[Luke 6:27-31] ““Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either. Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back. And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them”
As He Has Done for Us
When you’re walking down a path, what’s at the end of that path is where you’ll end up. Not what I wish or think, but what is really at the end of that path is where I’ll end up.
Also in life. I’m heading toward what’s at the end of the path I’m on. Adam leads to death. Christ is the way to life. “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.”
“As in Adam all die…” We don’t come from ourselves, and we didn’t begin with ourselves. Our human nature, body and soul, comes from those we’re made out of – our parents and those before them.
We are “in Adam” – by our natural conception and birth, we come from and are made of the fallen human nature of our first ancestor who, by his sin, brought sin, and therefore death, into the human nature we come from and share. We call the sinful nature in us our “old Adam”.
“Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned” [Romans 5:12]. “Because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man” – “one trespass led to condemnation for all men” – “by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners.” [Romans 5:17-18]
This explains the fallen moral condition we all have, in various ways – and the broken physical and mental condition that we experience. What is in us from Adam is broken. In Adam, all die.
“Dying” is more than just physical death. As we’re talking about it here, death, hand-in-hand with sin, is a path we’re walking on “in Adam” which is directed away from God. Death is a fall from fellowship with God and a trajectory of walking away from Him. It is spiritual death. At the end of this path is God’s wrath in hell, a complete separation from His love. In Adam, all die.
What does the path of our old Adam look like? It is seen in the the things that are opposites of God’s commandments, will, and design – such as:
Having other gods besides Him; using God’s name in vain; failing to call on His name in prayer and praise; not gathering to worship Him. Neglecting my neighbor’s physical welfare; unfaithfulness in marriage; unnatural sexuality; stealing, or only looking to my interests instead of the interests of others; gossip, half-truths, and lying; coveting what others have.
And the fallen path of our old Adam is seen in its symptoms: sicknesses, pains, anxiousness, heartache, and physical death. It’s a hard path. And, left on our own, it goes to worse places.
The death at the end of our path in Adam is not merely a natural consequence of the trajectory we’re on but is a debt of punishment owed that must be paid and is forever snowballing. In Adam all die. But…
“In Christ, all are made alive…” There is a New Man, a second-Adam – a new beginning of a new creation in you – a New Man for us to restart from, to be reborn from, who Himself is the Life and the very pathway of Life. [2 Corinthians 5:17; John 14:6]
In Jesus Christ, you are made alive again. In Adam, we were dying because of the pathway we were walking in. In Christ, we are saved because of the pathway He walked. His pathway to the cross for us.
By His perfect life and death on the cross, Jesus redeemed you – bought you back and brought you back to Life. Back to God. In Him “we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” [Colossians 1:14; Ephesians 1:7]
Jesus is the second-Adam, the new-Man. The Man from God. The Son of God. In fact, He is God-made-man. In Jesus, God became one of us to bring life back to our human nature.
Jesus fulfilled God’s commandments, will, and design for human life perfectly, without sin, in our flesh. He offered up His perfect life as the God-pleasing sacrifice for our life.
On the cross, He carried the sins of the world, of mankind – your sins – in His flesh and went before God on your behalf as the Sinner – sinless, but carrying your sin – and fully suffered the hell that was due for us.
Jesus went all the way to the end of our path in Adam ahead of us, and said, “It is finished” – “It is paid in full” [John 19:30]. And Jesus overcame what our old Adam could not have. He overcame death and took up His life again [John 10:18]. His resurrection.
Jesus saved you by the path He walked. Having saved you, now He sets you on the pathway of His resurrected life. Alive in Christ, you are now on the pathway of life in Christ.
In our Gospel today, Jesus describes this new pathway of resurrected life, which you were set on in your baptism – “in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” [Romans 6:4].
This path of resurrected life, on which your feet have been set in baptism, looks like this: It looks like doing for others what He has so freely done for each of us.
It looks like what we read this morning [Luke 6:27-38]: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you” – as He has done for us – “To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also” – as He suffered His face to be struck for our sake – “and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either” – as He has covered our sin, freely, by the robe of His righteousness [Isaiah 61:10; Romans 4:6-8].
“Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back. And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.” As He has done for u. “Be merciful… Judge not… condemn not… forgive… give…” As He has done for us.
“For if, because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ” [Romans 5:17].
He has freely set us on the path of life. At the end of this path is the unearned gift of the resurrection of the body and perfect life with God forever – for sinners like us – a gift we don’t deserve.
So, as He has been so good to us, let’s walk on the path of life He’s given us and be good to one another and to those who sin against us. Amen.
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