We are a cursed people. The stench of death hangs upon this world. It stalks us all. It lurks, like a specter, in the back of our minds from the time we become aware that we are persons to the time we breathe our last. It casts a shadow over all we do. Everything here rots. Everything here dies. Everything here turns to dust.

Nature itself feels the weight of death's oppression. The creation sighs, and it does not willingly suffer the sons of men to trample her underfoot. The earth longs for restoration, for the wicked to be put down, for death to crushed underfoot. If creation were not bidden by her Master to hold us up, she would gladly cast us off and be rid of our cursed ilk. The sons of men are cruel stewards.

Man is cursed to separation. He is separated from his God, and he is separated from the creation he was made to tend. He spends his life in fear of dying, wondering if there is something beyond this world of thorns and thistles. He sees the withering flower that dies and leaves no trace, he sees the oak tumble and burn, he watches his crops die for lack of rain, he hears his babies cry with hunger, he sees time etch her marks on his skin, and he knows he is headed for his doom. All of this, whether he knows it or not, is just recompense for his own wickedness.

It is a testament to the horror of sin and the depth of man's cursedness that the heinous thing we call death, the blight that permeates the world, is a mercy. Death is a mercy, though she is cloaked in terrible garments. For the Lord God said upon man's fall, "Behold, the man has become like on of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and live forever..." (Gen. 3:22). God drove the man out of paradise and into the clutches of death in order to save him from a fate worse than dying, a fate worse than a thousand generations of cancer, murder, rape, starvation, and war. A fate worse than a stillborn upon the lap of an inconsolable mother.

This brings us to the greatest shame of the sons of men and the source of our greatest misery. We are blinded to glory and goodness. We are utterly unable to see holiness. For if we could see glory, and if we knew holiness, we would never have to wonder if death were a mercy, whether our suffering is just, and how it could be that starving is preferable to God's displeasure.

Man is a cursed brute, and the world is full of his stench. No one knows this like a man who has been set free by that alien thing called grace, who has caught the scent of heaven, who has seen the glory of eternity, and who has been enveloped by the love of God that invades this wretched place. Only this kind of man, a man freed from the misery of sin, can see that God must kill us to save us, and that all our sufferings here, all of our miseries, are nothing in comparison to knowing the glory of God in the risen King, Jesus Christ. The cursed world thinks this man is insane, thus adding to the misery and the longing for the sons of God to be revealed.

Labels: Catechism Buzz, The Fall

Adam was created as a righteous being. By that I mean that Adam was created in a state that was fit to stand in the presence of God. He was in this state from the very beginning, that is, it wasn't as though Adam started off neutral, and then became fit to stand in God's presence through subsequent obedience. He was righteous from the get go and his obedience was the natural adornment of that righteousness.

The moment Adam rebelled against God's command, however, he lost this state of righteousness falling into a state of corruption. Corruption (in this sense) is used to describe the lack of that righteousness from which all obedience flows.

Did you catch that? Think it through till you get it.

Christ was born (impeccably) righteous. He did not become righteous through obedience. Christ's obedience flowed from His pre-existing righteousness. His obedience did not bring that righteousness into being, rather His righteousness brought His obedience into being.

Do you see then what we have inherited through Adam? Each one of us is born into the same state of corruption that Adam brought into this world; we are born lacking righteousness (corrupt) and therefore have nothing within us from which obedience can flow.

This is the inheritance of all mankind. It is not something handed down from parent to child so much as it is something Adam brought into being that immediately affected all of mankind.

Labels: Catechism Buzz, The Fall

So in Rom 3:23, Paul urges on everyone, without exception, to the necessity of seeking righteousness in Christ. He might as well have said, “There is no other way of getting yourself right, of getting past sin; it is not to each his own way, with some succeeding and others failing. All must be justified by faith in the same way, because all are sinners, and therefore they have nothing to boast about, nothing to take credit for, before God.” But he takes for granted that every one, anyone with a conscience, when he comes before God who will judge him, is lost and ruined because he knows his own shame. No sinner can bear the presence of God, as we see an example in the case of Adam.

Paul again brings forward a reason taken from one who might deny this, and hence we must notice what follows. Since we are all sinners, Paul concludes, that we are lack, indeed we are utterly empty of, the praise due to righteousness. So according to what he teaches, there is no righteousness but what is perfect and absolute. Even if there were such a thing as "half righteousness," it would still be necessary to deprive the sinner entirely of all glory: and therefore the imaginary idea of partial righteousness, as they call it, is proven wrong. If it were true that we are justified in part by works, and in part by grace, Paul could't say any of this — that all are deprived of the glory of God because they are sinners. It is then certain, there is no righteousness where there is sin, until Christ removes the curse of sin; and this very thing is what is said in Galatians 3:10, that all who are under the law are exposed to the curse, and that we are delivered from it through the kindness of Christ. The glory of God I take to mean the approval and proof of God as he is, as in John 12:43, where it is said, that “they loved the glory of men more than the glory of God.” In this way Paul summons us from the court of public approval to the divine court of heaven.

Labels: Calvin as Gadfly, judgment, justification, righteousness, sin

Parenthood calls us to extraordinary sacrifice, and teaches us from the depths of that sacrifice.

One of my little angels (I won't say which) was coming along well in the potty-training process. But there's a stage where one hears "I need help!" from the commode, and one must rise to the call of, um, duty. As I entered the bathroom, the pungent fog of putridity caused me to reel. "Eck!" I choked.

At which point my blessed seated munchkin, dipping down into some heretofore unknown deep well of conviction, shouted "MY! POO! POO! DOES! NOT! SMELL! BAD!"

And so it is with us all.

Labels: Catechism Buzz, children, sin, The Fall

Sin is something that goes against what God says in the Bible. For example, God says in the Bible "Do not steal." If we go out and steal a candy bar from the store, then we are sinning.

Sin is caused by Satan tempting us, but it also comes from our own heart. When Adam and Eve sinned at the beginning, all of their offspring were born with sinful hearts. We are born into this world with a desire to sin. The only way that we can be rid of this desire to sin is when we trust in Jesus Christ our Savior, who is God’s son. When we do this, God changes our hearts to want to please him instead of ourselves.

That doesn't mean we stop sinning. We still make sinful choices. However, God cares about us so much that He provided a way for us to get to heaven even without being perfect. "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." John 3:16, ESV

A. Gumm, age 12

Labels: Catechism Buzz, sin

To understand where sin comes from we must first know what sin is. In my translation of the bible it reads, "darkness covered the surface of the watery depths" even before God says, "let there be light". Notice that it isn't until the light is created that the darkness has context? We comprehend darkness because it is a lack of light.

Alternately, I suppose you could look at silence as another metaphor. Silence would not mean anything if there were no noise to give the lack of it context; or also loneliness. If you had never known there to be anyone else in the world (or at least I would imagine it this way because I have never actually been in such a situation), how would you know that you were alone?

In the same way, just as darkness is a lack of light, silence is a lack of sound, and loneliness is a lack of others, consider it: sin is a lack of obedience. Sin is the absence of something.

Labels: Catechism Buzz, sin

Because Adam set aside the command of God, taking to eat the fruit from the Tree Of The Knowledge Of Good And Evil, God drove him out of the Garden of Eden, and cursed him to boot.

One noteworthy effect of this fall is not defined so much by what we see but rather what we no longer are able to see. Consider this: in the garden Adam and Eve could sense the presence of God, not as some airy-fairy feeling, but through their natural senses - they knew where God was and could "see" Him in some sense (I say in some sense lest we forget that God is Spirit). They communicated with God directly and not merely through prayer. The moment Adam forsook the command of God he made forfeit his "right" to be experientially aware of God.

That isn't to say that there weren't moments throughout history where God spoke to men; He did speak to individuals occasionally throughout redemptive history, and in a variety of ways, but mankind as a whole was cut off from God by Adam's sin. By and large (second to such things as sin and death of course) the misery of God's absence (or more properly the fact that we are unable to see God experientially) is the most penetrating reality of our existence.

Do we have to work for our food? Yes. Do we get sick in this world? Yes. Is there corruption and violence? Yes. Fear? Hate? Suffering? Yes, yes, all of those things. Are these things the cause of our misery? The thoughtful answer is that these are all expressions of the misery of God's absence. Not that God is actually absent, but rather that God withholds (from our awareness) His presence from us. This is the very heart of our misery.

You see: hunger, thirst, sickness, and death all came upon us because of Adam's sin, but what defines the nature of our misery is not these things, it is the absence of an awareness of God. The most horrible thing about the curse was not what God added, but what God took away. Just as death is defined as the absence of life, and isn't a thing itself, but is the word we use to describe a lacking of life. Just as darkness is a non-thing: the absence of light; so also the misery that is in this world is defined by what we lack: the awareness of God.

The fall introduced many things: pain, suffering, death, sickness; but it's what the fall took away that brought misery.

Labels: Catechism Buzz, death, sin, The Fall

Okay, I'm speaking off the record here, deep background. We're friends, right? I've got an image to uphold, you see. Being a small "g" god carries responsibilities, and if word got out that the internet doesn't hold up his end of the deal, well, I've got other friends, too, and they may not play so nice. Just so you understand.

The things you look for when you come calling to me, what are they? You want a vicarious life, and you want connection with people. What's that you say? No, no, I didn't promise those things. You need to learn the difference between my promises and your expectations.

You spend your whole life sitting there, watching videos of bike stunts you were too afraid to try in junior high, all the FAILs, all the jokes you can’t wait to re-tweet. You fight in a war-game, then turn around and debate high theology like some mediaeval council. You “friend” a thousand people and fake your highs and lows. And I won’t even talk about the lurid stuff – today. But you live a life in front of a screen, and none of those people really know who you are.

For you, that's living vicariously. For you, that's connection. Fellowship, if you will. And you control it all; all the profiles, the playlists, the interactions, the comments and the posts. But you must remember, there's a big "G" God that all us little "g's" report to. Maybe "report" isn't the right word. It's more like "tremble and obey." And His ideas about vicariousness and fellowship go far deeper than your pea-brain has ever imagined.

The way He made things, there's a connection that you can't control, and it connects you with everybody who ever lived, because it's through a single man, from the beginning. His action was your action, and your action is found in his action. That's vicariousness. And it's locked up with everything that's wrong with the world.

So when you're looking for a way out of it that you can control, you're not going to find it with me. I'm just a tool. If you think I made you a promise, well, buddy, that's just projection. If you want fellowship and a life you have not lived, there's a different place to look, and it's not with me. Because a day will come when I give up my secrets, and you'll see that what you had wasn't really control.

Labels: Adam, Catechism Buzz, sin, The Fall

Freedom is an ideal that has been exalted to the highest heaven in Western culture. We demand freedom for ourselves, and we demand freedom for others. We believe that every man, woman, and child is born with the right to liberty and the pursuit of their own happiness. We love it so much that we hardly pause to question the wisdom of freedom. The wise can see, however, that freedom can be a tyranny. I hope you will give me the chance to explain why this is so.

Our first parents were made good. There was no moral blemish in Adam and Eve. They had no inborn compulsion to sin, foolishness, and selfishness as we have. They were innocent in a way we are not, and thank God, never can be. They lived in a blissful naivete that had never known, seen, experienced, or even heard of sin. This can never be again. Never, ever again.

When Eve stretched out her hand to become like God, she had no idea that it would mean the spiritual death of her soul. When Adam tasted the sweet fruit of transgression, he had no idea that his beloved son Cain would rise up and murder his beloved son Abel. All Adam could see in that moment was himself; he cared not for the consequence. He was, in that moment, enthralled with his own self, in his own sin. Once, he had been captive to the love of God, now he was enslaved to the love of self. And there are those who call this self-love "freedom." God did not give man the "freedom" to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God gave Adam a command, not a choice. Adam excercised a kind of freedom that should never have been, and by God's grace, someday never will be again.


This morning, I came to work and I brewed some coffee. I sat at my desk and turned on my computer. There, in my inbox, was an unsolicited email from some pornographer who stole or bought my email from someone. I have a wife. I have two children. I am the pastor of a church. I am a Christian. I felt the ghostly pleasures of sins past stirred by sins from which my God has been weaning me, but I was free to click away and kill myself with ruinous pleasure.

Thank God, I was repulsed. I was restrained. My Master has enslaved me. He has bound my soul fast with the bonds of love. I have seen, unlike Adam, what sin does to sons. I have seen the horror of what sin does to marriages and mothers. I put that email in that little box marked "spam" and destroyed it as a man destroys a loathsome bug. When confronted with a sin, like adultery, I do not want freedom. I want love to close all options but one, and then I want love to compel down the road of righteousness.

May the love of God in Christ constrain us so that every option is removed except the one choice that brings the most glory to our wonderful God.

Labels: Catechism Buzz, freedom, sin, The Fall