Tracing the family tree back to its roots is an ancient vanity which absorbs many today. Societies are being formed and members are finding the study of their pedigrees fascinating, if not altogether flattering.
For example, a member of a genealogical society in Ontario claims to trace his family tree back to 495 A.D. and he includes Alfred The Great among his ancestors.
Another traces his bloodlines over the centuries to the Doomsday Book, a record of English lands compiled for William the Conqueror about 1086.
Another was elated by his recent discovery that one of his relatives was a soldier in the war of 1812 and took part in the sacking of Oswego.
For various reasons not everyone cares to identify his family tree. The history of the black sheep, or the skeleton in the closet is admittedly often better left untold.
The long, inglorious history of the whole human family leaves no room for boasting. That our first parents were as guilty, fallen creatures cast out of the Garden of Eden, and that their first offspring murdered his brother is the shameful truth.
And what was the continuing result for every member of Adam's race to this very day? Let the Word of God answer: "By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned."
The universality of death but proves the universality of sin. As another has said: "Man has fallen! Not this man or that man, but the whole race. In Adam all have sinned; in Adam all have died. It is not that a few leaves have faded or been shaken down, but the tree has become corrupt, root and branch. The 'flesh' or 'old man'― that is, each man as he is born into the world, a son of man, a fragment of humanity, a unit in Adam's fallen body― is `corrupt.' He not merely brings forth sin but carries it about with him as his second self; nay, he is a 'body' or mass of sin." Rom. 6:66Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. (Romans 6:6).
"Climb your family tree!" urges the modern genealogist.
Unless we are prepared to go to the very bottom, the study of our pedigrees is a profitless exercise; but once we see our lost estate, how brightly the gospel shines before our dark and sinful background. It tells of
Jesus the One who left the throne
To save a ruined race.
Reader, the Savior that God promised on the very day that Adam and Eve fell, is Jesus. He is the Second Adam, the head of a new race. At this moment you are either in Adam or in Christ saved or lost. If lost, why not come to Him now, confessing your need and claim Him by faith as your own. He waits to receive you just as you are.