Before I can leave off the subject of Adam and the first sin, I need to include a few words on the matter of his relationship to us, and to his position. We speak of Adam not only as the shared progenitor of all mankind, but as the federal head of all mankind. “For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive” (1Co 15:22). Paul expends a great deal of effort in delineating these two federal heads, the one of humanity and the other of redeemed humanity. What has happened? In Adam, the progenitor of all mankind, we might say that all mankind was present. This is not a concept fashioned from whole cloth, but one utilized by Scripture in another setting; that of describing the priesthood of which Christ is High Priest.
The author of Hebrews points us back to Melchizedek, king of Salem, to whom Abraham paid a tithe. The author’s point in this, as in the whole of his letter, is to demonstrate from the Old Testament scriptures that Jesus, the High Priest after the order of Melchizedek, is the superior, even superlative head of a superior, even superlative religion, and author and assurer of a superior, even superlative covenant. He points to the he logic here. “Without dispute the lesser is blessed by the greater” (Heb 7:7), and it was the case that Abraham the patriarch was blessed by this Melchizedek (Heb 7:1). Abraham further witnessed the order by giving a tithe of his spoils of war to this Melchizedek who blessed him. This brings us to our point. “And, so to speak, through Abraham even Levi, who received tithes, paid tithes, for he was still in the loins of his father when Melchizedek met him” (Heb 7:9-10).
Abraham, in that moment, may be said to have stood as representative of all who would descend from him. Here is a point of distinction, however, between Adam and Abraham. Abraham did not stand as federal head for all mankind, nor even for all Israel. We cannot even rightly state that he stood as federal head for all who would have faith in Christ, as important as he is in that regard. There are but two such federal headships identified in Scripture: That of Adam and that of Christ.
As concerns Adam’s headship, what this indicates is that his success or failure was to be accounted the success or failure of all mankind. Indeed, if we consider the scope of the impact of his failure, we could say that his success or failure was to be accounted to the whole of creation. But we are not given to understand that Adam stood as representative for every living thing, only for himself, his wife, and his progeny. Sadly, that reality has played out throughout the history of man. We may not sin in the likeness of Adam, but we sin. We may or may not, as the circumstances of our upbringing dictate, have ingrained awareness of God’s commandments. We may or may not have been raised with an awareness of God. These factors alter nothing. The full declaration of Scripture is that all have sinned, all have fallen short, and all have done so knowingly. The first part we are familiar enough with. It is an explicit and unmistakable declaration. We have more trouble with the last bit. Yet, it, too is an explicit declaration. “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse” (Ro 1:18-20).
Here is the summation of Scripture: There is no such thing as the man who doesn’t know God. God makes Himself evident through His creation. None shall come before Him on the Last Day with the plea that they had no idea. Face to face with God, the idea of lying and offering excuses shall, I suspect, be done away, utterly inconceivable even to the most hardened sinner. It would be pointless, and that pointlessness will be manifestly obvious to all. We knew. Our knowledge may have been imperfect, but then that is primarily because we didn’t really want to know. We preferred our seeming autonomy.
Back to our federal head. He knew. This was no sin of omission, or sin committed in ignorance that God might, were He so inclined, find cause to dismiss the failing. This was blatant, knowing disobedience. This is not the baby exploring his world and in the course of doing so doing something he ought not to do. This is the baby looking back to check that mommy and daddy aren’t looking before proceeding to do something he knows full well he ought not to do. Eve may have been deceived, but Adam was not. He went to it with eyes wide open. He failed. Because he failed, from a legal stance, mankind failed.
Understand this. We are discussing matters of forensics here, forensics of the heavenly court. These are legal proceedings, and God is both prosecutor and defender, both judge and jury. Here is the truly supreme court, the decisions of which are beyond all appeal. Adam bore responsibility for all who would follow. Did he know this? I don’t know. He may have had an inkling of it. After all, he did have that other command, to go forth and multiply. This, too, would be an act of obedience to God, and it’s not hard to understand how the Roman Catholic church arrives at the idea that anything which interferes with the fulfilling of that commandment is necessarily a sin. But, just at present we are concerned with Adam
Adam’s sin was determined, and because he stood as the legal representative of all mankind, all mankind was determined to have sinned. All would fall under the penalty due to Adam, the penalty of death. It is thus that Paul can argue that death is the evidence of participation in the sin of Adam. We may ask when sin begins, and we are forced to answer, as David did, “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me” (Ps 51:5). There is something in us that wishes beyond all things to believe that the little baby born to us is born in innocence, that the child that dies in its first months, or certainly that child that dies in the womb, is innocent of sin, and must necessarily go to heaven. God could not be so cruel! But, hear this and hear it well. “In sin my mother conceived me.” Find that point you construe as the start of life. Most of us would, I think, point to that moment of conception, the first seconds in which sperm has fertilized egg, and this new human being has begun to form. It may be no more than a few cells, yet there is life there. At that juncture, says Scripture, this new life is a sinner, born of its father, Adam, and bearing the weight of his failure as our representative.
Oh, but that’s so unfair! Yet, we understand that if the president, our federal head so far as civil government is concerned, undertakes to commit the people and the produce of this nation to some treaty, we cannot say that we didn’t sign on for that, and refuse to heed its terms. In our form of governance, this is not, finally, the determination of one man standing for all, but the culmination of such a system on smaller scales. It is a representative government, and like it or not, we are at least ostensibly bound by the decisions made by those who represent us. If we are law abiding citizens, those laws constrain our actions, whether we agree with them or not. They constrain our children, even children as yet unborn, whether we or they agree with them or not. I am, of course, simplifying the case to suit the analogy, but you get the point. Federal representation is a common enough concept, and if we will look at it in a setting less freighted with emotions, we will recognize that in almost every aspect of life this plays out. Decisions are made that are binding upon us even though we have had no direct input into the decision making.
So it is with this matter of Adam’s federal headship and original sin. The decisions made by Adam are binding upon us. From the very moment of conception they are binding upon us, because he is our federal head, our representative, and what he has determined, and the reward or penalty for that determination, is ours to bear as well as his. The sovereign who surrenders his sovereignty in war commits his people as well as himself to submit to the victor. The child born to the conquered citizen is just as conquered as the citizen to which he is born. Again, this is hardly some novel cruelty on God’s part. It is our standard experience in every aspect of life.
Now this is not to say that God cannot in fact save that child that died in the womb, or died in earliest months. I cannot go so far as to insist He does in fact save every child whose death is, by our measure, prior to the age of accountability. That, after all, is really an idea of our own conceiving, and not a biblical principle, so far as I can see. But whether God chooses to save a particular infant or not is His business, a decision arrived at by His own good reasons, whatever that decision may prove to have been.
I must observer further that, these things being true, it necessarily follows that they hold true as well for the victim of abortion. I use those words advisedly. The aborted child is in fact a child and it is in fact a victim, victim of murder. We may couch it in whatever softening terms we like, but the terminology will not change the harsh reality. A murder has been committed, and of necessity, every murder has a victim. But, we cannot, on this basis, say that the death was undeserved. No. Death remains the evidence of sin, and of sin’s guilt. We may not care for the timing. Indeed, I suspect it is the extreme rarity that one does care for the timing of death. We don’t like it, and rightly so. Death is not how things are supposed to go. If there is any one thing that reveals to us the reality of God, it is this! We encounter death and we know there’s something wrong with that. It shouldn’t be that way. It’s not right. Well, congratulations. You agree with God. It isn’t right. It isn’t according to the proper design. It is the necessary, and necessarily just punishment of sin. It is the impact of the failure of our federal head, Adam, who, having been told outright,“in the day that eat from [the tree of the knowledge of good and evil] you will surely die” (Ge 2:17). He knew what he was doing, and he knew the cost, and he did it anyway. And, “through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so sin spread to all men, because all sinned” (Ro 5:12). There is no escaping the impact.
[11/20/19]
Your president, Adam, surrendered the kingdom to another. He abdicated the throne, and all man, all creation ever since has been dealing with the consequences. Perhaps stated thus it is more readily seen that what has transpired in this case is no different than what transpires constantly in all our earthly affairs. Those in charge make decisions and, as they are acting as our representatives, we are legally bound by those decisions. There is no appeal to countervailing opinions. There is no legitimate cry of, “he’s not my president.” There is either legal compliance or illegal rebellion.
I have to note that the same applies in church governance by and large, for wherever we find man we necessarily find structures of governance. It is never the case that man acts solely as a law unto himself. He may think he can, and he may even appear to get away with the very thing for a time, but in due season the truth is found to return in force. As some great author wrote., apparently John Donne, “No man is an island.” Since I’ve had to look it up, I may as well provide the whole, for it contains as well another familiar line. “No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as any manner of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
My, what a depth of thought is there, and far more than is generally seen in the few bits so often quoted. Man is ever in community. And does this not accord with God’s design? “It is not good for the man to be alone.” No, it never is. There is warning to our present tendency towards isolation, supposing that the glow of the screen is sufficient companionship, sufficient contact with the rest of humanity. It is not, nor ever can be. I could take as well the words of Bob Dylan that have been coming up in the context of our current sermon series at church. “We all serve someone.” Yes, we all answer to someone, and I think we can reasonably say that in the Christian context, rightly understood, we all serve everyone. That’s the goal, at any rate. But, as inheritors of Adam, we all fall short of the goal. Constantly.
