relationship with God. Adam's sin was not merely, or, first of all, the violation of a rule or law. When Adam disobeyed he severed and corrupted the covenant relationship he had with God his Creator and the One who loved him without measure. Before anything else sin always breaks relationship with God our Creator and Savior. It smears the relationship, it grieves our divine Parent and Benefactor; it breaks trust with God and betrays God to whom we are joined in a holy bond . It's a defection of allegiance to the rightful King of the universe. Sin is always religious before it is ethical. We know this.
If you shop lift or steal something you aren't just breaking a law you're betraying the owner. This is a devastating flaw of secularism because it eliminates the most fundamental source of ethics. If you steal from someone you are defrauding the owner. A few weeks ago someone stole some of Carol O'Brien's jewelry. There was no evidence of a break in. So, it appears that it was someone that she let in her house. The most basic thing is that they disrespected, dishonored and hurt Carol. Secularism will ultimately depersonalize society. Society will become, like hell, a very cold place. Jesus called hell the outer darkness where there is no light heat or genuine fellowship.
If a business pollutes a community's drinking water and lies about it, it not only breaks a law but it first and foremost breaks faith with the people who trust businesses to behave. When Enron cheated and mocked its customers, yes, it broke a law, but it violated the relationship it had with people. It's this betrayal of the relationship that is so grievous. When a society becomes secular it looses this fundamental wisdom. Laws won't be enough to sustain us no mater how many laws we pass. Law will not sustain us as a final authority. We were built for a relationship with God. When Adam sinned the relationship with God was severed.
In 1978 Alexandr Solzhenitsyn gave the commencement address at Harvard. In it he said,
"The West has thrown away God as well as the accountabilities and depths of purpose that used to be attached to belief in God; it has substituted for these weighty things faddish variations on the pursuit of freedom and happiness. Any return to greatness must begin with a reappraisal of the goal of human life, recognition of it spiritual nature and the recovery of a sense of responsibility to God and for others."
When Adam and Eve defected and followed Satan's lead instead of God's they chose to disrespect, disbelieve and dishonor God for who He is and was for them. They died to God's glory and wonder.
In his work on common and true virtue Jonathan Edwards says that Adam and Eve died to God's aesthetic presence and glory. Let me try to explain. Edwards says that common virtues are motivated by fear and pride. We keep our nose clean because we're afraid that if we don't we might miss out on our goals or because we don't want to seem as bad as others. Common virtue is motivated by fear and pride. Even our goodnesses can be rotten to the core.
On the other hand true virtue is doing the right things simply because they're worthy and beautiful of themselves and before God to be done. This is aesthetics. You love to look at a sunset not because there is any pay off or because it makes you look good. You enjoy it because it's beautiful to look at. You enjoy a piece of good music. I'm thinking or Samuel Barber's Adagio in Strings. Or, you enjoy a piece of art not because it advances your career or because you are afraid. You enjoy it just because it's good, pleasurable and wondrous. Beloved, these are reminders or hints in our spiritual DNA of what Adam and Eve enjoyed in God so effortlessly prior to the fall and what we will enjoy without any obstacle in heaven. Before the fall, Adam and Eve obeyed God, loved Him, served Him because He called them to and because He is worthy, the most beautiful, wise, loving and holy being in the universe. They moved toward God the way we now move toward a sunset or a beautiful piece of music. Spiritual death has turned us away from that kind of effortless joy in our relationship with God. Fear, selfishness, guilt and pride have mucked up the relationship. Now, our relationship with God is a struggle and difficult.
Spiritual death shows up when my glory, my agenda, my wants and wishes, my happiness becomes the driving motive. True virtue is doing things simply because God is God, simply because you want to honor Him for His goddness, simply because He is the Source of life and you want to be alive to Him as He is. That kind of virtue is Life. When you get eternal life in Jesus you begin to be generous just because God is generous to you. You want to be truthful because He is true and His truth is lovely. You want to be a humble person because He humbled himself. Now, since the fall this kind of relationship with God is not natural, but difficult. Without grace it's even impossible. But it is what we were made for. That's why God said to Abraham. "Abraham, I am thy portion and thy exceedingly great reward."
Satan said, "Eat the orange and you will be like God." They coveted God's glory. The Hebrew word for glory means weight or heavy. They wanted God's weight and His significance to rest on them. We can see this in a famous quote by Oliver Stone. He said, " I don't want integrity to block my creative growth."
Spiritual death smears the relationship, dishonors, disrespects and disbelieves God for who His is. It kills us to the ease of wonder, worship, glory and beauty of God simply for who He is and like dead men walking we use God and His word to support, fund and reinforce our own agendas, biases and prejudices.
2. A second way this death shows up with respect to our relationship to God is that it makes us suspicious of God and His word.
Gen 3:1-53:1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman,
"Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?"2 The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.'"
4 "You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. 5 "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."
Now, I think it's worth noting that when Paul drives us back to this story that he doesn't even mention Eve. This is amazing. If there was ever an opportunity for the apostle Paul to have expressed a bias against women this was it. But he doesn't. He holds Adam primarily accountable. Now that's another sermon.
But, did you notice that the serpent's strategy was to make Eve suspicious about God's generosity and goodness? The devil said, "Did God really say that you must not eat of any tree in the garden?" He planted the seed of doubt about God's generosity. "God is so tight and stingy that he won't let you enjoy anything." Eve corrects him but the damage is already done. She adds a prohibition God never gave. "No" she says, "He said that we can eat of the trees in the garden just not the one in the middle and then she adds that we must not even touch it."
She becomes persuaded that God is holding out from her something that was good for food, a delight to the eyes and something that would make them wise. Now, by nature, we are suspicious of God's generosity, goodness and justice. We look at the circumstances of our lives even those who live in the wealthiest and most blessed environment in the world and we doubt the goodness and generosity of God. As a kid I experienced the pain of an abusive stepfather. I can remember cursing God with righteous indignation. In my mind if He was indeed God He could stop it. If He was good he would have stopped it. He didn't; therefore, I concluded that He was unjust.
Stephanie Fast who spoke at the women's retreat last weekend said, "There is no event in your life that you would be better without." This came from a woman who at age four was abandoned by her parents, horribly abused, and found at age seven on a garbage heap in South Korea dying of cholera.
We look at injustices in the world and our first instinct is to blame God. When God held Adam accountable for his sin the first thing he did was to blame God. He said, "The woman YOU gave me." This was an attack on God. When Adam sinned he died to the confident belief that God is good, just and generous.
At the heart of this is to doubt the credibility of God's word. The serpent said to Eve, "Even though God said that you would die...He's wrong you know. You really won't die." Adam's sin plunged us into a mindset that God is not serious about keeping His word. We died to the serious belief that God is true to His word and means what He says. As a result by nature we don't look to govern or regulate our lives by His word. And we have by nature become suspicious of His generosity and goodness.
3. The third spiritual death shows up is in the presence of guilt and fear.
Gen 3:7-11Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. 8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the LORD God called to the man, "Where are you?"
10 He answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid."
11 And he said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?"
God leaves a lot here to our imaginations about the relationship to shame and nakedness. But, notice that their shame and fear operated primarily with reference to God and not each other. They hide themselves from God not each other. And when God asked them about it He connects their shame to their disobedience to Him. Perhaps as their souls were exposed to God's judgment they become aware that their bodies were also exposed to sin and judgment. They became like gods. As a result that knew all kinds of evil and ways to pervert their sexuality so they cover up. Derek Kidner says, "Satan's promise that their eyes would be opened is now a grotesque anticlimax to the dream of enlightenment." And now, afraid of God and rightly so, they hide.
There's still a lot of guilt and hiding going on isn't there? When Christy was about six and Rebekah was three, Christy decided that she would cut Rebekah's hair. So while she was playing in the back of the house Christy took her mother's sewing scissors and pretty much scalped the front of Rebekah's head. Now, she didn't want us to find out so she hid the hair she had cut off in her bedroom under the mattress. Now sin just makes you stupid. It didn't occur to her that we would figure it out by looking at Rebekah's nearly bald head. She thought she was home free until we pointed it out that we could see the evidence on Bekah's head. When Debby saw Rebekah's head she went ballistic (of course, in a Christian sort of a way.). However, hiding and covering up is what we now do. This is how being dead to a right relationship with God shows up. When we played our first games of hide and seek with the girls they would put their heads on the carpet and cover up their eyes. They thought that if they couldn't see themselves that we couldn't see them. I know it's dumb. But is it any dumber than what we do in more sophisticated ways? Spiritual death shows up in the oppressive presence of guilt and hiding.
4. Lastly, to be dead to a right relationship with God shows up in any attempt to protect and cover ourselves from God's righteous judgment.
Of course this is the origin of all man made religions. Adam and Eve attempted to deal with their shame and guilt by making coverings for themselves. Their actions represent all our attempts to make ourselves OK before a holy God. However, no man can do this...at least no man that has been tainted by sin. Only Jesus, the Son of God can do this. Dead to God in trespasses and sins we attempt to create ritual and rules to make ourselves acceptable to God and they all fail.
By nature, we all try to build a stairway (The Tower of Bable) or steps to reach God. Whether it's the 5 Pillars of Islam, 10 commandments of Judaism, Eight-fold path of Buddhism to enlightenment, in every man made religion you have these steps. "Go do this and you will ascend to heaven." However, in Christ, God says, "I'll come and give you a garment of righteousness of My making and not of yours." In Christ's gospel, He says that by grace He will give us His righteousness so that we never have to be oppressed by shame or hide from God again. Who could love you more than that?
Now look at how eager God is to bless and we'll close today with this. In v. 15, "So the LORD God said to the serpent, "And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel."
Of course, this is the first prediction that God would send a savior a champion who would do battle with the serpent, the devil, and prevail. It would be an ordeal and the seed of the woman would be wounded. But the victory would be his. And to symbolize that God is the one who will clothe us and save us, God made cloths of skins for Adam and Eve. However, they were taken out of the glad presence of the Lord, east of Eden, and barred them from entrance into that fellowship by posting warrior angels with flaming swords at the gate of the garden. This is the kind of death Paul is talking about. It's a death that breaks faith and smears our relationship with God, makes us suspicious of His goodness and suspicious of His word, produces guilt and fear, and inclines our hearts to save ourselves.
Through faith in Christ we have been granted eternal life and in Him you and I can be reconciled to our God by His grace.
Jesus has died so that we can live. Eternal life is to know God. Although our love for Him is not yet as easy as honoring a sunset we are now free to acquire and develop more and more a taste for this kind of worship. Through faith in Him and this glorious gospel we can now trust His goodness and His word. We can now know that He will never stop doing us good. There is nothing that comes into your life that He cannot redeem for His glory and your joy. Through faith in Him He casts our sins as far as the east is from the west to be remembered no more. Through the gift of justification we are now considered as righteous as Jesus Christ. That's the amazing in Amazing grace. Through life in Christ we can now know this joy of forgiveness and grace. Through faith in Jesus we can now know that we can never save ourselves but praise Him who has come to save us. This is eternal life ...that you know Him...Do you?