Paradise

 

Lucas Cranach the Elder presents the creation of Adam and Eve, the Fall into sin, and the expulsion from Eden, all in his painting entitled “Paradise.”

In the background, to the right, God creates Adam out of the dust of the ground (Genesis 2:7). In the background, in the center, God makes Eve out of Adam’s rib (Genesis 2:22). Adam and Eve were living in the perfection of creation. Cranach pictures peace and tranquility in the garden and among the animals sleeping and playing throughout the painting. In the foreground, in the center, God the Father is enjoying talking with His children in the garden in the cool of the day.

Adam and Eve traded in their perfection for a piece of fruit. They brought anger, guilt, illness, violence, and death into creation because they wanted to be like God – knowing good and evil. In the background, center right, Satan is pictured as a half-human, half-serpent being, coiled around the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Eve has already eaten from the fruit, and now Adam is taking a juicy bite.

Adam and Eve listened to the hissing whisper of the serpent and, with this single act of disobedience, brought the earth under the constant attack of Satan and his demons. They ruined everything for everyone. They destined themselves, humanity and all of creation to death.

God created Adam and Eve for fellowship with Him. He gave them the garden and its fruit to sustain them. Eating the forbidden fruit spurned God’s generosity and poisoned every relationship in the garden. Though it seems that God the Father liked to take walks with His children in the “cool of the day” (Genesis 2:8), because the children had broken their relationship with God, they hid from their Dad. In the background, in the center, Adam and Eve are hiding from God, as He looks down from heaven upon them. In the background to the left, the cherubim chases Adam and Eve out of their broken paradise.

We are like our first parents as we continue to hide from God and others what we have done wrong. We, too, have broken our familial relationship with the Father. We have continually crossed the boundary from good into evil. We have tasted forbidden fruit. Then, we try to cover up our public sins so others don’t catch on. We try to keep hidden those stomach-wrenching private sins. We don’t think about our sins of omission – those things we fail to do right. We ignore our sins of commission – those things we do wrong. But even without all those big or little sins, we would still be considered sinners in God’s eyes for we have been born in sin, born with Adam’s inherited sinful nature.

I recall visiting an elderly lady in a nursing home over two decades ago when I was a vicar. After the confession of sins, I asked her, “Is this your confession, then answer yes.” She said, “No.”

“What, you can’t say no?” I sputtered.

She said, “Vicar, I’m in a nursing home. I can’t sin here.”

Being a young, wet-behind-the-ears vicar, I didn’t know how to respond. I fumbled something out. “Well, do you ever get upset with your roommate?” “Oh, yes! All the time! She leaves her TV blaring at all hours!”

“Do you ever get upset with your family?” “I’m so mad at them! They stuck me here and never come to visit me!”

“Do you always enjoy the food and staff here?” “I despise the food! I hate their green Jell-O! It’s always runny!”
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“Let’s go with those three sins,” I replied.

How often aren’t we like this older lady in the nursing home? We overlook our sins of commission. We ignore our sins of omission. And, we can never fully understand the depth of the depravity of our sinful nature.

In order to understand just how awful our world is; in order to appreciate just how sinful we are; in order to realize that we are living in a broken paradise; we need to constantly go back to Adam and Eve in the garden at that tree. The questions and answers in Eden are still the only ones that matter.

In the garden, Adam and Eve plunged the whole world into sin. Whenever we get sick, feel selfish, get angry, become addicted, or deal with violence, it’s because of Adam and Eve. After God called His first children out of hiding, He spoke curses upon them and all humanity. We are still living under these curses. That’s why we work and toil, why we have problems in our relationships, and why we all will die. God said, “For dust you are and to dust you will return” (Genesis 3:18).

God also spoke a curse to the serpent. “I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He will crush your head, and you will crush his heel” (Genesis 3:15). This was a curse upon Satan. At the same time, it was a blessing for humanity. This was God’s first promise of a Savior.

God fulfilled that promise several thousand years later when the Son of God was born of woman. He wasn’t born of Eve, but from a daughter of Eve – Mary. Thirty years after His birth, the Son of God and the Son of Man was sent into the desert to do battle against Satan. There, Jesus listened to the hissing lies of the Ancient Serpent. But, unlike the first Adam, the second Adam did not fall for the devil’s treachery. Adam plunged the whole world into His sin. The second Adam was giving His righteousness to cover the whole world’s sin.

Three years later, the Ancient Serpent whispered into the ears of those who would listen and fall for his lies. Judas, Caiaphas, Pontius Pilate, and the crowd on Good Friday, all fell for Satan’s lies and crucified the Son of God. Satan rejoiced when he sunk his fangs deep into Jesus’ heel. He thought he had won and beaten God’s curse.

But, three days later, the Seed of the Woman walked out of the grave and stepped down hard, crushing the Serpent’s head. Jesus defeated death. He conquered sin. And He crushed the devil.

Jesus is the Angel that St. John saw in Revelation 20 coming down out of heaven. He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and bound him with a great chain. He threw him into the Abyss of hell, where he belongs.

Jesus is the Stronger Man in His own parable in Mark 3. Satan, the strong man, has bound us to our sin. We have no free will. On our own, we are slaves to sin, slaves to self, slaves to Satan. Jesus teaches in His parable, “no one can enter a strong man’s house to steal his possessions unless he ties up the strong man first. Then he can plunder his house” (Mark 3:27).  Jesus is that Stronger Man who has entered Satan’s house with stealth. He does not appear as God Almighty, heaving His chest, swinging His arms, casting the bright beams of His glory to the far corners of the globe! He does not approach in glory but secretly, humbly, drawing little attention to Himself as He approaches. He bears our human nature and draws near as one of us – though without sin, unbound, free as humanity was created to be. He is fully human and hidden in, with, and under flesh and blood, bone and sinew, He is also fully God.

Through His suffering, death and resurrection, the God-Man, Jesus Christ, the Seed of the Woman, crushes the serpent’s head. The Angel of the Lord hurls the great dragon into the Abyss. The Stronger Man binds the strong man of Satan. Hell’s dominion is plundered. We no longer have any reason to hide from God (as if we could). We are set free. We, who had been the possessions of Satan, are now covered in the blood of Jesus. The strong man is himself crushed, defeated by the very tools that once defeated us. For though he once overcame humanity by a tree in the garden, this same tempter is himself overcome by a tree – the tree of the cross!

As I visited our shut-in members this week, I told them the story of the elderly woman who thought she wasn’t a sinner because she was in the nursing home. Then, I asked each of them the same question I once asked her: “If this is your confession, then answer yes.” Not a single one of them said, “No.” They, like us, admit to their sin. We are living under Adam’s curse.

Thankfully, though, we are also living under Satan’s curse – which has become humanity’s blessing. When you don’t realize how sinful you are – go back to Genesis 3. When you realize how much you need a Savior from your sin – go back to Genesis 3:15. Jesus is the fulfillment of the serpent’s curse and the Father’s blessing. Because of Christ’s victory in crushing the Ancient Serpent, slaying the Great Dragon, and binding the strong man, now there is forgiveness in our broken paradise and the promise of the true paradise to come.