June 11, 2024 Show with Ken Samples on “Sin as a Disorder of the Good”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe.

It's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today. Proverbs, chapter 27, verse 17, tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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And now, here's your host, Chris Arnson.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnson, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 11th day of June, 2024.

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And it is going to feature, for the first time, Dr. Joseph Boot, founder of the Ezra Institute. But today, I am thrilled to have a returning guest who is an old friend of mine. In fact, he is one of my oldest Christian friends, especially one that still remains in contact with me.

For some reason, not all of them do, but my guest today does. And I was just reminiscing on social media with my friend Bosco Lau, who first met me in the early 90s at Calvary Baptist Church in Amityville, Long Island, where I was a member at the time before moving to Pennsylvania.

And he met me because he attended an apologetics conference that we had there featuring my guest today, Kenneth R. Samples. And Ken is a senior research scholar with Reasons to Believe, an adjunct instructor of apologetics at Biola University.

He's an author and former co-host of the Bible Answer Man broadcast. And today we're going to be addressing sin as a disorder of the good. It's my honor and privilege and thrill and joy to have you return to Iron Trip and Zion Radio, my old friend Ken Samples.

Chris, it is so good to see you. I think our friendship goes back 30 years, and I remember fondly coming to New York and I remember going out to dinner with you and your lovely wife and I enjoyed that so much.

Yes, that was one of our very favorite restaurants, which unfortunately is no longer in existence. Sherry's French Gourmet Restaurant in Babylon, Long Island. It was right on the water. Our table had a window overlooking the Great South Bay.

And I can distinctly remember having a blessed time of fellowship with you and Julie. And Julie always fondly referred to you as Mr. Sampson, even though she knew how to pronounce your name correctly, but she just liked calling you Mr. Sampson, as in Sampson and Deliah.

And it was a memory that is forever etched in my heart and mind.

Yeah, she was a lovely, lovely woman, dedicated Christian, and I miss her.

Yes, I miss her obviously enormously. But today we have a fascinating topic. But before you do that, I want you to let our listeners know about a new book that you're expecting to be in print this fall.

Yeah, I'm excited about this book. It is entitled Clear Thinking in a Messy World. And the subtitle is A Christian Guide to Logic, Reason and Cognitive Bias. I think we're living at a time where lots of people have lost their mind.

Whatever gave you that idea?

I think that thinking carefully and critically and in a biblical context, being a person who uses discernment is really important. So I have chapters on the laws of logic, on informal logical fallacies, and A Colleague contributes areas of cognitive bias.

I'm really excited. I've written a number of books, but this is a book, Chris, I've wanted to write for 30 years. So I'm so pleased that the Lord has allowed me to do it and it should be out in the fall.

Great. Well, I'm looking forward to having you back on the show when that book is in print and we'll address that subject. But today, as I've already announced, our subject is sin as a disorder of the good.

If you could, I mean, this may sound like a no brainer, especially when the majority of my audience is Christian already, but perhaps there are still people perhaps new in the faith who may get a general idea of what sin is, but they might not even as a Christian understand it clearly to the depth of how the Scriptures describe it.

So if you could start off with a working definition of sin.

Yeah, I think that a good definition is anything thought, word, or deed that is contrary to the moral character of God. Now, the Greek New Testament word for sin is hamartia. There are a number of definitions we could use missing the mark, breaking the commandments.

That's probably the most emphasis, both old and new. We've broken the commandments of God. Those commandments reflect the moral nature of God. So when we break them, we are going against God. I think one of the most diabolical elements of sin, though, is what Paul discusses, the apostle in Romans 1, where sin leads to a sense of deception.

And, you know, part of the problem with being a sinner is that you're not always aware that what you're doing is sinful. So original sin, of course, is the idea that Adam and Eve rebelled against God.

And from that original sin came an original sin would include the fact that we die physically. It also means that we have a corrupt moral nature, a sin nature, if you will. And thirdly, that we're guilty in Adam.

That third part is the controversial part that some people push back. But I believe the Bible teaches original sin. And I think if you have a low view of sin, you will probably also have a low view of grace.

I have a high view of sin and I have an even higher view of grace.

Yes, I remember being so disappointed watching one of my very favorite talk show hosts, Tucker Carlson, who identifies as a Christian. He obviously needs a lot more instruction in the true doctrines of the Christian faith, however, even though he is right on the mark with so many things, especially in regard to politics.

But I was watching Tucker and he was rightly dismantling the woke movement and the social justice warrior movement. And the aspect that he was targeting in his strong denial and refutation of these dangerous movements was the idea that white people could possibly bear the guilt of the sins of people centuries ago, or even as recent as the Jim Crow situation down south in the 1960s and prior, who had nothing to do with those activities.

And he was right there. He was correct on that. But then he went further and said, it is absolutely abominable. And, of course, I'm paraphrasing here because I don't remember exactly what he said. But the essence of what he said was, it is abominable and outrageous to ever think and teach that somebody could be held responsible for sin from the moment of their birth.

And that was where it became very vividly clear to me that he doesn't understand the very vital teachings that were denied by Pelagius' original sin. And, of course, we who are Calvinists go even further in describing it as total depravity.

But this is something that your average person, even your average person that might think they're a Christian or identify themselves as a Christian, and, of course, Tucker Carlson might be a truly born-again believer, but just in his infant stages of understanding the faith.

I mean, even Christians can be wrong on serious issues. But this is really the root of our whole need for Jesus Christ coming to the earth and our whole need for his perfectly sinless life and obedience to the Father and his sacrificial substitutionary propitiatory sacrifice on Calvary, his resurrection, his ascension into heaven, and his being seated at the right hand of the Father, is it not?

Yeah, the fundamental flaw I think there, and I like him as well. I like his political analysis. I think he's got a lot of courage. But if it's unfair, if it's unjust for God to hold me accountable for what Adam did, then I think it would also have to be unjust for God to hold Christ accountable for what I did.

Yeah, there you go. And so it's such a critical thing. I mean, we talk about Christ being the second Adam. The first Adam rebelled against God, broke the commandments, and all of his progeny followed into that.

And thus I do believe in original sin. I think it's biblical. And again, when I engage people about this topic, they will often bring up that issue. You know, I'm a sinner, and I do things that are wrong, but I'm not guilty in Adam.

And I say, well, be careful now because if Adam is not a representative, in Romans 5, Paul lays it out that in Adam we all die. In Christ we're all made alive. And so original sin has fallen on hard times.

Even Pope Francis recently said people are born good, which I think is inconsistent not only with Scripture, but with the Catholic catechism and certainly inconsistent with what St. Augustine would have taught.

And of course, the church that he claims to lead as the vicar of Christ on earth condemned Pelagius as a heretic. And that is the core reason they did so.

That's absolutely right. Yes. Well, and even Eastern Orthodoxy, Chris, they believe in people are fallen. They do believe that we have a sin nature, but they deny that we're guilty in Adam.

And so part of I think we only inherit. We only inherit physical death as a result. Is that their spin on it?

Yeah. The area they push back strongly is that we're guilty in Adam. They reject that idea.

Yeah. So you're taking this very important subject today and you are phrasing it in a way that obviously needs further explanation. Sin as a disorder of the good. If you could please explain.

So what we're made in the image of God, we're made to be lovers and worshippers. The intent is for us to love God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength and our neighbor as ourselves. We are intended to worship God.

We're made for God. That's our very purpose. But in our fallen condition. So you have God creating the world. But then out of that comes the fall, the fall. In the fall, we don't stop being lovers and worshippers.

But instead, we begin to use our love and our worship as idolaters. So we then use sin. We you know, some of the sins and I like to put it this way. One of the most diabolical parts of being a sinner is not just that we do bad things, but we take good things and misuse them.

So the idea of disorder, I mean, you can commit gluttony. But food and drink is a good thing. It's a necessary thing. Without it, we would die. But what do we do in our sin? We eat too much. We eat the wrong things.

Money is a good thing. It's nice to have money in your bank account to pay your mortgage to buy groceries. But what do we do with the good thing? We make it an idol. We're accumulating wealth is what we want.

We take sex. God created sex. Sex is a good thing. God likes bodies. We're taught that being faithful, monogamous marriage, you can make love to the glory of God. It honors the Lord. But what do we do with it?

We take a good thing and we misuse it and we have pornography. We have all of these things. So St. Augustine was very fond of saying that oftentimes these are disorders of the good. It's not just that we do bad things.

It's not just that we curse God or we murder someone. We have a way of taking good things and disordering them, misusing them. Augustine liked to use the expression, and so did Luther, the Latin incurvitas unsay.

Sin curves us in upon upon ourselves. And instead of choosing God and loving our neighbor, we love ourselves and we serve our own ideas. And so this idea is a disorder of the good. Again, food's a good thing.

Sex is a good thing.

Money is a good thing. But we misuse them. We disorder them. In fact, when you brought up sex, the very thing that you were talking about in regard to sex was at the core of a debate that I organized several months ago between Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries, a conservative, Bible-believing, theologically-reformed Baptist apologist, and a man by the name of Dr. Gregory Coles who identifies himself as a gay Christian.

And he is in a movement that calls themselves Side B, as in boy, Christians. And what they mean by that is that they agree that homosexuality cannot be physically consummated by a Christian. That is wicked, sinful, damnable, when unrepented of.

They agree even that homosexual lust is a sin. But they think that there is nothing wrong with innately having that proclivity and desire for same-sex relations as long as it doesn't fall deeper into lust and even more deeply into physical consummation.

Now, the thing that Dr. Coles, the so-called gay Christian, could not seem to get through his head or into his head, or at least he was giving the impression he couldn't understand what was being said by Dr. White, is that homosexual sin is not the same as heterosexual sin.

They will both send people to hell when they're not repented of. But heterosexual sin is what you were just describing as an abuse of something good. It is a gift of God. It is a design of God intended between one man and one woman in a monogamous marriage for life.

Homosexual sin can never be viewed that way. It can never be viewed as a good thing that can be abused. Am I making sense there?

Yes, absolutely. Genesis 1, 26 through 28, we're created in the image of God. We're created male and female. Jesus appeals to when he talks about marriage, he appeals to Adam and Eve, made in the image of God, made male and female.

And so homosexual sin or homosexual sex is a sin against nature itself. Yes. And that's very different than and I appreciate the way you put that. It's not merely taking a good thing and corrupting it, which heterosexuals are certainly strongly capable of doing and do do.

It is taking in a homosexual context. It is a fundamental problem of sinning against the nature of creation. And that's that's hard for lots of people to hear today. But, Chris, I think there's a fundamental mistake a lot of people make today.

They think that if you disagree with a person's lifestyle, you hate them or you're afraid of them. And they think if you are to are to care for people and treat them respectfully, you have to accept everything they believe in, everything they do.

Look, I can vigorously differ with a person who is gay, but still treat them with respect. I can even have compassion that they feel the same sex attraction. So we need to think in biblical categories, not in kind of postmodern, post-truth commonalities today.

And, of course, those who are anti-Christian. And when I say that, I mean they're opposed to what the scriptures actually teach. And they're opposed to the biblical morality of people who seek to be obedient to those scriptures.

But they seem to have a blind spot. It's more than they just seem to. When they would accuse us as being homophobic and hateful, they can't even recognize that they have the same attitude towards Christians who are trying to open their eyes by the grace of God through the proclamation of his word.

We're trying to see them rescued out of something that is going to ultimately damn them and even harm them possibly physically on this earth. And, of course, there are Christians and there are those that profess to be Christians who can be sinful in the way that they approach this.

They can be self-righteous and cruel intentionally. The gospel isn't offensive enough without us adding our own offensiveness. But there are countless millions of Christians who truly have a heartfelt compassion and love for people who are involved in all kinds of sin, including homosexuality, where they want to see those people rescued.

And as as R .C. Sproul put it, in fact, R .C. Sproul was quoting somebody else. He didn't identify who he was quoting, but he said that Christians are merely beggars who are pointing other beggars to where the food is.

Yeah, yeah. You know, I I think the idea here that, you know, since I was a teenager, I've heard the message that if you have as many girlfriends as possible, if you know you're famous, if everybody knows your name, you're going to be happy and fulfilled.

There's a lot of data that has come out about a satisfied, a contented life. There's a lot of data, Chris, that says that if you're faithful to your spouse, if you have a monogamous relationship, you're going to have greater sexual satisfaction than if you sleep around with all kinds of people.

I like to remind myself when I teach in my church, I remind people you're going to have a greater contentment, a greater fulfillment in life. If you follow the principles that the Lord has made, he made us he made us for himself.

And again, I love the confessions by Augustine. He says, look, I was looking for truth, goodness and beauty in myself and in his other creatures and not in the Lord. And I essentially crashed and burned were made for God.

And what is a very powerful point, I think, Chris, is this, that God will not allow us to be ultimately satisfied in anything other than himself. And it's crucial to remind ourselves when we're tempted sexually to remind ourselves that living a monogamous life, dedication to our spouse, when it comes to money, people who are generous, who use their money wisely, invest it, give.

And, you know, people who have self-control when it comes to food and drink. These people are the people who talk about a greater fulfillment in life. And so following God's morality and following the word of God is following the very being that created us and knows best and desires are our well-being.

And we have to go to our first commercial break. If you have a question for Kenneth, our samples on our subject today, please send it to Chris Arnzen at Gmail dot com. C .H .R .I .S. A .R .N .Z .N. Gmail dot com.

Give us your first name, at least your city and state of residence in your country of residence. If you live outside the USA, please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

And obviously, if we're discussing sin, it would be a no brainer that something that we're saying may evoke questions that are in regard to a very personal, private, intimate matter. And you would be compelled to remain anonymous.

So we will grant your request to remain anonymous. But if it's a general question, please give us your first name, at least city and state and country of residence. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Ken samples after these messages.

Greetings. This is Brian McLaughlin, president of the Secure Comm Group and supporter of Chris Arnzen's Iron Shopping Zion radio program. Secure Comm provides the highest level of security systems for residential buildings, municipalities, churches, commercial properties and much more.

We can be reached at Secure Comm Group dot com. That's Secure Comm Group dot com. But today I want to introduce you to my senior pastor, Doug McMasters, of New High Park Baptist Church on Long Island.

Doug McMasters here, former director of pastoral correspondence at Grace to You, the radio ministry of John MacArthur. In the film Chariots of Fire, Olympic gold medalist runner Eric Liddell remarked that he felt God's pleasure when he ran.

His effort sprang from the gifts and calling of God. I sense that same God given pleasure when ministering the word and helping others gain a deeper knowledge and love for God. That love starts with the wonderful news that the Lord Jesus Christ is a savior who died for sinners.

And that God forgives all who come to him in repentance, trusting solely in Christ to deliver them. I would be delighted to have the honor and privilege of ministering to you if you live in the Long Island area or Queens or Brooklyn or the Bronx in New York City.

For details on New High Park Baptist Church, visit NHPBC dot com. That's NHPBC dot com. You can also call us at 516 -352 -9672. That's 516 -352 -9672. That's New High Park Baptist Church, a congregation in love with each other, passionate for Christ, committed to learning and being shaped by God's word and delighting in the gospel of God's sovereign grace.

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So that's royaldiadem .com. Mention Chris Harns and of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. We're now back with Ken Samples, who is a renowned author and apologist, theologian and philosopher, one of my oldest Christian friends whom I've known since the late 80s, early 90s.

And we are discussing a vital topic, one of those topics that Christians need to be reminded of, sin as a disorder of the good. Unless you have already finished that, or should I say unless you have not already finished the thread you were on before the commercial break, I'd like you to start giving us practical examples on how this is perhaps unconsciously violated by Christians every day who just may not think too deeply.

As deeply as they should about this very issue.

Yes. So we are made in the image of God. And as image bearers, we're made to love God and to worship God. The fall, however, doesn't stop us from being lovers and worshipers. But we take our love and we start loving other things other than God.

We worship other things other than God. And a lot of times, Chris, people take good things and they they love those things. They worship those things. And I like to say that this can happen in three general ways.

Sometimes people without God, they adopt a worldview of sensualism, so they pursue sex and food and fashion. Now, now notice sex, food and fashion. Those are good things, but they're never intended to give you ultimate fulfillment and satisfaction in life.

Another way people do this is what I call materialism, not the atoms and things like that, but the pursuit of money, wealth and possessions. What money, wealth and possessions are not bad things. They're good things, but people make them the central goal, the ultimate issue of their life.

A third is egotism, the pursuit of achievement, prestige and power. Well, achievement, prestige and power are good things. You can use power in a positive, benevolent way. Achievement is a good thing.

People have academic achievements or business achievements. But notice what takes place in this context is that instead of loving and worshiping God, which is the way we were made to be because of our brokenness, our fallenness, we attach that love and worship to material things to temporal things.

And again, what I think is interesting is a person looks at sex. Well, sex is pleasurable. Sex can give you intimacy with another person. It seems like a very good thing. But without God, without God's grace, without having a relationship with God, sex can never ultimately give fulfillment.

Money can never ultimately give fulfillment. Food and fashion. So I think the fallen condition of man is, again, as St. Augustine stated, that being a sinner means not just that you commit bad actions, but that you take very good things and you pervert them.

You try to draw things out of them. They were never intended to give. And again, I think we can see this very specifically with gluttony. I mean, who doesn't enjoy a good meal? Who doesn't enjoy? Hey, I'm going to go out tonight and have some wine and have a nice meal.

Those are good things in our lives. We celebrate times with getting together. But for some people, food and drink becomes their consuming passion. We see it with money again. Money can can be used for very good purposes.

And yet what do we do? Well, if I have more money than you, I want to accumulate more money. I want to have more things. And then we can do it again with sex and with with our own personality. Hey, I want to have attention.

And, you know, Chris, I was that way. I was raised kind of a moderately Catholic. When I became a teenager, I thought I feel an emptiness. I feel a restlessness. I never felt totally satisfied or contented.

I thought, well, maybe if I become a big league ballplayer, maybe if I have lots of women, maybe if I everybody knows my name, I'll be fulfilled. And again, this is the standard fare for people who are separated from God.

Nobody at Cheers Bar in Boston was fulfilled. That was obvious. Everybody knew their name. And that didn't really help matters much.

Yeah. And, you know, I've been watching these videos my whole life about athletes and Hollywood people. And, you know, they get famous and they have lots of pleasure at their fingertips. They have drugs.

They have alcohol. They crash and burn. We were made for God and nothing outside of God will give us that ultimate sense of contentment and satisfaction that we were made to achieve. You can be very poor.

You can be hungry. You people. No one can know who you are and yet be deeply fulfilled in in Christ. So sex is a good thing. Food and drink is a good thing. Money is a good thing. We don't want to use them in ways they were never intended to be used.

My wife cannot meet my existential fulfillment. I need a savior. I need to have an intimate relationship with God. I think there are times where we as Christians, we're looking for other things to fulfill us in a way that only God can.

When you were talking about money in regard to our subject, about how money, there is nothing innately evil about money. Money is not, as it is often misquoted, the root of all evil. It's the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil, not every single evil.

But a perfect example of this taking something that is good and even more specifically giving money to God in the form of giving it to the church. What a wonderful, good, godly and obedient thing to do.

But how it was turned into evil in the scriptures, we find in Mark 7 11 with the Korban rule. If you may remember how Jesus was pulling the rug out from the feet of the Pharisees, they acted so pious and religious, but they were defrauding their own parents of being cared for by making these claims.

Oh, no, this money is going directly to God. We can't we can't use that to care for you. This is just absolutely and utterly despicable, which is why Jesus brought it up. Right.

Absolutely. Jesus seems to always be able to detect hypocrisy. He seems deeply offended and angered when people misuse those kinds of things. And so, again, we have to be very careful that we are not taken over by these things.

But I think that there's a very powerful apologetic message here, Chris. And it's the sense that I think that the Bible, historic Christianity, explains the human condition. Blaise Pascal, one of my favorite philosophical scientists.

He says that the human condition is one of greatness and wretchedness. We're great because we're made in the image of God. We can do philosophy. We can create art, put a man on the moon, but we're wretched.

You don't have to have the devil to explain Auschwitz. Human beings misuse things. Think of human trafficking. Can you imagine the indignation, the just indignation of God, seeing people sell children into a life of slavery?

I think Christianity powerfully explains the human condition. I don't think that a Darwinian evolutionary explanation provides the explanatory power. I don't think Buddhism and Eastern religions provide that kind of explanation.

And, in fact, I think the most confirmed biblical doctrine in the world is original sin. I see it every day of my life. So it's confirmed again and again. And if you're troubled, maybe your church has stepped on your toes or you've been offended by Christians.

Remember, the Bible says that we are fallen and even forgiven sinners still struggle with sin. So sin has a lot of explanatory power. It's an equal opportunity employer. All of us sin.

Yes. And let's even go further into this in ways that will probably insult many of my listeners, especially those who are in my own theological camp. You and I, Ken, are both theologically Reformed, a .k .a. Calvinists, a .k .a. believers in the doctrines of sovereign grace.