For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! (Romans 5:15, NIV)
I read some time ago of a family who’d taken to calling today, December 23, “Christmas Adam.” Tomorrow, Christmas Eve. Today, Christmas Adam. Since, you know, Adam came first.
Maybe it’s a feeble joke, but it points to some strong theology, taken up by Paul in his letter to the Romans, an unusual place to turn in the Christmas season, and yet…
Christmas—when we first put aside visions of shiny new golf clubs dancing in our heads—is about Immanuel, God with Us. You’ll likely hear your pastor speak of “the incarnation of Christ.” If Mary, like many a caring mother, kept telling Jesus he needed to “put some meat on those bones,” that was the irony. Jesus had meat on his bones. The God who is spirit became the God who is flesh. He did this, Paul told the Romans, as the second man.
The first man, Adam, introduced sin to the world. “In this way death came to all, because all sinned” (Romans 5:12). Credit to Adam, humanity was, humanity is, in a bad way. More than humanity, actually—for Paul noted later that “the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.”
Sin hurts. Personally. Judicially. And potentially eternally.
What sin demands is a Savior. Not a combover or a salve or a mother’s kiss. These are nice, but they do not rescue a dying soul.
Movie makers and their writers understand our desperation. They keep planting heroes at the heart of their screenplays.Movie makers and their writers understand our desperation, however subconsciously. They keep planting heroes at the heart of their screenplays. Sometimes subtlety won’t do the trick. We need a lightning flash and a grand entrance. We need it to be obvious that the hero has entered the picture, in both the cinematic and the idiomatic senses of the word.
I wonder where they got the idea? Perhaps from the old classic, The Greatest Story Ever Told. Perhaps from a mountainside above Bethlehem, where the sky filled with the glory of angelic presence and the hero’s entrance was duly announced: “Unto you a Savior is born.”
We don’t ever want to reduce Jesus Christ to another champion in the movies. But the truth is that he reduced himself, becoming a man capable of doing what only God could do: erase the sin that kills us.
Maybe it should not surprise us in our context today that Paul closed his thoughts on Adam and Jesus with a refrain—God’s provision is a gift. If it’s one you have yet to unwrap, today can be the day of your salvation.
“For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ!” (Romans 5:17)
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Jeff Hopper
December 23, 2019
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The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.
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