What is Original Sin?

Sovereign Grace Family Church

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Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist.

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My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist.

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Today we're going to be in Romans chapter 5.

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Now Romans chapter 5 begins with what I consider to be one of the most important verses on the subject of justification.

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You'll remember that in the first four chapters of Romans, Paul has talked about the nature of sin, the deadness of man in sin, and the reality that the only way to be justified is through faith.

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He used Abraham as the example of that.

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And then in chapter 5, verse 1, he says, That verse is hugely important, one that I would encourage you to commit to memory.

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It's one that I have said that if I was ever invited to preach somewhere where I didn't have time to prepare, where maybe I was at an event and someone said, Pastor Foskey, would you share a word with us? This would be the passage that I would pull out because it says so much.

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Therefore, having been justified.

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Therefore, talking about what has come before, the sin of man and the justification work of Jesus Christ.

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Having been justified.

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That's a past tense thing.

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That's something that has already taken place.

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We have peace.

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That's a current peace that we have.

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And the peace that's referred to there is the shalom, the true peace.

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Not simply a ceasefire, but a genuine peace that comes with the work of Jesus Christ.

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Because of Jesus Christ, the dividing wall between man and God has been torn down.

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And we now have access to the throne of grace because of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

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And so there's so much wonderful truth.

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And it says we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

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We have true shalom.

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Again, I encourage you, read chapter 5, verse 1.

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Memorize it and use it when you're sharing the gospel.

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When you're talking to people about what it means to have Jesus Christ as their Savior.

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It means to have peace with God.

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Now, I want to talk about something else today because this chapter is so full.

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And chapter 5 really is a gem that's often overlooked.

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Because chapter 5 also talks about the doctrine of original sin.

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You'll notice beginning in verse 12, Paul says, Just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.

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That tells us something about the nature of sin in regard to the relationship that we have with our ancestor, Adam.

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One of the things that we need to realize as biblical Christians, we believe in the historic Adam and Eve.

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We believe that there was a man who was created by God.

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His name was Adam, and he was the first man.

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We believe in Eve, and yes, we even believe that there was a serpent who tempted Eve to eat of the tree that God had told her not to eat of.

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And because she ate of it, and she gave it to her husband, and her husband ate of it, they fell into sin.

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And because of that, they brought the entire human race, all of their descendants, into that sin with them.

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We are all descendants of Adam and Eve.

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We all have the same mother and father ancestrally.

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We all have the same point of beginning.

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And so every one of us is a sinner because of our relationship with Adam.

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Adam was acting as our representative.

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Some people might say, well, I never voted for Adam to be my representative.

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But just remember this, God doesn't work on our vote.

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God doesn't operate in a democratic system.

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God is the sovereign of the universe, and when he creates a man, and he says this man is the representative of all mankind by his actions, and what he does is going to affect all mankind, then that's the way it is, and that's the way that God has established it.

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And what's great about that is even though Adam represented us in sin, and that's bad, Christ represents us in righteousness, and that's good.

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And so while we have the negative of being brought into sin because of Adam's sin, and we are born in sin, and we love sin, and we enjoy sin because we inherit the sin nature of Adam, but we also have the benefit of being represented by Christ who represents us in righteousness.

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Everything that Adam failed to do, Christ did perfectly.

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Adam failed to keep the requirements of God.

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Jesus kept them perfectly, and therefore where Adam failed, Christ succeeded.

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I want to just point you to the passage he talks about here.

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He says, The free gift is not like the trespass.

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For if many died through the one man's trespass, that's Adam, much more had the grace of God, and the free gift by that grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for many.

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So he's saying there where Adam caused death, Jesus Christ brought life.

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Where Adam brought condemnation, Jesus Christ brought the gift of salvation.

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And he goes on to talk about the distinction between the two.

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In verse 18 it says, As one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.

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So he's comparing Adam and Jesus, and he's saying where Adam failed, Jesus succeeded.

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And this is why Jesus is at times in the Bible called the last Adam.

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He's the last of two because there's only two.

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There's only two representatives of mankind.

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There's Adam who represents us in death, and there's Christ who represents us in righteousness and life.

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And so therefore there are only really two places you can be in humanity.

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You can either be in Adam and in sin, or you can be in Christ and in righteousness.

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And so the question is who is your representative today? Who are you under today? Whose banner are you waving? If you're outside of Christ, you're still under the banner of Adam.

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You're still under the banner of condemnation.

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You're still in your sin.

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But if you are in Christ, Christ has brought justification.

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He has brought life.

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He has given you a new banner under which, and that banner is the banner of Christ.

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He is our righteousness.

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So my encouragement to you today, again, this chapter is so full of good and sound teaching and information.

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I would encourage you to read it multiple times.

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I would encourage you to think about the implications of what it says and how it affects our understanding of the theology of sin, particularly the theology called original sin.

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When we talk about original sin, we're not talking about Adam's original sin, but what we're talking about is how the sin of Adam has affected all people.

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And it has.

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The sin of Adam has affected us all.

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We are all born with a sin nature.

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But by the grace of God, through our Lord Jesus Christ, we can be saved from that sin problem.

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And the only way to be saved is through faith in Jesus Christ.

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And having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

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I hope this has been helpful to you.

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I hope this has been an encouragement to you.

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Thank you for watching, and thank you for participating in Coffee and Calvinist.

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My name is Keith Vlasky, and I have been your Calvinist.