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Matthew 4:1-11; Romans 5:12-19
A Sermon for the First Sunday in Lent
What is the problem? That’s what the texts for today are asking.
Paul Tillich said that Luther’s question: “How can I find a gracious God?” may have been true in Luther’s time, but that’s no longer true today. Rather the question today is: Is there a God at all? Does God exist?
There have been a number of public intellectuals, atheists, who have taken up the question: Does God exist? And they have answered: No. Most well-known are those called the New Atheists (Harris, Dawkins, Dennett, and others). Each of them in their own way makes what’s called a category error. They judge religion by the rules of a certain kind of logic and science. It’s like judging the Mona Lisa by analyzing the chemistry of the paint Leonardo Da Vinci used. That’s a category error.
Another public intellectual, the English philosopher Roger Scruton (1944-2020), criticized the New Atheists. He said they think they can dissolve the sacred into biology. They don’t understand that religion deals with the meaning of life, and the meaning of life is not reducible to science. That’s a category error.
Another problem is that when you come down to it, everybody may not “believe in God,” but everybody has a God, even atheists. Whatever is final for you is your “God.” Whatever is decisive. If you say, God must be reasonable to us, then whatever “reason” means to you is your “God.”
Psalm 14:1 (also Psalm 53:1) says: “The fool has said in his heart: ‘There is no God.’” By which the psalmist doesn’t mean that one, the fool, is stupid, but rather: To say there is no God is foolishness.
What then do we do about all this?
The problem is original sin. What is the origin of it? What is the basis for and continues to be what sin is about?
“In Adam’s fall, we sinned all.” That’s a famous line from the New England Primer, 1690. What is it about? There is a lot of misunderstanding. People think it has to do with sexuality or some mechanical transmission of sin.
That happens when people misuse Psalm 51:5: “I was born in sin and in sin did my mother conceive me.” And Romans 5:12: “As sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned.”
Augustine famously misunderstood this verse and interpreted it to mean that original sin is inherited from birth. But you will have noticed it means “because all sinned.” Not that there was some kind of biological taint that was passed on.
What was original sin about? It wasn’t defined by the Western church until 529 A.D. at the Second Council of Orange. Then it was forgotten for 500 years because it was so obvious that we’re all on a slippery slope. We’re not able not to sin.
What does this mean? What if we compare original sin to a wrecked car. As we all know, a wrecked car can mean more than one thing. It can mean a fender bender, that can be fixed by getting a new fender or a new grill. Or it can mean that the car was totaled and the whole thing is junk.
The analogy breaks down because even when a car is totaled, some parts might be salvageable. They could be taken out of the wreck and reused.
Something else is going on with original sin, and again we can go back to Augustine. He is famous for saying: “My heart is restless ‘til it rests in thee.” He was saying that we have within us a bent for God.
But Luther and his fellow Reformers said (in effect): “No, that’s not right. We don’t have a bent for God. To the contrary, we would rather be gods ourselves. We are rebels. We want to run our lives and run the universe. And please don’t bother me.”
What the Lord does is snatch us even as we rebel and fight against him. We are unable not to sin. We want to be gods ourselves.
We come then to the text in Matthw in which Jesus and Satan are in this debate. Shakespeare picks this up in The Merchant of Venice, Act I: “Even the devil quotes Scripture to his ends.” After all, the question is not who can quote Scripture, because even the devil can, but the real question is: What is the proper use of Scripture? Or put another way: What is the problem as well as the solution?
We go back to Genesis 2 and 3. Recall that Adam and Eve were not to eat of that tree of good and evil that was in the middle of the garden. The devil lies to them and says: “Don’t worry. You will not die.” Of course that means you will not die right away.
What is it that they tempted by? They are tempted by knowing the difference between good and evil and being wise like God.
That’s the beginning, the origin, and the meaning of what sin is about. It’s put even more directly by Paul in 1 Cor 4:3-4: “But for me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. I do not even judge myself. I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me.”
In other words, in both Genesis 3 and 1 Corinthians 4, the great temptation is to think that we know what sin is, and that we can discern it, and that we can handle it. That’s the great temptation. But we can’t. As Luther said in his famous discussion of good works: “All the commandments are really the First Commandment: Thou shall not have other gods before me.” But we don’t like it. We want to run things ourselves. That’s called spiritual pride.
The real problem with Adam and Eve was: “Don’t eat of that tree, obey. That’s it.” And they answered: “Well, no. I want to know what and why, and I want to be able to decide the rest.” That’s what is so profound about that material.
In a similar way in 2 Cor 11:14, Paul writes: “Even Satan appears as an angel of light.” What people think is: “That applies to others, but not to me. I know if something is an angel of light or an angel of darkness.” But we don’t. That’s the problem.
That’s why in Romans 5, we have this remarkable second part of the text: 5:18: “As one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to acquittal and life for all men.” That is where we have the first Adam and the second Adam. And that’s where we can know what good and evil is, and what it is to be wise.
But note those two key words – “much more” – Paul uses that 4 times here (!) – in what Jesus Christ has done. It’s the cross that tells us how serious sin is. Apart from the cross we have no sense of no sense of how serious sin is.
The cross tells us how serious it is and then it tells us “much more”: It tells us he’s taken care of it. That’s what we look forward to as we look forward to Good Friday and Easter.
Amen