The Gospel of Knowing & Being Delivered from Original Sin
Notes
Transcript
Handout
Dear Congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ,
If you were to take your 300k plus car to Simon or Clarence, and say I think somehitng is wrong with it. It doesn’t sound right, and they came back and said no worries just top off the transmission fluid. Drive away muffled grinding sound, but feel it still not right, not pleased. But on the other hand, if they came back and said, need whole new transmission this car never going to run the way its supposed to with out a new transmission - heart is goign to sink, rather believe the first prognosis and may even foolishly drive away deep down knownig thing is goiong to fall apart. This is particularly so if you bought the car with 200k on it, and you never knew the power and the smoothness of a properly functioning transmission.
Well congregation I’ve also been told that this true of patients with their doctors - first resonse - you’ve got cancer - what not possible, tests must be wrong must have mixed them up. And it is certainly true of the spiritual diagonosis the bible gives of our condition, despite all the improvement sto scoeity technolgoy, at the root of it we’re really no more civil, nor is their less violnece, lust, pride, greed in all the centuries of passing human kind. We don’t sin less, just more advanced ways of sinning! It’s like all we’ve ever known is a human vehicle with a broken transmission, so we never miss what we ought to be. And that is why the Bible and our confession - says need strong view of both God’s creation - over our being created naturally as covenant partners with God - original goodnes,s righteouness and knowledge, imaging God by imitating his dominion - God giving the pln and purpose of all things - taht’s the human with a properly function transmission.
ANd because we’ve never known that, never seen what the world would be like - what family, church, and state, society - some mechanic comes out and says, well, its not perfect but here just put a little of this transmission fluid in and you should be able to keep rolling! We’ve misdiagnosed sin and denied original sin that though not given that name in the Bible, like the doctrine of the Trinity -is in their in saturation - as we confess the faith to each other, to our neighbours, to unbelievers - need to be giving the correct diagnosis, so we can give the correct cure! Our fallen human nature and this world that would live apart from the Living God and His Son, we want to define sin as just a moral problem - that we’re finite humans, of course not perfect, but just correct little moral wrong doings and we will get better and better! Well in the words of Doctor Phil - how’s that working for you - American, Candaa, world? But what you and I need is the gospel that sin isn’t just about moral behaviour, but at its heart it’s about relationship to God.
A. Original Sin as Corruption
Now you may be thinking that a fuller more robust view of sin like Romans 5, is medieval and fable, old time brow beating. But not just because its more realistic, but because it holds wihtin int the promises of raising human dignity to heights unkown by us. We can have at rnsmission that works, the human vehicle full of glory, if dare to nanme sin as God does! If we hear God’s diagonosis of sin, we can see Christ coming to save the lost by pure and powerful grace, insead of just coming to give a little hack or tweak to improve your life a little bit.
What is the Bible’s diagnosis of our fallen condition? We saw last week, God made us not in covenant of grace, but of nature, of works, - able freely to do this - intention that confirnmed by that obedience move to confirmed perfection, get eternal life, be made a spiritual man. But real free chioce able to give it up, to chose for self against God as the king and kingdom live for. The covenant threat for those who break the covenant of works - is the oppostie of confirmed in eterna life and parnterhsip and fellowship with God, bnaished from the tree of life and the garden. The day you eat of it you surely die. Spiritual death - separation, not alive to righteouness, but enslaved to sin,when Satan jpromised eating the fruit will change you - that part true - a corruption worked through every part, a curse of God - spiritual death. But also physical death, and one day eterna ldeath of hell.
This is what Romans 5:12 means:
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—
Before we describe how this is tranferred from Adam to the whole human race, think about how Adam changed before he was able to enter a new coveannt of Grace. Before he had been able not to sin, and to sin. Now just able to sin. That’s the signficance of him recgnizing his nakendess and being ahsamed. Before had knowledge of God, rightouensss, gooddness - image of God was compeltely intact - God’s friend and partner. Now under the judgment of God and with that constant guilt and shame - no longer friend of God partner but enemy of God - wihtout God or hope in the world!
Romans 5:14 desscribes not just as pyrical death - but a new reign in humanity’s life, the reign of the power of sin and death:
Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.
That reign of sin and death by Satan, brought corruption to every part of us - our mind Eph 2 darkened undestanding, our will, unable wihtout Jesus to do real good to God, our heart, our emotional life all tainted by sinful nature -with vestiage s of that image of God but tainted and shattered. This is why we sin because we are sinners, not are snners because we happen to sin. This is why Christain teaching is that orignial sin, isn’t just the first sin, its the root sin that affects us all! All our sin stems from this new sinful condition that we live from
But the condition is even worse than just that our hardware has been scrambled and our operatingt system pointing inthe directino wawy from God and twoard self and selfisness. Our relationship with God is broken this is the heart of it: Look at Rom 5:16
And the free gift is not like the result of that one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification.
Corruptin of our ability, corruption of our affections, corruption of our standing and relatinosip with God, Our position and job in the world. And saying this is saying at the same time that we are not the way wewere created to be, sin is secondary, and the primary thing is the way God created us to be in relaionship to him. While some may naively close eyes to deep down corruition and evil most acknowwldge - depravity of huamnity not changing on its own. Real prolbem is man’s heart of darkness!
B. Original Sin as Corruption & Hereditary Disease
Now this is were the controversy enters in. The Bible clearly states that Adam wasn’t acting for himself alone in his sin, and the punishment of that original sin came not just on him but the whole human race! Romans 5:14
Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.
Clearly those who sinned from Adama to Moses were not sinning by doing the same sin as Adam, breaking covenant of works, eating from the tree of knoweldge of good and evil. Yet Adam’s guilt and punishment and death comes on all of them, like us. And then we here those words which are a key to interpreting Adam. He was a type of the one who was to come. We saw 1 Cor 15 last week - that Adam was a natural man, but God had another type the Christ God-man became not just natural mman, but man from heaven, the spirutal man. Well so too God is saying Adam is a represetnative - federal head of human race, in the same way that Christ would be able to the head of a saved and renewed race!
What this is teaching is the doctrine of imputation. You get a credit card, and swipe a purchase. What’s going on … the bank is creditting you money, imputing to you that money as if it were yours and you really buy something, even though at that time the nmoney has come from somone else with the Name Master Card. Master Card reckoned a hundred dollars for you and you used it to get the groceries, even though you didn’t have that money on your person or account yet. Well, Adam imputes his guilt to us in negative way! Romans 5:19a
For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.
That another earns something for you and it is imputed from that person to your account. Christ perfect obedience iputed to you, your sin to him. Same principle asfederal head, Adam selected as the perfect representative of the human race, never a person in better position to pass test, God says he can take the test for us - but he fails, and in HIm we all failed, without the people he’s represetnting doing anything, even before they are born, plunged whole race into his original sin! Now you may argue is that fiar, but remembver it is true, and by same principle we can have Christ as our head. You take away this headship of the human race with Adam, you are also taking away the headship of Christ from those who live by faith!
But now things get personal. Acdam not only federal head of our race, he is the biolgoical head of our race. We iherit this nature everyone of us from conception on. Why do you and I so easily, even after saved, why do we sin so easily? You can’t deny it - you hvae inheirted Adam’s fallen nature! Psalm 58 3 says of the wicked:
The wicked are estranged from the womb; they go astray from birth, speaking lies.
ANd you may say Ok but I am not wicked, but listen to David, a man after God’s own heart in Psalm 51:5
Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.
Listen to Job 14:4
Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? There is not one.
This why the NT confirms this OT teaching Romans 3:11
no one understands; no one seeks for God.
It is why Genesis 6:5 before the flood
The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
Is followed after the cleansing with the same prognosis Gen 8:21
And when the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, the Lord said in his heart, “I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done.
This is why Romans 3:10 concludes both Jew and Gentile, religious and unerligios alike in fallen condition:
as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one;
This is why the gospel of John speaking of the whole human race says John 3:19
And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.
The sum it is given to us Ephesians 2:1-4
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us,
This is what it means that original sin is not just first sin, but it is the root sin that we all share in by both inheritance and by corruption. And John says flesh gives birth to flesh - and spirit to spirit - unless born again - with new spirit can’t change our sin-nature. Martin Luther helpfully spoke of the power of sin like a man’s beard. Shave it off and it immediately grow back!
And this is our witness to each other and our neighbours, not just slightly flwaed individual come into this world with clean slate, and just need to be moral - Christainity just a philsoohpy. NO something fundmanetally wrong insdie of me, I am not who I am meant to be, and I am not related to God the way I need to be, and I need something more than a q uick fix to address this.
And that brings us to the next move the Confession takes with original sin. It takes two false ways we and our neigbhours might deal with sin, and it shakes us up, like Simon or Clarence before we leave saying just quickly top uop the fluids, no go fro deeper solution.
C. Religious Ritual Can’t Deliver Me From Original Sin
Guido DeBres wrote this in 1561, in 1563 Council of Trent after meeting 18 years hardened the RC teaching against all Protestant distinctives. Justification by faith condemned, though taught by many before. So too the teadching on baptism defined against gopsel view of the Reformers. So now the RC church, rather than upholding what for instance Augustine taught about the sacraments being outward sign of invisible grace, they taught that Adam’s fall into sin did not completely corrupt human nature, it didn’t taint every part of us, thouh not as bas as we could be. No, they now taught that Adam was created with a good human nature that had both lower passions -bodily passion and desires and higher will and intellect. They taught builtinto creation was concupsience, inordinate desires, so God had to give Adam in the garden a NEW GIFT OF SUPERNATURAL RIGHTOUENESS> DONUM SUPERADDITUM, which would enale Adam to keep lower passions in check. In the Fall the main consequence according to the RC Trent is that God took back this gift of an external and supernatural righteouness. So Adam is back to square one, and his human nautre it self hasn’t changed much. Trent then said that bpatism has grace in it, kind of like that donum superadditum, you get baptized - your orignal sin is erased, and the pllution of Adam’s sin is washed away, as bapstism infuses grace so you can start living by your own power by good works and the ways of the church, which God then must in his justice reward you for!
In its fifth session, held June 17, 1546, Trent spoke of original sin, which needs to be “expiated by the laver of regeneration for the obtaining life everlasting.” 6 Because of this, Trent said, infants are “baptized for the remission. Saved from orignal sin by water, rather than by garace through faith in the blood of Christ!
But people do you see the problem with this idea that baptism can erase original sin. This sid eof heaven are we ever free from the effects of ourignal sin. Listen to Romans 7:18-19
For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.
A youth having porfessed faith cmae to the table last week, asks why do I still feel guilty if I belivee the gospel and am forgiven, isn’t that good that my consinence is working feel guilty for my sin?
Don’t you see that though the sinful nature, remains with us until Christ returns, it doesn’t reign in us any more when we have received Christ. But its still a polluted fountain we must fight against! Bpatism said the Reformers iss a covneant al sing and seal of the gopsel, of the righteousness that’s by faith, - its the extension of that promise that sins forgiven by grace of Christ, receive dthrough faith - that God will be our God adn we will be his people. Only the blood of Jesus remits sin, including oringal sin for which we needs forgiveness and cleansing. Think of that youth, with him we must feel the guilt and corruption of not only our pariticular sins, but even of the root problem our original sin our sinful nature - and turning to Christ look for a solution in Him. It is only as we recognize we are in Adam sinners, that we can look to Christ in the same way, as a new head to our humanity and look for an imputation, a solidarity more wonedrful: Romans 5:17
For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.
And though we can be assured that by faith in the blood - receiving hrist we can have assurance of God’s favour f u, listen to how our Confession describes it
Nevertheless, it is not imputed to God’s children for their condemnation but is forgiven by his grace and mercy— not to put them to sleep but so that the awareness of this corruption might often make believers groan as they long to be set free from the “body of this death. Belgic Confession Article 15
And this brings us to our witness that we need a grace that is greater than a little top of our own effort and ability to deal with our completel corruption in Adam.
C. Re-defining Original Sin as Imitation Can’t Deliver Me From Original Sin
Even more comon than those who believe a ritual can free you from oringianl sin, instead of faith in Christ, there are many in evnaglieciams and in culture in genreal - who bleive the error of Pelagius. This is the error we are all born as Adam was created, that the fall did not effect human will, understanding, emotion. And there is something in this that appeas to the myth of self-made-man.
Pelagius was a 5th century monk who lived on the frontier of the Roman Empire in Britain. The heart of his teaching wasn’t that we don’t become sinners, nor that we as sinners don’t need grace. The heart of his teaching was that te problem with man is not a corrupted nature and inheritteed guilt. THe prolbem said Pelagious is that we sin by imitation of Adam. After Adam sinned all human being still born into the world as innocents with a blank slate. He taught humans were not born in bondage to sin We don’t need a ag race taht awakens a dead will, enlivenes. IN Pelagius view, Adam’s sin merely introduced to human experience the principle of sin, that we would see other follow and then we might follow it ourselves. But theer is no orignal sin, no inheritted corruption. Adam’s sin affected himself alone and not the whole human race. We are born into this world - with eprfect righteousness, and anything God commands he gives us still the abilty to obey it perfectly. NO grace is need for obedience. There is no impairment of our nature or ability, we are all free to chose to become righteous or evil without Adam’s influence or God’s influence. At the heart of it orignal sin is the consequence of Adam’s sin on all of us, Pealgious says there is none behyond exapmple. There is no judgment of God against the human race, so that we are born subject to the wrath and condemnation of God unless we are born again. ANd there is no thorough going corruption and impairment.
Pelagious soaw so much moral laxity even among priests when came and visited Rome and wanted to teach that apart from Grace, we have the moral ability to please God. He desperately wanted to dfnd the freedom of the will. It should be clear that Augustine who uphaled orthodoxy, also stated man’s freedom was still intact after the fall and the corruption of our nature, but free in so far as we choose freely but according to our nature, our inclination. For Augustine our freeedom influenced by the corrurption of sin, so we choose what our nature wants and our nature has been corrupted and we need a re-birth! For Pelagius our freedom means that apart from grace we can be righteous by our own obedience, even if grace facilitates this, it is our will unaided by grace, and our righteousness that mertis God’s reward.
The controversy yielded several church verdicts including the judgment of the church in a synod in the year 418, where the Council of Carthage condemned the teachings of Pelagius. The heretic was exiled to Constantinople in 429. And once again, Pelagianism was condemned by the church at the Council of Ephesus in 431. Throughout church history, again and again, unvarnished Pelagianism has been repudiated by Christian orthodoxy. Trent and humanism of our age both teach a semiPelagianism that states that man has to act first, that the human makes the first initial step and then God rwards tht with saving faith and righteouness.
But this brings us to the real punchline of this sermon. Your witness andm y witness, the Bible’s witness to sin and at the root original sin being the problem is gospel good news, because if the problem werer ejust moral failures and the solution were just get a ritual or your work and draw yourself near to God - were would the action of God be, where would the radical solution to being drwn back into the inmage of God, radical transformed, where would God’s action in Christ of drawing us back into comunion and livng as real partners. If it were just ritual solution or a human works solution, really we make a little tweak and its life as normal. But listen to the Scirptures again Romans 5:15-16
But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. And the free gift is not like the result of that one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification.
Just like something superabounded and spread from Adam to you and me, so even better the free gift super abounds from Christ - we don’tneed to and we can’t justify ourselves, we can tell our world lookingit quarely in the eye it can’t justify itself, we need this Christ and we rare raised Him out of our corruption to become God’s fellowworkers. Sin and original sin is an article of faith that you need God to tell you who you are. You can open the newspaper and your newsfeed and you will see the consequences of sin even orignal sin that we are trapped in. But let God tell you the nature of sihn, the nature of sinful man, let him dfine in relation to how we live with or without Him. Let Him in this story tell you that sin is not first of all about being good or moral - its about refusal to live in relatino to God and His kingdom. And Let Him tell you of His solution , just as in Adam - sin and death and hell washes over the whoel mass of the human, race, even so in Christ shall we all be made alive! Evil and your sin and your guilt, and all the terrible consequence of sin in you and yoru family and this world, aren’t built into the way God made them, we are not trapped in them. We and the world groan becaseu sin isn’t ultiamte and we can be saved, OSin even our orignail sin can be forigven and cleansed and one day eradicated. Our guilt, our fallenness is not created and ultiate but secondary and in Christ temporaryMore astonishing as God tell syou of your guilt, He can tell you of your forgiveness and your restoration. We have to have this testimohy of sinignal sin to each other to the world, so we can have the true testoninry of sovereign grace and a superaboudning Christ!~