Romans 5:12-21
In November 2004 Dutch film-maker Theo van Gogh, a descendent of the Impressionist artist, Vincent van Gogh, was shot and stabbed to death by a radical Muslim. At issue was a film he made titled Submission which was written by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali immigrant who became a member of the Dutch parliament. The film portrays the treatment of women in Islam and does so in a Dutch fashion which explains the uproar that has ensued. It turns out that the real target was Ayaan Hirsi Ali with Theo van Gogh a secondary target.
Ali is an outspoken critic of Islam, not just radical Islam but also moderate Islam. When the Ambassador of Saudi Arabia called for her to be removed from parliament because of her outspoken critique of Islam, she became even more popular and in 2003 was voted the second most popular person in Holland.
Because of death threats, she hired bodyguards to protect her. Theo van Gogh ignored the death threats that came to him and so became the easier target.
She went into hiding in New York City after the murder of Theo van Gogh and the day she left, a plot to assassinate her on New Year’s Day was uncovered. She returned January 27 to public life in Holland saying she won’t be intimidated by Islamic fundamentalists.
The reason I mention this is because of the reaction in Holland to this incident. It is distressing to the people of Holland that someone needs to have a bodyguard to protect themselves in their country. They view themselves as an enlightened country where such acts of violence do not happen. Theo van Gogh had the proper Dutch attitude when he refused protection. Ayaan Hirsi Ali was less Dutch in that way but she is still alive.
The Dutch pride themselves on being a liberal society in which good people can do pretty much what they want and all get along with each other. This incident is revealing a crack in that view and questions are being asked.
The Dutch people are blaming the incursion of Islam for the trouble. “There are too many Muslims in Holland,” some say and there has been a reaction to the murder with mosques and Islamic schools being burned and an increase in the harassment of Muslims.
Islam is being used as a scapegoat for the breakdown in Dutch society but I think there is a more fundamental problem. The real problem is that the Dutch people have forgotten Romans 5:12-21. It is because they have forgotten what their ancestors knew from Paul’s letter to the Romans that their utopian view of a good society is crumbling. Islamic views are only a part of the problem. Without any Muslims in Holland, the good society that is longed for would still crumble.
What is it Holland has forgotten?
Paul has talked thus far in his letter about the wrath of God and how all of us are deserving of the wrath of God. Next he moved into a discussion of God’s solution to the problem of being alienated from God by talking of a righteousness that has come from God. A discussion of this righteousness is followed by an examination of the benefits that come from being made righteous in the eyes of God by faith alone and now in 5:12-21, Paul moves into a discussion of original sin.
You have probably heard a version of the old joke. Two people are having a conversation. One asks the other, “Do you believe in original sin?”to which the other person responds, “It depends on how original you want to be.”
What is original sin?
Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned— 13 for before the law was given, sin was in the world.
In this incomplete sentence of Paul, he speaks of original sin: how our human nature is a sinful nature and how this sinful nature came to be. There is a lot of debate about the doctrine of original sin and many are uncomfortable with it. If I had Mariska and Tertius bring up their daughter Chantal Daniella, who among us would want to say that this sweet baby girl was sinful. (About sweet charming Mariska and pure to the bone Tertius we would be less hesitant to say they were sinful and about me, there is no doubt that my nature is sinful.)
It seems cruel to look at a baby and say that baby has a sinful nature and so this doctrine of the church is difficult to swallow. Is it that Adam sinned and then we also choose to sin and that is what original sin is all about? Augustine argued against a British monk named Pelagius in the fifth century who proposed that.
Paul’s argument in Romans makes it clear that we participated with Adam in his choosing to sin. How can this be that before we were born we participated with Adam in his sin? That is the concept of original sin. But how does that make any sense?
Let me tell you how I view this. I believe the story of Adam and Eve is a story of how sin came into the world and what is behind the story is God’s creation of us as beings who have free will. When we were created with free will, we were created to make choices. And when we are able to make choices, we are able to choose what is good for us and what is bad for us. What is good for us is not always obvious because we live in a temporal world that is more real to us than our promised heavenly home that we cannot know with our five senses. And so with our free will our instinct is to choose what we can see, hear, smell, touch and taste. We instinctively make choices for this world and against God.
Original sin is the inevitable consequence of having been created with free will and it is only God’s presence in our world that allows us to choose wisely from time to time.
This discussion is interesting, at least to me, but it is not the real point. The point is that we are sinful human beings and that needs to be the starting point for all of our interactions with human beings. We are by nature sinful beings and we interact with people who are by nature sinful beings.
I know some of you are probably sitting in the pew and disagreeing with me or at least feeling uncomfortable about this. The reason for this is that our nature, because it is sinful, leads us to think that we are all basically good people.
This thinking is not new. The Chinese philosopher Mencius who lived from 371-289 BC developed his entire philosophy from two basic propositions: the first, that Man’s original nature is good; and the second, that Man’s original nature becomes evil when his wishes are not fulfilled.
This school of philosophy said, “If you let people follow their feelings (original feelings), they will be able to do good. This is what is meant by the saying that human nature is good. If a man does evil, it’s not the fault of his natural endowment.”
This idea of the natural goodness of man took hold in Europe starting in the 14th century and in the 19th century took over and enlightened men and women entered the 20th century convinced that man was basically good and all that had to happen was to enlighten him and we would have a peaceful existence.
But then came WWI and WWII. It had been understood that terrible things happened in other parts of the world, but in the educated West, man’s natural goodness would prevail because of enlightened education and culture. When the Germans began to use poisonous gas as a weapon and the British soon retaliated (taking advantage of the prevailing west to east winds) and over 7,000,000 of the sons of the educated and enlightened west were killed by gas and bullets and bombs, you would think that this philosophy would have been reconsidered.
But it continued and then came WWII with the people of Goethe and Schiller and Beethoven and Bach setting out to exterminate the Jewish population of the world. I’m reading a book called, Hitler’s Scientists, and what people don’t fully realize is that this extermination of the Jews had excellent scientific minds behind it. Enlightened people began to understand the genetic link to disease and theorized that by eliminating an undesirable people who they speculated carried diseases, the world would be strengthened.
After all the horrors of WWI and WWII, certainly we would give up this idea that man is basically good and begin to search for a better understanding of how people function in the world. But no. This is a philosophy that will not die. All the evidence in the world can be piled up: sex trafficking of women and children, business corruption, sports drugging, women being raped in South Asia by the men that had just rescued them; pile up all this evidence and people persist in believing that men and women are basically good.
And I tell you it is our sinful human nature that deceives us into thinking that.
So the Dutch are shocked by the violence in their country. And people throughout the west are shocked by incidences of violence and human betrayal.
We should not be shocked. Violence, betrayal, deceit are to be expected because of our nature. What we should be shocked by is when people act against their own interests and do good. This is what Paul sets out to talk about in this section of Romans.
Paul talks about two countries: the country of Adam and the country of Christ.
In the country of Adam, one man sinned and that sin led to death and because of our participation in choosing against God, we stand in condemnation and face Adam’s fate which is death. Death rules in Adam’s country.
Cemeteries stand as the best evidence for the truth of this. I love walking through cemeteries. I like to see when it is people died and how old they were and speculate on what was happening at the time. I also like reading the epitaphs and although this is in the middle of the sermon, I can’t resist reading some of the epitaphs found on gravestones.
Nova Scotia, Canada
Here lies
Ezekial Aikle
Age 102
The Good
Die Young.
Ruidoso, New Mexico
Here lies
Johnny Yeast
Pardon me
For not rising.
Georgia
“I told you I was sick!”
Hartscombe, England
On the 22nd of June
Jonathan Fiddle –
Went out of tune.
Albany, New York
Looked up the elevator shaft to see if
the car was on the way down. It was.
John Dryden (1631-1700) on his wife
Here lies my wife: here let her lie!
Now she’s at rest, and so am I.
Thurmont, Maryland
Here lies an Atheist
All dressed up
And no place to go.
Cemeteries are the best proof that we start in Adams’s country where sin leads to death and this last epitaph wonderfully describes the fate of those who live in Adam’s country. It is the land of Qoheleth in Ecclesiastes. “All dressed up and no place to go.”
People die. All people die. All humans in the history of the world have died and we will all die. And that is a truth we must deal with because we come from Adam’s country. Our nature is a sinful nature. We choose to take what this world offers and turn our back on what God offers us and the consequence is death.
If you think I have been emphasizing this bad news too much lately, with the sermons on Ecclesiastes and the sermon on suffering at the beginning of this year and now again today, I want to say that if you did not have the tendency to forget the bad news from which you have come, I would not have to repeat it so often. We need to be reminded of the bad news because that is how we come to appreciate the good news.
The good news is that we are not left stranded in Adam’s country. Because we have been blessed by God, we are able to walk into Christ’s country.
But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many!
In Adam’s country, sin leads to death and all are condemned to that same fate. But in Christ’s country, even though Adam’s sin is multiplied many times over, Christ death led to our justification and we are set free from the cemetery. We carry a confidence that comes from God that the cemetery where they lay our body or the place where they scatter our ashes will not be our resting place.
An appropriate epitaph for a Christian might be:
If you’re looking for me here,
you’ve come to the wrong address.
All of us have come from Adam’s country and stood condemned to die an eternal death until we were invited to step into Christ’s country and were set free from death and given the certain hope of eternal life.
In applying these truths, it is critical that we understand that as Christians we have come from the country of Adam and entered the country of Christ. We dare not ever forget that we started in the country of Adam. And we need to remember that we have entered the country of Christ.
Let me tell you why it is important never to forget where it is we started.
It makes a difference in economics. Why is it that capitalism is more successful than communism or socialism? When you read about the early church in the book of Acts, it seems they practiced a communistic economy in which the wealthy shared what they had with the poor so no one went hungry.
When you tell someone to work hard and they receive just the same as those who do not work hard, it is difficult to keep working hard. What makes capitalism effective is that it takes into account human sinfulness. In capitalism we work hard so we can have more. Greed motivates us and capitalism takes advantage of that. Capitalism takes into account that we have come from Adam’s country and that helps us move forward and make progress.
What is needed is for those who make money from a capitalist economy to walk into Christ’s country and use their wealth in a way that is pleasing to God.
Knowing we have come from Adam’s country makes a difference in how we get paid. Companies that pay people a fixed salary are not as productive as companies that pay their employees a smaller base salary and offer incentives for productivity. As an employee in such a company, I know that if I work harder I get paid more and so I do work harder than when I was paid a salary that did not reward me for my productivity.
Because we come from Adam’s country, we need marriage laws that make it difficult to get divorced. If all I have to say to my wife is, “I divorce you,” three times, my sinful nature makes it too easy to do that. In the fit of an argument I could say that six times. Marriage needs protection from our sinful human nature and so marriage is a legal status.
When I make a business arrangement with another Christian, it is not enough to have an oral agreement. The agreement needs to be written down to protect each of us from the other. Even though we are Christian brothers, one of us may misunderstand and without a written agreement to refer to, tension and bitterness can result.
Because we come from Adam’s country, we need accountability. If I work with money, I need someone to hold me accountable for how I use that money. The Biblical advice is to flee temptation. When Potiphar’s wife tried to seduce Joseph, he did not sit on the bed and discuss why she was seeking pleasure in an inappropriate relationship. Joseph fled. As a married man I do not put myself in situations where I can be tempted by other women because I know that I have come from Adam’s country. I take my sinful human nature into account.
A diplomat or some other leader of a country can make deals with other countries but if they believe in the basic goodness of people and make a deal that does not contain sufficient safeguards, they are not being responsible leaders of their country.
This is true in international relations, in communities, in organizations, in private relationships and even with myself.
We all have come from Adam’s country and even if we have entered into Christ’s country, we need to remember where it is we have come from and where our neighbor has come from.
Failing to remember that my nature is sinful makes it easier for me to be led into sin. Being conscious of my sinful nature helps me to avoid being led into sin.
It is important to remember that we have come from Adam’s country, but it is also important to remember that we now live in Christ’s country. And when we live in Christ’s country, we need to act like we live in Christ’s country. We have changed our address from Adam’s country to Christ’s country and so we need to act consistent with our new address.
Let me give you three personal examples.
If you are a passenger with me as I drive in Rabat, you will hear me say some unpleasant things about some of the other drivers I observe. I see rude, obnoxious, selfish behavior and it drives me nuts. So I will speak to the other drivers and question their parentage or describe them as being a part of anatomy. In other words, I am rude and insulting to them.
In Christ’s country it is important for us to bless others and instead I curse others. I am offended because they have violated my rights and I forget that in Christ’s country, we are to sacrifice our rights for the sake of others. We are to bless, not curse.
A few years ago a good friend in the church who was from a Pentecostal background, told me that if a Pentecostal church opened up in Rabat, he would leave RPF and go to that church. This hurt me tremendously. I viewed this hypothetical possibility as a personal rejection of me and of the gifts God has given me.
But I thought about this and I am certain what I would do in such a situation. I don’t know how I would react to persecution because I love comfort and dislike discomfort, but I know how I would react to this situation.
I would encourage and support this new church. I would bless this new church and I would try to participate in this new church as much as I was able. And the reason I know I would react this way is because I live in Christ’s country and in Christ’s country, unity in the body is more important than my gifts being affirmed or rejected.
We live in Christ’s country and so we need to act like citizens of Christ’s country.
One last example: Annie can get a bit nervous when I drive in Morocco. She becomes nervous when I pass cars and tells me that it is not my driving that bothers her but the way others drive that makes her anxious. I take this as an attack on my competency as a driver. When she drives, she feels more in control and handles driving better. So when we drive north to Ceuta, Annie drives over the mountains and I am a passenger. When we go to Ifrane, she drives after we get off the autoroute.
I often act as a citizen of Adam’s country in this situation and am sullen and passive aggressive. I need to act as a citizen of Christ’s country and love my wife as Christ loved the church.
One of the first sermons I preached was when I was a youth pastor in a Methodist Church in West Virginia. I peached a sermon in which I talked about how we are sinners but God views us as righteous because he views us through the perfection of Christ. I made the point that we are still sinners and that only in our relationship with Christ did we have hope of being accepted by God.
After the service, one of the elders came up to me and said, “If I knew that when God looked at me and saw me as a sinner, I would go out and kill myself.” I told her, “But that’s the good news that because of our relationship with Christ, God sees us as being perfect.” And she repeated, “Yes, but if I thought that God thought I was a sinner, I would go out and kill myself.”
She had forgotten that she was ever a citizen of Adam’s country and so was unable to live in Christ’s country.
You are a sinner and have come from Adam’s country. Don’t ever forget it. Because of this you need to guard yourself against your heritage.
But if you have accepted God’s gift of salvation, you are now a citizen of Christ’s country and you need to live in a way that reflects your new address.
