God Is Love by Gerald Bray

Author:Gerald Bray [Bray, Gerald]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Good News Publishers
Published: 2012-03-30T22:00:00+00:00

For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.14

What one man did wrong, another can put right. That this has actually happened is the glorious message of the gospel, which is the ultimate and only cure for the problem of what we call “original sin.”

Original sin is not something we acquire but is part of the package called “humanity” that we are born with. We cannot wish it away, nor is there any treatment or exercise that will cure it or make it less debilitating. Spiritual problems can be dealt with only in a spiritual way, and it is here that we hit the glass ceiling that prevents us from rising up to the level of God. For original sin is not just a defect inherited from our first parents; it has also led to a commitment—a relationship, in fact—which the Bible refers to as being “enslaved to the elementary principles of the world.”15 These “principles” are not abstract ideas but evil spirits, of whom Satan is the chief. In other words, just as the goodness of Adam and Eve did not come from anything they did but from the relationship in which they were created, so our sinfulness does not come from anything we have done but from the relationships into which we have been born. One of these is a broken relationship with God, and the other is a dependent relationship with Satan. The former cannot be healed unless and until the latter is broken, which is why the message of the gospel of Christ cannot be expressed exclusively in terms of individual salvation, important as that is. I can and must be saved as an individual, but for that to happen, the power of Satan must first be broken. In other words, I can be saved by being included in God’s victory over the powers of evil, but I cannot be saved without it.

Why are we held responsible for original sin, when it is clear that we did not bring it upon ourselves? Here there has been great disagreement among theologians, the effects of which are still apparent today. On the one hand, it is rightly said that we cannot be held guilty for sins we have not committed, even if we have derived some benefit from them. I am not responsible for the fact that my remote ancestors practiced slavery and amassed fortunes that to some extent are still the basis of the prosperity of much of the Western world. I have a responsibility to do what I can to correct the injustices that have resulted from this situation, but that is not the same thing as emptying my bank account and sending its contents to someone in the West Indies whose equally remote ancestors were enslaved. If restitution for real and imagined wrongs were a cumulative legal obligation imposed on all

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