by Peter Homeier

Peter Homeier was an aerospace engineer at the Aerospace Corporation in El Segundo, California, who posted a series of standalone theological essays to net.religion.christian in 1985. In an era when the internet was almost entirely academics and engineers, he wrote openly and directly about evangelical Christian faith — not in debate, but as testimony.

"The Tragedy of Sin" is the first essay in what amounts to a systematic theology of salvation, developed in installments across several posts. Beginning with the Garden of Eden, Homeier describes original innocence ("without guile or deception, without any cruelty or darkness"), the serpent's temptation, and the Fall — which he identifies as the source of all grief, suffering, and death in the world today. The essay then turns to the Gospel: Christ's death on the Cross as the answer to the law of sin and death, a "complete, unconditional pardon given freely to all who will accept it." It closes with a prayer of invitation.

Homeier's prose is warm and earnest, addressed not to theologians but to anyone reading at a terminal in 1985. "Come to Jesus just as you are," he writes, "and He will love you and accept you just as you are." This is evangelical Christianity as it arrived on the early internet: direct, personal, and unashamed.

Adam abused his freedom, and chose to violate the Law that God had made, sundering his intimate relationship with God and causing an inevitable result of death which has continued through all the ages since, rumbling and increasing in intensity and sorrow.

For Adam and Eve were innocent, without guile or deception, without any cruelty or darkness in their souls at all. But the devil came hidden in the disguise of a snake, and questioned what God had said to them. He works the same way today, with the subtle, sneaky, slippery thought nudged into our minds, "Did God really say that?" (Gen 3:1) It is the same spirit which today says "How do you know that Jesus is the Christ? Prove it to me!" The woman responded to the question, stating the commandment as God had taught her, and that to violate it meant death. Then the serpent lied to the woman, saying "You will not surely die. But God is just trying to suppress you, to keep you from being as great as He is, to know both good and evil." (my paraphrase) Thus the devil tempted Eve with the same pride that caused his own downfall, to be as high as God. And the woman yielded to the serpent's persuasive, seductive words, and ate of the fruit, and gave it to Adam, and he ate also.

The effects of that choice, freely made, have resounded to this day. The man and his woman were cast out of the Garden, and ever since man has been separate from God. No one but Jesus has ever known such closeness with the Father as Adam enjoyed. That intimacy was now shattered. Yet even at the moment when the Father, his heart broken for His children, was pronouncing the inevitable curse, He also gave the first promise of the escape from that curse.

"So the Lord God said to the serpent:
... 'And I will put enmity
Between you and the woman,
And between your seed and her Seed;
He shall bruise your head,
And you shall bruise His heel.'"

This is the first promise of the Messiah; Jesus was bruised by Satan on the Cross; but at that moment of death Jesus bruised Satan by completely defeating him and all his works.

How might the story of our race be if Eve had refused the serpent? What would our life be like? Can we imagine a world at peace, with people sharing love with each other, supporting one another, and not hating, destroying, polluting, maiming and killing one another? Yet that innocence is gone, lost by our surrender to sin, but there is a greater glory coming than that which would have been ours. For the Bible says, "When sin abounds, grace does much more abound," and we shall finally see a kingdom of God on earth that will be richer and deeper and more fulfilling because we went through this darkness to get there.

Today, the entire world is held in the grip of sin. All grief, suffering, sorrow, fear, torture, and death that we see today are here as a result of sin. This physical and emotional suffering is compounded by our separation from the beauty and love of God, leaving in us a hole, a need, an emptiness, that we do not know how to fill. People try all kinds of things to fill that emptiness; common attempts are to seek money, power, sex, and various kinds of material success. Even drug and alcohol addicts are really people trying to find something that will ease the pain and loneliness of daily life. But what we really need is not found in any of these substitutes. We need to know God and His deep, fulfilling love for us, unconditionally given to us. We were made to have fellowship with God — without Him, life has no purpose or value.

The Bible says that all have sinned, that all men have come short of the glory of God. We know this to be true for ourselves, for each of us is painfully aware of his misdeeds. In the first letter of John, the apostle writes, "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." (1 John 1:8-9.) I do not write this to lay any condemnation on anyone reading this. But just as a doctor would gently but seriously tell his patient that he was terminally ill, I must say to each of you that you also have an illness in you, which if left untreated, will bring you to a depth of death which is beyond comprehension, beyond all pain and anguish felt here on earth. Sin kills, utterly and completely, without any mercy, ruthlessly, inevitably. "The wages of sin is death." (Romans 6:23.) We can see these wages being paid out today, in physical illnesses, mental and emotional cripplings, breakups of marriages, hatred between parents and children, and worse. The thing about sin is that it inevitably brings death as its nature. It is not just something naughty that if we could just get away with it, we'd be O.K. When a person sins, he sets in motion irresistible forces that may not strike him that day, that week, or that year, or perhaps in some cases not even in his life here on earth, but will without any possibility of escape seek him out in the end and fall on him. For even if a person should manage to live pleasantly all his life while committing great evils, there has been ordained a Day when all shall stand before Him who created them. And on that Day, all that men have done will be remembered, and they shall be judged, unless they have come under the grace of Christ.

But there is an escape from this law of sin and death. The good news of the Gospel is that Jesus Christ came to fulfil this law by taking the death that we had earned onto himself, and dying in our place on the Cross. The law still operates, that sin brings death; but now we can live because Jesus, who lived a sinless life, took our sin on Himself and suffered the penalty that should have been ours. In Christ we have redemption for our sins. Praise God for this freedom in which we stand! Praise Jesus for willingly giving His life for ours! Was there ever such love as this? Here is the Power of the cross. For it is the power to catch up people out of the mire of their lives into the light and glory that we were intended to live in from the beginning. No one can lay an accusation against God's beloved children, who have accepted Jesus in their hearts, for "There is therefore now NO condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." (Romans 8:1, emphasis mine). Anything that might have been just grounds for condemnation and punishment before has now been completely dealt with on the Cross, and we are free! It is a complete, unconditional pardon given freely to all who will accept it, just by accepting Christ.

It is not necessary to try to clean up your life before you come to Jesus. In fact, you never could clean it up enough anyhow, and if you could, then what need would you have of Him? Let Him clean up your life, wash your heart with the blood He shed on the Cross, and remove the stain and corruption of sin in your soul. Come to Jesus just as you are, and He will love you and accept you just as you are. And all of your sins He will wash away.

Jesus said, "I came not to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance." He commonly ate and talked with prostitutes, oppressive tax collectors, and all kinds of people who had lived lives full of obvious sin. But these people did not hide from Him, but came to Him, and followed Him, and He loved them. But look at those that were considered righteous in those days, the Pharisees, who thought that they were doing everything that God required and did not need forgiveness. They did not practice the obvious sins that the others did, but their hearts were hard and cold and cruel, and they hated the Lord of Life because He exposed their shallow, meaningless self-righteousness and hypocrisy, hating Him to the point of hanging Him on a cross. I ask you, which people were the greater sinners? God has sacrificed His own Son to pay for your sin; will you scorn that gift and thrust it away? Choose today what you will say.

Prayer

Lord, may the grace of Calvary and your ultimate sacrifice there enter with power into the lives of those reading this now. May the words here written be testified to by your Holy Spirit. Move in the hearts of them now, Lord, that they may feel both their conviction of sin, and of your readiness to accept and cleanse them. I pray that if they have never before accepted You as their Lord, that they would now humbly and meekly yield to your Spirit and let Jesus into their hearts, taking Him to be their Lord and their Savior. May they be born again at this moment of commitment, entering into Your family and into eternal life. May all this be to Your magnificent glory, that Your name may be wonderfully praised. In Jesus's name, amen.

Colophon

Written by Peter Homeier ([email protected], the Aerospace Corporation, M1-080, El Segundo, CA), and posted to net.religion.christian on September 10, 1985. Distribution: na (North America). Article-ID: aero.422. Message-ID: <[email protected]>.

Homeier was an aerospace engineer who wrote a sustained series of standalone evangelical essays to net.religion.christian in 1985, addressing whoever might be reading at a terminal: a systematic theology of salvation in installments. "The Tragedy of Sin" is the first, establishing the problem that the subsequent essays — "The Cross of Christ," "The Meaning of Salvation," "Faith" — would develop.

Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.

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