This week we discuss God’s conversation with Adam and Eve after they have taken and eaten the fruit (Genesis 3:8-13). We look particularly at the problem of Adam’s and Eve’s blame shifting (which is our problem), and the way Christ overcomes the problem. Christ is the one who takes responsibility for the world. He is the one who bears the guilt of the world—yet without sin. And as the body of Christ we are called into the same vocation: taking responsibility not only for our own sins but also the sins of the world, and bearing guilt for the sake of our neighbors.

Here are a couple helpful quotes from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Ethics on bearing guilt and taking responsibility:

Jesus is not concerned with…being good (Matt. 19:17); he is concerned solely with love for the real man, and for that reason He is able to enter into the fellowship of the guilt of men and to take the burden of their guilt upon Himself. Jesus does not desire to be regarded as the only perfect one at the expense of man; He does not desire to look down on mankind as the only guiltless one while mankind goes to its ruin under the weight of its guilt…He does not wish to acquit Himself of the guilt under which men die. A love which left man alone in his guilt would not be love for the real man.

If any man tries to escape guilt…he cuts himself off from the redeeming mystery of Christ’s bearing guilt without sin and he has no share in the divine justification which lies upon this event. He sets his own personal innocence above his responsibility for [other] men, and he is blind to the more irredeemable guilt which he incurs precisely in this; he is blind also to the fact that real innocence shows itself precisely in a man’s entering into the fellowship of guilt for the sake of other men. Through Jesus Christ it becomes an essential part of responsible action that the man who is without sin loves selflessly and for that reason incurs guilt.

Last, here is the “Sicut deus” vs. “Imago dei” diagram referenced throughout the teaching:

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