Relocating To Elfland

“Mine, mine was the transgression,” goes the English rendering of Bernard’s hymn, “but Thine the deadly pain.” As our ancient fathers laid their hands on the heads of sacrifice animals and confessed over them their sins, we think today of the Lamb of God and confess, “He bore our sins in His body on the tree.”

“He bore our sins.” Does this really strike home as it should? God knows how sentimentalized and sanitized the cross has become in popular representations; but among us who call upon His name, does it really register that the Son of God hung dying in agony because of us?

I know this already sounds like angst mongering. We have all heard preachers try to whip up mass feelings of guilt before the specter of the cross. The modicum of truth in such otherwise manipulative harangues is that we surely should feel something before the cross. It ought, just perhaps, to move us a little that “herein is love,” and an astonishing love, extended to enemies.

But let us descend to concrete matters. When we confess our sins before the cross today, how do we do it? Do we take a list of precepts, say the Ten Commandments, and think of ways we have transgressed? I wonder if this really gets to the heart of things. Seeing ourselves as rule-breakers has its place, but I doubt it will evoke a sense of the badness of our sins unless we see the glory of the goodness and righteousness God intended for us and see, in light of that glory, the depths of wretchedness to which we have fallen.

May I suggest today some extended reflection on God’s original calling to man to be fruitful and multiply, to subdue the earth (Gen 1:28), to cultivate the sanctuary of God, and to keep it against all that defiles (Gen 2:15)? Here in the fourfold calling of humankind we might begin to see what we were made for, and how pervasive are our sins of commission and omission. We might also think of the threefold offices of our original estate: the prophetic office characterized by wisdom and knowledge, the priestly office characterized by holiness, and the kingly office characterized by righteousness. Or, we might consider the three relational theaters in which we were created: the cultic theater of worshipful communion with God, the communal theater of fellowship with our human neighbors, and the cultural theater of labor among the non-human creatures.

We might, in considering these things, feel just how badly things have gone awry. We might feel our real helplessness before the dominion of sin, and might awaken thankfulness for the work of the Last Adam, apart from whose death we would never have known relief from the curse, apart from whose resurrection our inheritance could never have been returned to us and secured, apart from whose Spirit the degenerations of sin would never have been reversed and healed. We may even, in contemplating how different is our estate now in the Last Adam, feel the stirrings of true hatred of sin, and fresh resolves after repentance and new obedience. “What Thou, my Lord, hast suffered was all for sinners’ gain.”