Pt. 10 LBCF Chapter 6 Of the Fall

The Confession’s Chapter on the Fall, Sin, and Punishment

Confession of Faith, and this title is Of the Fall of Man, Of Sin, and Of the Punishment Thereof. This is an interesting chapter for several reasons, because it has, well, first it has five paragraphs, but there are two themes that run kind of sideways or run parallel between it, and that is Of the Fall of Man and Of Sin, and I think you can see why they run parallel, because they're so intertwined with each other.

The other reason this paragraph is interesting, and I'll say it up front, if you remember in one of our introductory classes, we broke down the outline of the confession, and again, not one that the founders wrote, but has been developed by a lot of Reformed Baptists, specifically Jim Renahan.

The first six chapters, anybody remember what the first six chapters we called it? No? Everybody was out that week? The basics, or the foundation, all right? So you look at what are the first six chapters.

First six chapters are firstly of the Holy Scriptures, then chapter two is God and the Holy Trinity, chapter three is the decree, chapter four is providence, and what did I miss? I missed one. Oh, creation, then providence.

Okay, and now we come to chapter six. You can see how it works out. We started with our epistemology, then we go to our doctrine of God, and then God's purpose, going into his decree, through creation, through providence, and now to the fall of man.

This brings us up, this lays out the whole foundation, if you will, for the remainder of the confession and the remainder of our doctrine, because we want to get to the gospel, but we have to lay the proper foundation so we understand the gospel.

So the two themes that run parallel are of the fall and of sin. All right, and so the same paragraphs that we're going to look at for the fall are of sin, so I'm going to kind of go back and forth between them as we go.

All right, and then these two lead to the third subject of the confession of punishment. What is the punishment for the fall? What is the punishment for sin? All right, so that's the kind of basic outline that we're going to be looking at as we go through this tonight.

The Upright Condition of Man and the First Transgression

So now paragraph one addresses the nature of the fall. All right, and the first part of the paragraph sets the general setting of the fall. Although God created man upright and perfect and gave him a righteous law.

All right, that sets the tone. All right, in the beginning, what? God created the heavens and the earth, and we went through creation. All right, so what is the general setting of the fall? Man was created upright and perfect.

All right, and he had a righteous law. So what is this basically setting up? The fact that, whose fault is it that there was a fall? It's fall, no pun intended, but it falls securely on Adam and Eve, all right, because they were created upright and perfect, and they were given a righteous law.

There was nothing wrong with the creation that God had placed them in. Okay, so what we see here is the integrity of the condition of man. All right, he was created upright and perfect, and given the righteous law.

That's the setting. All right, then the second half of the paragraph, okay, I'm sorry, we're still in the first part, 1a, all right, is the contingency. All right, in other words, Adam and Eve were put in a garden, all right, upright and perfect, righteous law, which had been unto life if they had kept it, and threatened death upon the breach thereof.

So in other words, they're given this law, and they're told, keep the law, and you live. Break the law, all right, life for obedience, death for disobedience, plus a little bit more. This is just a simplified version of it, and it'll expand, we'll expand on that as we go through the confession.

All right, we're still under the general setting, yet he did not long abide in this honor. Now, this, we call this the brevity of their condition. Nobody really knows how long after the creation did they fall, but most scholars, I don't know, I haven't read anybody recently that thinks that it was a long period of time.

Most scholars believe it was a rather brief time. What that means, your guess is as good as mine. All right, when you get to the second half of the first paragraph, you get into some of the particular description of the fall.

Remember, the first half is just laying the groundwork, it's the setting for the fall. All right, so what's the occasion of the fall? Satan using the subtlety of the serpent to subdue Eve, then by her seducing Adam.

All right, in other words, this is this is what caused the fall of man. It's the occasion, all right, Satan using the serpent. The temptation of Satan, okay, still going along here. The manner of, well, Adam, who without any compulsion, in other words, there's nothing that compelled Adam to sin.

He did it with his eyes wide open. Adam wasn't forced to sin. Notice how this is in harmony with the decree and the providence of God. All right, remember as we've looked at the two chapters regarding that, the confession is very careful about the fact that whatever whatsoever comes to pass is what God has decreed.

All right, providence brings the things to pass, but never allowing for the possibility that God is the author of sin. And the confession is very careful in its wording, you know, to do that. So that's, so you can see here, Adam, who without any compulsion, the man of the fall, he wasn't forced to sin.

And each of these sections is in complete harmony with that what went before. Remember, these are the first six chapters, and this is laying the groundwork for everything that's going to come. Chapter seven is of the covenant, and then for many chapters after that, it just expands on the covenant.

All right, but this is all laying the groundwork to get into the fact of of the covenant and how we view the covenant. All right, still in the essence of the fall, he did willfully transgress the law of their creation and the command given unto them.

Notice the wording, willfully transgress the law. All right, it's the willful transgression of the law that is the fall of man. Not a misunderstanding, not an accident, but a willful transgression. And what is the substance?

It was actually the actual act of eating the fruit. That was the prohibition, the specific prohibition, all right, was don't eat of the fruit. In the day you eat of it, you shall surely die. So the confession says in plain terms what the transgression consisted of.

The motivation of the heart is revealed always in outward actions, eating the forbidden fruit, which God was pleased according to his wise and holy counsel to permit, having purposed to order it to his own glory.

Notice again, you see how it is consistent with the chapters on the decree and the chapters on providence. All right, this was all according to the plan of God, even though it was a willful transgression on Adam's part.

All right, Sam Walton calls this the permission of the fall. Again, notice the harmony of the confession. All right, and again, perfect agreement chapter three and chapter five. I want to keep emphasizing that so that you recognize that as we go through the confession.

I think our forebearers of the particular Baptists in London who put this together did a marvelous job the way they work everything together and seeing it's all in harmony with one another. So the general setting for sin, now again remember this may sound like I'm saying the same thing over again, but there is a subtle difference.

We were looking first at the first subject of the fall of man. The second subject that this chapter deals with is of sin. All right, so it uses the same chapters, the same sections for it because they are so intertwined.

So the general setting for sin is also found in paragraph 1a, which was the general setting for the fall. All right, and this is what, this is that whole paragraph 1a, although God created man upright and perfect and gave him a righteous law, which had been unto life had he kept it and threatened death upon the breach of it, yet he did not long abide in his honor.

That's the setting for sin. Same thing as the fall. It's, you can, this is one of those things where you can make a distinguishing, distinguish between sin and the fall, but you can't really separate it because the fall is sin.

That's the origin of sin. All right, that's why, so we need to be careful. Sin enters through the fall and the setting that permitted the fall is also the setting for sin entering into the world. And again, there's some theological reasons why they did that, but I'm not going to go into any of the deeper theological.

The particular description for sin is found in paragraph 1b, which is parallel to the fall of man, the particular. And again, it's the same thing, but it might be helpful just to read it, all the pieces together.

Satan, using the subtlety of the serpent to subdue Eve and then by her seducing Adam, who without any compulsion did willfully transgress the law of their creation and the command given unto them in eating the forbidden fruit, which God was pleased, according to his wise and holy counsel, to permit, having proposed to order it to his own glory.

Okay? So the origin of sin and the fall are so intertwined that you can't really separate them. Now, the nature of the fall reveals the essence or the definition of sin. And if you ever have occasion to try to ask somebody what is the definition of sin, it's not as easy as you think, because there's a lot to it, all right?

The first sin consisted in the transgression of the law. God gave them a command and they violated it. So that was kind of easy. Sin is rebellion against, transgression of, or disobedience to the law of God.

Okay? Now, I put this, sin can be described in a positive way. I don't mean in a good way. I mean, just, you know, you could say that a transgression of the law, that's a negative thing, how, you know, the violation.

But described in a positive way, what is sin? It's autonomy. When you push yourself in front of God, that's sin. All right? Now, paragraph two introduces representative sin. And again, one of the things that you may want to keep in mind, as we go through this chapter on sin and the fall, a lot of the doctrines that we have separated out are contained here, or at least have their roots here, but are not necessarily spelt out.

And you'll see what I mean as we go through. So for representative sin, our first parents, by this sin, fell from their original righteousness in communion with God. And we in them, whereby death came upon all, all becoming dead in sin and wholly defiled in the faculties and parts of soul and body.

Representative sin. We sinned in Adam. What other doctrines are, can you at least find here in seed form? Some of it's pretty plain, but some of it is just in seed form. Original sin, which is explained in chapter, in paragraph three, even more fully, but yeah, original sin.

What else? Federal headship. What else do you see in here? Depravity. Now notice it's not using some of the buzzwords that we use all the time, but the concepts are here. All right? So we see representative sin.

When Adam and Eve fell, the whole race fell. All right? And now it'll be expanded on, but it's important to show that, you know, our forebears, they picked this right up and built it right into paragraph two.

All right? But we have some other consequences of sin. All right? Not only death. All right? Which we will examine in subsequent chapters, but righteousness and communion with God was lost. Remember, Adam was created with original righteousness.

All right? That's lost. Communion with God is lost. Not all communication, but communion with God is lost. Death and total depravity came upon them. Okay? And all of mankind is represented by them. That's all contained in this one short paragraph of one sentence only.

Original Sin, Imputation, and Corrupted Nature

Okay? Paragraph three expands on that. They being the root, and by God's appointment, standing in the room instead of all mankind, the guilt of the sin was imputed and corrupted nature conveyed to all their posterity, depending from them by ordinary generation being now conceived in sin, and by nature, children of wrath, the servants of sin, the subjects of death, and all other miseries, spiritual, temporal, and eternal, unless the Lord Jesus set them free.

I love that here, even though it's describing the consequences of the fall, the consequences of sin, they throw in the hope of the gospel right in that last line. Right? I wonder if when they were going through this, that after writing this paragraph, they said, wow, this is depressing, and wanted even here, because we don't get to the gospel for another 15 chapters.

And so, but right at the end of it, because look at what it is. They being the root, by God's appointment, again, here you see federal headship, Adam was our federal head, standing in the room instead of all mankind, the guilt of sin was imputed, important words.

Why is that an important word, imputed? It's how we get our righteousness. What is that refuting? What did the Roman Catholic Church teach? Still teaches infusion, infuse righteousness, and that has some serious consequences.

Imputation is the proper term, and it's used by all of those early confessions. All right? Corrupted nature, all the posterity, all right, conceived in sin, children of wrath, servants of sin, subjects of death, all of these are the consequences, the result of the fall and sin entering into the world.

For the results, this is just summing up what we saw in that slide. Original sin, okay? Imputed to all posterity, so everybody is born with this original sin. We are all children of wrath, servants of sin, and then there are other spiritual, temporal, and eternal consequences, okay?

Now again, we're not, I want you to remember, the purpose of this class is not to prove all of this. That would be a whole different method of what we want to do here. This is just so that you know what the confession teaches.

We want everybody here to know what the doctrine of the church is, okay? Paragraph four then, from this original corruption, whereby we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to do, to all evil, to proceed all actual transgressions.

This is usually titled actual sin. We are sinners by nature and by choice, but the actual sin is a result of what? Our corrupted nature, our depraved nature, all right? And I like J .C. Ryle when he starts, when he starts talking about this, he calls it original pollution.

You know, because it affects the entire being. This might be a good place to make a couple of comments. We believe in the doctrine of total depravity. That does not mean that man is as totally bad as he could possibly be.

R .C. Sproul makes a distinction and calls that, that would be utter depravity. Total depravity just means that every aspect of your being, body and soul, I think that might be on the next slide, but every aspect of our being, body and soul, that's why you can't even necessarily trust your own reasoning ability, all right?

That's why every thought has to be held captive by the word of God. Why Proverbs tells us, trust in the Lord with all your heart, lean not on your own understanding. And this is something that we need to understand, is that we may have very logical minds.

God has given us wonderful brains with the ability to think logically and all, but we need to understand that we can't always trust on it. If our reasoning and our understanding departs from what the word of God clearly teaches, then somewhere we have gone wrong.

Now, I'm not saying throw out logic. That's not what the Bible teaches. We're taught that our minds are regenerated and we do have the ability to think. But when it comes to matters of faith, we can't trust that in our reasoning alone that we're going to reach the truth.

Truth is found only in the word of God. And that's why we're told to bring every thought captive to the word of God. And what's the climate for the actual sin? It's depravity. Why do we do the things that we do?

Because of the depravity of our heart. Paragraph five, this explains remaining sin.

Remaining Sin in the Regenerate and the Need for Sanctification

All right.

And again, this is a good place for it, even though we haven't come to regeneration, faith and everything else yet. But look at the corruption of nature during this life does remain in those that are regenerated.

And although it be through Christ pardoned and mortified, yet both itself and the first motions to have are truly and properly sin. Do I have to convince anybody here that believers sin? No, of course not.

We all know that. And this paragraph was said to explain it, that even though, you know, we're pardoned, even though we're redeemed, you know, the fact that the sin nature remains active is something that we have to keep in mind.

And that brings comes into the whole doctrine of sanctification.

All right.

Which we'll deal with several chapters later.

All right.

Questions?