The way that many speak of Christianity makes it sound remarkably like a second chance. And no one is really trying to hide it; instead, they typically come straight out with a promise that God will give you a second chance. Even Billy Graham is known to have said that God is the God of second chances, in writing and speaking.1 Basically, the vibe is that humanity failed, God showed mercy, Jesus made salvation possible, and now sinners have another opportunity to get things right.
While this sounds like an extremely Christian thing to say, it isn’t. It is still a complete misunderstanding of the kind of salvation fallen sinners need.
Adam did not need another chance, because another chance would have just placed him in the same place and with the same problem that had already condemned him. Salvation required someone who could accomplish what Adam could no longer accomplish for himself.
The Covenant
Adam was created righteous and placed in covenant fellowship with God. God graciously created Adam, furnished him with every good thing, and entered into covenant with him. Within that covenant, however, life and death were placed before Adam according to the terms God established.
Fisher summarizes the covenant in The Marrow as “Do this, and you shall live,” together with the corresponding threat, “If you do not do it, you shall die.” The covenant therefore contained a command, a promise of life connected with obedience, and the threat of death for disobedience.2
Spoiler Alert: Adam disobeyed.
With this in mind, the significance of the fall extends far beyond just one isolated sin. Adam violated the covenant and incurred its curse; he corrupted himself and brought his posterity with him into guilt and death. The apostle Paul describes humanity’s condition in light of this when he says that through one man sin entered the world, through sin came death, and through the trespass of the one came condemnation (Rom. 5:12).
This is important to understand, because a second opportunity does not fix an existing guilt. Telling a condemned man to perform better tomorrow does nothing about the verdict already standing over him today, and even perfect obedience from this point forward, were such a thing possible for fallen Adam, would not have erased yesterday’s rebellion.
Humanity stands guilty in Adam and requires a righteousness it does not possess.
The sinner needs a Savior.
The Promise
Within the scene of judgment, God announces something Adam could never have produced and had no right to demand. He promises that a Seed would come.
God declares to the serpent that he will put enmity between the serpent and the woman, and between their respective offspring. The woman’s Seed will crush the serpent’s head, although his own heel will be bruised.
Having described Adam as a child of wrath, subject to the curse and possessing nothing due to him except divine judgment, Fisher writes that “the Lord promised Christ to him.” And after quoting Genesis 3:15, Fisher states that “This promise of Christ, the woman’s seed (ver. 15), was the gospel.”3
The gospel enters the biblical story as a promise concerning Christ given to a man who has already broken covenant with God. Everything Adam possesses at this moment demanded judgment. God nevertheless speaks of a coming Deliverer.
The initiative belongs entirely to God because the remedy belongs entirely to God.
No Second Chances
Our instinct toward second-chance Christianity only happens because the covenant of works remains attractive to fallen humans.
Truth be known, we prefer another opportunity because another opportunity leaves some room for us to boast. But Scripture closes that road.
Redemptive history following Adam demonstrates this point repeatedly.
Noah receives a cleansed world, and sin continued. Israel receives God’s law, and sin continued. But thanks be to God, the New Testament makes explicit what Genesis announces in promise.
Christ comes as the representative man whose obedience answers Adam’s disobedience. Where Adam’s trespass brought condemnation, Christ’s righteous work brings justification and life to those united to him. He obeys under the law, bears its curse upon the cross, enters death, and rises victorious.
Reducing Christianity to a second chance is really an affront to the gospel. A troubled conscience does not need the demands of God lowered until they become achievable; it needs to know that the righteousness God requires has been fulfilled by another and that this Christ is freely given in the gospel.
At the moment when human obedience collapses, God begins to direct history toward the obedience of the coming Seed. From that promise onward, Scripture carries the sinner’s hope toward the One who would enter Adam’s ruined world, bear Adam’s curse, defeat Adam’s enemy, and bring his people into a life Adam could never recover for them.
God did not give Adam a second chance.
He promised him Christ.
https://billygraham.org/answers/does-god-give-us-second-chances
Fisher, Marrow of Modern Divinity, 28–29.
Fisher, Marrow of Modern Divinity, 45.
Wonderfully put brother! Well done. So often we fall prey to the notion of second chances because, as you rightly say, that’s incredibly appealing. But only to the part of us that thinks we are still capable. I think part of the law’s work on us is disabusing us odd what we’re capable of so that we cling to Christ all the more.