[Advent is a time of waiting for Christ, a time of longing for the Saviour, a time of urgent expectation for the coming of the Saviour. The shortest and most succinct Advent prayer is: Come, Lord! But in order to truly wait for Jesus, to ask him from the heart to come to me, we must first see very clearly our own need of the Saviour. In order to truly rejoice in Christmas, in the coming of Christ, we must first experience the eternal, primordial tragedy of man. For the coming of Christ into this world is such an infinitely great good deed because what happened to man is recorded in the ancient story of paradise. If we could now see that the old story of Adam and Eve is not so old - it is the story of us all - Advent would become more alive and real for us. We would become aware of how much we need a Saviour! Let us see this old and still relevant story!It begins, "And the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field that the Lord God had made..." (Genesis 3:1) This is surprising because before there was no mention of serpents, of cunning, of evil power, which the serpent personifies. Now, who knows from where, why and how, it appears as the enemy that unexpectedly invades a hitherto peaceful and happy country. I really like this objective simplicity of Scripture. It does not explain unnecessarily, but simply reckons with the serpent, a cunning and evil power at work in the world. It does not answer such prying questions as where it came into the world, what it is, who the devil is and what kind of serpent it is, but simply sounds the alarm: 'Men, beware! The serpent is here! The ancient tempter, the eternal enemy! Let's call him Satan, because the Scriptures call him Satan. This name conjures up a lot of vivid images in our minds, as people have imagined the figure of the devil before. But one thing we know for sure is that he is not what Dante imagined him to be in Hell, or what Goethe describes him as in Faust, or Madách in The Tragedy of Man. It is not the devil as man has often depicted him with horseshoes and little horns. It is not what he is, but what he wants. And that he wants something: that is what this story reveals.
What does it want? It's obvious from what he says to Adam and Eve: "You will be like God, knowing good and evil." (Genesis 3:6) This is the great Satanic bait that man keeps taking! This "you will be like God" means in essence: you man, think about it! Do you always want to be led on God's treadmill? When you want to do something, you must always ask God first if it's OK! You are the crown of creation! Tell yourself what is right and what is wrong! Do not always ask God what you should do and what you should not do! The deepest problem, then, which was discussed there in Paradise - and has always been since - is the autonomy of man! In other words: does man himself make the law for himself or does God give it to him? The ancient, satanic temptation is always the one that came first: to make man believe that he can be autonomous, that he can be independent of God, that he can determine what is good and what is evil without God, bypassing God.
The serpent's ambition is to make Adam ignore what God commanded. His greatest triumph today is still to lead man to the point of ignoring what God says is right or wrong. "You will be like God". What such a man does afterwards, how he lives, is beside the point. The main thing is to practically shut God out of his life. Never mind what God thinks is right, what God has to say about what he does. Then you can be any religious, upright, blessed, good soul! Satan's concern is not that a person should become a God-denying, useless, hateful, evil person, but that he should become someone who does not question God, who has no regard for His law. One who practically does not need God to interfere, to guide, to advise. Oh, there are so many such "good" people among us, who could not be said to have anything wrong with them, who do not fall into obvious sins, who always behave in a fair and right way. Whose only sin is to live and act in an autonomous, self-regulating way. They set themselves the standards to which they conform their thinking and their actions. This is the original sin of man! In effect, there is a break in contact between God and man. It is not that man denies God, or does not believe in Him, or does not think of Him with reverence and love, but only that he does not have contact with Him. His soul does not touch Him, there is no relationship.
Of course, the serpent does not always succeed in getting to the point where man shuts God out of his life completely. Nor did it begin here with Adam and Eve, but in a quite innocuous-looking way. They were not told by the serpent not to listen to God, not to believe that there are eternal divine laws - but there are situations in which they have to consider how God's command is to be understood. For example, someone having an illicit affair was desperate to prove that it was true that Jesus said not to commit adultery, but what he was doing was not actually adultery. You have to understand the situation he is in, you cannot condemn him for it. By the way, where is it written in the Bible that He cannot be happy? Or one is tormented by another problem: that he really wants to follow Jesus in everything, but there are evil people against whom, if he sincerely wanted to practice Christian love for his neighbour, he would be committing suicide. It sounds very nice here in church, but it is not useful in life. There are situations and circumstances in life where the divine law cannot be applied, or not fully. After all, where would we be if we forgave everyone, loved everyone as ourselves?! So one does not want to set aside the divine law, one does not want to deny it, but one chooses for oneself what can be done in certain situations. In such cases, it is always Satan who tampers with what God has said. "Did God really say that?" he whispers somewhere inside, and one begins to ponder. He begins to believe that this is not such a great sin, since in such a situation there is no other way to act. It is always Satan who tries to sway one's heart to the absoluteness of God's law, and to make one believe that it is as relative as everything else in the world. Its validity depends on the circumstances.
The deepest basis of all sin is that I want to know something better than God. He may have told me what to do, but... And then comes the explanation of why, in such circumstances, it is not possible to act according to God's law. You slowly convince yourself that what you are doing is not against God's law. So slowly you come to the point where you sin with the conviction that you are doing good! Like the SS soldier who, when called to account for the blood on his hands, replied with a clear conscience: 'I was only doing my duty! Don't think that it is so far away! Satan also holds up a mirror to us in which the possibilities of sin appear to us as if they were not sins. But we can do it, we can do it, we are already strong enough in faith, we think. A little joke, a little impurity, a little flirting, a little dabbling, a little laziness, a little laxity, a little cheating, a little profiteering, a little indignation, a little selfishness: these are not sins, they are permissible! The Lord condones them, because He knows that we are in circumstances where we have to do them! Any such relaxation of the divine command is satanic.
Then there is another temptation of Satan: he presents the law of God as a heavy burden that hinders man's freedom of movement. Behold, how good it is for those who do not allow themselves to be limited by what God says. How carefree are men who have shaken off this burden. Are they not tormented by such thoughts, wondering if they are doing the right thing? They live as they please. Those people are free! They are free to do as they please! They have no qualms of conscience if they take pleasure in satisfying their desires. Why not? Whatever pleases them is free! Yes, Satan sometimes makes the world in which man lives as having nothing to do with God seem desirable. I am God, my God! I live my life as I want! I order my life according to my own good pleasure, not God's. I do not allow myself to be bound by rules and regulations that prevent me from doing what I want to do. Isn't that how the world lives?
Isn't that how we live? Or do we take the word of God seriously? Is it not the case that in our souls there is already a split between us and God, and that we are only held together by external threads? Such external links as going to church every Sunday, and sometimes a prayer recited, and inherited Reformed traditions, church tax payments, and the custom of having our children baptised, of having our marriages blessed in church, of having our dead buried by a priest. But we live, think and act practically without God! We have long since separated ourselves from God in spirit, we have long since separated ourselves from Him!
That is why the Advent message is so precious, because it proclaims that God does not want to live without us! God will not rest in what happened in Paradise and what has happened to us since. God will not let us drift away from Him. God comes after us, speaks to us and says: You, man, who do not want to be with me! Take note that I want to be with you! The mysterious person of Jesus is the essence of this ancient Old Testament prophecy: "Immanuel, God is with us" (Mt 1:23; Is 7:14). Jesus: in this precious name, in this precious person, God says to you: you do not care for me, but I care for you. You have separated yourself from me, but I will follow you. You have gone away, but I embrace you again. You have sinned, but I forgive. You are estranged from me, but I love you! This is the only way to truly treat someone you love very, very much! And this is how God treats us. This is what the happy Advent gospel proclaims: "God is with us." Do you understand? With us! Together with us against the serpent!
What is the practical use of this? Let me tell you a little story. Once a morally low man was asked: are you what you should be? The man was astonished, embarrassed. Then he answered, annoyed: I am what I am. 'Well,' asked the other, 'don't you have the courage to answer my question? "Of course I do!" said he. Then answer me! Are you what you ought to be? He was even more embarrassed. A few moments of silence. Then the priest says: "No! In the pressed silence, the questioner spoke up: allow me to ask you a second question: why don't you change? I never thought of that, although I always knew I should. I'll tell you: because you can't! He can't! Nobody can get out of their own skin! But let me also say right off the bat that Someone can change themselves! Jesus Christ! He once said, "Behold, I make all things new" (Rev 21:5) He came and died on the cross so that you could be different! Whoever receives Him into himself will experience the divine power that changes you. He makes you what you are meant to be! This is what it means in practical terms: for those who are hurting because they are not what they should be, the Advent gospel is for them: Fear not, God is with you!
I wish we could really pray like this as an Advent prayer:
Come down, Lord, to me, Come down, Lord, to me,
Come, O Jesus, make haste,
With longing heart, with outstretched hand
I wait for you now with longing,
To go with you to heaven, With joy to enter
Into Abraham's bosom.
(Canto 215, verse 6)
Amen
Date: 14 December 1958.