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Romans 5:12-19
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Because sin, yours or Adam's is not what turns God against you. It is the disease that makes you forget God's name. Welcome to the Commons cast. We're glad to have you here. We hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week.
Speaker 1:Head to commons.church for more information. Welcome today. My name is Jeremy, and if we haven't had a chance to meet yet, again, thanks for being here with us. We don't take that for granted, so thank you. Now, we have already said thanks to Joel and Hillary and their family for all of their commitment and contribution to Commons over these years, but I do want to say one more time just how much I personally have appreciated the way that Joel has led and served in our community.
Speaker 1:I have learned a lot from him about what it means to lead with humility and gentleness. And also, how to work hard and still create space, intentional space for unhurried conversations and pastoral moments. Those are things that I want to continue to learn from Joel and build into my rhythms in new ways. As much as this is a loss for us as a community, having gotten to know Joel over these years, it also is really exciting to see he and Hillary step into a role that just honestly does seem to be tailor made for them. And so we wish them nothing but the best in this next adventure.
Speaker 1:Now, we are continuing in Romans today. And Joel actually took us into chapter five last week. Today, we'll push through to the end of that chapter. First, however, let's look back quickly. At the start of chapter five, Paul takes all of these ideas he has built in the opening four chapters, and he kind of sums them up for us.
Speaker 1:You can see this when you read. Paul says, therefore, since we have been justified through the faithfulness of God, we have peace with God, our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by his faithfulness into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. So, that's sort of a nice recap of the argument that Paul has been building in the opening couple chapters. And then he goes on to say, not only do we boast in this hope of glory, but also in our suffering.
Speaker 1:Because we trust that suffering produces perseverance, and perseverance character and character hope. I think sometimes it can be easy to read through these passages and kind of brush them off. Oh, right. There's Paul talking about toughing it out again. How original.
Speaker 1:However, we have to remember that Paul is far more tender than we often give him credit for at times. Now remember, Paul doesn't really know these people. He wants to visit them, but he hasn't yet. There are, however, other communities where Paul is very well known. Where Paul shares history and depth with that audience, and there are moments where we see a very different side of Paul come through in his writing.
Speaker 1:For example, there's a passage near the start of second Corinthians where Paul is talking about some of the struggles that he has faced. And at one point he says, I was under such great pressure, far more than I thought I could handle, and I despaired of life itself. And that translation might sound very poetic and even a bit stoic, but what he's really talking about here is a very dark place of depression where Paul wondered if he wanted to keep going. And I get that when you read Paul say, rejoice in suffering Because suffering produces perseverance, and perseverance, character, and character, hope, and you are in that kind of dark place, you might wanna say, stuff it, Paul. But understand that Paul is not oblivious to your pain.
Speaker 1:Remember, this is a guy who had sunk so deep into hatred that he sanctioned murder. This is a man who had sunk so deep into depression that he wanted to die. And so when Paul speaks from the other side of that kind of grief, remember that this is not someone who has skipped lightly to peace and now belittles or diminishes your hurts and journey. This is someone who if he could, would climb right into that hole to be with you. And I think this is why when Paul builds this progression from suffering to perseverance to character, he doesn't end on strength or happiness or lightness.
Speaker 1:He doesn't try to pretend that somehow what hurts you is good for you. God is not in the business of tough love. What he says is that in all of this, the divine will be in you and through you and with you, helping you to hope that things can get better. And sometimes you need to hurt. And Paul is not trying to take that away from you or move you faster than you need to go to push you somewhere else.
Speaker 1:He's trying to remind you about the incredible power of hope. About trusting that God is faithful and God is true and that in time all things will be made new. That's what Paul hopes for. And for Paul, that kind of trust, no matter how dark the present moment seems, is never something to be ashamed of. Not today.
Speaker 1:Paul is gonna launch into a new argument. First, let's pray together. God of infinite love, who we continually fail to grasp. Might we recognize that even in our darkest moments, moments of hurt and despair, you are present. Not rushing us or pushing us, but simply present to us.
Speaker 1:Reminding us that it's okay to be weak. And it's okay to need help. It's even okay to despair for a season. Because you are at work rebuilding hope in and through us to the world. As hope begins to return.
Speaker 1:In small steps, in glimpses of beauty, in quiet moments of tender surrender, might we then begin to partner with that story, bringing grace and peace to those we encounter. And so where we need hope today, might we sense your breath in our lungs. And where we sense hope today, may we breathe that presence into those around us. Might even the smallest shards of distant hope begin to turn into an imagination for all things renewed. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray.
Speaker 1:Amen. Okay. Today, we need to talk about original sin, bad Latin, and a completely transformed world. But I want to start with a story. Because as most of you know, I have a small four year old living in my home these days.
Speaker 1:And one of the things that all parents come to understand is that communicating what you actually mean to a child can be very difficult. And so to capture that reality, I would like to perform a small play for you. It's titled A Conversation With Dad, and I will play both parts in this play. It starts like this. Eaton, can I have this?
Speaker 1:Me, no. Eton, perhaps I've miscommunicated. I am asking for it because I want it. I understood that actually. Perhaps if I said it louder.
Speaker 1:No. No. The problem here is not with my hearing. The problem is that your argument is, as the Romans would say, Circulus infrabando. Well, then allow me to offer this new information.
Speaker 1:I want it. That's the same information. It's what you just said. It's also the information I assumed from the start of this conversation, so no. What if I were to ask more politely?
Speaker 1:Well, I would support your decision to behave more politely, and it may in fact increase your chances of getting the next thing that you want, but no, it won't affect your access to this thing right now. No. Can I have part of it? No. No.
Speaker 1:The having of it is what I'm saying no to, and having part of it is the same as having all of it. No. So can I have all of it? No. Why not?
Speaker 1:Because no. Okay. Look, I understand, but here's some new information to consider. Yes? What is it?
Speaker 1:I need it. Thank you. That's my play. Now as this one man play Thank you. As this one man play illustrates here, sometimes what we mean to say, no matter how clearly we think we are saying it, can still be obscured.
Speaker 1:And hold on to that and let's jump now to Romans chapter five verse 12 where Paul says, just as sin entered the world through one man and death through sin. In this way death came to all people because all sinned. Now, sounds pretty straight forward, but this is a verse that even if you have never read it before has probably likely shaped some part of your imagination of Christianity in some way. And that's because this is the verse where Augustine's idea of original sin comes into the Christian lexicon. And original sin as it's often understood is this idea that started with Augustine of Hippo in the fourth century.
Speaker 1:And Augustine is this incredibly brilliant theologian and thinker who probably more than anyone but Paul has shaped the early Christian story at least in the western tradition. And he reads this passage and he comes up with the idea that absolutely everyone is sinful and in need of restoration. And we're all good here. Remember Paul has already affirmed in chapter three that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And so we're all in agreement.
Speaker 1:But Augustine's innovation is to read this verse and understand that the reason everyone needs salvation is not really because they've actually sinned themselves. They may have. In fact, they certainly have. But the real problem in Augustine's mind is that somehow the sin of Adam has been passed down to all humanity. We call this idea original sin.
Speaker 1:Now, in its most fervent form, you will find people who will even say that, yes, a baby who dies will be forever separated from God because of this inherent dirty sinful nature that is in humanity passed down from Adam. The thing is even most people who really like Augustine will generally make some kind of exception in those extreme circumstances. And I think what this shows is that we don't really believe in this the way that Augustine did. We have this inherent sense that God is bent toward us. That even in our brokenness God is leaning in not away.
Speaker 1:And the problem here, going back to my play from earlier, is that Augustine, as brilliant as he is, is simply suffering from a case of miscommunication. You see, what's on the screen here is the NIV. And basically all modern translations, in fact all English translations going as far back as the King James have something very similar to this. All have sinned. But in the early Latin translation that Augustine was reading from, it was called the Vulgate, It was translated from Greek into Latin by a guy named Jerome.
Speaker 1:What this verse says is that just as sin entered the world through one man and death through sin, in this way death came to all people, in him all sinned. And so it's this little word epi in Greek, which means because, but in the Latin Vulgate it is mistranslated as in him. Now, there's a lot of scholarship dedicated to why this happened. And whether it was just a typo, or whether Jerome had something in mind here, we don't really know, but what we have here is that sin entered the world through Adam, and death entered the human story through sin, therefore death comes from all of us because we all sin. Or as Augustine is reading it, because in Adam we all sinned.
Speaker 1:And in one sense that doesn't really matter. Either way, Paul is saying we all mess up and we all die eventually. But theologically the question is, what is Paul trying to say that we inherit from the story of Adam? Is it Adam's sinfulness or is it Adam's mortality? His finiteness, his humanity.
Speaker 1:That might sound somewhat abstract, very esoteric, but here's why it's actually important. Because another way you could ask that same question would be to ask, is original sin about the fact that God is mad at me because of something someone else did a long time ago? Or, is original sin the idea that I have been born into a story that has somehow obscured my sight and I have lost sight of God's goodness in the world? And this is why heavy theology is actually really important for us. Because how you answer that question will deeply shape your imagination of who God is and how you relate to the divine.
Speaker 1:I was on Twitter this week, and Twitter can be this awful place full of angry people who argue about things that do not need to be argued about. And yet, every once in a while, a glimpse of something divine slips through. Maybe that's why I'm still there. Not in the memes, because you've got to stay up on the memes these days. But this week, I came across this photo a woman had posted of her parents.
Speaker 1:The caption said, my mom is in the final stages of young onset dementia. She was diagnosed five years ago at 53. My dad cares for her full time now. She doesn't always remember his name, but she knows that she is safe with him. And if I was to go looking for a picture of how God imagines our concept of original sin, this is perhaps as close as I could find.
Speaker 1:Because sin, yours or Adam's, is not what turns God against you. It is the disease that makes you forget God's name and miss God's presence in the world and run from God's arms. But the story of the bible is about slowly reminding you that you have somehow always been safe with God. Because God has been at work since the beginning, relentlessly repairing everything that has been lost. And if we jump ahead to the crescendo of this section in verse 17, that is exactly what we read.
Speaker 1:For if by the trespass of the one man death reigned through that one man, then how much more will those who receive God's abundant provision of grace and the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ. Now, I realize that when you read Paul, you can come across these ideas that are built in this sort of overly complex style at times. Now that is part of the tradition of Greek rhetoric that Paul is steeped in. But the key here is realizing that this whole section is about building a contrast between Adam and Jesus. Because Paul's point here is not really about original sin.
Speaker 1:It's not that after Adam, God turned in humanity. Paul's point is that if one human could cause all of that hurt and pain and frustration and alienation in the world through his mistake, and how incredible would it be to come to understand just how much healing and grace and peace and life Jesus could bring back into the world through his faithfulness. A side note here, if you remember all the way back to the story from Genesis, you may be silently wondering what any of this has to do with Adam to begin with. I mean, after all, if we are talking about the original sin, it was Eve who ate the apple, and it was the serpent that deceived her before that, and that was all before Adam even showed up on the scene. So why is Paul bringing Adam into this in the first place?
Speaker 1:And for that, we have to understand what Origen calls the order of nature. Remember this is the ancient world where patriarchy was the assumed reality. In that world men always took precedence over women and the woman took precedence over the child. So this is actually a somewhat normal way to tell that story in the first century. But I also think that Paul wants to make the parallel between Jesus and Adam as striking as he possibly can.
Speaker 1:And by telling the story this way and focusing on Adam, he gets to repeat this phrase through the one man. There's a lot of rhetorical value in that for Paul. There are a couple things here that are important. First, I think the way that Paul tells this story actually helps to combat the bad theology that it was somehow the weaker woman, Eve, that caused all of our problems. Paul is not thinking of this story in terms of scapegoating those who can't defend themselves in the conversation.
Speaker 1:In the ancient world, it would have been very easy for Paul to try to shift the blame off of men like himself and onto women. That's not what he does. At the same time though, we also have to be careful not to deperson Eve as well. We don't want to treat this story as if, well, she's just a woman. So at the end of the day, it really was her husband's fault anyway.
Speaker 1:That doesn't do justice to the autonomy that Genesis gives to Eve, and we shouldn't see her as any less capable of intelligent or moral choices than her husband was. And so I don't think that's what Paul is doing here either. In fact, I think what's really going on is that Paul assumes everyone knows the story from Genesis inside out. And because he knows that everyone knows the source material, he feels like he can use it in a symbolic way to make his point as compelling as possible. And if that means shaping the story in a way to make the parallel between Adam and Jesus as clear as he can, well then he's gonna go for that even if it's not exactly how the story played out.
Speaker 1:And what that tells us is that Paul understands the inherent symbolic value of this story. I don't think Paul thought Adam and Eve were just symbolic characters. In a pre scientific world, there's really no reason for Paul to question that. But he certainly understood that this story was about more than just two people a long time ago in a galaxy far far away. This was somehow about all of us.
Speaker 1:And you can see that at the end of verse 15. Paul says that Adam is a pattern of the one to come. And in Greek, it's the word tupos or type. But it's almost like we relieve this relationship backwards in English here. Because for Paul, Jesus doesn't come in the pattern of Adam.
Speaker 1:It's Adam who is this distorted mirror image, this bad backwards copy of what God always had in mind for all of us. And what that means is that for Paul, not only does Jesus fix what was wrong with Adam, Jesus improves it and Jesus completes it and he shows us what all of our copies of copies were meant to look like. It was Saint John Chrysostom writing in the fourth century who reads Romans and then writes that Christ did not merely do the same amount of good that Adam did harm. No. It was far more and far greater good that Christ accomplished.
Speaker 1:And that's because this whole second half of chapter five is about Paul saying that the influence of what is good will always win out over what is evil. This is not meant to be read as a downer recounting the sinfulness of humanity. Paul's assuming you already know that story. And you already know that the world is broken. This is about the fact that everything that has ever been marred by sin will be inevitably healed.
Speaker 1:You see for Paul, Adam and Eve and the fruit and the serpent, all of that is a symbol of all that is damaged in the world and now all of it is being repaired in Jesus. In verse 18, Paul will even say that consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act has resulted in justification and life for all people. Now remember, Paul's big meta narrative in Romans is this idea that somehow against all odds and expectations, God is welcoming all people, which for Paul means Jews and non Jews into the story. But there is simply no way to get around the fact that all people, in the Greek, is there on both sides of this equation because that's precisely Paul's point here. Jesus didn't just fix Adam.
Speaker 1:And Jesus doesn't just fix Jews. Jesus doesn't just fix nice religious people. Jesus fixes every story that has ever been damaged by sin. This is Paul at his most ferociously optimistic. Completely captivated by the idea that Jesus changes everything.
Speaker 1:For Paul, sin means death. But if someone can come back from the dead, then all bets are off. Now, before you go and accuse Paul of being a universalist here, I do still think that Paul imagines you can reject that life if you want to. I mean, verse 19 he says, for justice through the disobedience of one many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of one many will be made righteous. And that could be just a stylistic choice, but there does seem to be at least some room in Paul's imagination to reject God's work in the world.
Speaker 1:And God is nothing if not relentlessly relational even when that means we turn our back. But here Paul is saying, with every ounce of energy he can muster, there is nothing separating you from God's embrace in this moment. For Paul, it's like the arrival of Jesus has flipped the switch, and we all moved from a world that was shrouded in darkness to one that is full of light even if we choose to keep our eyes closed. And I'm gonna paraphrase here from Sarah Lancaster as she tries to make sense of what is going on in Paul's mind Because I really like the way that she frames this. She writes that, the old world is our old existence as it has been conditioned or shaped by sin.
Speaker 1:Sin is the robbery of God because sin assumes that we are independent of God. And so it necessarily takes us away from relationship with God. The inevitability of death on the other hand exposes the limits of our independence and the falseness of our devotion to ourselves. And so death brings us to crisis. But for Paul, Jesus answers that crisis with resurrection.
Speaker 1:And through life makes it possible for us to turn from the old world and to live in the new. And I think that's beautiful. But we are deep again into the weeds of theology here. And so there are a couple implications that we need to explore to really make sense of this in our lives. So first of all, if your experience of Christianity has been built around telling you that God hates you, God is angry at you, God is at a distance from you, Because of something someone else did a long time ago in a land far away.
Speaker 1:And now you need to be a better person or join a better church or repent a little harder before God can love you back. As if there is anything that you could ever do to change God's posture toward you. And you need to let go of that. Because as far as Paul is concerned, in a world where Jesus is alive, there is less than no space between you and the divine. And right now, God is in you and through you.
Speaker 1:God is wrapping God's arms around you even when the conditioning of sin causes you to forget God's name. Because God is only good news, and God's posture towards you is only ever welcome and embrace. Second, I'm not gonna confuse myself with Adam, and I'm not gonna compare myself with Jesus, but part of what Paul does for us in Romans is to remind us of the legacy our actions have in the world. When we sin and we bring hurt and pain and violence and mistrust into the world, We need to know that this has lasting impacts that cause deep wounds in the people around us. Maybe wounds that we will never fully understand.
Speaker 1:And when I read the way that Paul uses the story of Adam, it reminds me that there are very often unintended consequences for every careless decision I make. And they could hurt the people that are near me. And when I speak unkind words to a stranger because I'm frustrated that day, or when I brush off my son because I don't have the energy for his games right now, or when I treat your story with less than the attention and the dignity that it deserves, Then I am contributing to a world that closes its eyes to the beauty and light that surrounds us all the time. But equally, when I am kind and gracious. And when I respond to anger with steady patience, and when I give something of myself away asking nothing in return, in those moments, not only do I undo the harm I've created in the world, it is far more and a far greater good that I contribute to God's story.
Speaker 1:Because that's Paul's point. Good and evil are not equal and opposite. Because what is good and what is love and what is light and what is life will always be more powerful, and it will inevitably overcome all that leads to darkness and death. That's good news. And what that means is that because the divine is present in and through you, your best if flawed attempts to follow the path of Jesus will always be stronger than your worst moments in the dark.
Speaker 1:Because Jesus is alive in the world, you are not defined by your worst moment. Because the best of you is stronger. And when you are ready to open your eyes to this new world, you will see this goodness that surrounds you the way that Paul does. Let's pray. God, help us slowly to open our eyes to the goodness that surrounds us.
Speaker 1:And for all the ways that we have shut our eyes and turned our backs and retreated into selfishness and greed and mistrust. The way that we have contributed to a world that misses your presence near us. We ask for your forgiveness. And we ask that your spirit would be in and near to us helping us first to turn towards you. And first to open our eyes just to get a glimpse of that light, and even if it scares us a bit and hurts our eyes and we turn back away, would you be present bringing us one step at a time until we can fully open our eyes and turn to you and look at you and focus on you to be transformed into the likeness of your son.
Speaker 1:God, in all the ways that we contribute to your light and life in this world, we thank you. Because it is in your graciousness and peace and patience that you invite us to participate in your story. Be with us and through us. Show us who you have always imagined we would become. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray.
Speaker 1:Amen.