Jesus was perfectly obedient to the Law of God. In this way He is the Second Adam. As Adam was created in the image of God to be the obedient and faithful image bearer of God, so the eternal Son of God came in the flesh and was born under the Law to do what the first Adam failed to do. Jesus kept the Law completely so that He was fully holy in Himself and perfectly righteous in the light of God’s justice. Jesus also satisfied God’s justice for sinners who could not help themselves. Although Jesus was perfectly holy and not personally liable for the curse visited on sinners, He took the place of sinners on the cross and bore the penalty and curse for all those in Him.

“Why do we need to talk about sin? We ought to just talk about the love of God.” This comment was not made by a dedicated liberal. Rather, it was made by a woman who is a member of an evangelical church and has enrolled her children in a Reformed Christian School. She does not seem to have grasped much of the character of Calvinism.

Regrettably this comment is not just a strange aberration. In a recently published book, sociologist Alan Wolfe argues that this attitude is wide-spread throughout American religious groups and denominations, including evangelicals. In The Transformation of American Religion Wolfe states, “Talk of hell, damnation and even sin has been replaced by a nonjudgmental language of understanding and empathy.” Most American churches and synagogues today are characterized by attitudes and practices which are “joyful, emotional, personal and empathetic on the one hand, impatient with liturgy and theologically broad to the point of theological incoherence” on the other.

Wolfe is fundamentally sympathetic to this new development. He believes that this common attitude serves the interests of a diverse society that values toleration, cooperation and civility. Religions that are too exclusive in their claims undermine social unity and must be seen as somewhat dangerous and bigoted. For Wolfe, true Calvinism must be a problem for a tolerant society because of its stress on the seriousness of sin and on Christ as the only way to God.

The concern of Wolfe and many others is not new. Such criticism has been directed against Christianity since its beginning. In the Roman empire, Christians were called traitors and atheists because they would not worship the Roman gods. Christians were bigots and dangerous to the unity of the empire because of the exclusive claims they made for their faith.

Faithful Christians have always rejected the call to conform their faith to the desires of those who want to say that all religions are equally true and useful. As Christians we insist that we must talk about sin if we are to be truthful about the human condition. If we do not understand our sin, we will not understand the kind of savior we need. vOur sin creates two problems for us as we stand before God. First, we need to have the guilt of our sin taken away. Adam’s original sin and our actual sin have made us guilty before God and worthy only of condemnation. We need to be forgiven and so we need a savior who can ensure our forgiveness. Second, as sinners we need to have a positive righteousness with which we can stand before God. Adam was not created as a morally neutral being, but was created righteous and holy. So as sinners who want to become new creatures, we need righteousness and a savior who can make us righteous.

The Reformation was a recovery of the biblical doctrine of sin and salvation. Sin was again seen as a problem that could not be solved by human action. Salvation was again seen as entirely the work of God. God in Christ pays the penalty of our sin. And God through Christ justifies and sanctifies the sinner. In justification the sinner becomes perfectly holy in the judgment of God. In sanctification the sinner by grace becomes progressively more holy in his own life.

The Reformation doctrine of justification in particular is under serious attack in our time and we need to be renewed in an understanding of that doctrine and in our commitment to it. One way to do that is to meditate on the teaching of the great Reformation catechisms. For example, the great Reformation doctrine of justification was beautifully captured in a ques- tion of the Heidelberg Catechism. This catechism, published in 1563 in the Palatinate in Germany, was designed to clarify the doctrinal commitments of the church there and to instruct the people of God in the true faith.

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