Adam's sin

OK, here’s a try at responding person by person. I have spent at least two hours putting this together. I would beg those who read it to read it with some care simply out of courtesy if nothing else:

Brother Dallas: Two points, both from the Bible and not from me:
1. It still remains that some will enter that rest, and those who formerly had the gospel preached to them did not go in, because of their disobedience. Therefore God again set a certain day, calling it Today, when a long time later he spoke through David, as was said before:
“Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts.”
Hebrews 4:6-7

Thus I would first point out to you that “a long time” before David the gospel was preached to people. Therefore yes, Christ’s sacrifice had to do with all people from all time since creation. This is emphasized in Revelation 13:8 when Christ is referred to as the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.

2. When Christ came as high priest of the good things that are already here, he went through the greater and more perfect tabernacle that is not man-made, that is to say, not a part of this creation. He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place ONCE FOR ALL by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption … Nor did he enter heaven to offer himself again and again, the way the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood that is not his own. Then Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But now he has appeared ONCE FOR ALL at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself.
Hebrews 9:11-12, 25-27

Please note that “once for all” appears twice. The second time is in direct reference to the entire history of man, immediately following, as it does, “since the creation of the world.”

Christ’s sacrifice took away the sins of the world (as in the above, he did away with sin by the sacrifice of himself.). Anything less would have left His work unfinished. He stated, Himself, however, from even before the Crucifixion, that there would be one sin that could not be forgiven, and that one sin has directly to do with the free will He Himself gave man at the creation of man. The one sin that could not forgiven was the rejection of the truth of Christ. This was the sin of the Pharisees who considered him from Satan. Shown the truth, they rejected it. This also ties in directly with Romans 1. It also is explained so very clearly so many places in the entire Bible (consider the phrase “And Abraham believed God and he credited it to him as righteousness…”), but perhaps most explicitly stated by Christ Himself in John 3:

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believed stands condemned already BECAUSE HE HAS NOT BELIEVED IN THE NAME OF GOD’S ONE AND ONLY SON.

As Jesus told us, there is, truly, one sin that could not be forgiven. But He did not say it was not atoned for! Consider that. The debt was paid, even for rejecting Him, but the person who rejects Christ puts himself out of range of forgiveness from Christ. All that is rejected, and Christ respects that free will – for His gifts are without repentance – including that one! Is this heretical? Not according to Luke 17:3-4

”If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgiven him. If he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times comes back to you and says, ‘I repent,’ forgive him.” -- In other words, forgiveness is connected to repentance.

I know this goes against Calvinism, but this is exactly what the Bible is saying!

Would it be better for people never to hear the Gospel? Of course not! Without it, they are liable to all kinds of deception which could destroy the time God gave them here! The Gospel is the truth, and leaving people in deception even for a time under any pretext is wrong. How can they obey Christ if they don’t know Him? And if they cannot obey Him, how can the truth then set them free? Why would anyone want to leave anyone else in bondage once second later than possible? People may refuse the freedom the truth offers, but that does not ever mean we should not offer the truth!

In the section of the thread regarding whether or not Eve conceived before the Fall, that is HIGHLY doubtful since Cain, the murderer, was her firstborn. In your argument against that pre-sin conception, you forgot, I think, the best argument you had: the Bible. In Genesis 4:1, we see that “Adam lay with his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain” comes AFTER chapter 3, the chapter in which Adam and Eve sin.

I’ll respond to the Cain’s wife question when I get to Scott!

To Ken the Spurgeonite: I do not believe, personally, a child is ever ‘innocent.’ Children sin. That is not the point at all. The point is, however, that they sin unintentionally, or without intention. They sin as a result of sin nature, not as a result of conscious rebellion. Do they need a Savior? Of course they do! However it was Jesus who said the little children are His, not Helen! It was Jesus who said their angels in heaven always see the face of the Father, not Helen! It was God who decreed the age of 20 as being the age of accountability in the Exodus, not Helen! It was God who established the series of sacrifices for unintentional sins, not Helen! It is the Bible which tells us Jesus was the one sacrifice for all, not Helen! And it was Paul who said that before he knew the law he was alive, not Helen! It was Paul who talked about those who reject the truth they are given, not Helen! It was Jesus who declared Himself the Truth, not Helen!
It was also Jesus who said men are condemned for not believing, not Helen!

Our sins certainly deserve hell for us, but Jesus took all that away on the Cross. To say that we go to hell for our sins now is to deny His work on the Cross. Please show me one place in the Bible where we are told that any man will go to hell because of his sins. I can find plenty of places where condemnation is a result of unbelief, however.

Yes, I do know there will be eternal torture (Matthew 25: 46, etc.) – but that is for rejection of Christ. Christ took care of sins. And yes, at this point I know I have some very dearly loved members of my family who will not be in heaven, and my heart is totally burdened for them. And yet, I also find myself, as time goes by, starting to accept. But even the idea of accepting such horror is difficult. Nevertheless, they have rejected Christ. All of us, however, sin. What is ‘really gross’ is not that their sins are already atoned for, but that they are refusing this free gift from our Lord. It is their refusal which will send them to hell.

At least that is what the Bible says…

And I do not disagree that everything the unsaved person does or says is not ‘contaminated’ by their sin nature, but I will argue that not everything they do or say is sin. Sin is disobedience against the law, for it is the law which defines sin – at least according to Paul. A child sitting at the table eating with the family is not sinning, is he? Or are you going to presume that even while eating dinner he or she has a head full of sinful thoughts instead of maybe paying attention to something daddy or mommy is saying?

And for you to say that everything we think, do, or say is contaminated by our sin nature even after we are saved is in direct contradiction to Paul’s clear statement in Romans that “You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.” It also contradicts his statement that we have the mind of Christ. It also contradicts what Paul says in Romans 8:9 regarding the fact that those who are Christ’s are controlled by the Spirit. Yes, it does appear that you and I have radically different theologies!

Can I sin? Of course I can – and do! But I am no longer controlled by sin and I am, more and more, becoming conformed to the image of Christ, as all those who are born again in Him are predestined to be. And as I am more and more conformed to that image, I find myself more and more capable of a sort of praise that is pure and not at all contaminated by sin – because, to quote one of my favorite songs, “Even the praise comes from You [God].” As Christ works in and through me through the agency of the Holy Spirit, those works are not at all contaminated, but are His.

You say I do not take the impact of sin nature in our lives seriously enough, or the ramifications of it. I think I do. I am a Christian because there was a time in my life when God showed me the true condition of my heart and I ‘threw up’ spiritually. I was totally revolted by what I saw, and sickened to the core of me. I saw what sin had done to me. I can see what it does to others. Please do not judge what you think I do or do not know about sin nature! I know it is a killer. And before that it maims, distorts, tortures. The ‘mother of all Sadam’s’ if you like!

But I also know that God freed me from its grip and has put His own Holy Spirit in me, who is daily transforming me, and my whole being praises Him for that.

OK, Pastor Larry, here we go again!

First, I am a biblical Christian. Please quit throwing your Aristotlean pigeon-holing at me and read what I actually say instead of jumping to conclusions about things because of a few words here or there which are buzz words for you.

The separation of the Ten Commandments from the rest of the Hebrew law is VERY clearly delineated by God in Deuteronomy. If you had taken the time to bother to read the Bible studies Barry and I are doing right here on Baptist Board, you would have seen where we pointed that out.

Deuteronomy 5 closes with the instructions from God that more laws will be coming, but that they will be for this people alone to follow in the land they are being given to possess for themselves. This is an important distinction between the Ten Commandments and the laws which follow. The Ten Commandments are universal: each individual man has the ability to obey or disobey without societal sanctions. But the law for Israel which comes after is different. Look closely at what God says about it in the final verses of chapter 5 of Deuteronomy:

”Go, tell them to return to their tents. But you stay here with me so that I may give you all the commands, decrees and laws you are to teach them to follow in the land I am giving them to possess.”

[Moses then adds] So be careful to do what the Lord your God has commanded you; do not turn aside to the right or to the left. Walk in all the way that the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live and prosper and prolong your days in the land that you will possess.

The one point that should be added here is that although the laws which will be following are not commanded for society today, they nevertheless form a basis of what is right and good in a society and which have been used by a number of countries and involves what has come to be known as “the Judeo-Christian ethic.”
http://www.baptistboard.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=43;t=000082

Next, you wrote to me, “The Bible teaches that we all sin. And we are all responsible for that sin. The reason we sin is because of our sin nature. We are accountable for our sin.”
Of course we are all accountable for our own sin. I have NEVER argued against that. My argument in this thread in particular is that we are not accountable for ADAM’s sin! We have the consequences of our sin natures due to his sin, but we are not held accountable for the decision he made to disobey so long ago in the Garden of Eden! That is the whole point of this thread! Maybe you do not believe we are held accountable for Adam’s sin, but for those who do believe that, they are also saying we carry some responsibility for the fact that Adam sinned. And if we are responsible for Adam’s sin in any way, and are thus charged with it as being responsible, then why not apologize to God for your part in it? Certainly, being sorry for what you have done is part of repentance, is it not?
Or perhaps your concept of being charged with something does not imply responsibility for it? That is strange to me, for if I am charged with a crime, that does mean I am being held responsible to some degree for it!
On to unborn babies – I am not arguing they are not conceived having a sin nature. I am saying there is no way a baby can sin in the womb! First of all, he does not have the neurological connections to understand even what a law is! And, according to Paul, it is the law and his subsequent response to it which caused his spiritual death! Nor is the baby in the womb capable of doing anything but moving and developing!
I would also say that the idea of conscious choice is clearly indicated by Paul in Romans 7 as well as by the entire concept of the need for sacrifices for unintentional sins in the Old Testament. “Choose this day whom you will serve” also implies a VERY conscious choice!
I would still argue that death is the consequence of sin, not the punishment for it. Christ took the punishment for it and those of us who are in Him still die physically! Are we to be punished also for what He took the punishment for? Or do we simply still have the consequences to deal with? I argue for the latter, for God is just, and once the price has been paid, it has been paid. When it was paid by Christ, it was paid in full.

You then referred to Revelation 20:11-15 and 21:8. Revelation 15 states that the lake of fire is for anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life. Would you agree that those who are adopted into the family of God are those whose names are written in the Book of Life? If you are willing to agree to that, then I would refer you to John 1:11-13: He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God – children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.

In other words, those who believe are those whose names are in the Book of Life. I read nothing there about sinning. I am assuming you honestly believe, then, that Jesus did NOT pay the price for sins! Might I ask you what He was on the Cross for, then, according to your theology? Had He not sacrificed Himself on the Cross, then yes, we would all be condemned because of our sins. But that payment for our sins was precisely what He DID accomplish on the cross. Now we can only be condemned for rejecting that truth.

As far as Rev. 21:8 is concerned, please note that the unbelieving – who are, by the way, the cowardly – are also those who practice the acts mentioned immediately after. The believer would never be involved in any of that. Sin is the RESULT of the sin nature in man. When a man chooses to keep his sin nature, in defiance of Christ, then those works are going to manifest themselves, for, as Christ also said, from the heart issue the words and actions of a man. Their sins are as much a fruit of their spirits as our good works are of ours. They are not condemned because of their fruits. They are condemned because of the entire tree of unbelief which ended up yielding those fruits, as Paul also says in Romans 1. A tree may be identified by its fruits, but it is not condemned because of them. It is condemned to the chopper’s ax and fire because it is the KIND of tree that produced those fruits.

You then accuse me of dismissing Scripture with ease. And yet I would submit that everything I have said I have backed up with Scripture – and Scripture in context. I would also submit that it is my husband and I who are taking the enormous amounts of time the Bible study requires, and that you are not even making comments and have obviously not even read anything we have dealt with. Please do not accuse me of dismissing Scripture! I daresay, in some areas, I seem to know it better than you do. You did not seem to be aware of the statements by God in Deuteronomy separating the Ten Commandments from the rest of the law!

Finally you asked if unbelief is a sin. Yes. It is also atoned for by Christ. However unless repented of, it cannot be forgiven. You are confusing atonement with forgiveness. They are different. I, for instance, could pay all your debts monetarily, which would atone for them. But unless you apologized for having put both of us in that position, and even though my heart might want to forgive you, as long as you did not want that forgiveness, you would not have it. It would be yours to accept or reject, regardless of either the condition of my heart or the amount of money I might have paid to get you out of debt. It is the same with Christ. The sin of unbelief is atoned for, paid for – but forgiveness is another matter altogether.

To Scott Emerson:
No, the Bible is not silent regarding the conception of Cain. It is given in the beginning of Chapter 4 of Genesis – immediately after the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden.

Now you asked who Cain married. Yes, his sister. There were no genetic defects then. In fact, incest was not defined or forbidden until the time of Moses. Instead we find just the opposite occurring: it was preferred to marry within the close family. You will find, as was already mentioned, that Abram was married to Sarai, his half sister. When their child, Isaac, was of age to marry, Abraham sent his servant back to the family group to find a wife for Isaac from within the family group. This was also the choice Isaac and Rebekah had for Jacob, and Esau’s marriages outside the family group were quite distressing to his parents.

Like all parts of the Old Testament, we find this is a picture of a spiritual truth given in the New Testament: what has light to do with darkness? We are not to be unequally yoked, but to marry a brother or sister in the Lord.

Genetic defects, getting back to the first generations of men, tend to build up somewhat slowly, as sexual reproduction gets rid of most mutations. In addition, the explosion of the fountains of the deep at the time of the Deluge (Genesis 7:11) would have brought up the first radioactive materials known to man, thus exposing Noah’s family to strong radioactivity immediately after the Flood. Thus we also find that the age expectancy drops by half immediately after that – a sure sign that there has been genetic damage. And yet even that was not enough to endanger children of family marriages. It took until the time of Moses for the genetic defects to build up enough so that there was a danger if a man married his close relative.

If, by the way, there had been children born before sin, then Paul would have been lying when he stated that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Brother Dallas viewed this concept as the beginning of error. I disagree with him only in that I view it as the result of error… smile.

And while I don’t know about when Adam sinned relating to his time spent in the Garden, I do know that they were obedient up until that time, as disobedience is sin, and that they had been commanded by God to be of one flesh, which is taken as meaning sexually active. So although they may have been sexually active, conception did not take place. Since Eve was without a doubt fertile, there is at least that indication that they were in a state of sinlessness for only a very short time. In addition, the beginning of Genesis 4 may be indicating (nothing I would argue for, but something that should be mentioned) that this is the first time Adam lay with his wife.


Finally, toBob Ryan: I am not arguing that all do not die, Bob, even though Enoch and Elijah didn’t! (Or perhaps they will on the streets of Jerusalem during the Tribulation?)

Nor am I arguing that children do not need our Savior. I think you have not read what I have written too carefully?

However, a new birth is only needed if one has died. Paul indicates in Romans 7:7-11 that he did not die until he knew the law, at which point “sin sprang to life”, he rebelled against the law consciously and deliberately, and then died spiritually. I do not see how a new birth is needed, however, for someone who has not yet died spiritually. Will that child with his sin nature intact be in heaven should he die as a child? No, for ‘we shall all be changed.’ They will be fixed and made right, too. By virtue of the work of Christ.

=======

For anyone interested, Barry put up my response to Calvinism on his website here:
http://www.setterfield.org/calvinism.htm

 

Brother Dallas, I was trying to buttress your argument regarding the conception of Cain, not go against it! Oh for decent wording on my part...

About being able to make a choice even though one is in bondage to sin. One may not be able to do anything about one's bondage, but even a slave can wish he were free. That wish comes free to him. That is the free will issue as I see it. We can want something even when we are powerless to do anything about it. So yes, we have a choice about what we want. We may not be able to achieve it, but God judges the heart, right?

Jesus did everything. We could and can do nothing. But our wants, our wishes, are free for us to want and wish as we will.

I am accused of being Arminian, Pelagian, etc. etc. ad nauseum. But I DON'T think man can save himself or help himself or maintain his own salvation or anything else. But he can want to be free or refuse the offered freedom -- this is the free will issue as I see it, and the point on which we will ultimately be judged. It is ours to accept or refuse. All the work, however, has been done by Christ.

Just wanted to make that clear.

I think one of the mistakes Calvinism makes is to equate spiritual death with spiritual unconsciousness. This cannot be true or hell would have no meaning! The spiritually dead person is one who is separated from God, just as the physically dead person is one who is separated from his body. Death is separation, not unconsciousness of the spirit. Therefore the spirit, even though unsaved and spiritually separated from God, or dead, is still in a position where a response is possible, or God would NEVER have been able to have Isaiah quote Him in Isaiah 1:18-20 as saying that.

I do agree with you that we are born in bondage to sin. That does not make us guilty of being in bondage, though! We did not chain ourselves, but were born in that condition (and conceived in that condition). It makes as much sense to accuse a baby of being guilty of being a sinner as it does to accuse me of having freckles on my face! Now, if those freckles were sins, and there was a way to get them erased and I refused that when I was old enough to make some kind of decision about it, then yes, that would be sin. But just having the freckles in the first place is nothing I could help. Neither can any of us help being born in bondage to sin. And you simply cannot in any form of justice or fairness punish a person for something he has absolutely no control over!

As far as any lengthy responses, I know this is the time for studies. My daughter is already panicking over her finals. Don't worry about the time it will take! If all this has disappeared into oblivion, feel free to start a new thread...

 

I'm sorry Archie, I didn't see anything that needed to be responded to!

If you and I are agreeing, we had better be careful, eh?

 

LOL --
I messed up the tendon on my right hand and typing like this with only one finger on my left hand is the pits. This much has taken me about two or three minutes. I'll try to respond tomorrow. I'm giggling too much now trying to type this way. Anyway, I have this choice, right?

 

LOL -- God is faithful to heal! Anyway, Barry is now dragging me out of the house to see the Home and Garden Show and have lunch out and buy a new frying pan as our daughter munched the non-stick coating on the old one....

It should be a great day! You didn't really think you would be rid of me so easily, did you?

(Yeah, my thumb still hurts, but not nearly like last night. I think it was spasming then -- the pain was fierce. But healing is on the way, especially if I don't ramble on like this! )

 

You are right, Eric. But perhaps the best way to say it is that God did not so much predestine them to hell in the Reformed mind, but rather they consider that He abandon them to hell.

So much for God being love!

 

Ken, there is no other word for it. He loved some enough to predestine them for salvation in your book. The only possible logical continuation of that is that He did not love the others enough to predestine them for salvation but, instead, abandon them to hell. And that for something they had absolutely no control over at all -- the natures they were born with.

So there go justice and mercy, too!