Original Sin...Truth or Heresy??

All right, welcome everybody to another episode of The Parish Reformed. Today we have Jeremiah Nortier, or if you're French, we'll say Nortier. And we're gonna be talking about a little topic called the doctrine of original sin.

Some people have an issue with, some people may not believe that or understand it really well. So hopefully we can maybe shed a little bit of light on that in scripture. So Jeremiah, welcome buddy, you there?

Yes, sir, thanks for having me on, Trey.

There he is, so how's it going up in Arkansas?

Really good, as you know, we're still trying to figure out all the tech stuff. We had a really cool background that we will be throwing y 'all's way soon. So right now it's just a still shot, but we have it to where it kind of moves and we'll let it be a surprise for our viewers in the future.

Good deal, so you're in a red room with the apologetic dog behind you. I like it. So original sin, man, what do you think about this? We got a lot of friends out there that don't believe in original sin.

And they say that if you don't, and I do believe, if you don't understand or let's just put it this way, if you don't accept, if you don't accept the doctrine of original sin, you cannot accept the gospel of Christ because you can't know it, right?

So what would you say to that?

Yeah, so like we've talked about before, the doctrine of original sin is actually, for one, it's orthodox. And when you study it in scripture, it's gonna have implications on how you understand the gospel because it has a direct implication on our anthropology, right, our study of who man is in scripture.

So yeah, I mean, you have to understand original sin to understand the gospel.

Right, because if you're rejecting, I think the main objection that people have when they're not looking at scripture and coming from scripture outward, but they're looking at the way the world works and then looking at scripture, trying to make sense of it, they look at the doctrine of original sin that you're held guilty and responsible for what Adam did in the garden.

It's just not fair because I wasn't there, I didn't do it. How am I held responsible for that, right?

Right.

What would you say?

Yes, so for one, what we're bringing into question is God's justice, right? For one, he gets to define what's just, what's fair and what's unfair. And we have to understand is, if we look to Jesus in saving faith, we are getting his righteousness imputed to us.

Well, by the same respect, by the same principle, how is that fair? That we can be declared right before God on the basis of what Jesus Christ did because we have two federal heads. So we'll kind of unpack more of this term, but you're either represented by Adam in the garden or you're represented by Christ.

And if you don't like being represented by Adam, well, in the same breath, then there's no way that you could be represented by Christ. So when people look to scripture, especially as we dive into Romans chapter five, there's only two options.

And I think what's kind of a hidden assumption when people say, it's not fair that Adam represented me, it's as though they are assuming that they would have done something different than what Adam did in the garden.

And that's the whole thing. You wouldn't have done anything better than Adam, right? So just like our president, when he makes a bad decision, it affects the whole country, right? So it's a similar deal.

And it's the thing, you're exactly right. You start reading the Bible. Here's the deal, when you don't accept original sin, it's just a hard left right out of the gate. And it's just, you're breeding a Pharisee, right?

Because you read the Bible and say, well, if I was in the garden, like you said, if I was in the garden, I wouldn't have eaten the apple. No, you would have, you just done a lot sooner, right? Because what God does is perfect.

And he picked the perfect representative of all of mankind, which was Adam. And if he had picked you or me, we'd have done the same thing, but a lot quicker and probably a lot worse than he would have.

And you start reading the Bible this way and start saying, well, if I was in the Exodus and I saw God do all these plagues and these divide in the water of the Red Sea and part in that and we walked across and I heard his thundering voice from Mount Sinai with the 10 commandments, I would not have made a golden calf.

Yeah, you would have.

You'd have just done a lot sooner and a bigger calf. If I walked in the days of Jesus, I would have believed.

No, you wouldn't have.

Because there was people there who really did not believe but this is what it does. It produces this self-righteous pharisaical understanding. And man, you just can't understand the gospel. You can't see the gospel for what it is.

Back to what you said, the doctrine of imputation. If you don't accept the first Adam's imputation, you cannot accept the second Adam's imputation of righteousness because if you're wanting fairness, this is what becomes a doctrine of works, right?

Because you're like, well, I'm gonna earn it because I did it, right? Because I did X, Y, Z, so therefore I earn it. Anyway, so what scriptures would you go to to talk to somebody about this? There's a lot.

There's a lot. And so what we're talking about is the original sin of man in the garden. So what's important, and we'll look at this in a moment in Genesis three, but Paul gives us the doctrinal insight in Romans chapter five.

So both are really important. And so directly what we're talking about is in Romans chapter five. And so it really begins back in verse 12. So I'll read this verse and then the rest of it's really just explaining kind of the same thing just in a lot of clarity.

So 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. Now, when you look at that verse alone, there are kind of the Pelagian side of things to say, well, you see everybody sinned.

So it's not that we're inheriting any type of nature, we're inheriting some type of guilt from Adam. And if we were to look at this, just at this verse alone, then it would be harder for us to be like, no, God has declared men sinful, right?

And so it's as you continue to read from there, we get that reason why all men have sinned and it's because we have all died in Adam essentially.

Let me show you this real quick. For the Pelagians out there who don't know they're Pelagians because they've never heard of Pelagianism, right? They just believe that you're born perfect and that one day you probably will sin because the people outside have, you know, outside of you, all the people that you're born in this world and they've already sinned, now you're newborn into the world.

And eventually they're gonna influence you to sin and then you sin, right? But you are perfect, it's all their fault. And now everything in your relationships, you're blaming other people, because if it wasn't for you influencing me to sin, I wouldn't have sinned.

And here's where they get this, Romans 7. So I'm gonna hit that real quick and then we'll come back to 5, okay? Because this is what they'll say. In Romans 7, Paul says this in verse 7. Let's see here.

What shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means. Yet, if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. Hmm, if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had said, you shall not covet.

But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. I once was alive apart from the law. But when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died.

So they would argue, well, see, if there is no law, there is no sin. Once I was alive apart from the law. Therefore, there was a time in my life where I didn't sin. But when the commandment came, sin came to life and I died.

And he's talking about spiritually he died here, not physically, because he keeps writing down the chapter seven. So he's saying that's when he spiritually died, when he finally broke the commandment.

And because if there's no law, there's no sin, which it doesn't say that, but that's the quick hand eye trick. You know what I'm saying? Don't watch the left hand while the right hand's doing it. So that would be their argument, that if there's no law, there's no sin, which like you're about to read here in chapter five, they forgot to read chapter five because you're about to read verse 13.

Go ahead.

Yeah, yeah.

So 13 really kind of just continues the context of the whole train of thought. So Paul says, for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not.

Wow.

Think about that.

So you got to think too, the law of God has been written on the Imago Dei, the image bearer of God. So men have always been held accountable to God's standard. We know it intuitively from the heart, right?

And so as God communicates with his people, there's always that standard, right? And so I think you touched on a second ago, Pelagians kind of see every person that's being born as kind of a new Adam, right?

And you got this clean slate and it's because of your environment that you choose sin, but you're basically kind of, you're born good, right? Or in this neutral, clean state. And it's because your environment that you choose sin.

And so I wanna stress that verse real quick before you go on. So if Romans seven, Paul says, if your understanding of Romans seven is, if there is no law, there is no sin. Once I was alive apart from the law, meaning there was a time in his life where there was no law.

Well, right here it says, let's read again what you just said. For sin indeed was in the world before the law was given. Sin indeed was in the world before the law was given. So that kind of knocks that whole argument out.

Oh yeah.

Keep going.

No, so yeah, we'll just keep rolling with it. 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. And we could literally break down all of these verses, Trey.

I think this is just, Paul's basically saying the same thing. Just really telling us what it means with these two federal heads.

Let's break that down real quick. Break that verse, and that's huge for him.

Right. So 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 is to come. So there's actually a lot jam-packed in here.

For one, death is reigning because of man's innateness, innateness, right? His sin desire always results in death. So like

And that reigning is like a king, right? Not like water. It's reigning like a king. It's huge. I mean, it's a huge word.

Oh yeah. All this is so important because sin is reigning. Sin isn't just, man, we're born and we really want to tell the truth to everybody. We're really good. No, we're born depraved, right? And so you have how many kids, four, five?

Five.

Five kids. When they were born, did you have to tell them how to tell the truth or did you have to tell them how to lie?

Hey, you know, I had a friend call me up one day. He said, Trey, what are you doing right now? I said, well, I'm just teaching my kids how to be bad. No, that never happened. I have to teach them how to be good, right?

Right. Yeah, they lie on their own. They know what they should do and yet they desire to do the opposite because we have this self-consciousness, right? We have the impression of God on us so we know what we ought to do, but from birth, sin is still reigning in our lives and that's why we do see death.

And what's interesting with the Pelagian view is in their mindset, babies should not die, right? Because they're not sinning in this way that they would expect. So death is a result of sin that started with Adam and we see this permeating all throughout his posterity, through all of his offspring.

Now, I wanna just add to this where it says death reigned from Adam to Moses, right? Even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam. So from Adam to Moses and then all those people in between those two men, sin was reigning and death was reigning because of sin and the two things that these two men had, Adam had the law, don't eat it, right?

Moses had the law, but all these people in between did not have the law, but yet death still reigned because sin was in the world before the law came. Indeed, it was in the world. So it's not that if there is no law, there is no sin, no sin, I mean, the law has always been here and the sin, I'm sorry, sin has always been here even before the law of Moses.

So go ahead.

Yeah, that's really good. So I think we're in verse 15, but the free gift is not like the trespass. So what we're about to see is God's grace is in so much more abundance within Christ than what Adam had previously done.

So we're gonna see that Jesus and this federal headship is so much greater in light of what happened with Adam. For if many died through one's man's trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by grace of that of one man, Jesus Christ abounded for many.

Now, something that we wanna keep in mind here is because some people go like this really bothers me, Trey. Some people go to this passage to try to prove universalism. And you have to strip that away from the whole context of what Paul's been building up from Romans one all the way to five here.

But we're gonna see the all, if it's applied to Jesus, it's all that are in him, right? And if we say all are many in Adam, it's those particular people that are born from the womb that are in Adam.

Because Adam represented all humanity. Christ represented all those who would believe in him.

Yes.

So.

Yeah.

As far as federal headship.

Cause we're building up to, I think verse 19 is gonna be real key in all this. Obviously it's all congruent together. So verse 16 says, and the free gift is not like the result of one man's sin for the judgment following the one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification.

And so we're starting to see that contrast between justification and condemnation, Trey. These are forensic legal courtroom terms, right? You're either justified just as if you never sinned, declared righteous, or you're condemned.

So that's kind of, and then you got the judge, right? That makes the pronouncement. So we're starting to see these terms. Justification stands in opposition with condemnation. Verse 17. For if because of the 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.

So kind of like what we said earlier, whatever you do with Adam, there is a correlation to Jesus, and it's so much better, right? So you can't be mad of your federal head with Adam, right? Because then you can't, by those same rules and principles, you can't have Jesus Christ as your federal head, but it gets more stronger.

To me, verses 18 and 19 here really make a strong case. Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, right, and we understand that this does apply to all men from birth, then we'll continue to get into the heart of man what that looks like, right, from the womb.

Therefore, just as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification in life for all men. Now, this is where I've had those weird conversations that say, oh, so all men are declared righteous before God.

And it's like, that's not the argument that's trying to be made. It's if those that are in Christ, all the ones that are in him, they are justified. They have now received justification.

Well, it's not understanding the federal headship, you know, it's not understanding that doctrine. Go ahead, yeah.

So I think verse 19, this is probably the clearest, one of the clearest verses when we're talking to Church of Christ or other people that deny original sin to mean that our nature, something happened with our nature and our standing before God.

So verse 19, for as by the one man's disobedience, the many were made sinners. So this is talking about all of Adam's posterity, right? All are under sin. Romans three has been building this case that for all sin and fall short of the glory of God.

And then earlier in Romans three, we see that both Jew and Gentile are unrighteous. So the many here in Adam is all of mankind. They were made sinners. Now this is by forensic declaration before God. God, when he saw Adam and Eve sin, he looked, and it's interesting if you look at the chronology, right?

Eve is the one that was deceived, right? But who bore the full weight of that? Well, it was both Adam and Eve.

But I would say Adam won. Right, because he's the one who chose.

Adam was the federal head. Right.

He knew better, she was deceived. He looked at it and he's like, all right, let's do it. You know, he literally, he was not deceived in it. He knew better, right?

Yes.

And so, go ahead.

It's interesting because this kind of sets the paradigm for leadership in the church and leadership in marriage. It all goes back to the leader of the household, right? This is the roles that God has ordained, even though Eve is just as much a human being as Adam, but we see that the responsibility landed on Adam, right?

And so, for as the many, which is of one man's disobedience, the many were made sinners. So God looks at mankind now in light of Adam and Eve with Adam being the representative and declares them sinners.

Now, one objection I hear people say is, well, you have to transgress the law in order to be a sinner. And it gets into this kind of dilemma, Trey. Do we, are we sinners because we sin or do we sin because we're sinners?

And I think it's the latter that's true. We sin. We will transgress certain laws as we develop and all these things. And it's because we are sinners by nature. We've inherited this nature from our federal head, right?

Adam, in light of the fall. So this is crucial because this has to do with a correct anthropology of man. Who are we?

That's a big thing to remember, to understand this. It's not that we're sinners because we sinned. We sin because we're sinners. This is just what we do. This is why you don't have to teach your kid not to bite somebody.

Cause my kids never saw me bite my wife. And was like, you know what? I don't wanna do that. I wanna take a hunk of flesh out of somebody, you know? They've never seen me bite my wife, but yeah. So go ahead, verse 20, we'll clear that one up.

And I wanna hit some stuff in chapter seven to clear that up as well.

Oh yeah.

So it's multifaceted because God is legally declaring all men in Adam sinners, but it's deeper because we have a sin nature in light of the fall of man. So that's kind of embedded there. And then the verse goes on to say, so by the one man's obedience, this is talking about Christ, the many will be made righteous.

And so this isn't universalism. It's the many that now by faith, right? In Christ are now justified. There's no longer condemnation looming over their account. And this is so crucial, Trey, that God now can declare us righteous.

This is in that courtroom setting, right? God is the righteous judge. And by our faith in Christ, there is that great exchange that happened. And this is really the crux of the gospel. We get the perfect righteousness of Jesus accredited to our account.

And then all of our sin goes back to Calvary and it's paid for in full. And so now we walk the rest of our life in sanctification. And this is at the very heart of the gospel. So when we are made righteous, this is a legal transaction that's taken place.

Yep.

I love it. And a lot of people don't understand that.

It's so important.

I didn't understand that for forever. So Romans 7. So Romans 7, you know, when we look at Romans 7, look at this, I mean, think about this. If we understand, if we read the Bible, here's what I tell people, read it slow, then slow down, read it again, and then read it a third time, but a little bit slower, right?

And remember what you read because it's all going, it's all telling you something. And just what you said there about your nature. I mean, our nature, we do what our nature wants. You know, this is like a dog has a nature and a rabbit has a nature.

You know, if I put meat in a corner of a room and carrots in the corner of a room and I put a starving dog at the door and opened it, where's he going every single time? To the meat. This is nature. And the rabbit will always go.

Now he could go to the meat, the rabbit could go to the meat, but guess what? He'll never go to the meat. He'll go to the carrots because that's his nature. And so us and our sinful nature, we will always choose sin over anything of God.

That's our nature, you know? And if we say no to that, well, we're saying no to scripture and we're saying no to just the reality and the fact that we know that's true. You know, we don't want to apply that to us because at the end of the day, I don't want to think I'm that bad.

Surely I would never do that. Well, you need to read Romans 8 slow, but we went from five. Now let's look at seven where we get this idea that if there is no law, there is no sin. So look at verse five of chapter seven.

For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. So our sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit for death.

And I explain this a lot of times by saying, if you're walking in a park, that you walk down this little path in this park every day, and you've done it for months and months and months. And there's this little bench, this little bench over there.

You always pass by it. You never even look twice at it. And then one day you walk by this bench and there's a sign that says, wet paint don't touch. What do you want to do?

Touch it.

What do you want to do?

You want to touch it?

And you got to touch it. You're like, oh my goodness, I got to touch it. You've never thought twice about that bench. You never hardly noticed the bench out of the months and months you've been walking there.

But all of a sudden you see the sign that says, don't paint, don't touch. I mean, wet paint, don't touch. You're like, oh my goodness, is anybody looking? And you walk over there and you're like, pimp, you just got to touch it.

You know, cause we hate the law. Everything in us hates the law. And this is what it says. When we saw the law and we see the law, boy, it arouses the sinful passions in us, you know? And so check this out.

Verse eight. Well, let's just look at verse seven again. What then shall we say? That the law is sin?

No.

Why'd the law come? In chapter three, it tells us the law came to give us the knowledge of sin. Not that there was no sin. It just gives us knowledge of sin. Like when we say, oh my goodness, I did this.

That gave you the knowledge of sin because sin indeed was in the world before the law came. Says, I would not have known sin for I would not have known. I didn't know I murdered somebody. I didn't know I did this.

I didn't know I did that. I didn't know that was wrong. Well, now you know there's a law, right? If the law had not said, you shall not covet, look at verse eight. But sin, now, if we're gonna argue that there was a time in Paul's life where he was not a sinner, well, let's just read this a little bit slower.

Verse eight. But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me. See, it was already in him. The sin, something that doesn't exist cannot produce something, right? Something that does not exist cannot produce something that does exist.

So what produced in him all kinds of covetousness?

What was it? Sin.

There's a sin inside of him already. And apart from the law, sin lies dead. It lies dormant, that Greek word. It's not saying that it's dead like we're thinking dead. It's lying dormant. But as soon as it sees the law, boy, it starts arousing, man, we wanna do it.

But when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. In the very commandment, the promised life proved death to me. For sin, here it is again, seizing an opportunity through the commandment deceived me.

How can something that doesn't exist in you do something to you? See, the sin was already in him and it was the sin in him already that deceived him. It deceived him and through it killed me. So the law is holy and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.

Did that which is good then bring death to me? By no means. It was sin producing death in me through what is good in order that sin might be shown to be sin. It was the sin that was producing all this stuff in him because it was already in him.

But when it saw the law, it was like, man, I hate the law. Just like we all do. You're a kid, right? The cookie jar. Don't get in the cookie jar. And you turn your back within seconds in the cookie jar.

Why?

Because we hate the law. Does that make sense?

Absolutely.

Heck yeah, it does.

Couldn't have said it any better myself. There you go.

So you wanted to go to Genesis three. Let's look at Genesis three real quick. Or if you got more there, add to it.

Yeah, so a couple of thoughts before we go there. Because we're kind of talking about two concepts that are related and we see everything from what we've said in Romans five to Romans seven. We, since Adam, man was declared or made sinners.

Now that's not just a declaration only. That's also showing us what our nature is from our very heart. And so I kind of would just touch on what Ephesians two describing man's nature. And then really this is the same idea that Paul has earlier in Romans when we start seeing like Romans three.

I'm getting into that depravity of man and it's all encompassing. Man's not naturally seeking the things of God from birth. Rather, it's the opposite. It's we're fleeing from God in rebellion, essentially with our middle fingers in the air, right?

We would rather do what we wanna do, not what God has called us to do and what we know from the heart what we ought to do, right? Because even when there was no tangible law tablets, God has always been speaking to mankind.

That's why sin was crouching at the door with Cain, right? Because God's talking with him at that point, right? That looked a little bit different than Adam and Eve before the fall. And you have Romans two, the law of God written on the pagan's hearts, right?

And they're gonna be held accountable to that standard. So Ephesians two kind of gets into that anthropology, our nature. We sin because we are sinners. We really see that this is something deep within our hearts.

Paul's talking to Christians saying, and you were dead in your trespasses and sin, okay? And so spiritually there was nothing good there, right? It's only we suppress the truth and we chase after our sinful nature.

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, this is going back to what you said, the desires of the body and the mind.

And we're by nature, children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

Yeah, but Jeremiah, look, that's just, that don't mean that. Truly it don't mean that.

Right, people don't like their hearts exposed what their true nature looks like, because I'm a good person. I think the proverb says that each man wants to proclaim his own goodness, not do some true retrospection and be like, oh man, that's corrupt from the core.

Nothing that I could do possibly could make me right before God.

By nature, children of wrath. And like you're saying, here's what, the number one verse in the world that everybody knows, it is what?

John 3, 16.

Yeah, but nobody knows, not many know or understand, John 3, 17 through 21. Like that blows things out of the water.

We stand condemned already.

Yeah, and it's the light come down into the world, right? Yeah, this is the judgment light came out of the world, but we hate the light and we love darkness. And it says, everyone who does wicked things, everyone who does wicked things, who would that be?

That would be everyone. For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, right? Everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light lest his work should be exposed.

Like we hate light and you can't, you don't have enough gumption in you to love something you actually hate or to hate something that you actually love. You don't have the grit in you. I had a guy come to my house one time bringing up this text to me.

And I went and I got some kale from the refrigerator and I asked him if he liked kale. And he played, you know, college football. He went to the NFL for a little bit, big dude. And I gave him some raw kale.

He's like, I never ate it. And I said, take a bite. And he took a bite and he swallowed it. And he's like, oh, it's bitter. I was like, you want some water? So I went and got him some water. And he's like, oh, that was nasty.

I said, you didn't like that? He's like, no. I said, well, here, eat the rest of it. And it was a handful of it. He goes, what do you mean? I'm not eating that. I said, no, just choose to love it. Just choose to love it and eat it, you know?

Like you can't, you can't choose to love something you hate. And so that's the thing, what you're talking about there. By nature, we're children of wrath. We do what our cravings want by our nature. And so we won't come to light.

But then it says in John 3, 21, it says, but if anyone does what is true and comes to light, it should be obvious that that was a work carried out in God, that God did a miracle in your heart, you know?

So just adding to what you were saying that we do the desires of the body and of the mind by nature, children of wrath. Go ahead. I'm done.

Well, no, no, that was good. Because I think all this is important as we start going back to Genesis, right? Because we're showing clear teachings of the apostle Paul. You're showing clear teachings of Jesus that just said, look, when God shines his holiness and his light, we scatter, right?

We desire the darkness and we don't want the light to expose our sin. But that's why we stand condemned already. And before we jump into Genesis, Jesus in Mark 7 says that it's not what goes into a person that defiles a man, which already time out.

It's like, wait, if we're all born Pelagians with this clean state, then wouldn't that mean that Jesus is saying, no, it's not the circumstances that surround us that we take in. That's not the thing that corrupts us.

And so he immediately goes into rebuking the Pharisees, which is a good representation of every sinner's heart,.

Right?

We want to be gods. We want to be the religious elite. We want people to look at us and say, man, I wanna be like that person because they're so awesome. But Jesus is saying, it's not that goes into a person that defiles a person.

He says, what comes out of a person is what defiles him. What is corrupting is something that starts from within. He says, for from within, out of the hearts of man come, now this covers everyone, evil thoughts, right?

And from that sexual morality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting. You read that earlier in Romans 7, right? Wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within and they defile a person.