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The Catholic Telegraph
June 21, 2002Our long series of readings from Romans continues. Last Sunday we heard Paul explaining how Christ’s death for us when we were sinners provides us with a basis for ongoing confidence now that we share His life. This Sunday’s reading offers a further reflection on the action of Christ based on a parallel between Christ and Adam.
Paul begins the passage with an account of how sin came to be in the world. It is the result of "one man," Adam, who let the destructive forces of sin loose in the world through his own act of selfishness. One of the principal consequences of this primeval sin was the entrance of death into the world, not just the physical death of the body, but also the death of the soul, i.e., the destruction of the relationship that had existed between humanity and God. Death affected everybody, not only because everybody was deprived of the previous relationship with God, but also because everybody contributed his or her personal acts of sinfulness to the sinful state of the world at large.
Now Paul deals with the relationship of sin and death with God’s law, the law that God gave to His people as a vehicle of their relationship with Him. (Later on in chapter 5, Paul will explain that one of the results of the law was an intensification of sin that arose because people of the law not only did wrong but, through their awareness of the law, were conscious of the wrongdoing they did. It made their sin worse. That attitude toward the law is implicit in what Paul says here.) Sin was in the world before the law was given, but, although it was destructive both to the one who committed it and to those to whom it was directed, it was not attributed to the sinner the same way it would be after the law. There was still death, though, even for those who did not sin in deliberate defiance of a direct command from God as Adam did.
Now comes the connective with Christ: Adam serves as a kind of parallel with Christ. Both were figures of universal significance, and both exercised an influence that affected the destiny of "many," i.e., of everybody.
But there is a difference. Christ’s achievement was far greater than merely undoing the damage that Adam had done. The superabundant grace of God that resulted from the self-gift of Jesus left humanity in a far better situation than it had been in even before the sin of Adam. Jesus makes God’s graciousness "overflow for the many."
As the Church reflected on what Paul says in this passage (and in the rest of chapter 5), its members began to understand better and better the situation of humanity before the coming of Christ, why human beings needed redemption, and what Christ had provided for us. This part of Romans gives us the foundation for one of the most basic doctrines of Christianity, namely the Church’s teaching about original sin.
Before the coming of Christ, humanity was in a state of detachment from God. A relationship that had existed earlier had been broken and we were on our own. Every human being since Adam is born into this state of privation that we call original sin. Note that original sin is not a sin that each of us commits without knowing it. Nor is it something for which we will be individually punished. It is a state, not an item of individual behavior.
To be freed from original sin means to be liberated from the state of detachment from God into which we were born. In other words, if we are to come out of the state of original sin, it has to be because we enter into a new association, a new relationship with God. Entering such a relationship cannot be the result of our own efforts. It has to come from God and it can only come from God through God’s gracious generosity. Specifically, we are freed from original sin when we begin to share the life of the risen Christ through baptism.
But our humanity continues to bear some of the scars of original sin even when we have entered the state of grace. Our nature is weak and inclined to evil, not because God has not taken us to Himself after all, but because humanity’s all pervasive sinfulness has left us mutilated. No matter how close our relationship with God, we are still damaged goods. All of us know how easy it can be to do bad and how difficult it can be to do good.
This teaching about original sin developed over a long time. Some development occurred in response to the Pelagians in the fifth century who held that there wasn’t really anything wrong with us and that all that Adam did was give us bad example. Further development came in response to the early Protestants who claimed that original sin had damaged us so radically that not even God could bring us back except by a sort of legal fiction that covered over original sin but didn’t cure it.
We Catholics believe that original sin is real, that God’s cure for it is real, and that it all depends on the grace of Christ.
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Conversation Questions,
How does the Church’s teaching about original sin help me deal with the evil in the world?
What remnants of original sin do I find in myself?
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