The Problem of Sin

Our question for today is very straight forward: are most people, deep down inside, basically good?  Your answer to this question will set the stage for the rest of our conversations.  We will look at each answer and the consequences to each answer.  Finally, we will see where scripture leads us citing both Old and New Testament passages. 

Let us begin with the affirmative answer to our question.  In this paradigm, we have some significant theological consequences.  The first and most obvious is that this answer means that somehow all of humanity is free of Adam’s sin.  There are only two possible ways that this can be true.  First, we can assume that Adam’s sin is not imputed to all of mankind, that Adam was not a federal representative of all of us and did not sin for all of us (denial of original sin.)  Second, we can assume that Adam did impute sin to all of us, but that sin has been cleansed in some manner.

The first assumption was put forward by the British monk Pelagius in the fifth century.  The primary source of the church’s opinion regarding this position in that time was written by Augustine.  This position that denies original sin and the imputed sin of Adam to all of humanity is known as Pelagianism.  It has been condemned by every church counsel since the fifth century.  This point of view is held by many Americans and is clearly heretical.

There are other consequences of this assumption.  In order to attain salvation, man must seek God, an activity that he must be able to undertake in this system.  Because man has free will, he is able to choose to follow Jesus’ good example instead of Adam’s bad example.  The purpose of Jesus’ life was to provide a good example for man to follow in order to attain righteousness before God.  The question that is left unanswered in this system, though, is why then did Jesus have to die?

The second assumption has a couple of permutations.  It starts from the point that original sin is affirmed.  However, the purpose of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection is to provide victory over sin and death and give mankind a clean slate.  This allows man’s free will to again be able to choose to follow God.  There are subtle nuances here about whether we take the first step or whether God takes the first step.  When we take the first step, this is called semipelagianism.  This is the default position of most Americans.  It has also been condemned by church counsels.  If we take a step towards God, He’ll do all the rest.  Does that sound familiar?  If you pray this prayer and walk this walk, God will come down and do the rest.  If you just turn around and just face God, He is standing right there.  These are semipelagian positions that have become the mainstay of American religion due the revivalism movement of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.  This theology also assumes that if you can turn towards God, you can also later turn away from God and lose your salvation.  So, now that you have prayed this prayer, walking this walk is vital to maintaining your salvation.  Let me tell you the five rules for walking the walk in this area, and the seven rules for walking the walk in this area, and the fifteen principles of “Christian” living.  Deeds, not creeds.  All of this mess is under this theological umbrella, and it is all considered heretical.  Altar calls belong to this general heading, although they can also be seen with Pelagian and even Arminian theology.

Here is a historical aside.  On everything that is above this point, there is complete Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and historical Reformation Protestant agreement.  This is the horrible irony of the state of the church.  Over 1500 years of church history gets undone by our insistence on the efficacy of our free will and our American egalitarianism.  This combination may look great in our Constitution, but the historic church has condemned this position.  Therefore, the majority of what we Americans call Christianity and Church is actually neither.

The next position to consider is the reverse of this position.  What if God takes the first step, but we need to cooperate with God and make a decision to turn toward Him.  God enables us through an infusion of grace, prevenient grace, to be able to make a proper decision for God.  After God makes this first move, we have to cooperate with God and choose to follow God.  We have to choose to believe.  This is the position of a sixteenth century Dutch theologian named Arminius.  Original sin is intact in this system.  God offers the potential for salvation to all humanity and makes the first move.  It is up to us to respond.  This system is still synergistic; it requires action by both God and man, but God has to take the first step.  We are not capable of choosing God without this infusion of grace.  We can also choose not to follow God, and many people make this other choice.  Salvation, therefore, can be lost.  Arminianism is not considered heresy, but rather a doctrinal error by more orthodox branches of the Protestant traditions.  The Canons of Dordt are the Dutch Reformed response to Arminius and contain the enunciation of the five points of Calvinism, which refute the five points of Arminius’ Remonstration. 

The Roman Catholic position is more complicated and falls somewhere in here for our discussion.  The Roman Catholics have some notion of the perseverance of the saints, in other words, you cannot lose your salvation except by the unrepented commission of a mortal sin.  Their theology still insists on perfection for admittance into heaven.  There is a complicated system of sin, repentance and penance that is required to return to a right standing before God.  After we die, whatever deficit that we have from perfection has to be worked out in purgatory prior to acceptance into heaven.  At Baptism, we receive a similar prevenient grace that enables us to perform good works through the power of the Holy Spirit, and through the other sacraments (seven total in Roman Catholicism,) we receive infusions of grace throughout our lives that quantitatively accumulate to balance against our sin.  I want to make no effort to defend this position at this time.  Most Americans identify Roman Catholicism as heretical by definition, without ever bothering to understand what they believe.  The Roman Catholic system of justification is actually closer to the Reformed position than most Americans, who are either full blown Pelagians or semipelagians. 

Now, let us answer our original question in the negative.  Are most people, deep down inside, basically good?  No.  Let’s go to scripture to see why everyone except for the Pelagians who deny original sin would affirm this position.  We have done this exercise on this blog in the past, so for many, this will be familiar.  Here are some examples, by all means, not an inclusive list.  1 Kings 19:9-18, Isaiah 59:1-13, Jeremiah 21, Psalm 5, 14, 53, 140, Romans 3:1-20. 

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—

 (Romans 5: 6-8, 12 ESV)

These are heavy words and they condemn all of us.  If you hold to this position, then not only do you need God to clean the slate, you are horribly incapable of even cooperating with God.  This is known as monergism, where God does all of the work.  God recognizes the problem and arranges the solution.  Jesus enters the world, lives the perfect life and overcomes death, thereby ushering in the interadvental time of this present evil age (between His life, death, resurrection and ascension and the Age to come, which begins at the second coming, Judgment Day. the Last Day.)  He then imputes righteousness to His elect and reconciles His elect to Himself.  As each elect saint enters the world, the Holy Spirit arranges for their conversion and belief.  The Good Shepherd does not lose even one.  God does not fail in His purpose even the slightest.  He accomplishes exactly that which He intends.

Americans will yell, “That’s not fair!” Our egalitarian sensibilities insist that this is arbitrary and capricious.  But from God’s perspective, when He looks out upon the world from all eternity, all he sees is sin and death, a vast graveyard of humanity.  In His infinite Mercy, He decides to save a vast number of humanity, more than can be counted.  Do not ask for fair, because fairly we are all condemned.  Rest assured, instead, in the certain hope of His mercy for you, His elect.

That is our biggest problem.  We are all condemned to die and enter into hell forever.  Only the absolute perfection of God can satisfy the righteousness of God on the Last Day.  Without the imputed righteousness of the One who did what we cannot do, and the reconciliation He offers by the imputation of our sin to Him, where He has already paid the price for that sin, we will get what we deserve.  Death, hell and eternal damnation.

– Troll –

Does God Love the Sinner, but hate the Sin?

Usually, Troll doesn’t just plow into a topic that falls into the area of Ogre, but today will be different.  Two of my dear friends, in the same week, used the old saw “God loves the sinner, but hates the sin.” In both instances, I stated that I did not agree, but in neither case was the circumstance appropriate to elaborate.  Since this perspective is so pervasive in the US, I thought it needed a good discussion.

The statement above implies a couple of things.  First, it implies that deep down inside, man is basically good.  Secondly, it implies that even if the sin of Adam was federally imputed to all of mankind, the role of the Atonement becomes a clearing of the slate.  This further implies that the standard of God can be less than perfection, because Jesus gives the gift that keeps on giving, unless you are Roman Catholic, in which case you’ve got some work to do in Purgatory.  Both of these examples are works theologies, and typical of the liberal perspective.  Let us look at this statement from a theology of Grace instead of a theology of Works.

Is man basically good?  I’ve addressed this issue many times in the past, but here are just a few passages that speak to the issue.  Jeremiah 17:9, Psalms 5:9, 14:1-3, Isaiah 6:5, 59:7-8, Ecclesiastes7:20, and of course Romans 3:9-12.  We have a problem of sin.  Notice how Paul describes the condition of sin in Romans 5:12-21.  He is contrasting the imputation of sin by Adam on the whole human race to the imputation of perfect righteousness by Christ to the elect through the gift of faith from the Holy Spirit.  The problem here is that we are born sinners and we will die sinners.  We require an alien righteousness, a righteousness that is outside of ourselves, a righteousness that we can obtain from someone else, to satisfy the Justice and Glory of God.  And here is the rub: without this alien righteousness, our own deeds, our own works, condemn us to hell. 

Therefore, can we truly say that God loves the sinner?  Perhaps, if we argue that while we were still enemies of God, He provides us with this perfect righteousness, then we can say that God loves us anyway.  But here is the problem with that line of reasoning.  God doesn’t save everyone.  There is an elect remnant, Romans 9, that God has held back for Himself from before time.  For these, He loves us and gives us the free gift through Grace of faith in the meritorious work of Christ on the Cross.  So, does God love us due to any particular virtue of our own?  Of course not.  He loves us because of the imputed righteousness of Christ that is added to our account.  Without this imputed righteousness, He truly does not love us, but instead, we suffer His Just Wrath.

What if we come to the problem from an Arminian, Semi-Pelagian or Roman Catholic perspective of the Atonement?  What does this mean?  The work of Christ on the Cross was sufficient for all people to wipe our slates clean, in these systems.  Our free will, being thus cleansed of sin, is now capable of following the commandments.  Our salvation is based upon our efforts and works during this life.  If we make an effort, God will forgive the rest in the first two cases, or give us a time in Purgatory in the third case.  Now, I’d like for a moment to discuss how this violates the Holiness of God.  We are saying here that God will accept sinful people into heaven.  Check out Matthew 5:48.  The standard is perfection.  No joke.  Perfection.  Dwell on that bad news for a minute.  Do we really expect that God’s love implies that He will simply overlook our sin?

God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son so that all who believe in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.  John 3:16.  We all know this verse, but we seem to turn off our brains when reading it and add some stuff that just isn’t there to the equation.  God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son so that all who believed in Him and followed the commandments and took one step towards Him and prayed the prayer at the altar call and voted Republican would not perish, but have everlasting life.  Hmmm.  All that stuff is not actually in there, (except the bit about voting Republican.  It’s in the Grand Old Pachyderm Revised Standard Version (GOPRSV).)  As C.S.Lewis put it in the Screwtape Letters, just get them to add something to the Gospel, add anything to the Gospel, and then it’s no longer the gospel.  What this verse does say is that the work of Jesus on the Cross is 100% efficacious for all believers.  This means that salvation is based upon faith alone.  Certainly, I could have selected many other passages, particularly in the Pauline epistles, that are more explicit on this subject, but this is from John, and it is very well known.

Finally, God hates sin.  God abhors sin.  Any who sin, or are born in the condition of sin in Adam, in other words everyone, is condemned to hell.  God went about a rescue mission for an elect remnant of native vines and wild vines (Jews and Gentiles) in which He not only provides a perfect sacrifice that turns away God’s wrath, but also reconciles us to God through Christ Jesus’ blood.  Our sin, the sin of all believers, before we were born, was imputed to Christ.  His righteousness was imputed to all believers, and this righteousness is credited to our account on the Last Day.  Therefore, He lived the Life we could not live.  He died the death we could not die as a perfect sacrifice.  He arose from death and ascended into Heaven, becoming the firstborn from the dead.  On the Last Day, He will raise all of us and clothe His elect in His own righteousness, so that we may walk boldly in Judgment, confident in a perfect righteousness that isn’t our own.  God gets to see us through this perfect righteousness and His Holiness and Justice remains intact.  God, in this way, is not diminished by our sin.  We are accepted immediately and completely, full inheritors of His Kingdom.

Why did God go through all of this for us?  I’m sure He’ll tell us all someday.  Until that Day, the Last Day, we must trust in the scripture and believe.  Our reaction to this gift of faith and mercy is obedience and humility.  We will sin again and again as long as our bodies are IN Adam (until we die), and though it drives us nuts and upsets us that we cannot be the perfect man that Christ was, we persevere in the certain hope that our Salvation is secured in Christ.

That, my friends is why I do not agree with the opening proposition.  The theology of works is not my claim to salvation.  I’ll take grace, thank you.  Don’t give me what I deserve.  I’ll simply accept that free gift that the Holy Spirit has given me.  As bad is the bad news really is, the Good News is much better than you can possibly imagine.

--Troll--

Heidelberg Catechism: The Second Part--Deliverance, sub A

One of the most interesting parts of doing these catechisms is that we get to see the doctrine spelled out, but also we are given the proof texts along with it.  Although it takes a considerable bit of time, these catechisms make a great reading guide.  Read not only the verses quoted, but also the sections around those verses for context.  If you keep in mind the doctrines that are being added as we go, you will have a nice systematic theology built.  At the end of the second part, I'll go back and summarize the doctrine without the proof texts.  It reads very nicely as a clear and coherent doctrinal statement, as it was designed to do.  The second part has an introduction that I've divided in half, then it goes through the Trinity, and finally through the sacraments.  This is the real meat of the discussion, but remember that each part builds upon the prior section.

The Second Part - Of Man's Deliverance

5. Lord's Day

Question 12. Since then, by the righteous judgment of God, we deserve temporal and eternal punishment, is there no way by which we may escape that punishment, and be again received into favor?

Answer: God will have his justice satisfied: (Genesis 2:17, Exodus 20:5, 23:7, Ezekiel 18:4, Matthew 5:26; 2 Thessalonians 1:6, Luke 16:2) and therefore we must make this full satisfaction, either by ourselves, or by another. (Romans 8:3-4)

Question 13. Can we ourselves then make this satisfaction?

Answer: By no means; but on the contrary we daily increase our debt. (Job 9:2-3, 15:15-16, 4:18-19, Psalms 130:3, Matthew 6:12, 18:25, 16:26)

Question 14. Can there be found anywhere, one, who is a mere creature, able to satisfy for us?

Answer: None; for, first, God will not punish any other creature for the sin which man has committed; (Ezekiel 18:4, Genesis 3:17, Hebrews 2:14-17) and further, no mere creature can sustain the burden of God's eternal wrath against sin, so as to deliver others from it. (Nehemiah 1:6, Psalms 130:3)

Question 15. What sort of a mediator and deliverer then must we seek for?

Answer: For one who is very man, and perfectly (1 Corinthians 15:21, Jeremiah 33:16, Isaiah 53:9, 2 Corinthians 5:21) righteous; (Hebrews 7:26, 7:16) and yet more powerful than all creatures; that is, one who is also very God. (Isaiah 7:14, 9:6, Romans 9:5, Jeremiah 23:5-6, Luke 11:22)

This section lays out our need for a savior and exactly what His qualities must be.  We obviously already know the answers to the questions, but it is good to know that the questions also come from the Bible.  Often, when we are talking to others who are nominally Christian, the wrong questions are being asked.  We need to be sure to refocus the discussion on the right questions.

6. Lord's Day

Question 16. Why must he be very man, and also perfectly righteous?

Answer: Because the justice of God requires that the same human nature which has sinned, should likewise make satisfaction for sin; (Ezekiel 18:4,20, Romans 5:12, 15, 18; 1 Corinthians 15:21, Hebrews 2:14-16; 1 Peter 3:18, Isaiah 53:3-5, 10-11) and one, who is himself a sinner, cannot satisfy for others. (Hebrews 7:26-27, Psalms 49:7-8; 1 Peter 3:18)

Question 17. Why must he in one person be also very God?

Answer: That he might, by the power of his Godhead (Isaiah 9:6, 63:3) sustain in his human nature, (Isaiah 53:4, 11) the burden of God's wrath; (Deuteronomy 4:24, Nehemiah 1:6, Psalms 130:3) and might obtain for, and restore to us, righteousness and life. (Isaiah 53:5, 11, Acts 2:24; 1 Peter 3:18, John 3:16, Acts 20:28, John 1:4)

Question 18. Who then is that Mediator, who is in one person both very God, (1 John 5:20, Romans 9:5, 8:3; Galatians 4:4, Isaiah 9:6, Jeremiah 23:6, Malachi 3:1) and a real (Luke 1:42, 2:6-7; Romans 1:3, 9:5; Philippians 2:7, Hebrews 2:14, 16-7, 4:15) righteous man? (Isaiah 53:9, 11; Jeremiah 23:5, Luke 1:35, John 8:46, Hebrews 4:15, 7:26; 1 Peter 1:19, 2:22, 3:18)

Answer: Our Lord Jesus Christ: (1 Timothy 2:5; Hebrews 2:9, Matthew 1:23; 1 Timothy 3:16; Luke 2:11) "who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption." (1 Corinthians 1:30)

Question 19. Whence knows thou this?

Answer: From the holy gospel, which God himself first revealed in Paradise; (Genesis 3:15) and afterward published by the patriarchs (Genesis 22:18, 12:3, 49:10-11) and prophets, (Isaiah 53; 42:1-4, 43:25, 49:5-6, 22-23; Jeremiah 23:5-6, 31:32-33, 39-41; Micah 7:18-20, Acts 10:43, Romans 1:2, Hebrews 1:1, Acts 3:22-24, 10:43; John 5:46) and represented by the sacrifices and other ceremonies of the law; (Hebrews 10:1, 7; Colossians 2:7, John 5:46) and lastly, has fulfilled it by his only begotten Son. (Romans 10:4, Galatians 4:4-5, 3:24; Colossians 2:17)

Now, we have the answers to the questions that we raised above.  These two days of questions lay the framework for the whole Christian faith.  In the next group, we will finish the first section of the Second Part.

--Troll--