We Are Saved By Love Alone

One of the last century’s greatest minds was the English writer, and Christian apologist, G.K. Chesterton. He was once asked by a religious skeptic to explain the doctrine of Original Sin. He responded that the doctrine of Original Sin can be easily proved, “All one has to do is pick up a newspaper to see the evidence of it.” He thought that the modern tendency to deny the reality of sin was naive and contradicted by everyday experience. He considered the reality of human sinfulness so readily observable in human behavior that it required no additional proof.

We Christians understand paradox; we live in the midst of it. It is at the heart of the great mystery that we profess and believe. It was because of our sins that Jesus came into the world. God responded to our rebellion in and through the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. And he continues to respond today, not with vengeance but with love eternal. The well-known story of Adam and Eve is nothing less than the recognition and explanation of the reality of human sin. It is real and it has real consequences. What does the story of Adam and Eve reveal? That all human sin is rooted in pride, a fool’s quest to claim omnipotence to oneself, to make oneself the solitary arbiter of what is good, or evil.

I just finished re-reading the magnificent epic poem by John Milton, “Paradise Lost”. Its theme is the loss of heaven, Paradise, through the sin of Adam and Eve and the hope of God’s love and his promised redemption. It begins with the fall of Satan and his fellow rebellious angels. After the Archangel Lucifer and his fellow rebellious angels have been defeated by Michael the Archangel and the heavenly hosts and have been cast out of heaven into the depths of hell, he rises majestically from the fiery lake of Hell and gathers his fellow rebels around him. He gives a vengeful speech, ending it with a battle cry that resonates with so many in our times when he says, “Here at least (in Hell) we shall be free…Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.”

This is as good a revelation of the modern, rebellious sense of “freedom” as I have found anywhere. And yet Paul tells us in his letter to the Romans, “By one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.” This is the paradox we live in. Though, as inheritors of that Original Sin, we still often choose to be willful rebels, God’s love is not defeated. Rather, it is through obedience to his love alone that we are made truly free.

But there is another of the angels in Milton’s poem who expresses the truth of God and responds to it rightly. His name is Abdiel, which translated from the Hebrew means, Servant of God. Abdiel says to Satan, “This is servitude,/ To serve the unwise (yourself), or him (anyone) who hath rebelled/ Against his worthier (God), as thine now serve thee,/ Thyself not free, but to thyself enthralled…Reign thou in Hell thy kingdom, let me serve/ In Heaven God ever blest, and his divine/ Behests (commands) obey…” All sin, small and large is a rebellion against the only One who is worthy to be obeyed. The One who is the source and goal of all that is good and true and beautiful. And the unrecognized fact of reality is that our claim to freedom is a paradox of great irony.

In claiming our freedom from any and all hindrances to our own desires, we make ourselves slaves of those desires. As Chesterton suggested above, we find the proof of this rebellion, the echoes of the Original Sin by simply reading our local newspapers, watching the evening news programs, or spending any amount of time on social media sources. Or maybe through a bit of honest self-reflection.

All sin is rooted in the naive, prideful, cri de coeur of the solitary ego, declaring itself free from all limitations to its own desires. It is the foolish attempt of the “new trinity”, which we might rightfully call, “Me, Myself, and I”, to usurp the role of the Holy Trinity to itself. Shakespeare’s tragic hero, MacBeth, is a great example of this. He rebels against the laws of nature, the laws of the state, and the law of love, to usurp the king’s throne for himself. Just before his inevitable end, he has a single moment of true insight. He sees all of his sinful plans collapsing before him and he finally realizes that it has all been, “… a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

During Advent, the four weeks leading up to Christmas, we are called as Christians to reflect on the meaning of the Incarnation which begins with the birth of an infant in a manger, wrapped in swaddling clothes. We are to remember and celebrate the great mystery of God’s love, a mystery that is made all the more profound in the realization that God’s love toward us remains unchanged, undaunted, and undefeated, even in the face of our constant rebelliousness. During this Advent season, we are called upon to reflect on our need to repent for our sins, to make a way for the coming of our redeemer into our hearts and minds.

In this we can sing in the words of the great gospel hymn, What Wondrous Love Is This: “What wondrous love is this, O my soul? What wondrous love is this that caused the Lord of bliss to bear the dreadful curse for my soul? What wondrous love is this that would lay down his crown for my soul?” Christ has come to set us free from all of our sin and from its partner, death. What wondrous love is this, indeed!