Eating Things Has Consequences

When God commanded Adam not to eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and simultaneously provided a Tree of Life for their proper food, he was placing a covenantal meaning onto physical objects. The warning was that in the day they ate of the wrong tree, they would surely die. Did God follow up on his promise of consequence in a real way? Certainly. The day that Adam and Eve ate of the Tree, they died spiritually and became subject to physical death.

So in what way did the fruit of the Tree convey death to Adam and to the human race after him? Was the fruit toxic? Did it carry in it a hereditary disease? Not at all. The fruit itself was good for eating, for God created all things good. It was covenant commandment that was attached to the fruit that conveyed with it consequences. Adam brought death to himself and to his race by eating the fruit, but it was not the fruit that killed him. It was the covenant sanctions attached to disobedience that brought death.

Today, the Church also has a covenant food. A meal with blessings and curses attached to it. It has become common among even Reformed Christians to say that in the Lord’s Supper, nothing actually happens. The bread and wine do not physically become the body and blood of Jesus Christ, and therefore it would be superstitious to think that the bread and wine are anything special or that eating them might actually do anything to or for you, right? After all they are only useful as means to help us to remember Christ’s sacrifice.

But that is not how covenant food works. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians that those who eat and drink unworthily eat and drink judgment to themselves. The reciprocal is also true. When we eat and drink rightly, we have true fellowship with Jesus Christ. Is it anything inherent in the bread and wine that brings this about? Not at all. But that does not diminish the use of bread and wine, for they are covenant symbols (there is nothing “mere” about a symbol) of what they represent, namely the body and blood of Jesus Christ. To dishonor the elements or to use them lightly is to dishonor Christ himself. Not because the elements have been mystically changed, but because they represent him as their covenant function.

A good analog might be the Reformed doctrine of imputation. When God justifies and declares us righteous, he does so on account of Jesus’ righteousness, in commendation of a righteousness we do not have in ourselves.  Even so, the covenant food is imputed or reckoned to be to us Christ’s body and blood.  It is the God the Holy Spirit who applies the reality of the sign so that it is as if you had eaten his flesh and drank his blood, as he says we must do in John 6.

Just as it is the Spirit that applies the reality of the sign, it is the Spirit that judges the use of the sign.  When Adam misused covenant food it was not the food that judged him, but God himself.  So also if we misuse our covenant food it is God who judges, not the food. There is no active causality in the food, but there is direct correlation.

But the Table of the Lord is intended for life. God has given us an easy enough guideline to follow for worthy partaking that even a child can do it. One who eats of the Church’s covenant food need not be sinless or especially knowledgeable. They must simply eat in faith and in fellowship, waiting for and upon one another in love. This is no forbidden fruit to bring us death. The covenant food is intended to bring life to those who eat it in covenant.  It must be taken in faith, yes, but also God strengthens faith through it.  Surely even faith so small as a mustard seed.

Created in Covenant

Much has been made of the two “variant” accounts of creation in Genesis 1 and 2, especially the use of the name YHWH for God in chapter 2, when the more general Elohim is used in chapter 1. This has led to speculations about different writers from different times in history.  I’m not going to get into all the textual criticism here, but I operate under the assumption that the two chapters have the same human author.

With that assumption, I believe there is a good reason that chapter 2 names God as YHWH.  The name of God is a covenant name.  When we read things from a broader viewpoint in chapter 1, there is a distance apparent from the reader to this God.  But when the writer of Genesis takes a closer look at the creation of man, he gets personal.  YHWH is supremely personal.  It is a name, and it not only tells us what God is, but who he is.  The creation of man in chapter 2 is extremely personal.  God breathes life into him.  He gives them a place to live and food to eat.  In short, he creates man in covenant and gives a commandment together with sanctions and blessings.

In chapter 3 we have an interesting development.  The serpent is deliberate in its way of addressing God, not as YHWH, but merely as Elohim.  The serpent’s words are the only part of the section that address God in general, rather than personally.  In so doing, he seeks to draw Eve away from the personal nature of God and portrays him merely as a despot.

It is as if the serpent told Eve, “God is not near.  He is a domineering power who seeks to keep good things from you, and so there is no covenant with him worth keeping.”

Regarding Race

This post is prompted by an article that I saw posted a little while back regarding mixed marriages.  I gave it some time to ruminate, and after much thought, I’ve come to the conclusion that it is my firm belief that one should indeed marry only within his or her own race.  Now, before you start picking up stones to throw at me, please read on and see if you agree.

It is fashionable today to say that “there is only one race—the human race.”  Things like ethnicity, culture, faith, etc. do not matter.  What matters is one common humanity.  After all, our DNA is pretty much 100% identical no matter what ethnicity you are.  The accidentals like dark or light skin are just that.  Accidentals with no meaning beyond aesthetics.

In a biological sense that’s true.  All mankind does share the same basic physical makeup.  And if physicality was all there was, they would be right—there is only one race, the human race.  But that doesn’t tell the whole story.

On the other hand, we have the reaction against these modern views of anthropology.  There are some who believe that ethnic groups constitute race, and that these races ought to remain distinct and separate.  As such, there should be no marriage or mixing between the various ethnic groups.  Some even appeal to the Bible for such a position (yes, the article I saw was from this site).  After all, God divided the peoples into many tongues at Babel, and thus created ethnicity.  Who are we to try to reverse that?  That would be like trying to rebuild the tower of Babel.

I would propose what I believe is a more Biblical view—that there are only two races.  There is Adam’s old humanity which fell with him into sin and death, and there is the new humanity in Christ that is raised to life and righteousness.  For in Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free.  All are one.  In Adam all die, but in Christ are all made alive.

To be in Christ is to be not only a new person as an individual, but a member of a new humanity, born of water and Spirit.  The old man and the former race is no more.  For the believer is a part of that New Creation.

As for Babel, that was a curse upon the old Adamic race.  God reversed that curse at Pentecost, when the confused languages of the many peoples became no impediment to the spread of the Gospel.  The scattering of nations is finished for all united in the Church as the Bride of Christ.  Any attempt at a united humanity apart from Christ as the old Adamic man is indeed a rebuilding of Babel.  Because only in Christ can true legitimate unity be found.

And so, I say again, one must not be joined to another outside of one’s own race.  If you are a member of the new humanity in Christ, how can you even think of being united to one of Adam’s lost race?  And if that person from across the Pacific is your brother, how can you even think of him as a foreigner to you?

Perishing Apart from the Law

This is actually an observation that I had when I was writing a paper on Romans 5:12-21  a few years ago.  I’ll start by laying out the two verses I want to look at here:

. . . for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted (imputed) where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam . . .
Romans 5:13-14

I think sometimes people just pass over these verses without really thinking about them and trying to understand what Paul is really saying here.  I know I did before writing that paper.  After all, as a Reformed Christian, I would skim over Romans 5 and think, “Oh yeah.  Imputation of Adam’s sin.  I know that.”  And then move swiftly along.

When I took up that section for my exegetical study, I thought I knew exactly what I was going to find.  What a surprise I had!  I might write later posts about some of the other things I discovered in that study, but I’ll just concentrate on verses 13 and 14 here.

First, I think it is clear that Paul is speaking here specifically to Gentile believers.  That is not to say that the text has no relevance to the Jews, but he is clearly zeroing in on a state where one is not “under the law.”  He has made this distinction before in Romans, and he maintains it now for the sake of the Gentile who might say “But what has the Torah to do with me?  Why does God yet condemn?”

In answer to this, Paul makes clear that sin was in the world even “before the Law was given”—that is, in the period of time between Adam to Moses—and that this sin was enough to condemn, even apart from the Law.  However, Paul also make clear that there is a qualitative difference between the sin of Adam and the sin of those between Adam and Moses.

This brings to mind Romans 2:12, where Paul tells his readers that all are under condemnation.  Those who sin apart from the Law will perish even without it.  Those who sin under it will be judged by it.  Note that it is possible to sin apart from the Law; this is a clear reference to Gentiles and Jews.

Here’s the real kicker though, and the part that really challenged me to reconsider everything I thought I knew about Romans 5.  Sin, Paul tells us, was in the world “before the law was given,” but is not “imputed” apart from the Law.  From Adam to Moses was the period “before the law was given.”  So if we give the text its due, we must conclude that sin was not imputed to sinners from Adam to Moses.

Now, if we take the text to mean what it says, we must either rethink our traditional systematic definition of the theological term “impute,” or we must adopt a weird interpretation that says that those between Adam and Moses did not receive condemnation of Adam’s sin.

If we take the context into account, then we must also recognize that Paul is likening his Gentile readers to those “before the Law was given.”

I will not attempt to define “imputation” in this post.  I’ll save that for later.  I just wanted to encourage everyone to take another look at Romans 5 here.  Because how we read it has broad-sweeping implications for how we read the rest of the book.  Romans 7, for instance, where Paul says (whether of himself or of another is another related discussion), “I was once alive apart from the Law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died.”

” . . . apart from the Law. . . .”  Hmmm . . . we’ve heard Paul use that kind of language before, haven’t we?