By Canaan Chapman
Once I heard a joke about the two things that attract people to collecting and listening to vinyl records: the expense and inconvenience. Recently, my wife and I were antiquing, and a kind man showed the kids how an old record player worked. I turned around for one second, only to whip back around as I heard a scratching, ghastly sound. Mortified, I saw my son, feet off the floor, head and hands inside of the turntable. I didn’t want to buy a record and needle that day, but hey, if nothing ever tests my patience, how can I expect to grow in it?
This is a metaphor I can see the story of humanity through. God, by His infinite creativity, wealth of knowledge, power, material, and command of time, gave humanity the kind of perfect setup any audiophile would salivate over. Then, someone scratched the record and dulled the needle. The song of humanity was now a broken record, stuck on loop, doomed to repeat disobedience and reap its consequences.
In today’s reading, Romans 5 unpacks this situation and gives us context to what’s wrong—and who has fixed it. Paul crafted a perfect picture that carries so much power for us to understand our problem, hear a clear diagnosis, and then receive a solution. Sin entered the world through one man, and through one man, sin was taken away. Adam figuratively “scratched the record” and doomed humanity to repeating the same track over and over. God sent Jesus, who lived a perfect life, and through His sacrifice of obedience, He fixed what sin broke. And this didn’t just stop at a repair of the damage. It was a replacement—all things being made new in Christ.
And yet we let the broken record play and have loved the repetition of sin. Jesus saved (and saves) us from that. Do you know this truth—and yet sometimes still stand on tiptoe to reach into the hi-fi and scratch the record? We’re playing with things that are delicate and expensive–our lives! What action do we need to take, mindset we need to have, or perspective we need to live out that could remind us that though Adam started something terrible, Jesus repairs by sanctifying us?
It’s simple and beautiful. But it’s not fair, either. Man comes from dust (made from the earth), and then Jesus came from heaven (fully divine). First Corinthians 15:45–49 reminds us of this: while we come from earthly and sinful origins, God has secured an eternal end for us. That is simply beautiful, merciful, gracious, and kind. Something He didn’t have to do, but because He loved us, He did.
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