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is, if you say, and there are people who say this, well look, it's not fair, we're just talking about this yesterday in the morning at the
Machen meeting, it's not fair of God, and we're gonna get, I guess this kind of overlaps into the justice argument, it's not fair of God to say because Adam and Eve fell, everyone is guilty.
Okay? What's the problem with that? If you think about this logically, the problem with that is this, if that's not fair, then it's not fair to say that Jesus can perfectly obey in your place, and that that can be credited to you.
If Adam's sin can't be credited to you, then Jesus' righteousness can't be credited to you.
That's a major problem. Brian? Okay, give me the counter -argument, and I'll throw it over the counter.
Okay? Okay, so Adam is not God, therefore he, you know, by what standard is he our representative?
The Word of God. What's that? Yeah, he's the representative,
Adam is the representative for all humanity, right, in the garden. I mean, let's just look at Romans 5, since we're already in Romans 9.
By the way, while we're talking about Pelagian, Arminian, all this stuff, Pelagian means no original sin is imputed to everybody.
Arminius said that, yes it is, but it doesn't make you as bad as those nasty
Calvinists say that it does. You know, in other words, it only makes you, and sorry for using this reference, mostly dead.
You know, not all the way dead. For those of you who don't get that reference, talk to me after class.
There's hope for you. Okay, it comes from a movie, so it's not really, you know, that great.
All right, Romans chapter 5, verse 12. Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, right, sin entered the world through one man, that man is
Adam. In other words, there's no sin. God said he created everything, and he said it was good.
It was perfect. It was sinless. And listen, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.
And you say, well, wait a second. Here we go. It says here that all sinned, but I wasn't there.
Why am I responsible for what Adam did? And, you know,
Brian said, well, wait a minute, Adam's not God. How come, you know, we're responsible for what he did?
Because that's what God said. Yeah, I'm going there. Go ahead. Well, it's kind of complicated.
Let me just put it this way. Why is it that Adam gets to be our representative?
Well, let's put it this way. I would ask anybody, if you think you could do better than Adam in the garden, and here's why
I asked that, because Adam had a nature that was absolutely sinless. He came into this world.
He had no inclination towards sin. He had no sin nature. How could
Adam have a sin nature when he was created by God? God looks at him and says, he is good.
And what do you mean by good? He didn't mean, you know, hey, I've done good work. He can really dunk.
He can do a lot of things. I don't know. My mind always goes to basketball. Here's the thing.
Adam had the opportunity and the ability. Here's the important thing.
Adam had the ability to decline. What's the word
I'm looking for? What's that? Well, no, not free will.
But when sin came to him, he was not naturally inclined toward that.
He had the capacity to resist. He could have said, no, Satan, get out of here. In fact, what he should have done was, you know, when the snake came slithering in or hopping in or whatever it did.
I said this before, he should have picked it up and done some kind of WWE thing with it and flung that thing out of the garden before he said a word or, you know, grabbed him by the throat when he started talking to Eve because his job was to protect the garden and his wife.
And he failed twice. But here's the thing. As our representative, nobody would have done better than Adam.
Adam was. Humanly speaking. OK, I don't want to be careful about that because he wasn't perfect in the sense that Jesus was perfect, but he was flawless in the sense that we are all flawed.
We come into the world flawed. He came into the world flawless when God said he's good.
He didn't mean, oh, you know, he's a minus. He was a plus plus. I mean, that was it.
He was the pinnacle of everything a man could be. Adam right there. And that pinnacle, listen to Satan, listen to his wife and fell.
God said as a result of that, we can look at Genesis three. Well, let's say in Romans five here for the moment.
And I'll keep reading this as I as I accidentally turn to.
Yeah, I want to be in Romans chapter five as I turned to Romans four for whatever reason.
OK, let's keep reading down to.
Verse 17, for if by because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man,
Adam introduced death into the world. None of us would have died had Adam not fallen. That's the point there.
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. There's this parallel that goes on in here between Adam and Jesus.
Adam failed. Jesus succeeded. Those who remain in Adam will suffer the fate that Adam introduced into this world, which is to say spiritual death.
And it won't just be temporary spiritual death. It will be permanent spiritual death. That'll be eternity in hell.
And those who are in Jesus Christ will get his reward. We will have eternal life.
Verse 18, therefore, as one trespass, one sin led to condemnation for all men.
There's no getting out of that. Adam's sin led to condemnation for all men.
So one act of righteousness, that is to say, Jesus, one act, his perfect life in totality leads to justification and life for all men.
For just 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.
And some people will say, and well, let's finish that. I think we're almost done with the national discussion.
Let's just leave it at this. The national discussion or the idea of, you know,
God elects by nationality and not by individuality. That would run afoul of Ephesians 1, you know,
John chapter 6. We could go on and on. All these different passages, 1 Peter, all these passages that talk about God's election would be virtually eradicated by this idea of a national election.
Because it's very clear. I mean, if you go to Ephesians 1, you're not going to read Ephesians 1 verses 3 to 14 and go,
I think he's talking about nations. You'd have to do verbal gymnastics to get to that.
So let's talk about justice for a moment, you know, because that's the other thing that comes up.
Well, is it fair for God to decide before anybody does anything that he's going to love some people and hate others?
Jacob, I loved Esau, I hated. Some he chooses, some he doesn't choose. Some are before the foundation of the world, right?
Ephesians 1, they're chosen in Christ for what? Let's go to Ephesians chapter 1 and then we'll go back to Romans eventually.
But in Ephesians chapter 1, Paul says, blessed be the
God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.
Listen to verse 4, even as he, the father, chose us in him, in Christ, before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.
So before the foundation of the world, the father decided God, the father,
Jesus, Holy Spirit, chose a group of people to redeem.
And he said, those people are going to be holy and blameless before me. Well, how's that going to happen?
We come into the world with original sin, we're inclined towards sin, we sin by nature and by choice.
How are we ultimately going to be holy and blameless? It's by faith in Christ, in his finished work, in his life, death, and resurrection.
And that righteousness is then counted to us, just as Adam's sin was imputed to us when we were born, right?
As soon as he fell, we all fell. So, you know, the question comes up, is that fair?
Is that right? What's the answer to that? It's the wrong question, right?
Why is that the wrong question? God didn't have to choose anybody.
And we want to think that, you know, here's the issue.
What's our idea of fairness? And I've said this a few times in my life. What's our idea of fairness?
Okay, what's good for me? I mean, that's our ultimately our fallen choice. But even if we're trying to be altruistic, yes, okay, you get what you deserve, right?
Isn't that, isn't what we think, like, you know, you work super hard at work, you get your paycheck on Friday.
Do you think, well, that was fair? I'll tell you what happens with me, or, you know, right now even, no.
I mean, especially working for the government, with all apologies to government workers,
I worked with a lot of people who would say this, or something akin to this. I don't really care.
I get paid on the 15th and the 30th, no matter what I do. Now, that's a pretty good approximation of what
I would hear all the time. And I'm going, I would find myself, even before salvation, I'd go, I can't think like that, right?
And it's almost like, you know, I thought, probably as an unsaved person, I probably thought, yeah, I probably deserve your paycheck too, you know, because I'm doing your work while you're, you know.
We think we want fairness. What's the problem with that with regard to the economy of God? Fairness means, what's that?
Yeah, well, what does Paul say with regard to our check? The wages of sin is,
I mean, you show up on Friday to get your paycheck, and you look at it, and it's like, you die. I had a bad week.
I mean, we think we want fairness, but do we want fairness? Fairness is, everybody gets what they deserve, and what we deserve is death.
And instead, God says, you know what? Even though you were my enemy, even though you hated me, even though there was nothing good in you,
I chose you before eternity began, sent my son, the Lord Jesus Christ, second person of the
Trinity, to live a perfect life, die a substitutionary death, be raised on the third day.
Why? So that on judgment day, you could stand before me, before the son, even the judge, the one he's appointed, and be found not guilty, which is what you deserve, right?
You deserve hell on account of who you are and what you've done. But I'm going to give you heaven based on, not on your performance, but on the performance of another, based on the work of the
Lord Jesus Christ. Is that fair? Was the cross fair, right?
You want fairness? Is what happened to Jesus fair? The answer, of course, is no.
Was what happened to Jesus on the cross just?
That's the question. If you can answer that question, then you can get the other side. Was it just yes?
Why? Because God demonstrated how much he hates sin on that cross.
Justice and mercy met at the cross. The justice was poured out on Jesus Christ so that the mercy could be poured out on those who believe.
Without the cross, there's no forgiveness of sin. Without Jesus Christ, there's no imputation.
That is accounting language. Imputation just means this. And by the way, we talked about the three imputations yesterday.
And you have to be careful when you say that, because otherwise it sounds like what? Three amputations, which you definitely don't want.
Imputations just means this. It's accounting language. I deserve hell.
And instead, God accounts me righteous. He imputes
Christ's righteousness to me so that I get heaven. Imputation. Imputation number one, as he just rounds these off off the top of his head.
My sin imputed to Jesus. Did Jesus sin? No. But my sin is placed upon him.
He pays the price. That's technically unfair, but that's what God does in his economy.
It's just it's right because God says it is whatever he says is right.
He counts the sin of all believers. He imputes it to Jesus.
Jesus pays the price on the cross. So second imputation, Christ pays the price for my sin, his sacrifice by his sacrifice.
I'm accounted what? Well, first of all, not guilty. Right. I'm not guilty.
I'm found not guilty even though I am guilty. And then secondly, I'm found righteous.
Right. So I get the imputation of his righteousness to me.
And why do I need that righteousness? His death, his atonement means that I'm no longer guilty.
Is that enough to get into heaven? Why not, Brian? I have to be perfect to get into heaven.
I even apart from my sin, I don't have active obedience. I don't love the
Lord my God with all my heart, my soul, my strength, my might. I don't do that. Jesus did it.
I mean, I don't know about you guys, but sometimes I know this is hard to believe. I even struggled to honor my mother and father.
I even struggled not to exasperate my children. I know nobody, you know, has that has those kind of issues.
Christ Jesus perfectly obeyed the law of God in every respect. And we need that perfection, that righteousness to get into heaven.
Questions, thoughts, comments? Any Pelagians in the audience? Okay. No, really, any questions?
Okay. I joke about sometimes, you know, issuing flare guns, but I want to make sure that we're...
Yes, Mark. Please do. Yeah.
Yeah. First sin. Yeah, exactly. Thank you. His sin is imputed to us.
Our sin is then imputed to Christ. Christ's righteousness imputed to us. So, yeah, three, three.
Yes. Okay. When did
Adam become imperfect? That's a good question. I mean, there's my fallible reasoning, and then there's what the
Bible says. So, Brian. I mean, it really is.
That's the heart of sin is doubting God. So, when he, when
Eve doubted God, you know, it's his whole idea. What does Satan say? Yeah. Did God really say, or has
God really said, you know, and this is the whole undermining. And, you know, if you think about it, every sin that you commit in your life, what is it?
It's disbelieving God. You know, I know the Bible says I shouldn't do this, and I shouldn't do that, or I should do this, but I'm going to go my own way.
Even for unbelievers, they have the law of God written in their hearts. They know some things are wrong, and what do they do?
They just go turn that down. I'm going to go do what I want. I hear the alarm bells going off in my head, telling me
I shouldn't steal that candy bar or whatever it is. I shouldn't do this. I shouldn't do that.
I'm going to do it anyway. Why? Because I want to. Other questions, thoughts?
Yes, I see that hand. Well, it's justice, right?
Because in the justice, in the economy of God, somebody has to pay the price for all sin. It's either going to be us in hell forever, or it's going to be
Jesus on the cross. So when I say it's just, I don't mean it's right in the sense that Jesus deserved it.
It's right in the sense that God decreed it, Jesus agreed to do it, and it's the only way by which we can get to heaven.
Yes, Brian. Okay, and that's exactly right. If one sin in the history of the universe went unpunished, then the righteous judge, right?
Because we have to have a judge, a God who's righteous, on top of being merciful and loving and just and everything else, a
God who's righteous cannot look at a violation of his standards and say, you know what? No big deal.
I'm just going to overlook that. Every single sin has to be judged and accounted for.
And you know, I think your human illustration is perfect. There's only one problem.
You know, these days, we have judges who let people out of jail and, you know, in our world, the response is mostly, that's okay.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Thank you,
Mal. I mean, it is important to keep in mind that there's no, you know, let me just be clear on this.
Before the foundation of the world, it wasn't like the Father said, okay, here's the plan.
Jesus, you know, like it was a huddle, you know, it wasn't like that. Jesus, you do this,
Holy Spirit, you do that. It was like they looked at each other and just went, I mean, I'm humanizing it, sorry.
And they just went, they went like this. And they knew what they were thinking, right? There was no disagreement.
There's no two wills of God. There's no three wills of God. Perfect, unanimous decision, you know, no debates, no nothing.
So, you know, did the Son kind of go, I don't really want to come to the earth, but I will. It's like, no, this is all part of the plan.
I'm going to do, you know, I'm going to do my part.
The Holy Spirit's going to do his part. The Father's going to do his part. That's just how they work. Three persons, one
God. So there's no division between them. Good, Charlie. And that's a great point.
I mean, there's nothing with all that God has done and provided, you know, the 960 billion light years of the universe.
I mean, you know, but it's interesting if you study all the various factors that go into allowing life to exist, you know, this whole idea,
I mean, the biggest kind of way of spitting in the eye of God is to believe in evolution, right?
And I'm talking about macroevolution, meaning, you know, everything, the big bang and life just kind of evolved out of a little puddle of goo, and, you know, all this stuff.
Because when you understand all the conditions that are necessary for life, period, and the fact that even knowing all these conditions, scientists in a lab can't go, okay, you know, goo come to life.
They can't do it. Maybe even one day if they're able to, well, they won't be able to. All the things that God did, and then you want to look at them and go, you know what?
It's not fair if you impute Adam's sin to me, right? Yeah, don't
I get a week in Hawaii as well? And, you know, I mean, just like, yeah, it needs to include eternity.
Yeah, just like you said. I mean, it's pretty brazen, right, to say of God it's not fair.
In fact, what does Paul ultimately write in Romans 9? He says, what?
Who are you, oh man, who answers back to God? In other words, in light of everything that you've been given, exactly what you're saying, who are you, little
Mr. or Miss Clay, right, who's been shaped by God and planted in this place and given all these things, who are you to answer back to God?
And the answer is you're nobody, right? You are his creature. And there is this tendency, even as Mao was saying, you know, if you want to know what a false religion is, what does a false religion do?
It makes you better than you are, and it brings God down. And that's why I say, you know, many times
I'm going, there are many reasons to dislike Mormonism. I mean, it's a cult that leads to hell and stuff like that.
But the brilliant, I mean, you know, just minor things. But the brilliance of Mormonism is that it makes
God sort of understandable. You don't need to know everything about him, but about Mormonism, but ultimately it says that God is just a better version of you.
And there's some comfort in that until you start to realize, wait a minute, if he's just a better version of me, then that means he has emotions.
He can change his mind. You know, you start going down the list and you go, and, you know, there are certain biblical problems.
Like I'm nothing like you, God says. There was no
God before me and there'll be none after me. That's another problem. You know, I mean, there are, there are just a few problems with Mormonism, but it does have that single brilliance of just kind of making, and it makes it attractive to our flesh.
We like that idea. Oh, you mean I can become like God because he's not really that much different than me.
And on the surface, it seems nice, but yeah, it's deadly. Okay.
Fairness, justice. I mean, again, I would just say it this way. You don't want fairness.
You want mercy. You think you want fairness. People say, well, that's not fair.
I mean, this is, this is what you should say to your kids when they say, dad, mom, that's not fair.
You should just look at them and say, on the contrary, who are you to answer back to me?
That was my other response besides deuteronomy 29, 29, the secret things belong to dad. So all right.
Other questions, comments, concerns, the tension between the individual and the group, the individual, the nation.
Okay. Well, let me just, not exactly, but let, let me just kind of go with the, the
Adam and Jesus thing first, then we can talk about Israel. We're all, we all come into the world in Adam, right?
We're fallen creatures. We're descended from Adam. And which is by the way, the reason, you know, if you knock out and let me just digress a little bit,
I think I might've mentioned this before the, one of the problems with Pelagianism, the idea that Adam's sin isn't imputed to everybody, right?
Isn't accounted to everyone that we're all not in Adam when we come into the world. One of the problems with that is it's pretty hard to explain why the virgin birth becomes such an important thing, right?
In the Bible. Why is it so important that Jesus is born of a virgin? Because Adam's sin is then, it would pass through Joseph, but doesn't because he's born of a virgin miraculously, right?
So he's born, he's the only person ever born. And I can say that because Adam and Eve were not born, they were created.
He's the only person, the only human being ever born without a sin nature by virtue of the virgin birth.
And if you wipe out the importance of, or if you wipe out the imputation of Adam's sin to everybody, then you have to wonder why does
God make such a big deal out of the virgin birth? Why is that? Because everybody's born without a sin nature under the
Pelagian scheme. So that's a major, you know, theological hole. Yes, was born without a human nature, right?
Yes. Yes. But, but, and yes, in the, in the sense that what you said, it's a represented representation of God's supernatural intervention so that Jesus doesn't,
I mean, because, you know, when, when Jesus was born or when Jesus was formed, let's say, by the work of the
Holy Spirit, working miraculously through the, the egg of Mary, the whole notion, the science of using a couple of eggs or whatever to, to make a baby didn't exist, right?
So the, it's a, it's a good way to frame it. You know, it's a representation of God's supernatural work to superintend the creation of the, of the man,
Christ Jesus, so that he was born without sin, right?
So that we would understand. So that would be underscored for us to go, okay, this is something unique.
This is something different. This is someone to be, you know, watched and there's a reason
God's doing things this way. Yes. Yeah.
Amen to that. I mean, if, if it was just yeah, because otherwise,
I mean, you know, God, could God have just said, you know, said,
Mary, go to such and such a place and you will find the baby
Jesus there, you know, he's waiting for you. I've, I've created him wholly of nothing, you know, and placed him here.
He could have done that, but he didn't do that. So, yeah, it's not the, necessarily the physical, although, you know, what's that?
Yeah. Yeah. A body that God prepared for Jesus. But I, but I think if we,
Adam's curse is visited, I guess we could just say upon every other child who's born by natural or scientifically enhanced means, right?
Yes. They try to make her a right.
Yeah. They have an asterisk next to her too. They say she's sinless. And, you know, if you talk to a
Catholic apologist, they'll say she had to be sinless because God wouldn't allow his son to be born into a sinful vessel.
Therefore, you know, Mary was sinless and she was kept that way because, you know,
Elizabeth, you know, I, I mean, they just keep going back and, you know, it's this whole string of improbable things, but it's all too,
I think ultimately they, you know, they might say some other things about Jesus, but it's to protect Mary.
If you get right down to it. Yeah. Jake. Well, I think that's the,
I think that's the symbolism, the representation that Charlie's talking about is that that's how it's, you know, genetically passed through, um, you know, whatever the geneticists are able to do now with two eggs doesn't change the fact that those babies, um, you know, are going to be born with sin natures too.
Nobody's going to have to teach them how to sin. They're going to do it naturally because that's how they're going to come into the world. Okay.
Other quick comments, because amazingly without going to our notes at all, we are out of time and we have baptisms to do.
Okay. Let's close in prayer. Father, thank you for our time this morning. Even as we look at your sovereign work of salvation, deserving nothing, but your wrath coming into this world as sinners, and then sitting on our own by our own choice, by our own inclination, our own exercise of will.
Nevertheless, father, you have granted us newness of life, new hearts, new minds, new desires, washing us by regeneration, causing us your spirit, causing us to be born again, that we might worship
Jesus Christ, the risen savior. And that by believing him, by trusting him, you have granted us his righteousness, granted us forgiveness of sins that we might be with him forever in heaven.