Good Morning!
Today’s catechism lesson comes to us from Question #18. It sits below:
Q. 18. Wherein consists the sinfulness of that estate whereinto man fell?
A. The sinfulness of that estate whereinto man fell, consists in the guilt of Adam’s first sin, the want of original righteousness, and the corruption of his whole nature, which is commonly called Original Sin; together with all actual transgressions which proceed from it.
As explained last week “estate” means the life situation that one finds themselves in. The issue, the question, that this part of the catechism is seeking to answer is what happened to mankind after Adam sinned in the Garden by the eating of the Forbidden Fruit? In other words when God told the man and the woman that they would surely die if they ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil what kind of death did they experience? Well, we know obviously from the Bible that they didn’t pull an Ananias and Saphira. Lightning didn’t strike. No one was there to drag them out and bury them. However, the first inkling we have of what it might be is that they feel shame. They make for themselves leaf-based clothing to cover their nakedness and when the LORD appears in the Garden they hide. No one had to tell them to be weary of the presence of God after their sin. They knew in their souls it was wrong, but did not know what to do about it.
As we will hear this week from Genesis 3:8-13 the only thing Adam and Eve could agree on was that it was someone else’s fault. It was that woman, that serpent, another that made me do what God had told them not to. Pushing off of responsibility to the other is part of the way that sinners of all stripes deal with the conviction which they suppress in unrighteousness. Running away with fingers in the ear when called to repentance either by the unaided conscience or by the application of the word of God is what we see sinners do throughout the Bible, and today. As we read in Jeremiah 11 last night at prayer meeting it was this hatred of the preaching of the prophet that caused the people to want to kill him. Sinners don’t like being told they are sinners because they love their sin. They want nothing else but to revel in their sin and resent anyone telling them that they ought to change their way of life, regardless if the way they are going leads to destruction, sadness, and trials. Sinners love death. Here is exactly what the Catechism question is talking about when it speaks of the “corruption of the whole nature”. The way sin-addled humans look at the world is concentrated in how they can destroy themselves, and the sad reality is that they will get this wish in eternal perdition where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth. They would rather be wrong in the Lake of Fire, than admit to their fault.
This especially is central to the idea of what death does when it enters into the world because of Adam’s sin. We only have life, we can only experience life in the Triune God. There is a reason why the Scriptures identify light with life and darkness with death. But sinners don’t want light because it exposes the frailty and wastefulness of sin and shows it for what it is. Sin is a death cult. It savors grabbing hold of men and women and dragging them to Hell.
As was talked about in the sermon last Sunday the emotion, the feeling of shame is a way that our sense of right and wrong testifies to us that something is not right. There is a positive sense in which it is good that Adam and Eve saw their nakedness. It is somewhat similar to how Paul talks about the benefits of the Law in Romans 7. Remember there the Apostle notes that he did not know it was wrong to covet until the law written on his heart, showed him what God requires. The problem is how he in his wicked condition reacted to what the Lord had instituted in His commandments.
Pay attention to what he writes here in Romans 7:7-11:
What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! On the contrary, I would not have known sin except through the law. For I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said, “You shall not covet.” But sin, taking opportunity by the commandment, produced in me all manner of evil desire. For apart from the law sin was dead. I was alive once without the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died. And the commandment , which was to bring life, I found to bring death. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it killed me.
One could almost say that the law is like a nerve ending that awakens us to pain. It is a mirror which reflects truth. The problem is we are dead in sin. We do not want to deal with reality. Instead of moving Paul to repentance, sin motivated by the Law kills him dead even more. Lacking that original righteousness, the image of God being destroyed by Adam, we do not have the ability or desire to straighten out the crooked rod of our heart because we long for death. Our brains are so messed up we cannot in any way recognize the good.
Sinners heed the false counsel of the Devil and are willingly deceived by him, and do not want to do something about it. They revel in the destruction of sin because to admit that they cannot deal with it would be submitting to the fact that God was right in telling Adam and Eve not to eat of the Tree.
Humanity learned evil, and lost our knowledge of good.
That is how we died when Adam ate.
So what is the solution? While our Catechism question this week does not give us the answer, I think it needful to end our time together with that so as to not leave us in despair. So let’s go back to Paul. Take a moment today to meditate on these words from Ephesians 2:1-8 as they explain to our hearts and souls what it means to be awakened out of death and into the life granted and given to us by our Heavenly Father in Christ:
And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others. But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God,
Rest in this.
Here is today’s extra reading:
https://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/salvation-lord
Blessings in Christ,
Rev. Benjamin Glaser
Pastor, Bethany ARP Church