You seem to be overcomplicating things. There is no need to humanise God or try and justify sin and grace.
Sin is a byproduct of freedom, Grace is God’s generosity in not punishing it.
Richard
Well, but Jesus Christ is true God and true man, isn’t he?
By becoming flesh God humanised himself
Yes, but it holds also that:
It is you, who freely refuse to behave as God requires.
Undoubtedly, but it holds also that:
By leaving me alive on earth after my first sin instead of throwing me to join the devil and his angels, God wants me to repent. And God helps me generously by means of his grace to keep the resolution not to sin any more.
If I sin again and again, at the end God’s generosity can’t help letting me fulfil my will to go to hell.
You had already lost me here.
The Nature of Christ was dictated by God’s creation already. He had to fit into the population he was here to help.
This I take as a personal insult. Kindly refrain
Richard
No, I’m reasoning that since the Lamb was slain before the foundation of the world, humans were already known to have fallen to sin.
But yes, humans subject to death were not able to not sin – that is the condition we are born into because we are cut off from God, and only by connection to God can anyone not sin; in fact apart from faith sin is all a person can do.
There’s no “for all practical purposes” involved; the statement is clear that Christ is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. It’s stated as a reality, not as a potentiality.
Apart from God we had no choice: apart from God, there is no ability to not sin. Apart from God, the only choice was which sin we will commit next.
Nice theory, but its foundation is enlightenment humanism, not scripture. Where there is not faith, there is just sin, because without faith it is impossible to please God – so without faith, the only thing humans can do is displease God.
The core of sin is self-centeredness, and that begins with our first breath: a newborn baby cries because it regards itself as the center of the universe and objects strongly when it is thrust into dependence on someone else, so it cries out “Pay attention to ME!!!”
The prophet defines sin as falling short of the glory of God. Another definition is that all our righteousness is as filthy rags. Another is lawlessness. Yet another is missing the mark.
If we do not know God, the only thing we can do is fall short of His glory. If we do not know Him, the best we can do is filthy rags. If we do not know Him, we can only be lawless. If we do not know Him, we don’t even know that there is a mark to be missed!
A more pointed definition is that whatever is not of faith is sin. We can only have faith if we trust Him, and so whether or not we even know He exists then if we are not trusting Him all we can do is sin.
The only definition of sin that doesn’t apply to everyone who does not know God is covenant-breaker – we can only break a covenant if we are in a covenant relationship. But we can be rebels (another definition of sin) without even knowing it; if we are on the wrong side it doesn’t matter if we don’t even now there is another side.
This avoidance of the reality and severity of sin is common since the Enlightenment, but it is misguided. The prophet tells us that all have sinned, that all have gone astray.
No, prophets were talking to people of faith.people who had already identified God, or at least were part of a culture which identified God.
You are placing a burden on society that it does not deserve, neither does it fit with free will, or the God of forgiveness and Love.
The whole point f Genesis 1 is that the innocent did not sin. SIn is directly linked to becoming aware of good and evil. You might claim that everyone has got this knowledge? Ask a criminal, they will claim the right to do what they do. To them it is not a sin (in the broadest sense of the word) Sin is a religious term, It stays in that religion.
Richard
Are you claiming that Christ is not true God?
Please clarify.
I apologize for the misunderstanding!
I was using ‘you’ as a generalization, just as you did in the post I was commenting on.
Please read my comment as
“it is someone, who freely refuse to behave as God requires”.
I do not understand your reasoning. Of course Christ is true God, it is the humanity that is dictated by creation
It is your definition of sin that I dispute.
You seem to think that sin is related to the actions involved rather than the motives behind the actions. No action is a sin automatically. Even killing someone can be justified by Pharisaic Law at least, in fact the death penalty is part of Jewish Law.
Sin is disobedience to God. Therefore, you need to both identify God, and identify what He requires, to sin.
Which is where the “Last Chance Saloon” comes in. If I read scripture correctly, everyone will eventually be confronted with their actions in relationship to God. If they accept and repent then they are forgiven, if not then … (we do not need to go there)
In the meantime they can live oblivious to God without judgment or penalty. If God judges it will be by motive rather than specific rules & regs, or even faith.
You might ask: What is the point of faith then?
We align ourselves with God because we believe that is the right thing to do, and not for any perceived gain or loss (Heaven or Hell). Once we decide to accept God’s ways we are then vulnerable to sin.
Richard
I fully agree with this definition.
But if I disobey God, I harm myself.
And to heal the wound I need God’s grace.
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I would like to clarify that, strictly speaking, I am not proposing “Grace in the absence of sin” but rather the following:
When God made the first Homo sapiens creatures into humans in the image of God, he endowed these with original grace so as to they were not submitted to illness, death, and concupiscence.
These deficiencies (encoded in the sapiens genome and transmitted biologically by DNA replication) originate from the state of frustration and decay to which God submitted the creation from the very beginning.
And God created the world in such a state because it is theologically convenient in case sin happens, i.e.: to facilitate that the sinners convert and return to God’s love.
So, according to my theological-biological explanation also the original grace is “Grace to overcome the consequences of sin” after all.
I am sorry but you are making things more complicated than they need be. There is no need to either justify sin or look for origins. Sin is. It has no origins it has no substance, it has no means of transference. All we need is to be aware of it and the remedy for it.
Richard.
This just reiterates the error of imposing rationalistic humanism on the scriptures. Any act that doesn’t proceed from faith in God is sin. All who are born into death are born into sin because one who is spiritually dead can only sin.
What a person thinks of their actions is irrelevant.
And the innocent DID sin, so your claim about Genesis 1 fails: the sin in the case of Eve was that she stopped having faith in what God had said and so got deceived; by the time she ate of the fruit she had already sinned because she believed the serpent rather than God. So sin came before knowledge. Becoming aware of good and evil was a result of sin, not a root.
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Nonetheless you have also stated:
Could you please clarify which is “the remedy for it”, i.e.: for disobedience?
The remedy for sin is Christ, obviously.
God’s forgiveness. We have no means to make reparation ourselves.
Richard
Can you elaborate on now you support this view biblically?
My bible tells me that sin very definately does have an origin…Lucifer waged war in heaven, he and his angels lost that battle and were cast down to this earth.
He then setout to deceive Adam and Eve and did this by first posessing an animal (a serpent).
The book of Job helps shed light on this, we find that Satan made the claim that men such as Job are only loyal because God gives them great health and wealth…obviously, Job proved that claim wrong.
I really struggle to see how anyone with even just a little biblical knowledge can be ignorant of such obvious themes?
This is not as simple as citing scripture. You are personifying sin. Neither Satan nor Adam created or brought sin into existence. They may have been the first to commit or fall foul of it but that does not give sin substance.
The ability to sin comes from the ability to make an informed choice. Adam decided that the apple looked tasty soo he ate it. The sin was the action ( Christ said it was the intent).
Richard
God created the universe for the purpose of providing the conditions for life the purpose of which is free will and God’s desire for a relationship with others. The struggle against death for survival is the very essence of life which makes it possible for us to have an existence outside of God’s will which is the only difference from being entities in a dream.
Sin is defined as missing the mark, and since God’s purpose is life then sin is all about a refusal of life itself consisting of self-destructive habits which damage our freedom of will. It most certainly is not about failing to fall in line with something God is dictating because that would defeat the very purpose of life itself, which is to make our own choices. It is only that choices which are completely free includes to possibility of choosing against life itself – crying out the complaint “I did not choose to be alive.” That is the ultimate rebellion against God, refusing the very gift of life He has given us to choose death instead. Thus God says “I set before you life and death, therefore choose life.”
What we lost in the garden of Eden was a place for God in our lives as a benefit to our well being, for we chose instead to make Him an object of blame. The only thing which can break a parent-child relationship is for the presence of the parent in the child’s life to become detrimental to the child’s well being. In is the one reason a parent will choose to remove himself from the child’s life, limiting himself to working indirectly and from afar to help His children in whatever way He can.
I see no reason not to use the Biblical name Adam. And while I do not believe in magical fruit and talking animals, let alone magically animated golems of dust and bone, I find a good explanation for what happened in the story told in Genesis. But I don’t see any good reason to think that biology has anything to do with it.
Memetic or cultural evolution is the only means of any kind of transmission of sin – self-destructive habits of others which we imitate. But it is not about selfishness for that is an inadequate word to describe either evil or what is wrong with human beings – a pale word to describe the willingness to harm the well being of others for short-sighted gains. With a little wisdom, self interest will lead us well – that is not the problem. Nothing is more natural and right than the self interest of an infant which must focus all its meager abilities towards its own needs and well being. To call that sinful is just wrong.
It is only as our powers grow… the power to walk, to speak, and to use our hands, that we must learn the grand lesson of evolution that cooperation is the greatest survival strategy of all time… enough for God to say “it is good” when observing the results of His handiwork.
eh? You need to do some reading Richard…
Revelation 12:7-17
7Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. 8But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. 9The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.
10Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say:
“Now have come the salvation and the power
and the kingdom of our God,
and the authority of his Messiah.
For the accuser of our brothers and sisters,
who accuses them before our God day and night,
has been hurled down.
11They triumphed over him
by the blood of the Lamb
and by the word of their testimony;
they did not love their lives so much
as to shrink from death.
12Therefore rejoice, you heavens
and you who dwell in them!
But woe to the earth and the sea,
because the devil has gone down to you!
He is filled with fury,
because he knows that his time is short.”
13When the dragon saw that he had been hurled to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child. 14The woman was given the two wings of a great eagle, so that she might fly to the place prepared for her in the wilderness, where she would be taken care of for a time, times and half a time, out of the serpent’s reach. 15Then from his mouth the serpent spewed water like a river, to overtake the woman and sweep her away with the torrent. 16But the earth helped the woman by opening its mouth and swallowing the river that the dragon had spewed out of his mouth. 17Then the dragon was enraged at the woman and went off to wage war against the rest of her offspring—those who keep God’s commands and hold fast their testimony about Jesus.
then read the following…
Romans 5:12-26
12Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, so also death was passed on to all men, because all sinned. 13For sin was in the world before the law was given; but sin is not taken into account when there is no law. 14Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who did not sin in the way that Adam transgressed. He is a pattern of the One to come.
15But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abound to the many! 16Again, the gift is not like the result of the one man’s sin: The judgment that followed one sin brought condemnation, but the gift that followed many trespasses brought justification. 17For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive an abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ!
18So then, just as one trespass brought condemnation for all men, so also one act of righteousness brought justification and life for all men. 19For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.
20The law came in so that the trespass would increase; but where sin increased, grace increased all the more, 21so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
I think its a play on words to make the claim, “sin is created”. I do not accept the position you are attempting to make on that phrase…its completely misleading. Sin is an action of a being that has free will. All the angels and any consciousness in Gods creation has free will to choose. The point is, prior to the events of Genesis Chapter 2, no created individual on the earth had chosen to disobey God. That is the point.
As for Heaven, we know from Revelation 12 Lucifer had clearly chosen to disobey and rebel in Heaven… likely before creation of this planet. What we can say with confidence is that Lucifer was an angel in heaven prior to the creation of this planet…and Christ was the one who created this earth, so He clearly existed then as well. I am of the belief that Christ is the eternal Son…meaning he has always existed just like the Father and Holy Spirit. The place where i may differ from some here is that i believe that the incarnate Christ (the human form God took on) did not exist prior to 2-4 B.C.
It was at approx 2-4 BC that the Lord took on humanity…he become both immortal and mortal…the God/man. This is where a lot of Christians get their theology all messed up. They confuse this distinction of the Son of God prior to 2-4 BC and after the incarnation. We know from the statements the risen Christ made to doubting Thomas (see the scars on my hands…put your hand in my side) and also from the angels statements to the disciples after the ascention (this same Jesus will come again in the same way you have just seen him rise into heaven) that the mortality part will be eternal because the scars on his hands will be a permanent reminder to us of the price He paid for our transgressions, for the salvation of mankind and, that those scars are one of the means by which we can identify Him at the Second Coming (the other is that his feet will not touch the ground…the saved will meet him in the air)
Maybe these viewpoints are a bit too narrow.
First, we can make sinful acts even without knowing about the commandments of God and receive a judgement for these acts. Whether we call these sinful acts ‘sin’ or not is semantics.
Paul speaks in Romans 2 about how God will repay each person according to his deeds. He speaks also about those who do not have Law, that means the pagans who do not know the commandments of God. Paul writes about the pagans instinctively performing the right deeds, giving the impression that is good in the eyes of God, even if they do not know about God and the Law.
Our sinful acts are a violation against the will of God (a rebellion) but also a violation against other people - we can hurt other people but not God. It matters what we do to others.
Second, the concept of ‘original sin’ is very vague and Christians do not agree what it means. Depending on what we mean by the word, I could accept or refute the concept. The biblical scriptures give more support to the interpretation that we are judged by our own deeds than the interpretation that we are judged because of what our ancestors did. Based on this, I refute the hypothesis that ‘original sin’ is something that condemns a child before she/he has done anything. ‘All have gone astray’ is speaking about acts that the person does after she/he can do something.
Tertullian articulated a theological-biological explanation why even infants are guilty for the sin of Adam (I took this information from the book ‘Early Christian doctrines’ by Kelly). Tertullian believed that the paternal germ was not merely a portion of the father’s body but is charged with a definite quantity of his soul-stuff. According to this view, we get our soul from or through the paternal germ in semination. Therefore, all souls were contained in Adam (in his sperm) and were part of his sin. I guess there is only a small step from this view of Tertullian to what Augustine inferred about the ‘original sin’. Anyhow, I rather build my understanding about the ‘original sin’ on the biblical scriptures than the theological-biological explanation of Tertullian or the hypothesis of Augustine.
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Jer 31 & Ezek 18 are the citations for refuting any sort of inherited sin. We are judged by our own actions not by anything done before. Even if Adam existed in the form of Genesis we are not tainted by his actions.
Richard
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