10 Essentials Series: 7. Hamartiology, The Doctrine of Sin

As you guys know, we're going through the Ten Essential Doctrines series. And we've gone through Bibliology, Theology, Proper Christology, Pneumatology, and Angelology. Last week, or two weeks ago, we did Anthropology.

Today is Hormatiology, which is the study of sin. We'll get to Soteriology, Ecclesiology, and Eschatology in the upcoming weeks. So, Hormatiology is basically the doctrine of sin. Doctrine comes from a Greek word, didasko, which just means teaching.

The teaching of sin in the Bible. I'm going to lean heavy on John MacArthur for a couple of these things. These were not things that I put in my ordination paper, but I think things that need to be expressed and conveyed to us so that we understand fully what the doctrine of sin is.

And MacArthur does a great job in explaining it. So MacArthur says, The universal sinfulness of man is obvious and verifiable. Anybody relate? We can relate to that in our own lives. We can turn on the news, the internet, the newspaper.

We see sin happening all over the place. Sin permeates every aspect of our existence. It impacts us individually and societally. It is deeply rooted within us and manifested continually. Throughout history, societies have consistently acknowledged man's natural sinfulness.

Since the Enlightenment, however, Western civilization has become increasingly antagonistic to the reality of sin, especially as it is defined biblically. You need to be educated to know that sin doesn't exist.

There are four main reasons for this change. And these are really good. First, modernity tends to view human beings as naturally good. How many times have you been out on the street and witnessing to somebody and you ask them why they're going to heaven?

What's their answer? Because I'm a good person. They don't have an acknowledgement or an awareness of their own sin, or maybe they do and they're just suppressing it. But the proverb says, Give a man an opportunity and he'll proclaim his own righteousness.

So societies are increasingly opposed to God's standards, even redefining basic aspects of human identity, such as gender and marriage. Now, he wrote that in 2017, right? Think about what's going on now and how our society is devolving and these issues of gender, of life, the definition of life has changed, when life starts.

This is what happens when God judges a society and releases his restraint on the evil of their hearts. It'll continually devolve to the point where I'm arguing with a guy on Facebook that abortion is sinful, it's murder, and he calls himself a Christian.

He says, Give me one verse that says abortion is murder. I said, Thou shall not murder.

What else do you need?

So this is infiltrating the church. I don't know his spiritual state, I don't know if it's just a delusion or if he's not saved, but that's up to him and God. Second, deterministic views of humanity have challenged the biblical understanding of sin.

People are viewed primarily as products of their environment, social upbringing, or psychological drives or deprivations. I put Darwinism in there because, obviously, Darwinism is a theory of evolution.

So we are the products of blind random chance over time. We evolved from animals. So when you teach kids that they evolved from animals and then they act like animals, why are you surprised? You told them that their great-grandfather was an ape.

So when he starts swinging around in the classroom and beating people up, why are you upset? This also gives rise to the victimhood mentality. I'm a victim of my circumstance. I'm a victim of what other people are doing.

Or I didn't grow up in a specific environment conducive to me to get a job. So it becomes this victim mentality that pervades the culture. We see that with the woke culture right now. Third, with the rise of postmodernism, our society has shifted towards moral relativism.

Today, right and wrong, good and evil, are not defined in absolute terms, but are viewed subjectively. Relativism is the hallmark of postmodernism. So you'll encounter people who say, what's true for you is true for you and what's true for me is true for me.

Really?

So now we have to define truth as what is really true, what is truly true. Because then it becomes a matter of insulin and ice cream. You might like butter pecan, you like Rocky Road. Which one is right?

It doesn't matter, it's subjective. But if you have a headache and you take arsenic, it doesn't matter that you believe the arsenic is going to cure the headache, it's going to kill you. So we have to understand that there's objective truths outside of ourselves that govern over us.

Just yesterday, I saw a clip of a correspondent on MSNBC railing about the fact that they think, Christian nationalists, they think our rights come from God. It's what the Declaration of Independence said, actually.

I don't know. And let me ask you something. If your rights don't come from God, who do they come from? Nazi Germany? That's what happened with the Jews. Their rights were given to them or taken away from them by someone else.

So as soon as you take God out of the picture, you're talking about a very, very evil and corrupt society. Because someone's rights are going to trump yours. If they don't come from God, then we are not all created equal.

Very, very important. Fourth, sin is an unpleasant subject. In our age of self-esteem and subjectivity, people do not like to think of themselves as evil. It's true. I mean, I didn't want to think of myself as evil prior to God opening my eyes to recognize I truly am evil at my core, and that needed to be changed by God himself.

Okay, so what is sin? Of the Bible's 66 books and 1 ,189 chapters, only two books and four chapters do not mention sin or sinners, Genesis 1 and 2 and Revelation 21 and 22, standalone as unique chapters that rehearse the creation before sin and the new heaven and the new earth, which will never be infected by sin.

The rest of the Bible, from Genesis 3 -1 to Revelation 20 -15, abounds with the themes of human sin and the need for salvation. Sin is a major doctrine. The problem of evil comes into play in this situation, and guess what?

Our worldview is the only one who can explain the problem of evil and give the solution. Every other worldview cannot explain the problem of evil and cannot give them the correct solution, because if human beings are the ones who bring evil into the world, human beings can't solve the problem, because we're evil.

We need something outside of us, again, objective. We have Jesus Christ, the Savior, who comes into the world to rescue us because we cannot save ourselves. Sin is any failure to conform to the moral law of God in act, attitude, or nature.

It is any want of conformity unto or transgression of the law of God. Sin is manifest in two ways, original sin and actual sin of word, thought, or deed, whether by commission or omission. Whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.

So let's go through the scriptures. 1 John 3 -4, everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness. Sin is lawlessness. That's where action comes in, in act. We commit sin. We practice sin.

Anyone who's a Christian who practices sin needs to examine himself to see whether he's in the faith. You do not practice sin as a Christian. You slip into sin. 1 John 5 -17, all wrongdoing is sin, but there is a sin that does not lead to death.

Anything that we do wrong, an act of the attitude, is sin. Romans 7, 8, and 9. But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetedness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead.

I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandments came, sin came alive and I died. That's the nature, right? That pertains to the nature of mankind, covetedness. What's going on in our hearts?

You've got to just recognize that some sins are not crimes. We don't punish covetedness. Could you imagine there was a law on the books that punished covetedness? First of all, how would they know? And second of all, that would be a problem because we all covet things from time to time.

James 4 -17, so whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin. So this is a sin of omission. Seeing your brother on the side of the street, needing help, and you walk by. This is James saying, oh, be well fed and move on.

Show me your faith by your works. Our good works, we care for our brothers and sisters. We care for those people in the world who are not our Christian brothers and sisters. Whenever there's a disaster in the world, who are the first people in?

The people of faith. Christians are usually running to the scene of the accident to try to help people, whether they're believers or not believers. Romans 14 -23, but whoever has doubts is condemned if he eats because the eating is not from faith, for whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.

So if your conscience is bothering you about something and you err against your conscience, that's sin. So if you have doubts about something, you want to go to the Scriptures, see what it is you're having doubts about, and find what the Scripture says about that so that you don't act not in faith.

Any questions so far? We're good. Moving right along. Sin is a result of the devil's activity. The devil was an instigator of the first sin, Genesis 3 -1 and Revelation 12. He is the source or the originator of sinful behavior.

Genesis 3 -1 -5. You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. Now that is a lie straight out of hell, right? You will not surely die.

What did God say? In the day you eat it, you will surely die. It's a complete contradiction of what God said. And then he says, for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and then you will be like God.

What did God tell Adam and Eve in the beginning? He's going to create them in his image. Well, he didn't tell them that, but they were created in God's image. They were like God already. So this is Satan deceiving Eve, telling her a complete contradiction of what God actually said, and then getting them to think that God was something that they, that he was, there was something that God was withholding from them that they could have if they didn't eat from the tree.

Genesis 3 -13, the Lord said to the woman, what is this you have done? The woman said, the serpent deceived me, and I ate. So it's the serpent's deception that brought sin into the world. Revelation 12 -9, and the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent who was called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world.

He was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. Now, just to let you know, if Adam would have rebuked Satan and kicked him out of the garden, Adam and Eve would still have been pure.

Sin comes through Adam, because Adam fell. Sin was, Satan was sinning, but that would not have affected Adam had he rebuked the devil and said, we will die, and we're like God.

Get out of here.

God told Adam to guard the garden. He failed in his mission. Thankfully, God didn't give up on us. He sent his son, the last Adam, who's going to succeed everywhere that the first Adam failed. Okay, John 8 -44, you are of your father, the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires.

He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth with him, in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he's the liar and the father of lies.

This goes back to the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman. Now this doesn't mean that Satan is actually procreating and making people. Father of lies is a kind of, not an idiom, but a phrase that just represents him as the one who brought lies into the world.

Now here's something we like to talk about as Christians and apologists. How do we combat lies? Say again? With the truth.

Right?

It's as simple as that. When Jesus was tempted in the wilderness, he kept saying, it is written, it is written, it is written. Our job is to proclaim the truth to the people around us so that when someone comes to us and says, well, I'm a boy, but I feel like a girl, you're a boy.

That's the way God created you. Instead of changing the outside to match what you think is on the inside, how about we try to change the inside first, have it match the outside?

Right?

That's an easier solution. So we combat the lies that the world is telling us. Like Pastor Chris tells us every week, the world is catechizing us. What do we have to do? Speak truth to the world. 1 John 3, 8 -10,.

Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. No one born of God makes a practice of sinning.

Again, if you're born of God's spirit, you don't practice sin. It doesn't mean we don't sin. We slip into sin. We shouldn't be diving headfirst into it continually. If that's the case, you need to speak to one of your elders.

You need prayer. We need to work on this. We need to ask God. You need to examine yourself again to see if you're truly in the faith. No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's seed abides in him.

He cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God. By this it is the evidence who are the children of God and who are the children of the devil. Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.

The pastor has been going through the test in 1 John, the social test. Do you love your brother? Do you love your neighbor as yourself? Are you seeking other people's help and desire over your own? Seeking God's desires and his plan before your own.

Okay, now this is its origin still. Our first parents, by this sin, fell from their original righteousness and communion with God, and we are in them whereby death came upon all, all becoming dead in sin and wholly defiled, and all the faculties and parts of soul and body.

And these are the scriptures that we'll use to go through it. Romans 3 .23,. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. These next five verses are verses you probably should try to memorize.

This is really important when you're talking to someone about the Lord. You want to not just present the good news without the bad news, because the good news isn't really good until you know the bad news is really bad.

That's when you're going to seek to cling to this and recognize, wait a second, in and of myself, I have no good standing before God. I am worthy of every bit of wrath that he would pour out on me. I need a Savior.

And through the knowledge of sin, the Lord will lead you to Christ. Romans 5 .12,. Therefore just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, so death spread to all men because all sinned.

A couple slides later, we're going to go through exactly what that means. Titus 1 .15,. To the pure, all things are pure. But to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure. Both their minds and their consciences are defiled.

Anyone want to take a guess at what the word defiled means?

Yes.

Disordered, okay.

Say again. Marred, yes. That's more along the lines. Contaminated to cause to be morally filthy. It's tainted. That's what defiled means. It's a very important thing. We are tainted. We are contaminated.

We are morally filthy in God's sight because of the inherited sin that we, because of the sin that we inherited in Adam. Genesis 6 .5 -6, we went over this one last week. The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in all the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil.

How long? Continually. And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. Ooh, that's a tough verse to try to grapple with. Did God change his mind? We're not going to get into that today.

That's a cliffhanger. We'll do that some other day. Jeremiah 17 .9, you probably all know this one. The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick. Who can understand it? Proverbs, I think it's 27, says, Whoever trusts in his own heart is a fool.

How many times have you heard people say,.

Oh, trust in your heart.

Do whatever it is you want to do. And you're like, my goodness, if we're to trust in our own hearts,.

That's what Hitler did.

How's that working for you? It's not good. We don't want people to trust in their own hearts. We need, again, outside help to get us to see and understand that our hearts are desperately deceitful and wicked.

You probably all know this verse by heart. This is Romans 3. This is another one. If somebody is objecting to your view on total depravity or the universal sinfulness of mankind, you want to take them right to Romans 3.

And this is Paul writing this, and he's quoting all Old Testament verses. So this is not just once that it disappears in Scripture. This is a combination of quotes that he took from the Old Testament.

As it is written, none is righteous, no, not one, including Mary, just to let you know. Everyone has sinned. We've all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, only Jesus. No one understands, no one seeks for God.

You know what that tells me? No one understands. Where does understanding take place? In your mind. Your mind is tainted. No one seeks for God. Seeking is a function of desire. So our minds and our desires are affected by sin.

All have turned aside. Together they have become worthless. The inclination of our heart has turned. We're going in a different direction. That's why we use the word repent. We need to go back into the right direction.

And we become worthless. That word worthless means morally bankrupt. We are in rebellion to God. No one does good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave. They use their tongues to deceive. The venom of ass is under their lips.

Hate and murder are in their hearts. Speech is affected. We bring forth lies. Like who? The father of lies. When we speak lies, we're telling everyone that we are of the lineage of Satan. Not that this is a physical lineage.

You know what I'm saying. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. In their paths are ruin and misery. Their way of life is miserable. It's disordered. And instead of peace, it's enmity.

Enmity, like I said, is hostility on steroids. We are born into this world hostile to God. We don't want God. We want to be the center of the universe. We want to be autonomous and rule over ourselves.

The human heart pushes away any rule over it. It's only until God changes your heart and brings you under the lordship of Christ and gives you eyes to see and ears to hear that you actually do submit.

He seizes and subdues your heart because of Jesus. There is no fear of God. Oh, I'm sorry. In their paths are ruin and misery and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.

No fear of God.

Right?

Fear of God means reverence of God, taking him seriously, recognizing that there is a penalty for sin and not saying, oh, God, he knows me. He knows my heart. He knows I really mean good. No, our sin is sinful before God's eye and worthy of condemnation.

The total and total depravity refers to total distribution, not total saturation. That's Jim Oreck. He wrote a book, Mere Calvinism. I highly recommend that book. He has tremendous illustrations to bring forth the doctrines of grace.

So it's called Mere Calvinism. I actually interviewed him on the channel if you wanted to watch that. So what he's saying here is the total and total depravity doesn't mean that our lives are completely saturated in sin and we're unable even to love our mothers.

Or our children.

What he's saying, it's touched every single aspect of our life, our mind, our understanding, our desires. Everything about us has been tainted by sin. This quote will help a little bit better. Okay, this was written by Eric Sigward.

He was a pastor at Franklin Square OPC. And he says he was under, he was taking a class with Cornelius Van Till, who's kind of like the father of presuppositionalism. And this is what he said. This is what Van Till said to him.

Total depravity, that means the whole glass is poisoned. It's not as poisoned as it could be, but it's all poisoned. The faculties of our soul are all turned against God by nature. We are poisoned by sin.

Wherever there is evidence of God, which is everywhere, man will deny it, continually push against it. You see, God must reach down and save dead men in their trespasses and sins. You do not heal a dead man, you resurrect him.

That's the difference between a Reformed understanding and an Arminian understanding. An Arminian would say, oh, you need help. A Reformed guy would say, no, you're dead. You need resurrection. And that's what the Bible says.

We've been resurrected. Man is not sick, not drowning, but dead. Dead is dead, not mostly dead. It's dead. You can't throw him a rope. You throw a dead man a rope, what's gonna happen?

Nothing.

A dead man can't grab anything. Your mother is dead without Christ. Your culture is dead without Christ. Water and sulfuric acid look the same. If you drink sulfuric acid, it will kill you. And he's referring to Karl Barth, who has a different theology.

Barth has placed sulfuric acid in our water bottles and told us it's water. Barth has created the systematically most satanic philosophy ever devised by the mind of man. Salvation, however, is like cleaning a bad tooth.

It's no good if your dentist tells you your tooth is okay when it's rotten. The dentist has to go down, drill out the decay, and replace it with gold. That's what salvation is, right? So salvation is bringing a dead sinner to life, giving him a heart rather that has enmity towards God, he's gonna give a heart that now has love and peace with God.

Okay?

And like an old philosopher I know said,.

The tea is true.

Total depravity is true. Yes? Yeah, that we would call semi-Pelagianism. They believe that there's a part of us that can do good and be pleasing to God, or else where would they get their doctrine about merit and us meriting things before God the Father?

Now, they cloud it in all different words, condign merit, superfluous merit, all these different words. Basically, it's the merit of mankind that helps us get to heaven. This is why they have the doctrine of the treasury of merit, so that when a Roman Catholic dies, if he does not have enough good works to get to heaven, you pull from the bank, the treasury of merit.

You apply that. Now, the treasury of merit is merit composed of Jesus, Mary, and the saints. You know what the treasury of merit is for us?

Jesus.

What merit do Mary and the saints have that's gonna be applied to me? Their righteousness is gonna be imputed to me? I don't want any human being's righteousness imputed to me.

Go ahead.

Yeah, according to their doctrine, somebody who's a saint has to go through the beatification process, and they interview all the people that this person was in contact with, and if their good works outweigh their bad works, well, then they're gonna get to heaven because they have excess merit.

You also need, I think it's five or six miracles done in the name of that saint. It's all this stuff that is nowhere found in the Bible and, in fact, is like it's sulfuric acid in your water bottle. You're gonna drink that, and you're gonna die.

It comes in, well, that's a good question. So they're gonna take the excess merit.

Of Mary and the saints,.

And that's gonna get you the righteousness you need, but the temporal punishment for your sins still needs to be purged from you. Okay, so purgatory is a purgation, a purging of the remnants of sin in your life.

They do, the people who do not, are not part of the Roman Catholic Church have not submitted to the pope as pontiff who do not believe in the bodily ascension of Mary into heaven. It goes on and on and on.

The Roman Catholics have added to the gospel. The gospel is this, repent, change your mind, turn in a different direction, and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved. Roman Catholic doctrine is, oh, yeah, yeah, you have to do that, but you also need to do good works.

You also need to believe that Mary was bodily assumed into heaven. If you don't believe that, you're anathema, as per the Council of Trent. That's when they came against the Protestants. You need to submit to the pope.

If you don't believe that the pope is the vicar of Christ on earth, you're anathema. If you believe that you're justified, put in right standing with God by faith alone, you're anathema. So everything we hold as Protestants, they say is anathema.

Now their understanding has changed because they see that the Protestant Church,.

Although fractured,.

We hold to the essentials together, they see that we're gaining ground. So now we're separated brethren, and I reject that. I am not their brothers and sisters. I am not their brethren. I am Catholic.

I am not Roman Catholic. I love Roman Catholics. I want to see them know the Lord. I want to see them saved. I don't want to see them going through this cycle of works and this cycle of theology that ends in death.

There is a way that seems right to a man. In the end, it leads to destruction. The only way is through Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone, not anything that I bring. They would say that grace is necessary, but not sufficient.

We look at the grace of God and say, that is sufficient enough to save me. Look at the thief on the cross. He did nothing, could do nothing, except recognize that Jesus was Lord and confess him, who he was to the people around him.

Good? Okay.

A little diversion.

Okay, the effects of sin. The doctrine of sin directly defines mankind as fallen and affects everyone, since sin defines life at birth, corrupts everyone's relationship with God, with other persons, and with creation, and brings all to death.

Okay, again, I'm heavily relying on MacArthur here, but sin, we've heard sin scatters, right? What do Christians do and what does Jesus do? We seek to reconcile. We seek to bring people who are at odds with one another together.

We do not, sin wins when people separate and stay separated. That's why it's so important, Matthew 18, if your brother has, if you have a sin or your brother sinned against you, you go to him. You don't run the other way and gossip about him behind his back.

You go to him or her. You work it out. You reconcile. That's a win for the kingdom of God. Of course there's gonna be sin in the church. Of course there's gonna be disagreements and all kinds of things, but we are a people of God.

Jesus came into the world, a world full of corruption and misery and sin,.

To do what?

To bring us together, to reconcile. That's why it's so important that a church recognizes our mission is to become unity. We seek for the spirit of unity and the bond of peace so that sin doesn't win.

Make sense?

Okay, good.

Oh, I didn't read the second half of that. Sin impacts our entire human constitution and existence, right, total distribution, not total saturation, distorting every aspect of our being, body, and soul.

Sin also affects man's ability to fully rule and subdue the creation. Only a righteous man, Jesus, can succeed perfectly where Adam and mankind failed. Only the Son of Man can and will reverse the curse.

Our faith is in Jesus Christ alone to reconcile this world and turn it back to what it was. MacArthur would say sin always disappoints and never satisfies. Adam and Eve were instantly faced with this reality.

The aftermath of their sinful act reveals sin's consequences. Embracing the serpent's lie, Adam and Eve expected to become like God, enlightened and fulfilled, yet the exact opposite occurred. When Eve and then Adam ate the forbidden tree, the fruit of the forbidden tree, their eyes were opened but not in the way they expected.

They did not discover contentment and bliss. Instead, they experienced guilt and shame. They were immediately aware of their nakedness and sewed fig leaves together to cover their condition. The purity and innocence of their pre-false state ended.

Everything suddenly changed. So isn't that the case even now? When someone sins, what do you do? You cover it up. That's what Adam and Eve were doing. They were covering up. They didn't want to be seen in their sinful condition.

That's what the natural reaction of an unregenerate human being does. It wants to cover up a sin. They don't want people to know. They recognize and know that it's wrong. They just don't want other people to find out about it.

Here are the effects of man's sins. Man's relationship with God was severed. Man died spiritually, physically, and eternally. There's an immaterial sense. There's a material sense. There's a time element sense.

If we're separated from God, our sin separates us. That's going to be the everlasting condition of our existence unless we're reconciled by Jesus Christ through repentance and faith. Second, sin brings the wrath of God, which is God's righteous displeasure toward sin.

Ephesians 5 .6, the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Third, sin invites God's punishment. God is holy and righteous. He must punish sin. Jesus says the wicked will go away into eternal punishment.

It's the justice of God applied to that person's life. Fourth, sin creates enmity. Again, hostility between two parties. Romans 5 .10 says that people are enemies of God and alienated from the life of God in Ephesians.

Fifth, strife between all persons is promised and realized. Right out of the gate, Cain slew his brother Abel. I mean, there's four people on the planet, and he kills one. Lamech killed a young man who struck him.

So, I mean, this is murder that starts in the very beginning of mankind. Sixth, sin affects creation. Creation now works against man and frustrates his efforts. Cursed is the ground because of you. In pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life.

In sum, not only will Adam and his descendants suffer and die as individuals, but also all of his relationships will suffer. That's why, again, as brothers and sisters in Christ, we have to recognize sin for what it is and work to reconcile with one another.

It's not easy, but it's mandatory. God reconciled you to Christ by his death on the cross.

All right?

We are not our own. We've been bought with a price. We, too, have to reflect that to the people around us. Only the Lord Jesus will be able to restore mankind's relationship to God, to one another, and to the creation.

As the last Adam, Jesus, he will love God and his people perfectly and will manifest absolute control over the creation. Two components, two categories, I should say. There's original sin and actual sin.

How does the first man's sin affect all born after him? Theologians often refer to this reality as original sin. From the Latin peccatum originale. In one sense, original sin refers to the first sin committed by Adam, but original sin also encompasses the sinful state and condition of all people because of their relationship to Adam, which is the reason people are depraved and tainted with sin from conception.

The Bible says that creatures reproduce after their own kind. After Adam fell in sin, he reproduced after his own kind. He was a sinner, and that was reproduced in him. Original sin, all mankind fell in Adam's transgression, the covenant being made with Adam not only for himself but also for his posterity, and all mankind, descending from him by ordinary generation, sinned in him and fell with him in his first transgression.

This comes right out of Keech's Catechism. 1 Corinthians 15,. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.

Romans 5 .12. 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, therefore as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.

One act of righteousness. If you're a Roman Catholic, read that. One act of righteousness. Not all your acts and all Mary's acts and all St. Joseph's and St. whoever's acts. One act of righteousness. That's so important.

Leads to justification and life for all men. 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. Now, that's a mouthful. This has a lot of theological implications.

So I'm going to rely on a scholar, Wayne Grudem, who we talked about in the cessationist movie. We don't like him, right? No, we like him. We just disagree with that position. He's a brilliant man. This is what he says to explain that verse because it needs to be explained.

Paul explains the effects of Adam's sin in the following way. Therefore sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned. The context shows that Paul is not talking about actual sins that the people commit every day of their lives.

For the entire paragraph, Romans 5, 12 to 21, is taken up with the comparison between Adam and Christ. When Paul says, thus in this way, that is through Adam's sin, death spread to all men because all sinned, he's saying that through the sin of Adam all sinned.