The First and Second Adam (1st Sunday of Lent)

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Click here for this Sunday’s OT reflection (Adam, Eve, and the Fall)

While the Old Testament reading focuses on the fall of Adam and Eve, the Epistle reading focuses on the effects of that fall on the human race. St. Paul teaches that Adam’s sin brought about the stain of original sin that affects all of humanity. The Catechism explains the effects of original sin in the following words:

The whole human race is in Adam “as one body of one man.” By this “unity of the human race” all men are implicated in Adam’s sin, as all are implicated in Christ’s justice. Still, the transmission of original sin is a mystery that we cannot fully understand. But we do know by Revelation that Adam had received original holiness and justice not for himself alone, but for all human nature. By yielding to the tempter, Adam and Eve committed a personal sin, but this sin affected the human nature that they would then transmit in a fallen state. It is a sin which will be transmitted by propagation to all mankind, that is, by the transmission of a human nature deprived of original holiness and justice. and that is why original sin is called “sin” only in an analogical sense: it is a sin “contracted” and not “committed” – a state and not an act. (CCC 404)

This concept has deep Scriptural roots. In the Old Testament, we see it taught in a number of passages. For example, King David in Psalm 51:5 laments, “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.” Likewise, the prophet Jeremiah describes the concupiscence that comes with Original Sin in Jeremiah 17:9: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?”

But while Adam implicated us all in the curse of Original Sin, Christ, as the Second Adam, brings the reversal of that curse through His death and resurrection. Elsewhere Paul teaches us that “as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” (1 Corinthians 15:21-22) Through faith in Christ, we can experience the reversal of the Fall, which begins with forgiveness of sins, and will be fully consummated by the destruction of death on the Day of Resurrection. As Paul teaches:

Death is swallowed up in victory.”

“O death, where is your victory?

O death, where is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:54-55)

J. Luis Dizon