Bringing Clarity To The Term Christian – Part 5

Bringing Clarity to the Term Christian – Part 5

Christians were former sinners – Continued

 

Welcome back to Powerful God – Practical Faith and Part 5 of our blog series;  “Bringing Clarity to the Term Christian”.  As always, I would encourage you to read the previous blog posts in this series, if you have not already, to get updated on what has been discussed so far.

We are continuing further in our discussion of Statement 2 of our 14 Statements clarifying what a Christian is:

A Christian is a former slave to sin and an enemy of God.

In our previous post, we ended with a discussion on the prohibition God gave to Adam. We noted that the object of the prohibition, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, was not as important as the prohibition itself, which was really an acknowledgement, “in action”,  that God “is” God, and mankind is His creation, who was indeed created to honor, submit to and give glory to the Creator of all things. A passage of praise to God in the book of Revelation makes this statement very plain……

“Worthy are You, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honor and power; for You created all things, and because of Your will they existed, and were created.”

Revelation 4:11 New American Standard Bible (NASB)

But,  as we all know,  Adam made the choice to dishonor his Creator.  Adam, with full knowledge of what he was doing, acted in willful disobedience to God’s command. It is important to note here that Adam was not coerced, deceived, or manipulated into taking this fruit that was off limits to him as in the case with his wife. Even in the New Testament, in I Timothy 2,  you can read where Paul, alluding to this sin, comments that Adam was not deceived in this. Genesis makes the point clearly that…

“she (Eve) gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.”

Now the magnitude of what has just occurred in this brief event is not expressed as detrimentally as it should be often times.  As I stated earlier, we have heard this story over and over again, but maybe, because of the casual familiarity with it, may not have fully understood the depth of its meaning to us.

If you remember in our earlier post,  I noted that not only what occurred was important,  but also “when” it occurred.  Remember our extracted statements from Romans 5…

…. through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin,….

…. death spread to all men, because all sinned …..

Because of Adam’s disobedience to God’s law, sin entered the human condition. For many of us, this  seems simple enough to understand. Adam committed the first sin and because of this we have sin as a reality to us.  But then,  Paul adds, what is for many the “show stopper” comment: Paul, under the inspiration of God the Holy Spirit writes..

“death spread to all men, Because All Sinned”. 

“Now wait a minute”, many of you might me saying.  How can the Scriptures teach that “all sinned”, past tense, when “all” of us were not even there at the beginning. This is a valid question. The answer is rather unique but in my opinion, very consistent with the perspective of an eternal/timeless God’s activity in fulfilling His universal purpose. God is explaining to us that at the beginning of human history, when only one man , Adam, existed on the earth, God saw Adam as the human race in total. At this beginning of human history, God saw Adam as the representation of the whole of humanity.  This, I believe is an eternal perspective that I myself cannot fully comprehend. When Adam sinned, God saw, in Adam, the whole human race as sinning, which includes both you and I. Now in our individualized, time-bound way of looking at the world, the first thing that comes to our mind is, “that’s not fair”. “Why should I be penalized for something that I had no control over. I had nothing to do with Adam’s sin so why am I paying for it?”  Well, the best way for me to answer that question is to say that even though we were not individually engaged in the sin of Adam, God saw Adam functioning as both himself and as you and I who would have,at that time, been future members of the human race. Therefore, through Adam’s sin, humanity sinned and we have all inherited this terrible sin nature which subsequently leads to death.

This is why Paul goes on to say in Romans 5:14 that…

….death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam…..

In this passage the Apostle Paul references Moses because Moses was not only Israel’s honored prophet who led them out of Egypt, but his name also became synonymous with the giving of the Law or the Commandments. Now the purpose of the Law was to introduce and teach God’s righteous standard, something, until the time of Moses, only existed in the flawed conscience of man. Paul is making the point here that the result, penalty, consequence and/or curse of Adam’s sin, which was “death”, was applied to everyone, even before the giving of the written Law of God, and applied even to those who did not perform a sinful act similar to Adam’s.  Paul re-iterates this condition in Romans 5 by stating….

….the judgment arose from one transgression resulting in condemnation….

…..through one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners…..

Now I know that this may be somewhat difficult to take in initially because in our culture, we attempt to emphasize personal responsibility to a degree that we want to recognize that individuals are responsible for their own actions and should bear the consequences of their own actions. Although this is true, it does not always follow that the actions of an individual effect only that individual. We all know and have experienced how a number of our decisions have had a negative affect on others and how the actions and decisions of others have had a negative affect on us. But we tend to passively accept this situation because we can observe negative outcomes in time, and can tie those negative outcomes to some cause or some reason. For example:

• A baby has a severe learning disability as a result of his mother deciding to use harmful drugs while pregnant with him.
• A passenger is killed in a car crash as a result of a person deciding to drive while intoxicated.
• A family is broken up and heartbroken via divorce because a husband decided to be unfaithful to his wife.

But it seems unjust to us that God would indict “us” apart from something “we” caused as individuals. However, our God, with respect to his divine plan and purpose, which was established prior to creation, and from an eternal frame of reference, sees activity in time much differently than you and I do. For His purposes in time to be performed , he has chosen to identify each and every one of us, in Adam, as sinners and under His judgment. But…as we shall see later in this series…. He likewise established a plan of redemption and a means of being made righteous for all who trust and place genuine faith is Jesus Christ, which, if you have taken the time to read Romans 5, is the remedy for our dire relationship with Adam. I cannot help but recall this passage in Isaiah Chapter 46 which says…..

“Remember the former things long past,
For I am God, and there is no other;
I am God, and there is no one like Me,
Declaring the end from the beginning,
And from ancient times things which have not been done,
Saying, ‘My purpose will be established,
And I will accomplish all My good pleasure’;
Calling a bird of prey from the east,
The man of My purpose from a far country.
Truly I have spoken; truly I will bring it to pass.
I have planned it, surely I will do it.

Isaiah 46: 9-11 New American Standard Bible (NASB)

Although God has not revealed every detail of this plan for the world and his people to us, we know enough to understand that the Eternal God is revealing to us who He is through His sovereign choices:

• The “choice” of exposing sin in creation
• The “choice” to pronounce judgment on that sin
• The “choice” to meet out justice for the sins of His creation and the “means” by which His justice will be carried out.
• The “choice” to extend love, grace, forgiveness and faith to an elect number of His creation who will receive him.
• The “choice” to totally eradicate sin at the end of time….a time only known to Him.
• The “choice” to receive an elect people of His choosing into His divine presence eternally.

Therefore, in conclusion, the Scriptures due teach that…

• we have all been made sinners through the sin of Adam,
• we have all inherited a sin nature, in which we were made servants or slaves to.
• 0ur sin nature brings about all sorts of sinful desires that are acted upon, in which God holds us responsible for in time,
• and……..
• the sins which were applied to us, both in Adam and in our personal lives, bring about death..

Now that we have established the reality of sin and how we became sinners, we will discuss in our next blog post about God’s attitude toward sin and how sin made us God’s enemy.

Wow !!!  Statement 2 is taking a while to complete isn’t it ? Well,  I hope that you are learning along with me and that it has been insightful for you.

Thank you so much and God Bless

P.S.

I deeply apologize for the delay in getting this posted. There have been a lot of changes to my personal schedule which has limited my time on the blog, as well as the holiday season, which can also be hectic. I appreciate you patience.

Thanks again for reading.