Results 1 - 3 of 3
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Results from: Answered Bible Questions, Answers, Unanswered Bible Questions, Notes Ordered by Verse | ||||||
Results | Verse | Author | ID# | |||
1 | Why the children? | Num 33:55 | Inquisitor | 224844 | ||
Dear Beja, It's difficult to respond to so many questions in one post but I'll try. ALTHOUGH I notice you didn't respond to the scriptures in my previous post as I did to your's. Quoted from Beja... Q1.So you agree that our basic nature is to rebel? That means the problem is not at the level of our actions, but of our very nature or disposition which then leads to our actions. Children have this flaw as much as any man does. As the father of a 3 year old I can assure you of that. As a father and grandfather, I can agree that our kids can be a major pain when they don't get their way. But don't you see, they don't see anything wrong with that screaming, hollering and misbehaving. All they know they're not getting what they consider they gotta have. But later on, maybe as soon 10, 11 or 12 years of age, they begin to put two and two together and see the difference between right and wrong. So this growing and learning is a process through which all of us mankind go, in our maturing. Q2. I deny that adam and eve had this same flaw. I could not tell from your post if you agree with that point. However, if that also is granted then what shall we say? Every one with us are born with the natural inclination to sin and rebel, and that we inherit from Adam. God doesn't create ANYTHING with a sinful or evil nature in it. Don't you see that in the Creation account of Genesis? EVERYTHING Created by God "was good" and He was satisfied with His Creation including His newly created Adam and Eve. BUT they grew in knowledge and learned about the attractiveness of sin and disobeyed God. That's where we ALL go wrong. We ALL violate our conscience. We all look at the options/choices in our lives and weigh the advantages of making the good vs bad decisions. Good decisions almost always include a sacrifice of some kind and thus one child chooses NOT to share his cookie or his toys with his sibling. And on it goes in spite of the teaching and spanking from the parents. The child learns to conceal his decisions and the consequences thereof. Don't you see, the initial birth of a child from God (just like His Creation in the Beginning) is perfectly innocent from all sin. That child has no consciousness about right from wrong; how could anyone argue against this? Q3.And when did Adam obtain this flaw? When he first chose to sin. How can we but say that each and every one of us are cursed with this rebelious and sinful nature as a result of Adam's sin? I tried to explain this above but one has to see that this spirit of rebiliousness varies from one person to another. We all have different parents and different environments from which we learn right and wrong. BUT we can also learn to be clever and get away with our rebellious life for a little while. But sooner or later, either mankind or God will catch up with that person and he will "reap what he sows," either in this life or the one hereafter. Q4.So the end result is that even a newborn infant, because of the sin of Adam is a little sin factory. By nature even that infant is deep down inclined to sin. NO, NO, NO...that's what I've been saying. The child is innocent but he learns to be sinful and rebellious against the good things in life and later on against God's Good Will. Q5.They don't have to wait and make a choice to have that inclination. And is that inclination itself not sinful? Our very disposition is sinful, not merely our actions. This inclination as you're referring to above is true but it doesn't manifest itself in a child with actual intent until his early teens or maybe 11 or 12. He doesn't actually start scheming and hatching "evil" plans to get his way until this stage of his life. This is what I'm trying to get across to you. How can you possibly look into the face of a sweet, innocent two month old baby and call that sweet child evil, down deep inside? God forbid. Please tell me you don't really believe this way. Azure, do you have anything to say about this? Do you have some way of reconciling the conflicting verses I've provided in my previous post? I'm anxiously awaiting such responses from both of you, Beja and Azure. I do hope you and all who are reading might respond with their thoughts. Please do. God bless all of you, Inquisitor |
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2 | Why the children? | Num 33:55 | Beja | 224851 | ||
Inquisitor, (I received an error first time I tried to post this, forgive me if it double posts.) Here is some further posts from some saints wiser than I. The Belgic Confession The Doctrine of Original Sin (Article 15) We believe that by the disobedience of Adam original sin has been spread through the whole human race. It is a corruption of all nature - an inherited depravity which even infects small infants in their mother's womb, and the root which produces in man every sort of sin. It is therefore so vile and enormous in God's sight that it is enough to condemn the human race, and it is not abolished or wholly uprooted even by baptism, seeing that sin constantly boils forth as though from a contaminated spring. Nevertheless, it is not imputed to God's children for their condemnation but is forgiven by his grace and mercy - not to put them to sleep but so that the awareness of this corruption might often make believers groan as they long to be set free from the "body of this death." 1689 Baptist Confession Of the Fall of Man, Of Sin, And of the Punishment Thereof (Chapter 6) 1. 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 thereof, yet he did not long abide in this honour; Satan using the subtlety of the serpent to subdue Eve, 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 purposed to order it to his own glory. 2. Our first parents, by this sin, fell from their original righteousness and communion with God, and we in them whereby death came upon all: all becoming dead in sin, and wholly defiled in all the faculties and parts of soul and body. 3. They being the root, and by God's appointment, standing in the room and stead of all mankind, the guilt of the sin was imputed, and corrupted nature conveyed, to all their posterity descending 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. 4. From this original corruption, whereby we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil, do proceed all actual transgressions. 5. The corruption of nature, during this life, doth remain in those that are regenerated; and although it be through Christ pardoned and mortified, yet both itself, and the first motions thereof, are truly and properly sin. (end quotes) On that last line when he says, "yet both itself, and the first motions thereof, are truly and properly sin" what that is saying is that not only is the actions we take sin, but also this defiled nature that prompts us on and causes us to long for sin is itself sin and therefore worthy of condemnation. In Christ, Beja |
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3 | Why the children? | Num 33:55 | Beja | 224852 | ||
I'll reply to my own post to save annoyance. Here is something Calvin wrote in the Intitutes of the Christian Religion. Book 2, Chapter 8, section 2. He speaks here concerning the ideas of our own inability from whatever reason being an inadiquate defense against judgement from God. "And we cannot pretend the excuse that we lack ability and, like impoverished debtors, are unable to pay. It is not fitting for us to measure God's glory according to our ability; for whatever we may be, he remains always like himself: the friend of righteousness, the foe of iniquity. Whatever he requires of us (because he can require only what is right), we must obey out of natural obligation. But what we cannot do is our own fault. If our lust in which sin reigns so holds us bound that we are not free to obey our Father, there is no reason why we should claim necessity as a defense, for the evil of that necessity is both within us and to be imputed to us." The idea here is that somebody might say that if we are unable to obey then we can not be blamed. Calvin's response is to say that the very fact that you are so wicked that you are incapable of obeying is not reason for your pardon, but reason for your destruction. In Christ, Beja |
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