Two truths to savour

In Christ all the fullness of the deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. Colossians 2:9-10

In these two verses (actually one verse plus half a verse) Paul makes two statements, both of them quite extraordinary. Because they take up just twenty-one words in our translation (merely fifteen in Paul’s Greek) they are easy to skim over. But that would be a serious mistake.

I heard of an old-fashioned Scottish preacher who used to ask his congregation to take a Bible truth and “suck it like a sweetie” – no crunching it or swallowing it whole, but really getting the full flavour and richness. In that spirit I invite you to slow down and read these two statements as if you have never read them before, and so allow them to work their work as the Holy Spirit sees fit.

1.   The first statement is about Christ: in him all the fullness of the deity lives in bodily form.

That takes some getting our heads round. Various commentators do a good job of explaining what it means. But in fact no better explanation is needed than one given by Jesus himself during his time on earth.

In John 14:1-10 he aims to comfort and reassure his disciples, troubled as they are by the thought that he will soon be leaving them to return to “my Father’s house”, heaven itself. Philip latches onto the word “father” and makes a request: “Lord, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us”.

To which Jesus, instead of laughing out loud at the naivety of the request, replies completely seriously, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father”. To see Jesus is tantamount to seeing the Father. Isn’t that exactly what Paul is saying in our verse? Putting it another way: Everything that makes God God (that’s “all the fullness of the Deity”) is wrapped up in this man Jesus of Nazareth.

His disciples weren’t to know it at the time, of course – to them, Jesus was certainly a very special and wonderful man. But - God in the flesh!...

If you had told Mary that she had changed the nappy of God-in-the-flesh I suspect that she would have given you a very odd look. If you had told the twelve disciples that that leader they were following – the one snoring in the night, the one tired and requesting a drink of water from the woman at the well, the one who used his own spit to restore the gift of speech to a needy man – that that man was actually God-in-the-flesh, they too would have found it hard to take.

But that’s how it is, and Paul is just spelling it out. The wonder of it is simple: how available to us God has made himself! (The same truth is spelled out at greater length in Philippians 2:5-11 – if you like, an even bigger sweetie to suck.)

The question that arises is: Have I been looking for God in all the wrong places? In ceremony? In miracles? In learned books? In “spiritual gifts”? In long sessions of fasting and prayer? These aren’t all necessarily bad, of course. But… keep it simple! An old hymn used to say “Turn your eyes upon Jesus…” Do that, and you won’t go far wrong.

2.   The second statement is about us, we who have put our trust in Jesus: in Christ you have been brought to fullness.

Slight differences of translation are possible here, but in essence they boil down to the same thought: it is by faith in Jesus, and ongoing obedience to him, that we find our true selves, our fullfilment.

You may, if you are an older Christian of, say, twenty-plus years’ standing, look back in your life and wonder how it would have turned out if you had never become a Christian. You may, of course, have gained  many of the things this world longs for: money, fame, success, popularity, you name it. These things are not necessarily wrong in themselves, but they can so easily become a snare, a ruining of the Christlike person God always wanted you to be.

Then again, you may be able to see people you once knew as being far from God and indifferent to the things of God – people you see now as truly transformed into the likeness of Christ. You shake your head in real wonder: Who would have guessed it! Who indeed?

Perhaps you find yourself doing that as you look back on your own life. Yes, I may not be perfect - in fact, I’m very certainly not perfect! But neither am I the man or woman I was. Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 5:17 suddenly spring to life: “If anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation…” Yes, all that stuff in John’s Gospel about being “born again” really is true!

We are not yet the finished article, that’s a fact. But we are called to live as if we were. In Colossians 3:1-4 there are some great past tenses: we “have been raised” with Christ; we “have died”; our present life “is now hidden with Christ in God”.

Christian, live that life, that resurrection life, that eternal life! – for the finished article, Christlike perfection, is only a matter of time away.

Lord and Father, I confess that I am not the person I ought to be; I am not the person I would like to be; I am not the person you made me to be. But at the same time I am not the person I was, and I am not yet the person who, by your grace, I will one day be. Please help me to live today as what I am: someone dead to sin and raised with Christ. Amen.

Oh Lord, have mercy!

The Lord Almighty… makes wars cease to the ends of the earth. He breaks the bow and shatters the spear; he burns the shields with fire. He says: ‘Be still, and know that I am God…’ Psalm 46:9-10

Oh, how one’s heart sinks! Surely not another war!

We’ve got used to what’s going on in Ukraine. We thought it might last days or possibly weeks; but it’s running into years and there is still no end in sight. And now renewed conflict in the so-called “Holy Land”, right out of nowhere, and the familiar, distressing statistics… so many dead, so many injured, so many missing. Not to mention grim facts that can’t be quantified: the increased intensity of hatred and the burning desire for vengeance in people’s hearts on both sides. Oh, Lord…!

If we are Christians we naturally ask the question “What can we do?”, to which there is no simple answer. Pray, of course; that goes without saying. But somehow – even if wrongly - it seems such a feeble response. See what light we can gain from the Bible, which has much to say about war? Yes; but even there it seems to speak with mixed voices. No wonder many people, including Christians, find themselves slipping into hopelessness and even despair.

But it might be helpful to pull together some of those voices to see what kind of perspective they give us.

The voice of Jesus, of course, is paramount: “You will hear of wars and rumours of wars”; but he then goes on to tell his followers not to be “alarmed” (Matthew 24:6).

These words reassure us that he is Lord of all, that nothing happens outside God’s ultimate control. There is indeed real comfort there – but let’s be honest and recognise that it can seem pretty cold comfort. Who would want to preach a sermon on that verse to a congregation today in Jerusalem or Gaza city? How would it be possible to avoid a hollow ring?

One thing we mustn’t do is to read Matthew 24 and respond inwardly with, “Oh, so that’s all right then. Jesus saw it coming and tells us not to give in to anxiety”. Yes, Jesus did see it coming, and his words do offer reassurance; but to individual men and women and to boys and girls caught up in the horrors of bombs and shells, collapsed and burning buildings, and dead and mangled bodies in the streets, to those poor people something more than words is needed, even the words of Jesus.

Perhaps this is a prompt to focus prayer on those who are genuinely working to provide that “something more” - that they will see what that means in practice, and be given the means to provide it. On the radio this morning I heard two people speaking, one Palestinian and one Israeli, both of them parents of children killed in previous atrocities. They work together for an organisation determined to find a measure of reconciliation between the warring factions. Let’s pray for them and others like them.

In general, of course, the Bible sees war as an evil. The psalmist plaintively laments its prevalence in his day and place: “Too long have I lived among those who hate peace. I am for peace, but when I speak, they are for war” (120:5-7). Isn’t that the authentic voice of the ordinary people who, suffering terribly, just long to “get on with their lives”?

There has never been a time in human history when war has not been part and parcel of life. I still find it slightly startling every time I read 2 Samuel 11:1, which speaks of “the spring, the time when kings go off to war”. It almost seems that just as we speak of “the holiday season”, so in the ancient world they had a corresponding “war season”! It’s just what they did.

The very existence of Israel as a nation depended on being victorious in war. How else would they survive? That didn’t make it right, but simply a fact of life. And that is what explains to at least some extent those uncomfortable passages where God - the God of peace - actually commands war, and why Psalm 144, for example (traditionally ascribed to David), celebrates God as “the Lord my rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle”.

Not to mention those episodes where God commands what today we would see as genocide or massacre, such as Joshua 11:16-21 (which includes that terrible word “exterminate”). I doubt if those words get read very often in church! It’s as if God adapts himself to the ways of sinful humankind in order to bring about his purpose of fashioning a viable nation, while at the same time using war as a form of judgment.

Other passages tell us that, terrible though war is, it is only for a time. Micah 4, paralleled in Isaiah 2, holds out a vision when “all nations” will stream to a new Jerusalem. We are given the wonderful prospect (take time, please, to soak this up!) of armies “beating their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks”, when “nation will not take up sword against nation, nor… train for war any more”, when “everyone will sit under their own vine and their own fig-tree, and no-one will make them afraid”.

That’s desperately hard to imagine in times like the present. But come it will, come it will! If not, the Bible is unreliable and Christianity itself a cruel lie.

Those prophecies will be finally fulfilled in Christ, the Prince of Peace. It is of him, ultimately, that it is said: “He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth. He breaks the bow and shatters the spear; he burns the shields with fire. He says, ‘Be still and know that I am God’…”

It takes faith to believe in that. But if we know the love and grace of God in other areas of our lives, why should we doubt him in this one?

Lord, have mercy!

Lord God, help me to believe these promises – and, until they come true, to work day by day to be a peace-maker in my own little world, following the example of Jesus himself. Please look with compassion on all people who are currently caught up in the horrors of war. And please bless and give success to all those movements and agencies that are committed to working for peace in our troubled, groaning world. Lord, have mercy! Amen.

"I have set you an example..."

When he had finished washing their feet, Jesus put on his clothes and returned to his place. “Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asked them. “You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them. John 13:12-17

We had a little joke in my last pastorate (people often seemed to like taking the mick out of their minister, I can’t think why).

Numbers at our Sunday evening service were far smaller than in the morning, so before we left in the morning anybody who was willing would help with shifting or removing many of the chairs and rearranging them into a more suitable format.

My regular job was to roll one of those old-fashioned mechanical sweepers over the carpet, and this machine was humorously referred to as “Colin’s sweeper”. All good, cheery camaraderie.

But then some people joined us who came from a different country with a different church culture. They were quite shocked to see this. On one occasion one of them actually tried to take “Colin’s sweeper” from me. I was the pastor! – this really wasn’t fitting! (I did, of course, heroically stand my ground.)

You’ll see the connexion with the wonderful scene from John 13, when Jesus, the eternal Son of God, adopted the role of the most menial servant and stripped off, got down on his knees, and washed his disciples’ no doubt quite stinky feet. Simon Peter protested – and was put firmly in his place.

I’m not, of course, presuming to put myself on a par with Jesus – no, no, absolutely NO! But the parallel is there all the same, though in his case  Jesus is teaching a very serious and important lesson.

The most obvious point is about humility.

In the Roman world humility was likely to be despised rather than admired. But among the Jews it was the opposite: “humility”, declares Proverbs, “comes before honour” (15:33, 18:12) – not before disgrace or shame. Moses is described (Numbers 12:3) as “a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth” (which suggests, by the way, that while the first five books of the Bible are traditionally referred to as “the books of Moses”, that title is not to be taken too literally, as suggesting that he wrote every single word of them!).

And of course Jesus declares the “meek” to be “blessed”, to be those who will “inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5). So that memorable action just before his crucifixion (surely the ultimate demonstration of humility) rings wonderfully true.

The more focussed lesson of the foot-washing is about leadership. Jesus is teaching his disciples what kind of leader he is – though by this time in his ministry, some three years on, you would think they should have had a pretty good idea already. Putting it very simply, in Christian circles, leaders lead by serving, not by ruling. Yes, they have an authority which should be respected and even obeyed (Hebrews 13:17), but they have – or should have – no sense of status, no ambition to move up the pecking order.

The climax of the story comes with the words of Jesus: “Now that I, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you should also wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example…” We tend to play down Jesus’ role as example, preferring to emphasise him as the sacrifice for our sins. But it’s possible to overdo this…

(Perhaps this is a suitable moment to pause and ask ourselves the question: Being ruthlessly honest with myself, am I ambitious in a self-glorifying kind of way?)

Of course, there can be a painted-on kind of humility - an oily, unctuous, servile obsequiousness, the sort that might as well be wearing a label round its neck: “Do you see what a wonderfully humble person I am?” It’s even possible to slip into the odd paradox of being proud of being humble(!). Ugh! My knowledge of Dickens’s novels is, I’m afraid, a bit faded; but it’s hard to completely forget the monstrous Uriah Heep in David Copperfield. Or, if Anthony Trollope is your thing, the gloriously grotesque Obadiah Slope in the Barchester novels.

I picked up a story some years ago about one of the early “saints” of the church who was renowned for his wisdom, humility and practical involvement in founding schools and hospitals. An earnest young man visited him one day, obviously keen to impress him. He declared his intention to adopt a monastic life and devote himself full-time to solitude, fasting, meditation and prayer. The old man listened, nodded his head, then quietly responded, “Very good… but then whose feet will you wash?”

Private prayer and devotions are vitally important. Attention to matters of doctrine and interpretation likewise. But whose feet do we wash day by day? Whose feet should I be washing today?

Thank you, Father, for Jesus’ wonderful example described in John 13. Thank you too for the faithful people who have had the love and humility to wash my feet down through the years. Please help me to see Jesus’ example in my mind’s eye, and to consciously follow it. Amen.

A question of balance

See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? Isaiah 43:19

Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. 1 John 4:1

Fads and fashions come and go. Clothes we wore fifteen years ago now look “old-fashioned” (not, of course, that you care if you’re a sensible person). Music likewise: yesterday’s star is today’s forgotten man or woman. On a more serious level, political trends can be much the same; even the kind of language we use to address one another – I was greeted in the street just today by a total stranger who called me “Sir” (yes, really!), though more often it’s strangers on the phone who call me “Colin” as if I was a lifelong friend. That never used to happen!

It happens too in the realm of “religion”. A few years ago in Christian circles everybody seemed to be quoting Jeremiah 29:11: “I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plan to prosper you and not to harm you…” Wonderful words, of course, but spoken originally to a particular people in a particular place and in particular circumstances… Who could be so sure that they applied in your circumstances or mine today, except in the most general sense?

I can remember when what we now call “the charismatic renewal” was brand new. I was a very young Christian, so I was happy to let wiser, more mature heads grapple with that puzzling phenomenon. But there’s no doubt that it created pretty serious waves, waves which are still having their effect, sometimes good, sometimes perhaps not so good, half a century later.

I’ve seen trends for “inner healing”, or perhaps just healing in general (if you have faith you should expect to be healed!). I’ve visited a “Zionist” church, which seemed to see Christianity through the lens of today’s middle-eastern politics. I’ve seen people in worship barking like dogs or howling with laughter or falling over under some kind of emotional – or should I say spiritual? – force. Plus, of course, churches where the virgin Mary almost seems to have supplanted Jesus.

Yes, fads and fashions come and go, even in the life of God’s church. This is why Jesus warned his people against false teachers and prophets; there are sombre words in, for example, Matthew 7:15-23 and 1 John 4:1-3, and Paul speaks about childlike believers who are “tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching” (Ephesians 4:14). We mustn’t say we haven’t been warned!

But wait a minute…

What if God is “doing a new thing” (Isaiah 43:19)? We mustn’t completely discount that possibility, must we? What if the “new thing” is in fact the rediscovery of an important but neglected old thing? Going back again to my own early experience as a Christian I feel now that the Holy Spirit barely figured in my understanding; I don’t remember sermons relating to him or much mention of him at all. So when the charismatic movement hit us all it caused us to do some very serious thinking, and now, some fifty years later, I view it as a genuine movement of God, in spite of errors and excesses.

I’ve put two Bible verses at the top of this blog. The one from Isaiah 43 seems to scold the people for their spiritual blindness – God says “Don’t you see this new thing I am doing?”, implying that they should. But the one from 1 John 4 sounds a warning: “Don’t be taken in by false or misleading teaching!”

And the question arises, “How should we reconcile these two voices?” Don’t they seem to contradict one another?

We sometimes talk about the need to be “balanced” in our views. It may sound rather a dull word, as if all that matters is to be comfortably middle-of-the-road, but it’s a good word all the same. We need to be balanced – biblically balanced – when thinking about fads and fashions.

Some Christians are just plain gullible; they will swallow the latest thing hook, line and sinker. Others are overly sceptical; they have closed minds and are so sure that their views are right that they refuse to consider the possibility that they might have something new to learn. They can come across, frankly, as rather arrogant: “We’re the ones who’ve got it right” (with a patronising shake of the head), “and anyone who takes a different view is sadly lacking”.

The balanced mind is what the Bible calls “discerning”.

King Solomon, newly enthroned following the death of his father David, was invited by God to ask for whatever he would like. And what did he ask for? “Give to your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong…” (1 Kings 3:7-9). Beautiful! – though that was in the days before he descended into folly.

Through meditation, by comparing scripture with scripture, through developing a hunger and thirst for the fulness of God’s truth, by talking with others who are wiser in Christ than we… this is the route to a balanced and discerning discipleship.

This is how to avoid a shallow gullibility on the one hand and an arrogant know-it-all mentality on the other. Lord, help us to get it right!

Dear Father, we live daily amid a swirl of bewildering opinions, enthusiasms and trends, even within your church, and there are times when we find the Bible hard to understand. We want to think and act in accordance with your truth, so please grant us the teaching ministry of your Holy Spirit - and the humility to recognise when perhaps we are wrong. Amen.

In need of encouragement?

Encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. Hebrews 3:13

I need encouragement, don’t you? In fact, after the basic necessities of life – food and drink, work, rest, leisure and so on – I can’t think of anything much I need more.

The Bible has much to say about it. I think it’s rather wonderful that in the early church the apostles gave somebody the nickname “Mr Encouragement” (literally, “son of encouragement”). Joseph Barnabas, whatever his faults and weaknesses might have been, was obviously the kind of person who gave others a lift; as I like to put it, he was a picker-upper rather than a puller-downer (Acts 4:36).

The word most commonly used in the New Testament for “encourage” has a wide range of possible connotations, everything from “comfort”, to “cheer”, to “help”, to “support”, to “exhort”, to “urge”, even, perhaps, to “gee up”. In John’s Gospel Jesus uses it to describe the promised Holy Spirit, where the NIV translates “advocate” (14:16, 14:26, 15:26, 16:27), describing somebody who stands by you and speaks up for you in a court of law.

Whoever wrote the Letter to the Hebrews obviously felt the members of the church he was writing to needed encouragement on a regular basis: “Encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today...” Don’t put it off! If you sense that somebody needs a bit of a boost, then the time they need it is now, not tomorrow or next week or next year; any of those might be too late.

Encouragement, then, is like sunshine after rain. This doesn’t mean, of course, that there is never a time when something a bit sharper or a bit more challenging is needed. The New Testament also tells us there are times we need to correct, warn or “admonish” one another. This can be hard! – but done in a spirit of love and humility it may be the very type of encouragement somebody needs: an act, indeed, of love.

It’s striking how the writer of Hebrews finishes that verse (3:13): we are to “encourage one another daily… so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness”. He is obviously very concerned: to be “hardened by sin’s deceitfulness” is no joke – but why does he speak in such serious terms?

The answer is that a Christian who is losing their way just a little – going off the rails, as we sometimes put it – is likely only to carry on on that track if somebody doesn’t “do a Barnabas” for them. Sin and error can be massively deceptive: what at first seems harmless and innocent enough can gradually become ingrained as an ever-growing bad habit. It is the action of a loving Christian brother or sister to take a deep breath and – well, say what needs to be said. (And we must always remember, of course, that no-one is immune to the danger. As Paul puts it in Galatians 6:1: “if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently. But watch yourselves, or you also may be tempted”.)

I knew somebody once who was asked to leave the church she belonged to; to say she wasn’t happy would be a major understatement. But some years later she told me about it and said, “Looking back now I see it as one of the best things that has ever happened to me”. It had the effect of kick-starting her spiritual life.

Another danger we need to avoid is being so keen to give support that we slip into insincere, shallow encouragement. May God preserve us from both unctuous gushing on the one hand, and what is really a scold with a smile on its face on the other. Most people can spot a false manner or words a mile off anyway (it’s called hypocrisy), and it is no part of Christian love to offer it. Encouragement – yes; flattery  - NO!

One of the greatest things about encouragement is that any of us can provide it. You don’t need a degree in theology or counselling, you don’t need your grasp of doctrine all polished and correct – a kind word or phone call or message, perhaps just a smile, may be enough. I remember somebody once who got really excited because a relative stranger had “remembered my name!”

A fact: tiny things like this can change someone’s day, perhaps even their life. Somebody was lamenting, “I just don’t know what to say to our new neighbours – they don’t really speak English!” and was given the wise advice: “Have you tried ‘Hello’?” That may be all that encouragement means in such a situation.

I started by saying that I need encouragement. Some people who know me may be surprised by that, but I suspect it’s true of even the most self-confident-seeming people: oh yes, we try to project an image of confidence and competence, but stick a tiny pin in our egos and we putter out like a deflated balloon.

Encouragement is, in essence, a part of love. And love is the greatest thing of all, without which we all wither and die. Lord, help me to remember that next time I feel inclined to criticise, correct or find fault!

Forgive me, Father, for the times I dent somebody else’s confidence through unwise or inappropriate words. Just as I delight to be encouraged myself, so help me to be an encourager of others. Amen.

The dark mystery of sin (2)

Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me. Psalm 51:5

I broke off last time intending to share a couple of personal experiences which have a bearing on the mystery of “original sin”, how it can seem baffling and even unjust.

First, a conversation with a fine, committed Christian whose life had turned out hard; she had shed many tears. Hearing her share her sorrows I tried – no doubt very clumsily – to offer some sort of comfort: she had at least received the gift of life, and there had been some times of joy and happiness, that sort of thing. To which she replied, not bitterly or angrily, but in a purely matter-of-fact way: “Yes, but to be honest I think that if I had been given the choice, I would have said No, thank you”.

It wasn’t easy to respond to that! It certainly wasn’t a time for a lecture on the sin of ingratitude! (Or so I felt, anyway – you may think differently.) She was, after all, only doing what Job did when he “cursed the day of his birth” (Job 3:1), but in a far gentler way. She was simply daring to say, “I just can’t see the justice of God in the way the world is, and in the way my own life in particular has panned out”.

Second, a conversation with an older man who was explaining his decision not to become a Christian: “If God knows all things, then he must have known that it would all go wrong! So why did he persevere with his plan? It has led to so much pain and sorrow…”

Again, it wasn’t easy to know how to respond (I was still a teenager at the time, and had only been a Christian a matter of months). As I got to know the Bible a little in the coming years I came across passages like Romans 9:19-21, words written by Paul (admittedly in a rather different context): “Who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this…?”

In other words… God is God. He only does what is good and right, however hard it is for us to understand. There are those who accuse Paul of offering not an explanation but, putting it bluntly, a cop-out in those verses. Well, that may be their choice. But what can we do, ultimately, but tremble and bow the knee? – and cling by faith to the hope that one day we will see it all clearly (as, of course, Job did)?

Those two stories don’t prove anything. But they do illustrate how, even in our own modern world, the question of “original sin” remains a mystery, whether to a Christian or a non-Christian.

So let’s go back to the question: Am I a sinner because I sin, or do I sin because I am a sinner?

My friend Peter, who posed the question, felt that we have to say Yes to both parts. And that, surely, is right. Our consciences, even before we become Christians, produce in us a sense of guilt when we think, say or do something wrong. But it’s also a plain fact that we are born into the world with that tendency to do wrong which is our inheritance from Adam and Eve.

We can, if we like, shake our fists at God (he can take it) or tie ourselves in knots trying to work it all out; but ultimately we will be wasting time and energy. Better by far to recognise Satan, the enemy within, as a sinister reality, and to do battle with him day by day. Explanations can wait until that day when “God will wipe every tear from their eyes”, when “there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things (yes, including sin!) has passed away” (Revelation 21:4).

Above all, let’s not forget the greatest truth of all: a human being has been born into this world who lived and died victorious over all sin. Jesus wasn’t sinless because his mother had been preserved from sin; Mary was a sinner like every other woman and man. No, he was sinless because, where Adam had yielded, he prevailed. When Satan came to do to him, the “last Adam” (1 Corinthians 15:45), what he had originally done to the first Adam, he was sent on his way.

That’s the main thrust of the second part, the rather tricky part, of Romans 5. Yes, the curse of sin is something we inherit from birth – each of us, if you like, becomes our own Adam or Eve, and we become responsible. But that curse is lifted by the second Adam, and we are made free.

By faith we have entered into his victory, and the day will come when that victory will be completed by final resurrection. It was said of Jesus’ encounter with Satan that “the devil left him, and angels came and attended him” (Matthew 4:11).

And that’s exactly what one day they will do for us too!

Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counsellor? Who has ever given to God, that God should repay them? For from him and through him and for him are all things. To him be the glory for ever! Amen. Romans 11:33-36

The dark mystery of sin

Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me. Psalm 51:5

Am I a sinner because I sin, or do I sin because I am a sinner?

This intriguing question was tossed in my direction recently by a friend (thank you, Peter!). I use the word “intriguing”, though possibly “baffling and incomprehensible” might be more appropriate! You may be wondering what the point is: it seems a bit like a theological version of “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?”

In essence, it’s a way of approaching the mystery of what the church has traditionally called “original sin” – how to explain the fact that we human beings seem to have a warp in our make-up that leads us to act in ways we instinctively know are wrong. The Bible has many mentions of “sin”; but where did it originally come from? And in what sense are we individually to blame?

Obviously, all of us who try to be honest will recognise that we do wrong in various ways; we may sum those ways up in the traditional trio: “in thought, word and deed”. That seems reasonable. And if we are Christians, we will then accept the description “sinner” as a result: we are sinners because we sin. No problem.

But what about the second part of the question? If I sin “because I am a sinner”, that smuggles into my mind the thought that I am, so to speak, “pre-programmed” to sin; that in turn suggests that I am not alone responsible for my sin; and that in turn suggests that an injustice has been done to me, that “it’s not my fault!”.

Which raises the question, So who precisely has done me that injustice? To which ultimately there can only be one answer: God, for is he not the maker of all things and the lord of all creation?

In short… if I say that “I sin because I am a sinner”, aren’t I in effect accusing God of being the ultimate author of sin? Which, of course, it is impossible for a Christian to do, believing as we do that God is not only all-powerful and all-knowing, but also perfectly pure and holy.

I don’t know if Peter had been thinking about Psalm 51 when he asked the question, but it is certainly a standard “proof text” for the idea of original sin - that the corruption of sin is something we have inherited  from Adam, our first ancestor, something that has been passed down the generations. Something unavoidable…

“I was sinful at birth”. But how could that be so? How can a new-born baby be guilty of sin? I had never yet entertained a thought, or spoken a word, or done a deed!

“Sinful from the time my mother conceived me”? But how can an embryo be regarded as sinful? How can there be any sense of guilt if I wasn’t even a conscious being? Yet the writer seems to be saying that that is so – and the psalm as a whole certainly is full of that sense of guilt.

It could be that the psalm, traditionally thought to be by David, is applicable just to him personally, and is not intended to apply to the whole human race. But the Bible, once again taken as a whole, makes it clear that sin is a universal feature of every man and woman, so that seems unlikely. Paul makes much of this in Romans 5:12-21.

My own feeling is that the psalmist is essentially using “hyperbole”, a figure of speech which means deliberate exaggeration that the reader will immediately recognise as such – no intention to deceive, but an attempt to press home a particular point – and in this case the point is the sheer inescapability of sin.

Putting it in down to earth terms, we as human beings come into this troubled world as “damaged goods”. There is a fatal flaw in our nature which lays us open to what the Bible calls “sin”. The origin of this is described in the Adam and Eve story in Genesis 3, and it traces it back to an “enemy” or “adversary” pictured as a snake, or “Satan”. Whether we like it or not – and no doubt we don’t! - this enemy is something we are destined to grapple with every day of our earthly lives.

That seems to me a reasonable explanation of original sin, and a reasonable understanding of passages such as Psalm 51. But it still leaves open the big question: “Is it fair?” We didn’t, after all, ask to be born, did we?

I would like to share two stories from my own experience which, more or less directly, touch on this question (even if they don’t provide satisfactory answers).

But I’ve run out of space, so they’ll have to wait until next time…

Our Father and our God, we live every day with the reality of sin and temptation. We know our transgressions, and our sin is ever before us. Help us never to make excuses or to treat sin lightly. But thank you that Jesus came to be our sin-bearer on the cross, and that in him we can find forgiveness, purity, hope and victory. So bring us to that day when sin shall be no more, and we will be perfectly like him. Amen.