1 Corinthians 15:21-22 “For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead also comes through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.”

It’s amazing how much trouble one person can cause. I can’t help thinking of the character Kevin McCallister from the Home Alone movies, an eight-year-old who single-handedly ruins his family’s holiday vacations and foils the plans of a team of thieves.

His mischief is nothing compared to the mischief our ancestor Adam created when he fell into the first sin. The effects of that one misstep spread far beyond his immediate family to every member of every family ever since. He didn’t mess up a few days of happy diversion. He destroyed our lives–all of them. His one sin was far worse than any weapon of mass destruction the world has known. In Adam all of us became sinners. It’s our inheritance, our share of the family “fortune” we receive from him. In Adam, we all die.

But Christ undoes the damage. He restores our future all by himself. So often it takes one person to break something, but many to fix it. One might think that would be especially true with death, the greatest human catastrophe of all time. How many world religions don’t believe that every individual has to solve the problem of sin and death all on his own?

Not so with Christ. “The resurrection of the dead comes also through a man.” “In Christ all will be made alive.” All by himself, Jesus has restored our future. He has obliterated our sins. He makes us look as though we have never committed a single one.  He has reversed the effects of death. Instead of the end of life, it is the gateway to life the way it was originally supposed to be. He has created for us a new life, an existence on the other side of death, where there is no more sin, where perfect love permeates all our human relationships, where we walk with God by sight, not just by faith as we do now.

That new life is truly “to be made alive.” All problems, pain, and poverty will be gone. These bodies will function properly all the time. Everything will be back the way it was supposed to be. Our future has been restored, because Christ, and Christ alone, has cleaned up our past.