I.

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, the doctrine of Original Sin was once very close to my heart. There was something about the idea that all human beings are conceived and born so hopelessly depraved that they are constitutionally incapable of doing anything but vicious evil, that made a lot of sense to me as a sixteen year old growing up in suburban New Jersey. The idea that any good in the world was purely a product of the direct initiative and intervention of God into human life, seemed to me an accurate description of reality.

This extreme version of Original Sin, which was first expressed by Augustine in the 5th century, drove a huge wedge between God and humanity: God was all good, humanity and, by extension, creation, was all bad.

Enthusiasts for the doctrine of Original Sin are very clear in holding that it applies to everybody: tribespeople in New Guinea, the Queen of England, newborn babies in Beverly Hills, everybody. We are born in sin and raised in corruption. No one is untainted, unstained, and therefore all are condemned to hell simply by virtue of being born, or even conceived.

Augustine himself, who systematized this doctrine with ruthless zeal, explicitly and categorically stated that unbaptized babies go to hell because they are born with the stain of Adam’s sin, which he thought was transmitted through sex. Needless to say, non-Christians and heretics also go to hell.

The Roman church found this enough of a problem that they found it necessary to invent Limbo as a vague place where unbaptized babies go instead of hell. It took until 1903 for the Presbyterian Church in this country to officially waffle on the unbaptized babies question. And we still have not officially renounced it because to do so would be to scrap the whole Western tradition of theology.

But the point is that, in its extreme form, Original Sin says that in order to love God, you have to hate yourself, hate others, and hate the Earth, because it’s supposedly all fallen, sinful, and hopelessly corrupt.

Even the Bible, the Law, coupled with the doctrine of Original Sin, puts humanity in a position of being born conscious that we are in a box we can see out of, but cannot escape. This is how Augustine would put it, and most of the rest of the Western tradition including Luther, Calvin, and our Presbyterian forebears.

The point of this hypothesis is to make God’s grace that much more miraculous and amazing. It is to shock us into reliance on God alone out of sheer helplessness and despair. God forbid that anyone even suggest that human nature is not quite so bleak and paralyzed.

No. Original Sin says we are nothing and God is everything. We can only wait for God to pick us up out of the lethal slime like a mouse who fell into a septic tank. If God doesn’t condescend to rescue us, we are doomed.

III.

But, if you read his words, Paul himself does not really say anything of the kind. In fact, for all he may have believed in something we might recognize as Original Sin, we see clearly in this passage that Paul considered it a bankrupt and obsolete doctrine. I’m sure he would be horrified by the understanding of Original Sin as it was perpretated by Augustine and his followers.

This is quite a remarkable passage because what Paul is basically saying is that, just as Adam represents the sin we see in ourselves and all people, so Christ represents God’s grace and life for all people.

Adam represents all of us. He symbolizes and personifies the human condition. He simply embodies the story of how we got this way; how we ended up as self-centered, short-sighted, alienated beings who seem to have no clue about God or the true nature of our world or even ourselves. And that much is accurate. We are not conscious of our connectedness to God; rather, we are naturally aware of our alienation and individuality.

Thus Original Sin, understood correctly without Augustine’s extremism, is a simple description of the human condition. It is about our responsibilities and our situation. But Original Sin is not the end, or even thoe most important part of the story.

Paul says, in effect, "Sure, it may be the case that everyone was sinful and died because of Adam’s sin. But those days are over! It is now even more true that everyone is united to God because of Christ."

Everyone! Here’s what he writes: "Therefore, just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all." That’s all, as in everybody. Everyone tainted by Adam’s sin, is now saved by Christ’s righteousness. Jews, Gentiles, male, female, free, slave, black, white, rich, poor, Republicans, Democrats, Pepsi drinkers, Coke drinkers, capitalists, socialists, David Letterman, Jay Leno, people who like Johnny Mathis, people who like Eminem, gays, straights, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, murderers, victims, Mother Teresa, Leona Helmsley... everyone.

It’s just that everybody doesn’t know it. Everyone doesn’t trust in this truth. Everyone does not live according to this new reality. We have not heard or, even if we have heard, we fail to believe in this good news that God, in Christ, has given us new life in communion with all things. But Paul says that Christ is just like Adam in the sense that he too represents something that can now be found in all of us.

So, if we are like the mouse that has fallen into a septic tank, and there is not hope for us unless God directly intervenes to pick us out of it, the good news is that this is precisely what God has done for us in Jesus Christ.

III.

It is as if now, within each of us we have the sin of Adam or Eve, and, because of God’s action in Jesus Christ, we have his righteousness. These two are not enemies so much as representatives of the two sides, the two directions, of our nature. We have our conscious, rational, willfull, limited, individual, sinful side; and we also have an interior, spiritual, blessed, connected, and unlimited dimension. "Adam" is the way we talk about the former. God comes into the world in Jesus Christ to reveal to us the latter and pour it into our hearts.

Do we have to reject one in order to choose the other? Let me frame this in terms of relevant examples from nature. Do oak trees hate acorns? Do butterflies hate caterpillars? No. Neither does God reject or hate the Adam and Eve side, the fallen state, of our nature. Instead, God embraces it and loves it and cherishes it by uniting with it in Jesus and becoming fully human, and thereby redeeming and saving and liberating it.

It is as if Paul is saying that Adam is the acorn; Christ is the oak tree. Adam is the caterpillar; Christ is the butterfly. Adam is our old self; Christ is our new self. Adam is our past; Christ is our destiny; Christ is what we will be; Christ is what is now encoded in our very being. Adam and Eve are the way we get there.

But what happens to us when we reject the good news of God’s redemption of the world in Christ, and seek to live as if nothing is changed, nothing is different, and we are still maimed and trapped by Adam’s sin? What happens when an oak tree insists on believing it is still an acorn and tries to act that way? Instead of branching upward and out, it thinks it should be rolling on the floor of the forest. Instead of being a generous home for squirrels, it fears becoming their food. And so on.

And what of a butterfly that thinks it’s a caterpillar? It ignores or denies it even has wings, and drags them like a punishing, heavy set of suitcases through the grass.

What happens to us, who have been delivered and transformed in Jesus Christ, when we think we are still hopelessly crippled by the sin of Adam and Eve? Instead of reaching up and out, instead of flying on beautiful wings, instead of living according to the love of God poured into our hearts by the Spirit in Christ... we still live as if death were our destiny, as if we were waiting for something, as if we were isolated individuals, crawling around in the dirt, oppressed with fear, rage, greed, lust, and so forth.

Paul’s point is that in Jesus Christ everything has changed. The entire universe is now a different place because of what God reveals in Jesus Christ. As he will say in chapter 8: "There is a new creation." And in Christ we are reconnected to this Truth, the Truth that there is a new creation, revealed in God’s saving Presence in the world in Jesus Christ.

IV.

"Christ’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all." That’s what Paul writes. Christ is life "for all." That is perhaps the first thing we have to tell a broken and confused world. That proclamation is the beginning of evangelism. Because of what God has done for the world in Jesus Christ, you and I and everyone and the whole creation are redeemed and delivered. Because of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, you and I and everyone and the whole creation are forgiven, renewed, transformed, and delivered. Because the love of God has been poured into our hearts and into our world in Jesus Christ, there is now nothing that can ever separate us from it.

Christ has revealed that we are butterflies: What would be the point of acting like caterpillars? Christ has revealed that we are spiritual oak trees: What good is it to act like an acorn? We are reborn, renewed, redeemed, changed souls full of freedom and light. We have been washed and renewed and regenerated by the blood of the Lamb of God. We have abilities we never knew we had. Why would we still act like broken mortals crushed under the weight of sin, fear, death, and darkness?

May God bless us with the knowledge and joy of new life, the new life Jesus Christ reveals in all of us; and may we be given the grace to help others find that new life in themselves, because it is there, waiting to be uncovered.

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