To Know Him for Fully: A Sermon for the 1st Sunday in Lent

A common thread that runs through our entire liturgy today is temptation. The Collect for the First Sunday in Lent begins by recalling Jesus’ temptation by Satan, and then asks God to help us, knowing that we are “assaulted by manifold temptations.” Our reading from Genesis tells us of the Great Fall – where humankind succumbed to temptation by the crafty serpent. And then in our gospel lesson, we hear of Jesus’ 40-day temptation in the wilderness. The difference between these two accounts, of course, is that Jesus was able to resist temptation, while Adam and Eve were not.

During the Season in Lent, the Proper Preface for the Eucharistic Prayer also focuses on temptation, as it says, “Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who was in every way tempted as we are, yet did not sin…” – again, like the Collect, a nod to our Gospel lesson today.

So right out of the gate, on the First Sunday in Lent, we are being asked to grapple with the very thing that the first human beings grappled with. And also what our Lord and Savior grappled with. Of course, we all know who was able to resist temptation and who was not. The dichotomy is clear.

But I think we have to be careful with these lesson and prayers, lest we leave worship today with the wrong message. Otherwise, we might get all worked up and inspired by Jesus’ formidable self-control, discipline, and obedience, and come to believe that the purpose of Lent is for us to be like Jesus. All we have to do this season is try harder – if we pray, fast, attend Adult Formation classes, volunteer, give alms to the poor – we just might be able to go 40 days without succumbing to the “manifold temptations” that assault us. And if we really try hard enough, we might even live a sin-free life, if for only 40 days.

If we approach Lent this way, we have missed the mark. The bottom line is that no matter how hard we try, no matter how faithful we are, we will always be Adam and Eve. Until Christ comes again to judge the living and the dead, we will never achieve perfection in Christ.

So then, if this is the case, then what’s the point? Why even try to live a faithful, obedient, holy life if we know that we will always end up succumbing to temptation? I think the answer to this question, and the way to approach this broad gulf between Adam and Eve on the one hand and Jesus on the other, lies in our lesson from Paul’s letter to the Romans. In Paul’s language, he is drawing the distinction between what he refers to as the two Adams. The “first Adam” not only refers to the first human being, but also is a representative term for all of humankind.

The first Adam – created in God’s very own perfect image – succumbed to temptation, and by their own will chose to disobey God. Ever since then, all of humankind has been living under the image of the fallen “first Adam”, who “introduced sin and death into the world.”[1] Paul saw Jesus as the “second Adam,” sent by God to redeem the “first Adam” by bringing forth life out of death. This is a brilliant use of metaphor, wordplay, images by Paul to communicate the truth of the Good News of Jesus Christ.

What Paul recognized to be true was that through the sin and disobedience of the first Adam, all of humankind thereafter inherited the penalty of death. No longer was humankind immortal, as we were first created to be. This theology of inherited – or original - sin is scandalous for many people. Many Christians today refuse to believe it. We shouldn’t be held responsible for something someone else did a long time ago. We didn’t eat the forbidden fruit in the garden. God wouldn’t hold me accountable for what someone else did a long time ago. Adam’s sin doesn’t affect me. When I choose to disobey God, it has nothing to do what the first Adam did a long time ago. And so the arguments go.

But Paul doesn’t stop with inherited sin. His understanding of the consequences of the Second Adam are just as scandalous as the first – actually much more so. Paul asserts that just as sin came into the world through one person, so did salvation. I think Eugene Peterson’s translation of Romans 15-16 from The Message can help us hear the dichotomy Paul’s lifts up between the first and second Adam. It reads like this:

 “Yet the rescuing gift is not exactly parallel to the death-dealing sin.

If one man’s sin put crowds of people at the dead-end abyss of separation from God,

just think what God’s gift poured through one man, Jesus Christ, will do!

There’s no comparison between that death-dealing sin

and this generous, life-giving gift.

The verdict on that one sin was the death sentence;

 the verdict on the many sins that followed was this wonderful life sentence.”

My friends, that is the gospel in a nutshell right there. As bad as the news is that we are implicated by the actions of the first Adam, we have the scandalous Good News that we are redeemed by the actions of the second Adam. Yes, one person’s disobedience affects all of humankind, whether we like it or not. But in Christ, one person’s obedience graciously affects all of humankind as well.

Ted Blakley tells us that “Paul argues that the positive effects of what Jesus accomplished not only reverses the consequences of Adam’s sin but completely surpasses them. This is because the grace and graciousness of God is so far superior to the power of sin and death.”[2]

So, as we begin our journey together through this holy season of Lent, let us remember that none of us will get through these 40 days in the same obedient, faithful, sin-free manner that Jesus did in his 40 days in the wilderness. Because we have inherited the sin of the first Adam, we too will succumb to the manifold temptations that assault us. But we also must remember what Paul wrote just one verse after what we read today – “where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.” As children of the first Adam, we do not have to live in despair. We are not sentenced to eternal death. In the second Adam – Jesus Christ – we have eternal life.

During this season in Lent, I encourage us all to not try to heroically make it 40 days without failing. That is simply impossible, and it is not what God expects of us. Rather, during this holy season, we are called to engage our faith in such a way that we come to know Jesus more intimately, more deeply, and more fully. And as we come to know and experience him in this way, then we will better be able to rejoice and be glad in the great Good News of new life in Christ, who died so that we all might live. 

[1] J. Ted Blakley, A Lector’s Guide & Commentary to the Revised Common Lectionary, Year A.

[2] J. Ted Blakley, A Lector’s Guide & Commentary to the Revised Common Lectionary, Year A.