I can’t help but reposting.
Adam’s sin contaminated our entire race. All born of Adam are in the same spiritual death condition that Adam and Eve found themselves after they sinned. Sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned. Pelagius argued that this last statement was untrue. He was a moralist who taught that all men are capable of not sinning. How would that be possible? He taught that people could simply make up their minds to not sin then use their will power to do good. He argued that we do not need God’s help in this endeavor either. Not only is that fallacious, it is unscriptural. All are born dead in their trespasses and sins.
Read Mike Ratliff’s full text:
It’s excellent. And ties together many things I’ve been mulling over the past weeks and months.
The studies of John’s Gospel my wife and I are doing with Dr. S. Lewis Johnson’s sermons.
The emphatic way he reads and explains verses like…
John 3:7 Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.
The large Ephesians study I’ve been doing using Dr. MLJ’s sermons…
The conversations about the problems of the world…ideas about just loving like Jesus, or Christians not following the Sermon on the Mount.
Our Zoom Bible Study readings….
Sin is the worst of evils. So greatly do godly men hate it, that they have long preferred anything else rather than its defilement.
Where Plumer has an extensive list of chapters on Sin in his opening.
THE HEART OF MAN IS ALL WRONG
Let us look at our own hearts. There is a mystery in all iniquity. In Scripture it is often called a lie, guile, deceit. The heart of man is full of all treachery; so that “there is no faithfulness in their mouth; their inward part is very wickedness; their throat is an open sepulcher; they flatter with their tongue.” “His mouth is full of cursing, and deceit, and fraud.” “They speak vanity everyone with his neighbor: with flattering lips and with a double heart do they speak.” “The counsels of the wicked are deceit.” “They hold fast deceit; they refuse to return.” “The heart is deceitful above all things.” It deceives every being but one. It would deceive Him, if he were not omniscient. None but God knows all the depths of iniquity and duplicity within us.
Genuine conviction is attended with a sense of the divine knowledge and hatred of our sins.
Man is the only creature on earth that seems to practice self-deception. The fox deceives his pursuers, not himself. But man “feeds on ashes: a deceived heart has turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand?” Isaiah 44:20. Who has not often seen that “there is a way that seems right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death?” Proverbs 16:25. How timely is that exhortation of Paul, “Let no man deceive himself!” 1 Cor. 3:18. How strange and yet how common that he, whose heart has deceived him a thousand times, should yet confide in it as if it had always been honest!
Talking openly about our sin condition is very useful….not that we dwell on it, and become Monastic. Or think we can be perfect or do this on our own. But we see ourselves realistically, cry for mercy and grace. But also grieve for what we see in the world and particularly in those who profess faith in Christ.
Rainbow Trout 