Do you ever wonder why your vehicle keeps breaking down? Yes I understand—it’s a Ford. But is there something more to this? Why does your house continually need to be maintained? The paint fades, the faucet leaks. It would be wonderful—and very nice on the wallet—if you took your car in for an oil change and were told the oil was better now than it was 5,000 kilometres ago. How wonderful if the shingles on the house just got better and better over the years. But no, the car doesn’t get newer, and the oil in the engine deteriorates. The shingles on the house wear out and need to be replaced.
Why is this? Scientists tell us this is the result of a law—the Second Law of Thermodynamics, or the law of increasing entropy, in layman’s terms the process of deterioration or running down, or a trend to disorder, which is taking place all throughout the universe. (We mention just in passing that this law shoots the theory of evolution completely full of holes. Things are not evolving in this universe—it’s the other way around.)
I am a dunce when it comes to science, but this law arrested me in something I read years ago, and I wrote down a quote about it. I am sorry I neglected to note the author.
There is a natural tendency, then, for all observed natural systems to go from order to disorder, towards increasing randomness. This is true throughout the entire known universe both at the micro and macro levels. The tendency is so invariant that it has never been known to fail. It is a natural law—the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Here is another quote I wrote down by science writer Isaac Asimov.
We can see the Second Law all about us. We have to work hard to straighten a room, but left to itself it becomes a mess again very quickly and very easily. Even if we never enter it, it becomes dusty and musty. How difficult to maintain houses, and machinery, and our own bodies in perfect working order; how easy to let them deteriorate.
“In fact all we have to do is nothing,” Asimov continued, “and everything deteriorates, collapses, breaks down, wears out, all by itself—and that is what the Second Law is all about.”
I am not aware what scientist first formulated the Second Law of Thermodynamics. But I know an apostle who nailed it down a long time ago, calling it “the law of sin and death.” This is “the primal fault” I mentioned last time.
Question. If Jesus Christ dealt with the primal fault at Calvary, why is the primal fault still very much at work in our world—and in fact is obviously getting worse? The earth is waxing old as a garment before our very eyes. And (same question continued) if Paul called Christ “the last Adam” (1 Cor. 15.45), how is it that many millions of Adams have walked the earth since His death on Calvary’s cross?
Short Answer: It’s because God has an eternal purpose that is still unfolding—a mystery that is still in the process of being unveiled. It was by man that the primal fault was introduced into the world, and it is by a Man that its reversal is to be fully effected.
For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead (1 Cor. 15.21).
That Man by whom resurrection came has a Head… and feet. And though now we see not yet all things put under His feet, God will yet put all things under this Man’s feet till the last enemy, even death, is put under His feet (Heb. 2.8,9, 1 Cor. 15.25-27). And so we are awakened as to our part in all this, the wondrous mystery of Christ—a many-membered Man—through whom God will yet deliver a groaning creation.
The Bible tells us that “the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but by reason of Him who subjected it in hope…” (Rom. 8.20 New KJV). In two or three places the Bible hints that disorder entered God’s universe in a spiritual dimension prior to the creation story that is given to us in the first three chapters of Genesis. But it was when Adam sinned in the Garden that God—reluctantly—placed a curse on the whole creation—this law of entropy that we see all around us. There is a primal fault. All things deteriorate over time. They decay. They atrophy. They go into corruption. They die. Not only in the physical universe, but also in the world of man—especially in the world of man—in all the ways and works of man. And nothing man has ever done or can do is able to change this law. It rains into the sea, and still the sea is salt.
This has caused wise men to despair, and rightly so. If only we too had such wisdom, and despaired, and then cried out in our despair, as this same apostle I mentioned did.
“Oh wretched man that I am,” he cried out. “Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”
Who? God, through Jesus Christ our Lord! Paul discovered (by revelation) that the God who had subjected His creation to futility had later introduced another law into His universe, the result of the Cross of Calvary. Oh, how Paul thanked God for this! Let us too thank God—and let the words we are reading arrest us. It is a law that liberates from the law of sin and death.
For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death (Rom. 8.2).
Can mortal eyes actually be reading such words? Can this actually be true? You meant there is a law that to obey, to walk in, triumphs over the working of the primal fault?
Yes! When Jesus Christ died on Calvary’s cross He there and then dealt with the primal fault—sin in the heart of man.
It was by His death that the primal fault was dealt with.
But it is by His life that the fix is manifested. This is where you and I come in.
For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more being reconciled we shall be saved by His life (Rom. 5.10).
How are we saved by His life? Paul is speaking here of the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. This liberating law of life is working right now in those who are in Christ Jesus—in measure. In its full working, those walking in this law will ultimately deliver a whole creation that was made subject to futility because of the sin of Adam.
Because the creation itself shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glory of the liberty of the children of God (Rom. 8.21).
…More next time. https://amendingfeast.org/2012/01/06/love-the-primal-fault-remedied/
A Mending Feast 