But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.
1John 1:8-9
If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
In my last post, I discussed the fallen nature in which we are all born subject to sin and death because of the transgression of our first parents. At some point in our lives, we all go from simply inheriting the effects of sin to rightfully deserving the effects of sin by committing our own sins. In this post I will discuss how personal sin and its effects are described, how we receive the forgiveness of our sins, and how we are to live in accordance with that forgiveness.
The apostle John defines sin as "the transgression of the law" and James writes "For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all. For he that said, Do not commit adultery, said also, Do not kill.". We are also told that "to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin" and that "whatsoever is not of faith is sin". Our sins are described as "an heavy burden", wounds that "stink and are corrupt because of my foolishness", and "a loathsome disease". We are told that our sins harden our hearts, have dominion over us, give us "disquietness of heart", make us "not able to look up", cause our hearts and strength to fail, and cause affliction and pain. David asks the Lord to "heal my soul; for I have sinned against thee". We are told that "every man shall be put to death for his own sin", "transgressors shall be destroyed together", "workers of iniquity shall be scattered", and that the wicked will "perish at the presence of God".
We know that we cannot hide our sins from God becuase it is written "Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance.". It is also written "If thou, LORD, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand? But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared." and "But if the wicked will turn from all his sins that he hath committed, and keep all my statutes, and do that which is lawful and right, he shall surely live, he shall not die.". How is it that having injured ourselves with our sins, we are able to find healing simply by not causing further injury? It is only because Christ "gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people" as it is written "But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life." and that Christ "was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification". When asked how to respond to the message of Christ's death and resurrection, Peter told the people to "Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins". Paul writes that we are "Buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead. And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses; Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross;" and it is written in Isaiah "But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.". And when we fall to temptation after having been baptized into Christ and His Church, we are to seek his forgiveness from Him in His Church. We are to follow the example of David who while seeking forgiveness from the Lord also confessed his sin to the prophet Nathan. James tells us to confess our faults one to another, and pray one for another, that we may be healed. Christ told His apostles that "Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained" which we see exercised by the apostle Paul when he writes to the Corinthians "To whom ye forgive any thing, I forgive also: for if I forgave any thing, to whom I forgave it, for your sakes forgave I it in the person of Christ".
How are we to act in response to the forgiveness we receive in Christ? We are told to "walk in newness of life" and to "not serve sin". We are to yeild our "members as instruments of righteousness unto God". We are told "Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.". We are to walk in the Spirit and not fulfill the lust of the flesh. We are told to give thanks in all things and to pray without ceasing. We are to "have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life." It is only fitting that we should love the Lord with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength and to love our neighbor as ourself. Christ tells us not to judge because we will be judged by how we judge others and that we must forgive others in order to be forgiven.
I acknowledge my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the LORD; and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin.
I just want you to think about this a little bit.
ReplyDeleteDon't you think it's ludicrous to imagine that before a baby is born, it is guilty of sin?
Psalm 51:5 - Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.
We are born already corrupt with sin. Then our punishment for sin is death and perhaps eternity in hell. Here you might say that Jesus changed things by dying for our sins, so original sin might not have as much as an affect as it might have in the past. Jesus is the entire principle of the New Testament. But this entire Testament is based upon. God had himself incarnated as a man, Jesus, in order to be hideously tortured and executed for atonement of our sins. If god wanted to forgive our sins, why not just forgive them and be on with it. Why is there a need for such a display of sadomasochism? Who is he trying to impress? Perhaps himself, since he is judge, jury, and now the execution victim. The point is that this entire idea is repulsive and just nonsensical.
The purpose of God becoming a man, dieing, and then being raised from the dead wasn't to treat sin as simply a crime for which someone must be punished, but to treat it as something that has caused us to become broken that we need to be healed of. He had to unite Himself to human nature in order to heal it. He had to be tempted in every way and not sin in order to be the perfect man. He had to take on the consequences of sin up to and including death, and not just death but the most accursed death possible, in order to take onto Himself what holds us captive and make Himself present and united to even those in death. Most important, which your misrepresentation of the Gospel forget to mention, He had to be raised from the dead, glorified and never to die again, in order to be victorious over death and to heal our human nature which had been corrupted by sin. It is only by His resurrection that we will be raised up at the resurrection at the end of this age and heaven and earth will be made new. It had to be God who did this because only God is the source of our very life and existence and the one who first created us in His own image and likeness.
DeleteThank you for taking interest in what I have written.
To answer your first question, yes it is absurd to think of a baby as born evil and it is certainly unorthodox to believe this. So how do we interpret this piece of scripture in a way that makes sense? Everything God made including man is very good (Genesis 1:31). It is a misunderstanding of ancenstral sin vs original sin. There's an exceptional article that expands on the Orthodox understanding & the western misunderstanding. "Ancestral sin has a specific meaning. The Greek word for sin in this case, amartema, refers to an individual act indicating that the Eastern Fathers assigned full responsibility for the sin in the Garden to Adam and Eve alone. The word amartia, the more familiar term for sin which literally means “missing the mark”, is used to refer to the condition common to all humanity (Romanides, 2002). The Eastern Church, unlike its Western counterpart, never speaks of guilt being passed from Adam and Eve to their progeny, as did Augustine. Instead, it is posited that each person bears the guilt of his or her own sin. The question becomes, “What then is the inheritance of humanity from Adam and Eve if it is not guilt?” The Orthodox Fathers answer as one: death. (I Corinthians 15:21) “Man is born with the parasitic power of death within him,” writes Fr. Romanides (2002, p. 161). Our nature, teaches Cyril of Alexandria, became “diseased…through the sin of one” (Migne, 1857-1866a). It is not guilt that is passed on, for the Orthodox fathers; it is a condition, a disease." full article can be found at this link: http://www.stmaryorthodoxchurch.org/orthodoxy/articles/2004-hughes-sin.php
DeleteThis article continues on to answer your other questions about a sadomasochistic god under the section Augustine's Legacy: "...How then could God’s anger be assuaged? The position of the ancient Church had no answer because its proponents did not see wrath as the problem. The Satisfaction Theory proposed by Anselm of Canterbury (c. 1033-1109) in his work Why the God-Man? provides the most predominant answer in the West[5]. The sin of Adam offended and angered God making the punishment of death upon all guilty humanity justified. The antidote to this situation is the crucifixion of the Incarnate Son of God because only the suffering and death of an equally eternal being could ever satisfy the infinite offense of the infinitely dishonored God and assuage His wrath (Williams, 2002; Yannaras, 1984, p. 152). God sacrifices His Son to restore His honor and pronounces the sacrifice sufficient. The idea of imputed righteousness rises from this. The Orthodox understanding that “the resurrection...through Christ, opens for humanity the way of love that is stronger than death” (Clement, 1993, p. 87) is replaced by a juridical theory of courtrooms and verdicts.
The image of an angry, vengeful God haunts the West where a basic insecurity and guilt seem to exist. Many appear to hold that sickness, suffering and death are God’s will. Why? I suspect one reason is that down deep the belief persists that God is still angry and must be appeased. Yes, sickness, suffering and death come and when they do God’s grace is able to transform them into life-bearing trials, but are they God’s will? Does God punish us when the mood strikes, when our behavior displeases Him or for no reason at all? Are the ills that afflict creation on account of God? For example, could the loving Father really be said to enjoy the sufferings of His Son or of the damned in hell (Yannaras, 1984)? Freud rebelled against these ideas calling the God inherent in them the sadistic Father (Yannaras, 1984, p. 153). Could it be as Yannaras, Clement and Kalomiris propose that modern atheism is a healthy rebellion against a terrorist deity (Clement, 2000)? Kalomiris (1980) writes that there are no atheists, just people who hate the God in whom they have been taught to believe."
You spoke of consequences of sin. Keep in mind who is enforcing the consequences, God. So in order to save us from the consequences, this is enforced by god himself. God was incarnated into Jesus, and then forced himself to die, in a brutal and vicious display. Like I said earlier, he was the judge, the jury, and now the victim, all one and the same. The whole idea is nonsensical. If God wanted to forgive, he would have just done it. Period. There is no reason for this display. Can you agree with this?
ReplyDeleteIf you tell a child not to touch a hot stove and they do it anyway, forgiving the child for breaking the rules alone will not do anything to heal the burn on the child's hand. The difinition of "consequence" according to Merriam-Webster
Delete1: a conclusion derived through logic : inference
2: something produced by a cause or necessarily following from a set of conditions
And once again, Christ's death isn't just about punishing someone for a crime, but about undoing what sin has done to us, which is why He had to be raised from the dead never to die again.
Nite Echo, you make some excellent points, but on the other hand, some questions are too deep to understand...to look into the mind of God would be impossible. Why did the All-Knowing, All-Loving, & All-Powerful God create things/rules/etc in this way?
DeleteGod can be known by humans through the divine energies and operations of the Father, Son, & Holy Spirit. Although, God's essence is beyond the understanding and comprehension of His creatures. I am wondering if you believe in the concept of faith and if so, at what point.
I understand what your saying. The blood of another heals "wounds" caused by sin. Do you think it moral to spill the blood of another for the sake of this. It was god who demanded the blood in the first place. It is Gods wrath against sin in the first place in which some sort of payment or (healing) needs to happen. These are the rules that God simply made up. Just like he demands the blood for two goats every year from Moses and Aaron in Leviticus, it was for an atonement for sin. The idea is that Jesus had to die, as a scapegoat, for our sins. Whether you call it forgiving sins, or "healing" sins, its just all for the sake of sin.
ReplyDeleteI'm just saying that entire thing is a horrible idea. Given that the judge is all powerful, Given that he had the power to forgive (or heal). It's simply ugly that if he wanted to forgive (or heal) our sins, Why wouldn't he (God) have simply just done it. I'm just saying that there is no reason for this at all. If he would have simply said "your forgiven", or "your healed", I could understand that more. But instead he says, OK someone else will have to die. That just makes it even worse, given that he could have simply just forgiven, or "healed".
Just as a lifeguard has to dive into the water to rescue a drowning victim and a firefighter has to enter into a burning building to save a life, God had to become man and enter into our broken condition up to and including death, and not just dieing but DEFEATING DEATH BY BEING RAISED FROM THE DEAD NEVER TO DIE AGAIN in order to rescue the human race from the destruction that we brought upon ourselves by seperating ourselves from the source of our life and existence. You keep talking about Jesus dieing, but you haven't addressed the fact that His death means nothing if He is not raised from the dead. Sin and salvation isn't a divine rulebook of requirements that must be met, but based on God being the source of our life and existence and us being made in His image and likeness.
DeleteThe point I'm trying to make isn't to clarify your statements, they've been made. I can see that your being bogged down with details. But the question I am asking is simple, Why couldn't God have simply forgiven?
ReplyDeleteHe did, this is how He did it. You keep implying that the cross requires a lack of forgiveness and I'm trying to tell you that it is not only the means by which God forgives us, but also fixes the condition that we put ourselves in. When your car battery dies, the only way to get it to start again is to re-introduce the electricity into it that gives it life.
DeleteI'm not implying a lack of forgiveness. Its just that for an all powerful god, you don't need to re-incarnate yourself as Jesus and then die, and then raise from the dead in order to save humanity. If your all powerful, then just use your power in an instant. Just say that it's fixed, just like he said "let there be light." That is what I'm trying to ask, why he couldn't he have simply just done it. There is no need for the other nonsense.
ReplyDeleteIt is one thing to bring something into existence from nothing. It's another to reconcile with a creation that was created very good and then subjected itself to self-destruction by choice. To simply declare the undoing of sin would undermine the gift of self-determination that created us with, would deny the nature of sin as turning away from the source of our life, and would deny the nature of mankind as made in God's image and likeness to be able to be "unlike" that which mankind was created for and still maintain the glory of what we were made to be "like". It also speaks of God's love for His creation to personally take everything onto Himself and to personally cause the restoratin of the fallen by His own actions. It's like in the beginning when God spoke everything into existence but said "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness", that is "Let us make", and also "And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." instead of simply "Let there be...".
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