When Adam and Eve were created in the Garden of Eden, they
were created differently than all the other creatures. With light, the seas,
the land, the heavenly bodies, the plants, the birds, fish, and animals, with
all these things God spoke them into existence. He said, “Let there be…”
and there was. But when he gave himself the task of creating Man, he did
several things that he didn’t otherwise do. First, he took council within
himself, Moses says. I don’t know that we can totally understand what that
means, for who has known the mind of the Lord? But I think we can say that it
means God thought about the nature and shape that man and woman were to have.
Adam was formed from the ground, and God breathed life into his nostrils. Eve
was subsequently formed from Adam’s rib. God added flesh, and made her a living
being, a suitable companion for Adam. The Bible also says that Adam and Eve
were created in God’s image. That means that something of God’s nature was
stamped upon these creatures like an image can be stamped upon metal to create
a coin. Adam and Eve were by no means gods, but something of God was impressed
upon them that other creatures did not have.
Theoretically, we should be able to know the great
difference that exists between us and animals just by sitting back and
observing how we are different. Indeed, that might work splendidly if we still
possessed the image of God in all its fullness. But that is no longer the case.
Sin has pretty much destroyed the impression God made upon us at the start.
When Adam fell all mankind fell. His sin infects us all. We do not voluntarily
and joyfully enter into God’s will and do what he has commanded just because it
is good and to his glory. The fall into sin introduced a new motivating factor
in us human beings that determines our actions. When we are confronted with a
set of choices we now do not think about God or his will or his glory. Instead,
we ask, “What’s in it for me? Am I going to be benefited by this? Is it going
to give me pleasure or happiness?” If we believe that it will, then we will do
it. If we don’t believe that it will, then we won’t do it, or if we are forced
to do it nonetheless, then we do it with great bitterness.
Another word for this is “selfishness.” We will gladly help
ourselves, but not others. For example, nobody has to threaten and harass a kid
to go to an amusement park. Or nobody has to bribe somebody to eat food that is
delicious. We gladly take up these kinds of things because we want to do them.
Our will is one with these pursuits that give us pleasure. But what about when
a kid is required to do something that helps his or her parents instead of
himself? Do you remember how bitter it sometimes was to do chores that your
parents forced you to do? Sticks and carrots were required to make you do it.
You did these unpleasant things because you knew that you had to do them sooner
or later, because possibly worse experiences might be in store for you if you
didn’t do them, or perhaps you had some reward in store for you if you carried
through with it. If there were no sticks or carrots involved, you just didn’t
do unpleasant things. Punishments and rewards are what motivate sinners,
because sinners care about themselves.
This is the opposite of the way that we were created. It is
the opposite of God. God is love. All the commandments of God may be summarized
with the word “love.” We are not just to love those who do good to us, for this
is nothing other than loving ourselves, in the hopes that the goodness will
keep on coming to us. We are also to love our enemies. Enemies are people from
whom we do not expect anything good for ourselves. What we expect from them is
pain and trouble. If we were to only look out for ourselves when it comes to
our enemies, then, at the very least we would carefully avoid them so that they
can’t hurt us. If we remain involved with them, then we will suffer like Jesus
suffered. Because we are selfish, we do not ever want to suffer. Or if we do
have to suffer, then we want a big fat pay-off in the end to make it all worth
it. This is because we love ourselves more than we love anybody or anything
else.
It is necessary for us to speak at length about the way that
we are unloving and selfish by nature so that we can understand the Bible. The
Bible teaches us things about ourselves and what will happen to us that we are
predisposed to disbelieve. For example, in our Gospel reading today Jesus says
that unless our righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees we will
by no means enter the Kingdom of heaven. The scribes and the Pharisees were
tremendously disciplined and outwardly pious. They were extremely careful to
keep God’s commandments and were exceptionally good citizens. They are
precisely the kind of people that you sometimes hear people talking about when
they say, “If anybody is in heaven, then surely that person is in heaven.” And
yet with the words in our Gospel reading Jesus locks them out of heaven, and
says that they are not good enough.
This is not because Jesus is being artificially nit-picky.
He says this because of the truth of what is going on with these great
achievers. The truth is that they are not motivated by anything else than the
love of themselves. They do what they do so that they can be recognized and
praised. Even their striving for heaven is just another one of their selfish endeavors.
They do not so much believe in God as they believe in themselves and in their
own goodness. There is really nothing that feels so good as feeling good about yourself,
and with their strict codes of conduct the scribes and Pharisees indulge in
this tasty treat. To sum up everything we might say about these scribes and
Pharisees, we could say that they are corrupt in such a deep way that all of
their striving cannot set them free or make them righteous. The power of sin is
so great that there has never been a single soul who has even come close to
setting themselves free from it. So when Jesus says that our righteousness must
exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees he is really saying that no one is
righteous, no, not even one.
In order for us to be accounted righteous before God,
therefore, it is necessary for the most drastic, cosmic, astounding things to
happen. It is even necessary for us to be born again, as Jesus told Nicodemus.
Unless we are born again we cannot see the kingdom of God, Jesus says to him.
Nicodemus naturally wondered how it might be possible to be born again. Jesus
responded that we must be born by the water and the Spirit. That is to say, we
must be baptized.
In our epistle reading today St. Paul speaks about what
happens when we are baptized, and if you will only believe what he says you
will see what drastic and amazing things happen. He says that we have been
baptized into Jesus’s death. Death and hell is the correct punishment for sin.
Jesus, though he knew no sin, became sin for us and endured the punishment for
sin that we deserve. When we were baptized, St. Paul says, we were united with
Jesus in his death—in that punishment for our sins that was carried out on him
so that atonement was made.
Being united with him in his death we are also united with
him in his resurrection. Since we are united with him, we are one with him.
Since we are one with him, we share together in what belongs to each of us. The
Son of God took upon himself our human nature as well as all the sins that we
have committed. That is what he has received from us. What we have received
from him is his own perfect, divine righteousness and perfect justification
before God. We have received his sonship as the Son of God, and are therefore
children of God. We have received from him, therefore also, God’s benediction
and blessing. God is well pleased with us for the sake of Jesus. He gives us
life and love and happiness. These divine blessings will only increase in us
until they are given in full measure in heaven and with the resurrection from
the dead.
And so we should think of ourselves as the children of two
different Adams, as St. Paul speaks of it in his letter to the Romans.
According to our flesh we are children of the Adam who fell into sin. This
wrecked so many things that we cannot even begin to list them all, but the most
precious and important thing it wrecked was our relationship with God. The
entire nature and mentality of human beings is opposed to God from the moment
of our conception in the womb of our mothers. We are not motivated by love of
anyone or anything except ourselves. This results in coarse, disgusting
outbreaks of sins, and we all well understand that. What we might not understand
so well is that this false mentality also infects and corrupts even our
seemingly good deeds. The scribes and Pharisees looked splendid on the outside,
but inwardly they were full of uncleanness. This is what we have inherited from
the first Adam.
The second Adam is the Lord Jesus Christ. We are born from
him by the water and the Spirit, by Holy Baptism. What we inherit from this
Adam is justification before God so that we are accounted righteous by the
atonement that Jesus has worked for us on the cross. We are therefore
reconciled and acceptable to God. Furthermore we are given the Holy Spirit, so
that we begin to love and trust in God. We begin to take delight in the will
and Law of God and enter into it with our own will. We begin to love as God has
first loved us. From the first Adam we received sin, hatred of God, death, and
hell. From the second Adam we have received forgiveness, righteousness, life,
and salvation.
Notice how both of these states of being that we have
received from the two Adams is above and beyond us all. Nobody has ever asked
to be born. We are not in control of that. Likewise, nobody has ever been born
without sin after Adam and Eve fell. We have inherited sin from them just as we
inherit any number of different genetic traits. It doesn’t matter if someone
wishes with all their might to be a foot taller than they actually are, it
isn’t going to happen. It’s been inherited whether they like it or not.
Likewise, our sin and damnation is such that it belongs to us whether we like
it or not.
The same thing is true with the gift that is given to us in
our baptism into Jesus Christ. This gift is not dependent upon us in any way.
Jesus is who he is. He does what he does. He gives what he gives. If he
baptizes and forgives and saves, then that is precisely what takes place. It
isn’t up to us to dictate what Jesus can or should do. It’s his baptism. He
does with it what he wants.
Now it can seem as though we have something to do with our
salvation because baptism is a gift that can only be received by faith, and we
are able to disbelieve. But this is no great ability, nor is it praiseworthy.
In order for you to see this, consider this analogy. Let’s say that you are the
heir of someone who is as rich as rich can be. As the heir to this rich person,
all the money that belongs to that rich person belongs to you. But let’s
suppose that you decide that you are going to pretend that you aren’t the heir,
and so you are poor and destitute, miserable and pathetic. Is that some kind of
great achievement? No, it is just sheer stupidity and ungratefulness. So it is
also when we deny the inheritance that we have as baptized children of God. Why
on earth would we deny the salvation that is given to us as children and heirs
of God? And yet it happens, because sin makes us stupid.
But God has given us his Word to make us wise. What God’s
word teaches us is our great need on the one hand, and God’s incredibly
gracious promises on the other. For our salvation, for the renewal of our life,
for us to beat back sin, we do not look to what is within us. All that we are
going to find in our heart is the evil that we have inherited from the first
Adam. Instead we look to the second Adam and the second birth, and what God has
promised and achieved thereby. Because God is gracious, he has washed you with
the Baptism of rebirth and renewal. This is not in any way your doing, but
rather God’s doing. In embracing this gift of God you have salvation according
to Jesus’s own Word: “Whoever believes and is baptized shall be saved. Whoever
does not believe will be condemned.”
Baptism is more powerful than your sin, and so why do you
remain in your sin? Why do you believe that it is still bound to you and that
you cannot ever be free from it? You are in Jesus who is risen from the dead.
Death no longer has dominion over him. Likewise, therefore, it also has no
dominion over you. Therefore, consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God
in Christ Jesus.
