The Family Inheritance You Never Asked For

We are in Lent. It kicked off on the 18th of February and in simple language, Lent is a 40-day period that Christians have used to reset their souls, where we might stop trying to prove we’re "good enough," but rather focus on trusting that Christ is enough and all we need. This season is an opportunity for us to be devotional and disciplined, our loving and grateful response to the journey of Jesus to the cross, as we look ahead to Easter.

We have been exploring our Reformed tradition, our covenantal story, and some of the foundational doctrines of our Presbyterian heritage, and there are few more fitting places that these truths come together than the First Sunday of Lent. The gospel reading in Matthew is a place where Jesus’ journey in the wilderness is not just a moral example for us, it’s one of the most pivotal steps toward our freedom through grace.

Freedom from what, you ask. It’s freedom from the inheritance that we have received from a family member who dropped the ball in the beginning, Adam. Like it or not, scripture informs us that we are all born into a story we didn’t write, that before we took our first breath, we were part of a family that was in debt. This is tough for us to grasp, especially in this age where we all seem intent on divesting ourselves from any connection with the past. This First Sunday of Lent we explore the doctrine of Federal Headship, the sin of Adam, and the weight of our inheritance from him.

Is there any hope for us? Romans 5 gives us a most outrageous solution, a gift, a new representative able to free us from the debt of our inheritance from Adam. And it requires us to ask the question of ourselves, do we live in our debt, or are we living in the gift that our debt has been paid by another? Take a moment to read Romans 5:12-19 and the Gospel of Matthew 4:1-11 and may God bless you as you do so.

Josh