A Devastating Corruption

            The burden of Genesis 4:1-6:8 is that sin grows like a particularly aggressive cancer in the human race.  The most familiar story of the bunch—the story of Cain and Abel—demonstrates this.  God smiles on Abel’s offering (his gift of the ‘fatty portions’ indicates a gift of the best portions), but not on Cain’s (which, presumably, was not from the best portions).  Jealousy and anger grow, and the Lord warns of the danger: “Sin is crouching at your door.”  Refusing to acknowledge his own faults (either in a second-class offering or in his unfounded resentment), Cain lets his anger burst out into murder.

            Cain’s descendants continue the devolution.  While Cain’s descendants rack up all sorts of accomplishments of technology and art, morally they are bankrupt, as Lamech’s attitude shows.  “Cain, my murdering forefather, is avenged seven times, but me, seventy times that!”  Despite all his accomplishments, man’s violent self-assertion is never far from the surface.

            Finally, there is the devastating note in Genesis 6:5, that ‘every inclination of man’s heart is only evil all the time.’  That seems like an overstatement, doesn’t it?  But that’s what Genesis says.  Sin is not just an occasional misstep, a moral failure, a surface issue.  Sin is a deep corruption of human nature which means that the most basic thoughts of our hearts are turned away from the Lord.  Here’s how the Augsburg Confession, the founding document of Lutheranism, states it:

“Our churches teach that since the fall of Adam all men born in the natural way are born with sin, that is, without the fear of God, without trust in God, and with concupiscence [that is, an inclination to sin], and that this original sin is try sin, even now condemning and bringing eternal death upon those not born again through Baptism and the Holy Spirit.”

It’s only the grace of God and His love for His creation that stays His hand.  Tomorrow we’ll read about the flood that destroys most life from the face of the earth, but the thing to see is despite the devastating corruption of sin, the Lord refuses to give up on His creatures.

            In this Advent season, it’s important to see the importance of the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus.  Human nature is so terribly corrupted, and the solution is a human being who does not bear that terrible corruption, One who is not born ‘in the natural way,’ One for whom God is His only Father so that Adam’s corruption doesn’t touch Him.  I noted on Monday that the Scripture is the story of God’s interaction with humanity, and the climax of that story is the coming of the New Human Being, Jesus our brother and savior, in whose life, death, and resurrection, our very nature is recreated.