A Friend of Criminals

I recently asked a group of men what they considered the greatest crime in history. One said that it was Hitler’s murder of millions during WWII. Another said Pol Pot’s atrocities in Cambodia were right up there with Hitler’s. Since we were meeting on September 11th, we also talked about the terror attacks on 9/11.

I think the greatest crime of all times was when Adam joined his wife and ate from the tree God had commanded him not to eat from (Gen. 3:6).

In Romans Paul wrote that “sin came into the world through one man” (Rom. 5:12). All sin, every sin, every crime ever committed is directly connected to the first sin of Adam. And, because of Adam’s first sin, mankind has been plagued with all kinds of affliction, pain, and suffering.

All people throughout all of history have been sinners and criminals and all of life has been filled with pain and sorrow because Adam broke God’s law to not eat of the fruit of the tree of good and evil. That alone would make Adam’s sin the greatest crime of all time.

But that’s not all that Adam’s sin did. Adam’s sin was not just against some impersonal law. Adam’s sin, his crime, was a direct and personal betrayal of God.

The Lord had given Adam every good thing: delightful food to eat, a beautiful garden in which to live and work, a wife that was “fit for him,” and the Lord God himself walked with him in the garden.

When Adam chose to follow his wife and eat the fruit it was a direct and personal betrayal of God; he turned his back on God and scorned all that he had done for him. Theologian Dr. R.C. Sproul called Adam’s sin, his crime, an act of cosmic treason.

What did God do in the face of Adam’s sin, his crime, his cosmic treason, the greatest crime in history? What was his response? How did God treat the greatest criminal of all time? He came looking for him.

“Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day…[and] the Lord God called out to the man ‘Where are you?’” (Gen. 3:8-9).

God’s first reaction to Adam’s crime was to come to him. Though Adam had turned his back on God and all that he had done for him, though Adam had jilted him, betrayed him, forsaken him and all his benefits, God came looking for Adam.

And what did God do when he found Adam? He did pronounce judgments. There were consequences for Adam’s crime and the crimes of Eve and Serpent. But that is not all God did. God did not only judge Adam’s crime. He also announced grace.

In the midst of God’s pronouncement of judgment on the Serpent, the first judgment ever pronounced on anyone in his history, God also said, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, between you and the offspring of the woman; he will bruise your head, but you will bruise his heel” (Gen. 3:15).

That is the protoevangelium, what Old Testament scholar Derek Kidner called “the first glimmer of the gospel.”

From the very beginning, God’s judgment was intertwined with the promise of grace, that a seed of the woman would be a redeemer to save his people who were guilty of sin and under the sentence of death.

And then we see something else significant.

Adam and Eve had made a meager, insubstantial, ineffective attempt to cover their sin. They made clothes out of leaves. It wouldn’t work. They needed something less flimsy, something with more heft to it, something capable of standing up to the elements of a now fallen world.

What they really needed was a substitute to take their place and pay the price of death which their crime required.

And so, some animals died that day and gave up their lives in the place of the people and provided their skins so that God could make garments and cover Adam and Eve (Gen. 3:21). God not only promised a future salvation from the seed of the woman, he provided actual mercy and grace to man and the women in the moment of their greatest need.  

In the face of the greatest crime, the greatest betrayal, the greatest act of treason of all time, God showed himself to be the greatest hero, the greatest rescuer, the greatest friend of sinners and criminals.

And then, the whole story of the Bible is that of God again and again coming to sinners and criminals, seeking them out, and offering them a covering for their sin, offering them grace, being their friend.

What a friend we have in Jesus, all out sins and griefs to bear.

What do we learn from this about how Christians should treat criminals?

1.      We should go and seek them out.

2.      We should share with them the message of mercy and grace, the gospel.

3.      We should introduce them to the Savior of criminals and the greatest of friends

4.      We should also be their friend.

5.      We should remember that there is no crime too great but that the criminal may be welcomed in the community of God’s people.  

That’s a lot of shoulds. Most people don’t sustain doing “shoulds” for very long. We do much better sustaining those things that we “get to do” rather than the things we “have to do.” How do we move from “we should treat criminals the way that God has treated them since Adam and Eve” to “we get” to do so?

It is by remembering that we too are criminals, we too are sinners capable of all kinds of wicked deeds. There really is profound truth in the oft quoted saying, “There but for the grace of God go I.”

Let us remember that we are no better than those who are incarcerated for their crimes. And let us also remember how kind, gracious, and merciful Jesus has been to us. Let us gaze at our Savior taking our place in the judgment of God, meditate on the love that he has for us that sent him to suffer in our place.

 Then full of gratitude for what Jesus has done for us, let us turn toward our incarcerated brothers and sisters with the Good News that Jesus is their friend, and that we are as well.

 Much love, Barry