Genesis 3:1-24; Romans 5:12-21
Dearly beloved,
From one end of the Bible to the other we gaze upon the history of
salvation. In the book of Genesis we hear about the Lord's creative aspect
of history. How wonderful it must have been to be in the Garden of Eden,
where the landscape was beautiful. One can imagine the flowers and the
colors. The beauty must have been magnificent. Then, of course, there was
the peace of the garden.
There wasn't any such thing as predator and prey. No worry about a
deadly snake bite, until that one dreadful day. All the beauty, all the
peace, all the joy of that blessed garden would be forever changed at the
hand of one man, Adam. We know the account. Satan tricks Eve into taking
fruit from the forbidden Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
The serpent, Satan, lied to Eve. He told her that God did not want her
to eat of the forbidden tree, because she would then be like God, knowing
good and evil. So between Eve and Adam we find a major change in all that
had been taking place in the Lord's creation. We know what happens. After
Adam and Eve eat of the forbidden tree, they are then removed from the
Garden of Eden. God did not want them to then eat of another tree, the Tree
of Life. If they had eaten of that tree after falling into sin, they would
live forever in sin.
Then comes the history of mankind living in sin. Offspring from Adam
and Eve tainted with the curses, which God had pronounced upon man, woman
and Satan, of course. St. Paul picks up on the theological and
life-enduring consequences of Adam's sin. We are brought right to the
forefront of the meaning of Lent. We are face to face with our fallen
condition, and we look upon the reason for the coming of Jesus Christ into
the flesh. We are all descendants of Adam. We have inherited his sin.
King David even admits this in Psalm 51 when he says about himself, "Behold,
I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me"(Psalm
51:5).
The sermons for these Lenten Vespers services have been centered on
finding Jesus in the Old Testament. We have looked at types and situations
that point us forward to the time of Jesus, along with His suffering, death
and resurrection. Today's sermon is no different. Paul connects Adam and
Jesus, but he does it in an unusual way.
Adam was the prototypical man when he was created. He was in the image
of God and was without sin. He was holy. He was as the Lord wanted him.
But Adam was not God. God is the Creator. Adam was creature. Adam was
holy but it was a gift of God. Adam fell. St. Paul talks about Adam and
his effect on us, but he says something interesting in Romans 5. St. Paul
says, "...death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning
was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to
come"(Romans 5:14). St. Paul says that Adam was a type of the one who was
to come.
Before sinning, Adam was an image or snapshot of the holy One who would
come into the world. Before Adam's sin, he could be in fellowship with God
and love unconditionally. Adam's gaze was fully fixed on God before the
fall. Adam wanted to do God's will; He wanted to live for God; He was
righteous in God's sight. But not after the fall.
Adam as the type of Jesus shows us that when Jesus comes incarnate of
the virgin Mary and is made man, He picks up where Adam left off. Jesus,
the Son of God, the 2nd person of the Trinity, had His gaze fixed upon the
will and command of the heavenly Father. Jesus lived for and loved the
heavenly Father and kept His law perfectly. Jesus gave glory to the
Creator. The coming of God in the flesh was to fulfill the required
righteousness, but St. Paul gives us more insight into the reason for Jesus'
taking on flesh.
Jesus is the anti-type of Adam. He is the fulfillment of Adam. Jesus
comes to fix what was broken at the hands of Adam. Even more than that,
Jesus comes to restore what was lost in the fall of Adam. You may recall
how God handled the sin in the Garden of Eden. To prevent Adam and Eve from
eating from the Tree of Life and living forever in sin, God put an angel at
the entrance to the garden, and the angel waved back and forth a flaming
sword. The garden, with all its beauty and peace, was only a distant memory
which would soon be forgotten by creation.
Jesus comes to open up the Garden of Eden, again. The dynamic that was
running through the whole Garden of Eden account was fellowship with God.
Adam residing in the garden was fellowship with God. The closing of the
Garden was alienation from God. But by grace and faith in the promise, God
opened the way for reconciliation through His Son. The One who was to come,
would come bearing a gift and St. Paul reminds the church of it.
St. Paul says, "The free gift is not like the trespass. For if many
died through one man's trespass, much more have the grace of God and the
free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. And
the free gift is not like the result of that one man's sin. For the
judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift
following many trespasses brought justification."
This topic must have been on St. Paul's mind frequently because he also
talks about this to the Corinthians. "For as in Adam all die, so also in
Christ, shall all be made alive"(1 Corinthians 15:22). And, again, "Thus it
is written, ‘The first man Adam became a living being"; the last Adam became
a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first but the
natural, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of
dust; the second man is from heaven"(1 Corinthians 15:45-46).
We are suddenly in this latter part of Lent taken back to the beginning
of Lent on Ash Wednesday when we hear that we are dust and to dust we shall
return. But in Jesus it does not stop at dust. You are so beset by sin
that you are unable to live a perfectly holy life that God expects. You are
not the Adam that God originally created in His image. Your sinful urges
are such that you often look to yourself rather than to the Lord--the reason
for Adam's fall in the first place.
But in Jesus you are not left without help. In fact, Jesus has given
you a way to be restored in the image of God. St. Paul concludes his
thoughts on Adam and Jesus in this way: "Just as we have borne the image of
the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven"(1
Corinthians 15:49). Bearing the image of the man of heaven looks like
baptism, wherein you put on Christ and are clothed with the white robe of
Christ's righteousness.
You are then placed into fellowship with the Holy Trinity and you rest
in the peace and presence of God's love. The entrance of the Garden of Eden
is then opened to you, and you find yourself with the Lord in His love and
forgiveness. Jesus restores you. Jesus forgives your sins, and He prepares
the path to heaven for you. Jesus is the second Adam, the holy and
righteous One who tends the everlasting garden.
We are there every time we gather in the Divine Service, which is a
foretaste of heaven. The Lord's Supper is the entrance into the garden once
again, and the true and eternal Garden of Eden is heaven itself, where we
shall again see God walking in our midst in the cool of the day, as we gaze
upon Him and no other, basking in the beauty, the peace, and the joy of our
Lord's goodness toward us. Amen.
--
Rev. Chad Kendall
Trinity Lutheran Church
Lowell, Indiana
www.trinitylowell.org
