In the same way that parents pass financial consequences to their children, so too do they pass spiritual consequences to them, and we are all powerless to escape the debts of our forefathers.
Scripture tells us that the first man, Adam, lived the beginning of his life without sin in a paradise that God created. God created from him a wife, Eve, so that they could “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it.”
The happy couple could have continued in peace by trusting God’s goodness, but they succumbed to doubt and did the only thing God had told them not to do: eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Not only did they disobey what God had said, but they also disregarded the warning He added, “In the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
While Adam and Eve did not immediately expire, God did expel them from Eden and prevented them from living eternally in their disobedience.
“Then the Lord God said, ‘Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—’ therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.”
In the day that Adam and Eve ate of the tree to rely on their own knowledge instead of God’s, they earned death for themselves, since that was the contract that God established with them as their Father—for what child shall not learn obedience to his parents?
For the Christian, and more broadly for every adherent of an Abrahamic religion, that is how mankind allowed corruption to have dominion over every child of flesh and blood. “The borrower is the slave of the lender,” and you can’t ‘pay back’ or erase disobedience. A man cannot undo his actions; he and his posterity must live with them and bear their consequences.
For the nonbeliever, the story also serves as an archetype. There has never been an ordinary man who lived a perfect life and committed no mistakes. Each of us repeats in our own life the disobedience of Adam and Eve; we have all disobeyed our parents, we have all lied, we have all stolen something, and the list goes on. For every one of these offenses, we earn afresh the same consequence that Adam and Eve earned: brokenness and discord that no good deed of ours could erase.
But why was this outcome possible in the first place?
That question can be answered with a question: Would you prefer to be able to interact with the universe to the fullest extent that is physically imaginable, or would you prefer to be controlled by an external force?
The honest answer is the latter option, and that option allows the possibility of brokenness and evil. However, there is a crafty answer as well. Perhaps if we did not know that we were being controlled, we would enjoy having our lives controlled to prevent evil.
We can look at North Korea as a case study of such a scenario. Its people have little to no knowledge of the outside world, and they believe—to varying extents—that their leader is a benevolent deity whose control over their lives is for their good. Such extreme normalization of outside control over oneself is the closest experience to the inability consciously acknowledge it that humans can have. Yet, I do not know of a single person outside of North Korea who would say that that country presents a desirable outcome. Even when compared to the chaotic anarchy of Somalia, I believe that most people would prefer to live in Somalia than in North Korea for the very fact that they would endure a greater risk of evil for the ability to be unimpeded in their autonomy.
We know what we would prefer because we have experiences that we can assign to both options. If we did not have experiences of both, then we would not know which option was truly good. To show that something is good, then, it must compete against something else and win; that is, until all options are explored, no single option can be said to be good. So, regardless of our own preferences for autonomy, autonomy must be granted so that things that are good can achieve the status of being good.
On that subject, I could go one level deeper with an analysis of whether something can be good without allowing anything to prove itself and achieve the status of being good, but doing so would likely only serve to muddle my point.
The great sorrow of humanity is that we were all made in God’s image, wanting to exalt ourselves as the ultimate authority, and by that very desire being consigned to produce a world of chaos. For as every reproduction of an image decreases its quality, so are all man’s efforts to pursue himself instead of the One whom he was supposed to reflect.
Similar to the possibility of disobedience, the punishment for it is also ultimately good. The presence of imperfection renders any formerly perfect thing to be imperfect, so a perfect God cannot allow imperfection to dwell with Him. Were Adam and Eve to live forever, they would have a debt that they could not escape, and it would forever separate them from God. So God, their Father, declared that their corrupted flesh would return to the dust from which it was made so that their spirits might reunite with the Spirit that made them—that their last breaths might return to the Breath from which they came.
However, that still left the debt of disobedience unpaid, since death has no restorative power, although men could not be held responsible for that debt after death. Thus, each proceeding generation inherited the responsibility for the accumulated debts of the previous generations, with none able to pay them off.
Because through Adam all men are corrupted (or because all men have chosen imperfection), salvation cannot come through humanity alone. It then falls to the Creditor to forgive the debt, which He committed to do for the presentation of substitute deaths, or sacrifices. But there are still two problems: 1) the sacrifices do not transform the supplicant to be perfect, and 2) because of that, the supplicants create more debt afterward that requires more sacrifices.
“For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near. Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, since the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have any consciousness of sins?”
These sacrifices did not remove the imperfection that humanity imputed to itself, and habitation with God remained out of reach.
The only solution, then, was to fundamentally transform humanity—flesh and spirit—so that God, instead of corruption, can become its ruler.
That could only happen if God Himself put on human flesh through Adam’s posterity, live a perfect life, offer Himself as a sacrifice and payment for mankind’s debt, overcome death, and return to His perfect dwelling.
Since God cannot vacate His throne over all reality, God the Father sent God the Son to be born of a woman in immaculate conception—for otherwise He would have been born of corruption and not of God—to live as a man, “tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin.”
The man Jesus of Nazareth was God the Son who resisted the devil’s temptations and did not seek his own will but the will of Him who sent him, thereby correcting the mistake of Adam and Eve and every other person that had lived or would live.
“For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.”
On the cross, Jesus made the payment that would cover the sum total of all humanity’s sin.
“For it was indeed fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens. He has no need, like those [former] high priests, to offer sacrifices daily, first for his own sins and then for those of the people, since he did this once for all when he offered up himself.”
By Jesus’s resurrection from the dead, he confirmed that in the day that man conforms to God he shall surely live, and by Jesus’s ascension into heaven, he granted all humanity access to transformation through him, to join him in his eternal life after death—that destiny for which he first created all humanity.
“Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you.”
Now, Jesus is continually before God the Father pleading the cause of humanity by making perpetual presentation of his one sacrifice on the cross, and he stands as the “author and perfecter of our faith,” having done what is only natural to him: being a perfect creator of everything good.
“This makes Jesus the guarantor of a better covenant.
The former priests were many in number, because they were prevented by death from continuing in office, but he holds his priesthood permanently, because he continues forever. Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.”
And make no mistake, Jesus invites with a desperate plea every son of Adam to accept his gift of forgiveness through the cross and transformation through the Spirit to reach life with the Father.
“Whoever comes to me I will never cast out.”
And again,
“No one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
He has chosen everyone, so draw near to him and let him fix this world of brokenness that we have sown.
“Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.”
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