When Something Dies — and Something Begins
First Sunday of Lent – Year A
Genesis 2:7-9;3:1-7 · Romans 5:12-19 · Matthew 4:1-11
Sin and grace. Some cultures don’t use these words. But almost everyone knows the feeling of doing something that doesn’t match who they want to be.
Someone once put it this way:
“Every time I do it, something dies inside me.”
They weren’t talking about rules. They were talking about themselves.
A young woman once said: “I want to be holy and beautiful.”
Not just admired. Not just desired. But whole.
Where does that longing come from?
These two voices already say a lot. Sin feels like drifting off course. Grace feels like being pulled back toward life.
Something dies— and life begins again.
The first Sunday of Lent tells that story.
Adam reaches for the tree of knowledge because he wants control. He wants to decide for himself what is good and what is not.
The result is not freedom. It is distance. From God. From others. From himself.
Something dies.
Jesus stands in the desert facing the same temptation.
Define yourself. Prove yourself. Take control.
And Jesus refuses.
He does not grasp. He does not perform. He does not turn stones into bread or faith into spectacle.
He chooses trust.
Life begins.
Paul looks at this long human story and names it plainly: something has gone wrong with us.
Again and again, we choose what looks good now over what gives life later.
Like Adam, we have eaten deeply from the tree of knowledge. Our achievements prove it. But knowledge without wisdom turns against life itself.
For the first time in history, we are capable of destroying the very world that sustains us.
That is what the Bible calls sin— not bad behavior, but broken relationship.
Something dies.
And then Paul dares to say more.
What entered the world through one human story is being undone through another.
Grace.
Not effort. Not self-improvement. Not moral perfection.
A gift.
An undeserved opening. A new beginning offered right where things went wrong.
And life begins again.
Grace does not deny the damage. It heals it.
You can recognize it when it happens.
In Burmese lay missionaries bringing the Gospel to forgotten places. In an Indonesian sister running a small clinic amid violence. In a mother of five holding her family together with nothing but faith and tired hands.
None of them are perfect. But they are alive.
A person touched by grace becomes lighter. More awake. Less defensive. More free.
Grace begins when we imitate Jesus in his decisiveness.
No bargaining. No delay.
Just a clear refusal—
“Get lost.”
And suddenly, light enters.
That is the move from Adam to Christ. From grasping to trusting. From something dying to something beginning.
Scripture Attribution
New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993
the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of
Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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© 2025 Krakus.
Licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0 (Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial).