Reading
Death ruled from Adam until Moses, even over those who didn’t sin in the same way Adam did—Adam was a type of the one who was coming. But the free gift of Christ isn’t like Adam’s failure. If many people died through what one person did wrong, God’s grace is multiplied even more for many people with the gift—of the one person Jesus Christ—that comes through grace.
Romans 5:14-15
Reflection
As a teenager I got into some serious trouble with the police. Since I didn’t have a dad my mom sent her older brother to talk to me. Among the things my Uncle Jack told me was this bit of wisdom: “Who you choose to follow will determine who you become.”
We are studying Adam Hamilton’s book, Why Did Jesus Have to Die? In the book Rev. Hamilton talks about different ways of understanding the meaning of the crucifixion. One of those viewpoints focuses on how Jesus restores the damage done by Adam.
Adam Hamilton puts it this way:
“In Jesus, Adam’s story is reversed. Jesus becomes a second Adam, a second archetype or pattern that we may follow…This idea that Jesus came to reverse course for the human race, to give us a new defining story, a new Adam to follow, is called the recapitulation theory of the atonement. In Latin the word for “head” is caput. To decapitate is to remove the head. Recapitulation, and its short form, recap, is usually defined as summarizing or restating something, but it is literally to re-head something. Recapitulation, as an atonement theory, means to restate our story as humans, only now with a new head of the human race, no longer Adam, but Jesus. Again, he offers us a new defining story.”
My Uncle Jack offered me a new defining story. It would take me a few years to shake my old Adam self but eventually I began to focus on following Jesus. That changed my story and my life.
Prayer
Dear Jesus, help me rewrite my story. I want to let go of the things that have kept me broken and in pain. Let me focus on becoming more like you. Amen.
