Have you ever found yourself asking “What’s wrong with people?” We can ask this question at the office. We consider it through our stores. Maybe we even consider it with our own families. “What’s wrong with people?” is not a question which was birthed in our lifetimes. There have been horrible, wicked, acts since the beginning of the world.
The only reason we have an accurate answer to this question is because God revealed it to us in the Bible. From this book we learn what exactly went wrong. We learn that people are not inherently neutral and are somehow screwed up by society. It is not as if evil is bound within a single group whether it be by ethnicity, or by profession, or by education (or lack thereof), or by gender, or by any other visibly external distinguishable marker. No – the wrongness at work in the world cannot be erased simply by greater distributions of wealth, or of knowledge, or anything else.
In a famous challenge put out by a newspaper years ago, this very question was raised, “What’s wrong with the world today?” One individual named G. K. Chesterton most famously responded in this way: “Dear Sir, I am. Yours, G. K. Chesterton.” Though it may read like a rhetorical quip, Chesterton was closer to the truth than that newspaper desired to know.
Because of the outlandish sins of our world, in all of its pomp and show, it is easy for us to see the peacock-like displays of sin and cry out, “There! That’s what’s wrong with the world!” There are indeed horrifying, wicked, and nigh unbelievable displays of sin available and paraded before us today.
However, the same machinations of horror which drive the vessel for sin in people’s hearts out there, churns and whirls within our chests as well. We as Christians are very much still in need of God’s unceasing and on-going supplies of grace today. We need God’s grace just as much as much as we did the very first day we believed.
All too often our pride forgets this reality that we are still sinners in need of salvation. It is true that if we have repented and believed in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ we are saved. But which person among us would have the self-deceived pride to claim that we no longer need God’s grace for today or tomorrow? We all stand in need of Christ to continue the good work of cleansing us from the inside out. We too belong to that lump of humanity who have been affected by the sin of Adam. This then is Paul’s response to what’s wrong with the world today: we are all too much like our father, Adam.
The corruption of our nature is called “Original Sin” in theology. It is not the original or first sin, but the on-going effects of that first sin committed by Adam in the Garden of Eden. The Apostle Paul said as much when he wrote, “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.” (Romans 5:12 ESV) Our world’s descent into madness, chaos, horror has one source: the very first man, Adam.
Why does Adam’s sin affect us? Adam was set apart by God as a king to rule the creation. He represented more than himself. As a king represents a kingdom, so he represented all of humanity. He represented himself, and every descendent who would be born from him.
Sin’s entrance into the world then was through Adam. Death, likewise, did not exist prior to sin. This is why Christians reject an evolutionary view of creation. Evolution demands the role of death as ordinary and part of the good/very good of God’s blessing when He completed creation. But even an unbeliever knows that death is a tragedy. Death is an evidence of what is wrong with the world. Believers know by God’s Word that even death will die when the Son of God appears in glory. So, death’s entrance into the created order came by means of Adam’s sin.
By Adam’s sin death has come to us all. We are born under the curse. This lies behind some of the more horrifying tragedies in our world such as miscarriages and still births. Adam’s sin penetrates every person from conception. We are born inheriting original sin, and from this polluted fountain come all our actual sins which we commit as individuals.
What hope is there then if we are doomed by the first Adam? Our hope is in the Last Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 15:45). This duality is so important for us to grasp because every person you meet exists in a relationship with God under one of these two Adams. They are either under the first Adam in the covenant of works in the condemnation of death running from God. Or they are under the Last Adam, Jesus Christ, in the covenant of grace clothed in the righteousness of God and no longer in sin because they are united to their Savior.
The question to ask then is which Adam are you under? Are you in Adam under your sins and the condemnation of death awaiting God’s judgment or are you under the Lord Jesus Christ knowing that He bore your sin on the cross? God offers his free grace to all who call upon Him abandoning themselves. Flee to Christ while you still have time.