Hamartiology - Original Sin

Well, good evening. Everybody seems so excited to say hello. Good evening. Oh.

Wow.

Couldn't even get one when I tried. Here are your handouts. For tonight's lesson. This is week four in our study of homology for a thousand points. What does homology mean? Oh, it's nobody wanting to participate at all.

What is it Dale. But what is homology? It's the study of study of sin. Thank you. Study of sin, huh?

Yeah.

Yeah, it's a three-letter word. The word is sin. How Martia the Greek word? Martia means sin. We've talked about the word means to miss the mark. And in our first lesson we talked about the nature of sin.

The only way that you can understand what sin is is to understand the standard. By which sin is measured? The standard is God. He is holy. He is righteous. He is just and therefore everything that is outside of him is unholy.

Unrighteous and unjust. Everything that does not obey him. Everything that does not submit to him. Everything that rejects his authority. Everything that rejects his sovereignty. There was a film that recently came out.

It was a documentary I haven't watched it yet, but I want to it was by a friend of mine pastor Tom Askell from Tampa and the. And the film was called by what standard. And. It's a film about all of this social justice Warrior stuff that's been going on in our in our culture the social justice culture that we live in now that's that very much seeks to try to squelch freedom of speech and tries to allow for all kinds of sin and depravity in the name of social justice and.

The title of the film by what standard is actually based on a very simple.

Apologetic response which is used in.

Presuppositional apologetics. You remember we talked about this years ago presuppositional apologetics. Which means that when we begin to discuss the subject of why we believe God exists. We presuppose the existence of God because without the existence of God nothing else makes sense.

To make sense of sense we need a sense maker. To make sense of our own ability to understand self. We have to have a creator. Therefore the very idea of God is ingrained in us and Even the unbeliever when he seeks to make an argument against the existence of God He will almost in every case borrow from the Christian worldview to do so.

He'll say something like God can't exist because of all the evil in the world. And what's the question by what standard. Do you measure evil? By what standard do you measure that which is bad. Your own standard your own goodness your own badness?

Well, what about Adolf Hitler what made him good or bad? Is there no standard above you? Is there no standard on which we are able to place our understanding of right and wrong outside of your feeble mind?

Sorry, I'm a little worked up tonight. I Had a little I had coffee just a minute ago, but I also. I've been here since 9 a .m. Working on the the new sanctuary. And so I'm just a little I guess I'm keyed up and tired at the same time.

But but the reality though, I love that question by what standard. Anytime someone challenges your faith upon what standard are you challenging it?

And.

That's where we get the idea of sin sin.

God is the standard.

Sin is anything that violates God. Therefore the nature of sin is.

Anything.

That would go against the command or the nature of God. It's what we said in the first class in this series. It is any want of conformity to. Or lack of adherence to the the law of God God's command. And then we looked at part two is the origin and problem of sin.

Where did sin come from? It's began with Adam and Eve in the garden. The problem of sin was the question of why did God allow it. God has a purpose for all things and we answered that question in that class.

The last two weeks we broke part three into two parts and we may break part four into two parts I don't know. It's going to depend on how fast I can talk but part three. We looked at the consequences of sin.

Can anybody. With a good memory and a desire to speak because nobody seems like they want to engage. Can anybody tell me what some of the consequences of sin were. That was the first one thank you Lee that was good.

That was a little relationship, right? The very first thing that it was affected when Adam Eve sin was their their relationship with God was. Was interrupted it was there was a wall that came up a wall of separation.

Came up, right? What else a mouse remember anything else? What happened when they fell? What was the consequence? Anything will do. I'm really wanting to get thank you death entered in both spiritual and physical death.

They spiritually died and then they physically began to die and eventually would die. There were other consequences as well such as. That's right, that's when we actually haven't dealt with yet. But that's true because what like I said everything from here on out is really a consequence of sin.

But and we're going to look at that next week when we look if we get there on the bondage of the will. Because that's our incapacity to do anything good towards God because of sin our slavery to sin causes us.

Until we are born again, we are unable to do any good towards God. All right. Well tonight we're going to go into the extent and the Imputation of sin now the reason why I didn't have part for the extent of sin and part five the imputation of sin is.

Because these two do go together the extent of sin is because of the imputation of sin and what we're going to see tonight is that sin is universal and The imputation of sin is immediate. And we're going to see what that means and how it plays out now again whether or not we get to both parts tonight.

I don't know because I'm in no hurry. I will say this though. I'm super excited about the next part. The next part is soteriology for the study of salvation. I've already got ten lessons in In the in the study of salvation and I don't even know if that's going to be all of them because there's just so much So much so rich to think about salvation.

But but I certainly didn't want to outdo it with sin and we've have six with sin. So we've already got ten on the subject of salvation. But we're going to begin tonight looking at the extent and imputation of sin.

What does it mean to impute something? I wrote that in Greek. I was just Talking about it. Okay. So what does it mean to impute? You may know. Okay, I know Lee knows Lisa. What does it mean Lee? Ascribe to that's right.

What's it? I like I like a little even less simpler word. I like the word charge. To charge to something to charge to an account. Right if I have a debt. And I and and and and and and that debt is transferred from me to you.

My debt goes from me to you that it's charged to you. It's imputed. It's ascribed to you. That's ascribed to a good word too, but that's what it means. It means to charge to someone else's account so when we talk about sin, we talk about its extent and its imputation and really the subject of tonight is going to revolve around a Doctrine that's called the doctrine of original sin the doctrine of original sin.

Now people get fused confused confused sorry people get confused with the term original sin. Because they think when you study the doctrine of original sin, you're studying the doctrine of Adams sin but we've already studied that right we've already looked at the the Original that when we talk about the original sin, we're talking about what Adam did but when we talk about the doctrine of original sin, what we are talking about is the effects of Adam's sin on his Children you are a son of Adam.

In fact this Sunday last Sunday. I talked about evolution and on our Sunday morning I said I didn't believe evolution was biblical this Sunday. I'm going to talk about why I don't even believe it's scientific.

Not only is it unbiblical it's unscientific. It does not follow the rigorous demands of even the simplest scientific principles and one of the things that Evolution does teach is that all of us did are Related because we all come from an ancestor of an ape of some sort.

I don't believe that that's true. The Bible doesn't bear that out. But what the Bible does say is that we're all related. The Bible says we're all related through our Ancestor who is Adam you're all sons and daughters of Adam and his sin has affected you.

His sin has affected you. In more ways than you can probably imagine. And you you might think oh how unfair that someone else's sin could affect me. Well, let me just say this about that. People sin affect you all the time.

Somebody gets hit by a drunk driver their sin affected someone else. Parent abuses a child sin affects them. Right. So first of all the idea that Sin shouldn't sin of one person shouldn't affect another person is it doesn't even take reality into the case.

But the other side of it that we're going to see as we go through this lesson. And as I said, maybe not tonight, but in the week to come we're going to see that not only did Adam sin affect us in a External way, but it affects us in a in the way of an internal change whereby he actually acted on our behalf.

We are guilty because of Adam. We bear the guilt of Adam and you say that's not fair. Well. Let me teach you What fair is fair is a place you go and you ride rides? And you get on a Ferris wheel you get on a carousel that's fair.

It's not about fair. It's about right. God ascribed Adam as.

The.

Representative of all mankind. You say I didn't vote for Adam. God didn't need your vote. God didn't ask you to vote. We weren't going for a president. God can do as he chooses. God chose to have Adam represent all mankind and all mankind fell in Adam.

And as we will see. Some people hate that. Some people despise it some theologians hate it and yet it is clearly biblical. I Want to quote dr. RC Sproul. This is What he says about the doctrine of original sin.

He said the doctrine of original sin teaches that people sin. Because we are sinners. It's not that we are sinners because we sin but rather we sin because we are sinners. That is since the fall of man.

We have inherited a corrupt condition of sinfulness. We now have a sin nature. The new testament says we are under sin. We have a disposition towards wickedness so that we all do in fact commit sins because it is in our nature.

To commit sins, but that's not the nature that was originally given to us by God. We were originally innocent, but now the race has been plummeted into a state of corruption. God made Adam good. God created him in a state of goodness in a good place and Yet he sinned.

And he took us with him and I always tell people I say before you get all mad at Adam. Don't think you would have done any better. I really I don't fancy myself any better than Adam and that's why I think it's sensible that he was my representative.

Because he did what I would have done now. This doctrine is not without its opponents. The doctrine of original sin Is one of the most disputed doctrines in all of history. But I want to mention this it's always disputed by the heretics.

And you say well, it's they're only heretics because they don't believe in the original sin. No, that's not that's not right. But. And I don't mean to be sassy, but here's the point they are they're heretical in other areas, too and it always comes out in the wash as they say and What comes out in the wash is because they're heretical in other areas.

They tend to become heretical in this area, too. Because they do not want to read and believe what the Bible says about the nature of man. They want to find something in the nature of man that makes him able and redeem.

Able to do good toward God without God having to do good toward him first. By the way, if you want to know what Calvinism is, that's what it is. We cannot do good toward God until God first does good toward us.

Because we are dead in trespasses and sins until God makes us alive. That's the simple and you know, you want to get all tied up in predestination and run your loops around election. It's really not about that.

It's about the fact that you are so bad that God has to make you good. Before you can ever even trust in him. He has to turn your heart from wickedness To righteousness before you would ever even believe in him.

I know that. I know how wicked my heart is and was. And there was no way that my wicked heart wanted anything to do with God. I'm going to give you three men who challenged the doctrine of original sin.

I'm going to tell you a little bit about them and I'm going to give you some quotes from them. The first one is named Pelagius. I've mentioned Pelagius before. Pelagius lived in the fourth century. He was an opponent of the man who we all know is st. Augustine if you're Richard and St. Augustine and Pelagius debated the subject of the will of man.

We get to the bondage of the will. We're going to see Pelagius a little bit more. But listen to what he says about original sin now now now by the way original sin is what is the oldest Christian doctrine?

This doctrine goes I mean back to the Old Testament the idea that we are sinners by nature. It what did David say in sin did my mother conceive me. That doesn't mean she sinned by having intercourse. It means that from the very moment of conception.

He bore the nature of sin. And this is what Pelagius says they are insane who teach that the sin of Adam comes upon us by propagation a Propagated by generation is totally contrary to the Catholic faith.

Stop right there and just know this in the fourth century Catholic was Christian. It was a general term, so he's don't get confused by that. He goes on to say sin is not born with man, but is committed afterward by man.

It is not the fault of nature, but a free will. So that's that's Pelagius. You're not a sinner by nature. You're a sinner by choice. I say it's both. You sin by nature and by choice. But Pelagius was getting man off the hook.

You're not a sinner by nature. I remember sitting in this very church. Actually right right where Jackie's sitting because that used to be the pastor's office. And I remember sitting across from another pastor who told me don't believe in original sin.

I.

I.

Believe it's possible that man could Live his whole life without sinning. I don't believe anyone ever has. This was what he said. But I believe it's possible That a man could be born Could grow up and never sin.

What's that. Possi Picari. Possi Picari the possibility to sin or possi not. Picari the Possibility to not sin. See we believe that about Adam, right? We believe he had the ability not to sin. But his posterity do not because we inherit the proclivity to sin from him.

The desire to sin is in the nature of man. Pelagius says no guess who the church sides with Augustine. Why does the church side with Augustine. Because he was right? It's just like simple. We had argue all day long the reason the church sided with Augustine.

Or Augustine or whatever his name was Aurelius I'll call him Aurelius. That was his first name the reason the church sided with Aurelius. Oh. Am I saying that wrong, too?

Okay.

Yeah.

The and the church sides with the church sides with him. Because he stood on Scripture Pelagius stood on Argumentation. He argued things like well if man is responsible he must be able If man is responsible to keep the Ten Commandments He must be able to keep the Ten Commandments if man is responsible To be righteous that he must be able to be righteous.

That sounds all well and good until you understand the concept that grace is Necessary and God wants us to depend upon him and his grace.

Which is why it's impossible outside of grace.

Pelagius did not believe in the necessity nor in the sufficiency of grace. And when we get to our Study of salvation you better believe I'm gonna hit that hard. The necessity of grace and the sufficiency of grace for salvation.

We believe in great salvation sola gratia by grace.

Alone.

Okay.

So Pelagius was the first one not the first one, but he's the first one on my list. Fourth century the next one. I want to introduce to the man by the name of Charles Finney. Yeah, I see Richard get all excited Richard anytime.

I go into history. Richard gets all excited. Charles Finney who was Charles Finney. Richard you want to tell everybody. Did you really just say that. No what else did he do Richard. Industrial Revolution and all that.

Yeah, yeah, but what was Finney's what was Finney's claim to fame though? Or it's okay if you if you can't think of anything right now, but the Wednesday night service is a funny. There's a whole lot that he did, but the one thing that Finney was very well known for was his absolute rejection of original sin.

Finney did not believe in original sin. Finney was the one who introduced the idea of the Crusade style evangelism and Finney was very Influential on later crusade leaders even the late great Billy Graham because the idea of Going in and having these great revival meetings where your goal was not to have men go home.

Converted what was to have men come forward and be converted. He borrowed the the mourners bench from the Methodist Church. See the mourners bench was that that place that you go up to in the front you get down on your knees and you cry.

Your eyes out while you pray at the end of service and they play 118 verses of just as I am. That's called we a lot of people that I grew up with called that the altar. Oh, you're gonna go to the altar.

Like the guy I saw my wife's my wife went and took me on a vacation. She used to work at AT &T and she won a contest top 100 salespeople in America. She won it two years in a row and They took us they flew us out to Arizona and she got to rub elbows with the top AT &T executives and one we're at a they were serving a lot of drinks we didn't drink but they served a lot of drinks there and we were walking around event and Her her one of the top guys was sloshed.

I mean three sheets of the wind whatever you call it. He was he was done and. And she walks up and she introduced. Hi, mr. Whatever your name is. This is my husband Keith he's a pastor and the guy went.

Whoa, he grabbed my hand and I've never had to shake my hand out any minute he's gonna get milk. I mean you just did you pound him up and he held my hand real tight. He said I went to the altar last Sunday.

And it was everything I could do to say well, I didn't stick but that was I would have been ugly. But the point is that idea of going to the altar. The idea of every time you have service the goal is to get people to weep and come down for get on your knees.

I was Charles Finney man. Charles Finney popularized that it became very much a part of Evangelical culture and it's still a big part of evangelical culture today and a lot of churches. In fact when we you know, we just had our new chancel put in.

When the guy was building it and he's a believer. He's a brother and he's a great guy as he was building it. He built the steps and he got down on his knees and he started doing this and I said, what are you doing?

So I'm making sure there's room. I said, well, maybe they'll start coming forward now that we got a nice set of steps. Go across the front. He was making sure there was room to people to get down on their knees.

So Charles Finney came up with he didn't come up with it. But he popularized it and this is what he said about original sin. He said original sin is a monstrous and blasphemous dogma. Original sin physical regeneration and all their kindred and resulting dogmas are alike a subversive of the gospel and repulsive to the human intelligence.

So not only is he saying They're they're bad. They're blasphemous. They're ungodly. That was his position. And I would I would honestly say that that's a heretical position but that was there was many other reasons why I would say Charles Finney.

Charles Finney was was Because of what he believed about the nature of man. He believed it was okay to manipulate men into salvation. And I'm telling you today What we have in a lot of churches is a manipulation to salvation.

Now I'm all for making the sanctuary look nice. It's what we're spending some money on right now having some reef reef reef restorations done but I will never be for at one time in the service everything goes dark and the music goes up high and we force men through the manipulation of their souls or rather through the manipulation of their emotion to try to save their soul and that's what Often happens when people don't believe that it takes an act of God to change the heart.

They think we need an act of man. You know Pat was joking with me. Are we gonna get a baptistry shaped like a firetruck? No, we're not. Because that isn't it's it's an attempt to manipulate the emotions.

One more and then we'll move on Brian McLaren. Brian McLaren is more contemporary. He's Emergent church. That's right. He was very famous in the emergent church and He asked this question. He says this original sin really in the Bible that humanity has become detestable to God and that it is only people who become Christians that God can truly love that they're being loved by God through just being God's creatures is somehow destroyed by original sin.

Did you hear what he said? Not only is he denying original sin, but he's denying the necessity and the efficiency of being a believer in Christ. Because what he said was are we saying that God only loves people who are in Christ?

I will tell you this whether or not you want to argue whether or not God loves the unbeliever. Whether or not you want to argue with whether or not God loves how God and what way he loves the unbeliever.

I'll tell you this the wrath of God abides on the one who is outside of Christ. If you are outside of Christ tonight, if you are not in Christ, you're like the person who was in Noah's time.

Noah's.

The only one. He and his three sons and their wives were the only ones who were saved from the wrath of God.

Men.

Were destroyed women and children were destroyed. By the wrath of God in that flood. I don't believe in the wrath of God. One day you will one day you will stand before God and every knee shall bow and Heaven on earth and under the earth and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

You. Will you will kneel now or you will kneel then? With a broken knee and and a and a broken heart. For you will look upon whom you have pierced. The Bible says yes, sir. Absolutely, that's why there's 15 people here tonight.

And I love every one of you, but the point is this is why I'm you know, we're not selling out stadiums preaching this stuff. Yes, right, yeah. No, I mean Yep and it became a mile wide and an inch deep.

And that's what the church really is today. Unfortunately, it's a mile wide and it's an inch deep and that's the reality. That's the problem is that when we deny original sin. We deny what the Bible says and let's look at the scripture because we all this was introduction and I didn't get to my outline.

But look at what look with me at Romans 5 and we're gonna read verses 12 to 21. I'm gonna make some comments and then we're gonna start to draw everything down and next week. We'll actually break down the two parts.

I'd Originally said I was gonna do tonight. Romans 5 12. You've heard me talk about this before but I have to say it again. 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.

For sin indeed was in the world before the law was given but sin is not counted where there is no law yet death reigned. From Adam to Moses even over those who sinning was not like the transgression of Adam who was a type of the one who is To come who was to come.

All right next week I'm gonna I'm gonna dig into that a little more because I want to show you what that all means. What Paul is saying essentially though first for simplicity sake. He's saying the people from Adam all the way to Moses didn't have the law to break the way Adam did.

They didn't have a command directly from God now. They had their conscience and the Bible says every man knows in his heart the the moral law of God because in his conscience. But ultimately he didn't have a verbal command from God to break yet.

He still died. Why did he die if death is a result of sin? Why did he die? Because he sinned in Adam because he dies as a result of the sin of Adam. He is dying and and we know this you go to first Corinthians 15 in Adam all die.

If you don't believe in Adam, you don't believe the Bible. Because the Bible in the theology of salvation and sin is Dependent upon the person of Adam. Absolutely people say Adams a fairy tale didn't write everything else off.

That's right. Jesus certainly believed in the historicity of Adam but go on with it. It says this but the free gift is not like the trespass for if many died through one man's trespass right there. Many died through what through one man's trespass the many he's talking about people's.

I would doesn't say everybody know but what he's talking about. He's talking about the people from Adam to Moses. Because the people from Adam to Moses are the many the people from the Adam to Moses didn't have a verbal command from God.

Until the law came but they still died. Why did they die because of one man's trespass? The sin of Adam. Put a death penalty on all men. And he says much more the grace of God and the free gift by that grace of that one man.

Jesus Christ abounded for many that's the beauty of Christ. Going back to the word imputed Adam sin is imputed to us and you say oh, that's unfair. Christ's goodness is imputed to you and you say oh, that's good.

It's just as unfair.

It's just as unfair that the unrighteous Would give be given the goodness of the righteous Savior. That's right. The free gift is not like the result of that one man's sin for the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation.

But the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. For if because of one man's trespass wrath death reign through the 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.

Therefore as one trespass led to condemnation for all men So one act of righteousness leads to justification in life for all men for as by the one man's disobedience The many were made sinners. So by one man's obedience the many will be made righteous.

I Don't know how we can deny it. I don't know why we would want to deny it.

McLaren Finney.

Augustin is not the guy who's thinking of Pelagius. McLaren Finney. Pelagius you go down the line. Not only is this doctrine Denied by the heretics, but it is not discussed even by the faithful. Because it is even among believers one very seldom understood.

But also to it is too often Too much to bear. People don't want to hear it. People do not want to deal with it. They don't want to have to face what the Bible says, yes.

A lot of times when you talk about this about getting into discussion with an unbeliever, you know an unbeliever and. The word comes up about science. Sure, okay.

Yeah, God is all-knowing absolutely.

Yeah.

Let me close with this again. We didn't get to the outline and I apologize I knew I was going to possibly break this into two parts. It's so this is it. Because let me tell you something guys I mentioned earlier.

Calvinism reformed theology, whatever. This is at the heart of it.

But.

This is not up for debate. A denial of original sin is a denial of what the Bible teaches. It's not as if I mean, can we debate the subject of predestination? Yeah, I think I'm right but still talk about it.

Can we discuss those things?

Yes.

But when it comes to the doctrine of original sin whether or not we are inheritors of Adams sin and guilt. This is what the Bible clearly teaches to deny it. You have to do hermeneutical gymnastics. You have to back you have to bend over backwards To get away from it.

You have to come up with all kinds of philosophical solutions. There are not Hermeneutical solutions, which means biblically based solutions. It's always philosophical. So next week, we're going to see the twofold outline.

We're going to see the extent of sin. And here's the question why? Why is sin universal? Why is no one not one person outside of the Lord Jesus Christ? Able to say I'm without sin. Could it be? That it is on in our very nature and If it is in our very nature, how did it get there?

So we're gonna look at that next week at the extent of sin and how how it was imputed. But for now, we'll we'll break father. Thank you for this time of study. I pray that this has been useful and helpful and I pray Lord that it's been an encouragement to your people.

Pray that you would use this time To save those who are listening who may not be saved Lord or whether they be Here or through the internet Lord use this time to draw people to yourself. Show them their sin and their need their desperation and need for Christ in his name.

Amen.