What's Depraved? (Reprise)

Continuing the discussion from the previous thread and post I thought it might be ripe to reference Edwards more completely concerning the imputation of Adam's guilt as congruent with the depraved nature.

What is evident, as Edwards points out, is the condition of man is that of unrighteousness at conception. Unrighteousness he posits is the negative principle. That is, when God removed the constraining influence of the positive, the righteousness of the will of God, man was then left to his own natural propensity to self-love but without the highest regard in self-love which is the love of God. It then is resolved that evil is no positive influence created by God in man but is rather the result of the negation of righteousness.

Evil in man is still, as Edwards would confirm, a reality, a thing which is created, but through negation. God does not need to place in man evil created ex nihilo, but merely to withhold his favor and evil is without the will of God that which wills its own. His favor is that constraint which is called the righteousness of God, or his will. It is not the will of his creatures, firstly, as derived from them, for what is the clay? Man's nature is as a river, the heart of a king in the hands of God, and water by its nature flows according to the constraint of the course set by the banks. Can man make God to see? Who has been God's counselor? None. It is God who has made man and the eye and given it sight to see. And more than that, he has given all that can be seen. All things, purposes, plans and means are from his hand. The negative principle does not mean that the nature itself is evil created, rather, that by the negation of the positive influence of righteousness in both nature and mind, that which was created good, and fit, does by its own tendency bend toward its own destruction being left without the unifying principle of the law of righteousness. Further, the whole creation was subjected to sin and the like principle known in physics, according to its natural bent, finds its terminus via the law of entropy in chaos.

Adam's action is not alone, nor at first where guilt resides. It cannot be, for even the "good" acts of fallen man are accounted as evil. Guilt was by imputation. It is the judgement of the righteous God who cannot abide with unrighteousness. Indeed, guilt as Edwards describes, is congruent with the nature of unrighteousness. By imputation of guilt, then, we have a legal decree, the finding of God which is assigned, not to the act, but to the individual who acted and that because man who acts is one with his nature which acts in the totality of the being. Adam's sin then is not like ours seeing as he had the righteousness of God constraining his actions and was innocent in the beginning. What we know is that he was deceived into believing that the action that he would take was righteous.

Our first exposure is in Genesis 3, and Paul tells us in Timothy as confirmation that the woman is not allowed to teach the man to reflect the original order of creation, and, to remind us of the deception that was first in Eve, who being in transgression taught her husband. Further, that he was cursed because he both listened to his wife and ate. Genesis says that Adam listened and that it was the woman's voice he heard. Adam was made first and from him is derived the woman whose position is not the dominance of her will over his, but is to be in submission to his headship, i.e., his will as a help fit for the purpose. Adam reversed the order by submitting himself to her in violation of the type which is the order of creation, itself the reflection of God's headship and his will as the primary source of will in man. When Eve fell, the conclusion is that Adam also, being one flesh, fell with her. Even though she ate first, the guilt is imputed to Adam as her head. That is the reality, for in Adam, all sinned, including Eve even though it was she and not he who first sinned. The offense Godward is to make God over into the creatures image, reversing the order or creation, now corrupted by that which opposes the will of God, exalts the will of man, and supresses the truth in unrighteousness. It is to do what Satan intimated, to make God to be unrighteous and ascend to equality with him, even above him.

One must consider that the evil tendency (the negation of righteousness) was not in Adam, nor in Eve from the creation, contrasted to James who locates it in fallen man, and not external. Rather, they were created in holiness in the image of God. The evil resided outside of them in an influential spirit called the Serpent of Old, or Satan, who Scripture declares as being what he was from the beginning. His influence was directed toward the mind and not the nature of man which was righteous. The mind operates under the influence of the nature unless some other influence impinges upon it. Unlike we who have inherited both the guilt and corruption, the faculties of Adam's mind had not yet been infected with thoughts directed only toward self-love to the negation of love of God resulting in chaos. Theirs was a righteous nature and beside it was given a righteous commandment, another influence, to guide the mind. So we have the statement that Adam's sin was not in the similitude of the many sins of his posterity. We sin because the corruption that was introduced into Adam by deception (a contradiction of the commandment) is passed along to us and resides in us. To that effect, God has assigned to man the stature of unrighteousness, removing from him the constraints of God's will which is righteous. The effect of Adam's guilt was sealed to him by God's imputation of guilt and the removal of righteousness which leads to life, simultaneously. The result was that Adam became the condemned according to his nature. We then have the history of Scripture and of all mankind, that the likeness of Adam is now transferred to his posterity rather than the likeness of God. Such that, the unrighteousness that was imaged by Satan in the Garden, Jesus assigns to man. To that end, man is continually attempting to make others over into him own image just as his father the devil did.

I will add this paper also.

As Shedd says, the reality of sin is far deeper than the superficial reality that guilt inheres in actions alone as the Arminian would propose. Guilt inheres in the nature. Nature permeates the entirety of our being. But some will say, then how was Adam accounted guilty? Was it not in the action? Again, I say, no. Guilt has to do with the declaration of God as Judge, just as righteousness has to do with God's declaration of righteousness which is foreign to man, an action outside of himself given to him. Man was not in the beginning neutral having both tendencies, therefore guilt was external to him for unrighteousness was not in him. Guilt inheres in nature precisely because God has declared the nature to be unrighteousness, not merely in an abstract way, but in truth, man has been "unrighteoussed." So also, the guilt is imputed congruently with depravity. "In the day you eat you will die." Not, in the day you eat you will become guilty, then later die. But, at once, simultaneous. "In the day" is colloquial meaning at the point of time. So later, we have Scripture using the term judgement to connote both the passing of the sentence and the execution of it as simultaneous though temporally expressed. To our feeble minds we see things from a temporally bounded perspective. But, the reality is that though man is born with an unrighteous nature and will proceed to actual sins, those sins are nothing more than the expression of one thing, sin. And sin is guilty of offense toward the nature of God by its very nature, whether it acts or not.

Man was created in innocence, but not in moral neutrality. He was created righteous. As righteous he could not sin, but God had left the will to its native freedom, being that which chooses according to the highest regard of the mind (in this sense it means volition where Shedd rightly uses Will to mean essential being or nature and all the attributes of it including its actions). It was there, in the mind, that deception entered,

"So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate."

To this Jesus adds, what a man desires in his heart, that is what he is. So that, a man lusting after a woman has already committed adultery. It does not become sin in action but in conception (the woman saw), and conception is accomplished in the inmost place where no one knows. The entrance of the deception was below perception, precisely the definition of deception. Then, it was at the point that Eve saw, that it was concluded that she had already eaten. The corruption though entered in disguised as a beautiful creature. This does not take genius, just attention to the texts. It was by imputation, in other words, by the introduction of the lie, beyond the view of consciousness, that she was corrupted, and obviously that without her consent for no true consent is given to a lie.

The text tells us that their eyes were opened, but what it means is that their eyes were closed, blinded by the darkness that had entered and they had chosen over the light. They saw themselves as naked, where God saw them as he had clothed them. Who said they were naked? Not God. Nakedness to them became shame but it was not so, God had clothed with righteousness and nakedness was what he had clothed them with. As we can see, the doctrine of imputation is demonstrated in Satan's very actions. For it was he who introduced deprivation into Eve and she into Adam. The deception itself is guilty. The corruption itself, at once the judgement, death sentence and execution. Through Adam we have, as Scripture declares, received God's curse, he having concluded that we were all in Adam, the whole of creation, subject to sin. Which is of course the truth even though the action of our birth had not yet occurred. Therefore David says he was conceived in sin. Not his, but his by imputation and that by the negation of righteousness as a result of the curse upon Adam's kind.

Guilt then is at once congruent with and consequent of depravity. That depravity is primarily the deprivation of righteousness. It is deprivation of righteousness in nature, nature being that which permeates the entire being, body, soul and mind. Righteousness itself cannot abide with any kind of sin, whether of nature, or of the actions of mind or body. In the entrance of sin into the world, God withdrew himself by removing the righteousness which constrains the will to love of God alone. Later we see this in the veil. It is not man who has placed the barrier to entrance between God and man, (see the Garden event), but God. In fact by God's action God prevents man from doing so by the unrighteousness of man's own will. In the reconciliation that is in Christ, that veil is removed to the glory of God, through Christ's flesh, through the imputation of Christ's righteousness, effectually securing regeneration in the elect so that they can enter. Christ, who has put to death sin in his flesh has reconciled them to God in himself for the benefit of the elect and secured them forever by the vital union of the Spirit. But, no sinful choice can enter and no sin nature would will itself to, either.

As Shedd concludes, this is the great rift between one set of theologians and the other. What was begun in the Reformation was a return to the doctrine of original sin and clearer understanding than that which was held by the Pelagians of all types who rejected the doctrines of the Protestation both before and after Luther. This is what separates us, today. Misunderstanding the doctrines of the fall is the seminal beginning of all errors and offense against the doctrines of grace. The Arminian faction would contend against Shedd's statement:

"The prayer of David is the proper prayer for us to the lay of our death:

"Search me, O Lord, and try me, and see what evil ways are within me; cleanse Thou me from secret faults."

A prayer, it may be remarked, that is utterly unintelligible on the hypothesis that there is no sin deeper than consciousness."

Far then from being that it is only the conscious sin that it under the guilt of condemnation, David is repeating what he had learned by the Law, as well from his own innate sense. We must remember that the Law was added because of transgression not transgression because of the law, even though the law would produce the effect of making sin recognizably, exceedingly sinful through the unavoidable violation of it.

Let's not forget that we wage our war not against flesh and blood but against every lofty thought that exalts itself against the knowledge of God (my compilation). It is not individual Arminians, or Romanists, or any other people of Pelagian persuasions who are the real enemy. And each of us shall give an account of himself to God. Our challenge is to declare the truth and let the sword of his word divide that which is his from that which is not. It is not a new battle and all of the elect at first fight against the kingdom of God until they finally hear, "Do you kick against the goads?" I did, for I did not begin completed with this knowledge, nor have I yet arrived at a full understanding of it. Like the disciples we all believe ourselves the possessors of our own destinies at first self-assured that we have found the way until we hear the Lord say, "You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you."

With Isaiah let's us declare as we come into the presence of God, "Woe to me, for I am undone," recognizing that sin is the un-doing of God's will in man, of which we are all guilty. Humanistic concepts of will as mere volitions of single choices do not go deep enough into the soul well of depravity. Instead, rightly defined, Will is the entire being according to Shedd's usage as expressed by Isaiah's totally coming apart in the presence of the Lord, peirced to the deepest part, divided soul and spirit, searched in the inmost being, where secrets of the hearts of men so desperately wicked that no man can know it, reside. That depravity is not found just in the foaming of the surface waters, nor in the merky deep and darkness below, but issues forth from the very sping of its existence. A Reformation understanding then, is not that of the will as a ready instrument wielded distinct from self, but Will is the wielder, himself. Will is what Shedd says, in concert with Edwards, man is, and man is born bound by a creature's nature, a child of wrath, exhaustively unrighteous, thoroughly.

So we do not speak a common language when speaking of will. For we do not mean mere volition as the Arminian formula would have it. Rather, we speak of that which is reflective of the whole image of God into which we were created. It follows then, we also have a greater appreciation of what it means to love the Lord God with the whole mind, the whole soul, the whole spirit, the entire substance of our being and not just our volitions, and then why it is that total depravity is the only other reality, and being sin, stands guilty of hating God with its entire being and not just the actions that flow from it. Knowing this, we also gain a deeper appreciation for repentance, and forgiveness, for those who love much have been forgiven much by he who has become sin for us. With Isaiah we know our native state, but also who it is that has given us the righteous confession of the lips that comes from the throne of God.

Armchair Synergism: Don't Try This at Home

Edit: Matt Shultz has given me permission to link back to the post in question below. He wanted me to remember that he is not the author of the list I'm looking at, but did post it because he agrees with it.

The synergist in question has arranged his Core Beliefs under the familiar TULIP acrostic. This is helpful in one sense (ease of evaluation and comparison) and very unhelpful in another. That is, one of the biggest problems with the whole Calvinistic Resurgence in the SBC is the fact that many on the non-Calvinist side seem to arrogate to themselves willy-nilly the right to re-define theological terms as they please, with no reference to the way those terms have historically been used. That happens here.

Here is his first statement:

"1.Total Depravity

Man is totally depraved. Every facet of man’s nature and faculties is corrupted by the sin nature. There is nothing in man that can enable him to earn or deserve eternal life. God, in grace, draws all men (John 12:32; Titus 2:11), Man is able to receive and respond to the grace of God (Mt 23:37;John 5:24-25; Eph. 2:8-9). Man is a free moral agent with responsibility to respond to God’s grace (John 1:1-9; 3:16-17). Man can respond to God’s grace and come to Christ and he is called to do so (Rev. 22: 17)!"

Calvinists would agree with much in the first three sentences. I would demur and say that it’s not the sin nature that corrupts man’s faculties: it is the judgment upon the Fall of Adam that both corrupts our faculties and gives us a sin nature. One could argue that the sum total of our corrupted faculties is, in fact, our sin nature.

I don’t want this to turn into a huge thing, but let me simply assert that not a single one of his referenced texts actually supports the ideas he has referenced them for. Just as an example, nothing in John 1:1-9 or 3:16-17 teaches that man is a “free moral agent,” especially if by that phrase something like Libertarian Free Will is meant. Those texts simply show some people having faith in Jesus and some rejecting Him. They do not speak at all to the issue of man’s ability to choose righteousness in his fallen condition, or where faith comes from, etc.

But there is in this short statement a very glaring contradiction, apart from the spoof-texting.

After affirming that “There is nothing in man that can enable him to earn or deserve eternal life,” our author then states (three times) that totally depraved man does in fact have the ability to do the one thing that is needful for him to receive eternal life.

He may want to quibble about words like “earn” and “deserve,” but the bottom line is that he has man in his natural state possessing the ability to procure salvation for himself, by making the right choice. This is neither Calvinism, nor Arminianism; it is semi-Pelagianism. Pelagius was a heretic, for those keeping score.

Somewhere, apparently, within this totally depraved man, there still resides the ability to weigh the claims of the Gospel and come to the righteous decision. This is, of course, in direct contradiction to the apostolic teaching.

At the end of his extended discussion of how the Gospel is viewed by the world, in 1 Corinthians 1-2, Paul brings it all to a sum with this statement:

But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. (2:14)

This is a pretty fundamental truth of Scripture: the natural, or fallen man is completely and utterly opposed to the righteousness of God, so the idea that a man in this state could give the glorious Gospel of Christ a fair hearing is frankly laughable.

I hope that is not what our erstwhile author is trying to teach, even though, if he did he’d merely be joining our denomination’s President: that wouldn’t make it right, though.

I am hopeful that I've merely misread some things.

A Greek Word You Should Know

sarx
(flesh)

Throughout the Bible, “sarx” is used as a way of describing humanity. We are flesh, as in “flesh and blood.” As beings of flesh (sarx) we are to be distinguished from God, who is spirit (pneuma). However, especially in the writings of Paul, sarx/flesh takes on a new meaning: it becomes a shorthand way of referring to fallen man’s natural rebellion against God, of which we are all guilty.

Here’s a little quiz for you. It’s multiple choice, and only one question. If you get it wrong, no one’s going to fail you or throw rocks at you or anything:

Out of the four following statements, three are paraphrases of Scripture, and one is a line from a stupid song that is sung in a stupid little cartoon movie that kids love. Can you pick out the line that is not Biblical at all?

1. Men cannot follow their natural tendencies and manage to please God.

2. The imagination of your heart is only evil continually.

3. No good thing dwells in me naturally.

4. Your dreams will fly on magical wings, if you follow your heart.

Okay, let’s see how you did. Number 1 is a paraphrase of Romans 8:8, which says, “So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God.” Number 2 is an application of God’s own assessment of fallen humanity, from Genesis 6:5: “every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” As for Number 3, it comes from this verse, Paul’s confession of his own spiritual state without the indwelling presence of Christ: “I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing...” (Romans 7:18). The answer is #4. That line is from the movie Thumbelina.

I don’t mean to pick on Thumbelina. It’s no more stupid than any other cartoon that’s ever urged the same advice on kids. That advice is very warm and fuzzy sounding, but it is utter foolishness. “Just follow your heart.”

Okay, just to prove I’m not picking on Thumbelina, I’ll give you a quote that is just as stupid from my favorite movie of all time, Braveheart. At the beginning of the show, young William Wallace has a dream in which his dead father says to him, “You’re heart is free. Have the courage to follow it.” Gag me.

We hear this stuff all the time in our culture. And we hear other wonderful sounding stuff that is just as ignorant of the Truth of the Word of God. How many times for this one: “There’s good in everybody,” or this one, “People are basically good.”

Now, if it shocks you that I list those things as stupid, untruthful lies (which I do) then here is my bet: I bet you’ve never put much effort into reading the Bible. Hey, nothing to get offended about. But if you had, none of this would shock you.

The Bible simply does not teach that all people are basically good. It doesn’t: I’m sorry. Wouldn’t it be nice if it did, and we could all put on our rose-colored glasses and think nice thoughts about each other? But we can’t, because the truth is

God looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, that did seek God.

Every one of them is gone back: they are altogether become filthy; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.
- Psalm 53:2-3

Ever since the fall of Adam and Eve into sin, the human race has been a race of sinful people. Including me. And including you. Again: I’m sorry. I’m not thrilled about being the one to have to tell you this. But that’s the truth.

Hear again God’s own pronouncement about the natural state of mankind, from Genesis 6:5.

And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

Right there is the reason why Thumbelina and Braveheart are dead wrong. They’d tell you, follow your heart and your dreams will come true. Follow your heart, for it is free! But God tells you that the heart is “only evil continually.” I wonder what you’ll wind up with after a lifetime of following something that is only evil continually?

Okay, okay, someone will say. That verse you’re quoting is from right before the Flood of Noah, when the earth had grown especially wicked and God wiped it out. That was then, this is now.

Well, that was then, and this is now, but the human heart has ever remained the same. The prophet Jeremiah wrote (thousands of years after the Flood) that, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jer 17:9) The implied answer is, only God can know it.

Wow. That’s amazing isn’t it? “Deceitful above all things.” “Only evil continually.” “Desperately wicked.” At least we can’t accuse the Word of God of beating around the bush!

Let me ask you something. If you were going to try and communicate to someone that something was as bad as bad can be, could you use any stronger language than Scripture has used to describe your own heart?

So, you might ask, what does all of this have to do with the Greek word, “sarx?” Just this: Paul uses sarx, or “flesh,” as a shorthand way of referring to everything we’ve just looked at. Especially in Romans, chapters 7 and 8 (a couple of enormously important chapters as touching the central truths of the Gospel of Jesus Christ) when Paul uses “flesh,” the stuff in this chapter is what he’s talking about. Flesh means the corrupt, natural human way of doing things, of talking, and of acting, both toward God and one another.

[We need to make an important pit-stop here to clarify something. The Bible does not teach that there is anything inherently evil or sinful about the physical material out of which our bodies our made. Our physical, flesh and blood bodies are not what’s being talked about when the Scripture uses “flesh” this way. In fact, on the day that God gave Adam and Eve physical bodies made of bones and blood and tissues and sinews... “flesh”....He pronounced the work of that day to be “very good.” Some ancient false teachers of the first century plagued the true church severely with their false doctrine, called “Gnosticism.” One of the tenets of Gnosticism is to believe that physical matter is evil, while all things “spiritual” or immaterial are good. To this way of thinking, then, the only way a human could be good was to be liberated from his physical body. Okay, that is not Christianity. Evil does not live in your physical tissues. It lives in your thoughts, your desires, your motivations, your words and deeds, etc.]

We’ve said all of this in order to get to the point of asking a few questions. You don’t need to tell anyone your answers...but God knows.

1) Have you ever figured that you would go to heaven because, “I’m basically a good person.” ?

- If so, you need to ask yourself who is right in their judgment of you. Is it you, or is it God? God has already called you “flesh.”

2) Have you ever figured that you would go to heaven because, “I’m a better person than most other people, even religious people.” ?

- You may in fact be better than most people, even the religious ones. Thing is, both you and they are “flesh.” Both you and they have hearts that are “desperately wicked.” To say you’re a better person than them is like saying you’ve got the best seat on the crowded bus...and the whole bus is headed off the cliff.

3) Have you ever figured that you would go to heaven because, “God knows I’m doing my best.” ?

-> Is “doing your best” anything similar to “trying with all your heart?” And would that be your “deceitful” heart, that is “only evil continually?”

4) Have you ever figured that you would go to heaven if you could do more good deeds than evil deeds?

- > If, as a person of “flesh,” your heart is continually evil, let me ask you, when in that continuous evil do you think you might manage to do enough good to tip the scales?


I think the apostle Paul must have asked himself these same questions, or some similar, and very honestly realized that his answers didn’t hold any water. He realized that he had no reason to put any “confidence in the flesh” for his going to heaven. (Philippians 3:2-7) He realized that as a man of “flesh” he simply couldn’t do enough good things to make himself right with God (Galatians 2:16).

Finally, he realized that what he couldn’t do, as a fleshly man, God did for Him, by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh. Jesus lived as a human being the perfect, good, and holy life that none of us can, due to the weakness of our “flesh.” (Romans 8:3)

Friend, this is the truth. If your life up until the point was the service that you were performing for God as an employee, the only thing you’d deserve to be paid is destruction. When you looked at your pay stub, in the box where it says, “Net pay due this period,” instead of a dollar amount, it would simply say, “Death.” As flesh, that’s all you can earn.

But right now, even as you read these words, God is making you an offer. Trade in what you have earned, in exchange for what Jesus alone has earned, eternal life with God in heaven. Christ died to pay for your sins, and rose from the dead to offer you everlasting life in Him.

God has “made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” 2 Corinthians 5:21

Right now, you can make the first step toward real freedom, freedom from the continuously evil desires of your heart and mind. Your sins, the works of your flesh, can be cleansed through the blood of Jesus Christ, and the Spirit of God can come to dwell within you, so that from now on, you will have a new power with which to overcome your sinful nature.

Just stop right now. Right where you are, just bow your head and let God know that’s what you want. There are no “right words” that you need to say. However you express it will work, as long as you do so believing that what you’ve seen here is right and that God can and will make a change in you through Christ. Just let God know.

A Great Heart Transplant

Many people do not know this, but I was born with a serious heart problem. My condition could have easily cost me my life. The scary thing is, I was not made aware that I had such a condition until my junior year of college. Thankfully, by the time I learned of my original heart condition, I had already been healed. The symptoms should have alarmed me, but they didn't. Many people who should have been aware of my condition growing up, never saw it necessary to inform me how terrible my condition was. It was only in a college classroom did I begin to learn of my serious heart condition. My professor began describing certain symptoms of this condition. These symptoms include, but are not limited to the following.

• A love for the darkness (John 3:19)
• Turning away from God as one who is worthless (Romans 3:12)
• Hostility towards God (Romans 8:7)
• Inability to please God (Romans 8:8)
• Inability to understand the things of the Spirit (1 Corinthians 2:14)

As I began to hear of these things, I was alarmed because that was an exact description of the condition I was born with. However, I was also shocked because since the seventh grade those symptoms had gone away. I wanted to learn more about my original condition, and what caused all these symptoms. I soon discovered that all of these symptoms were the result of one problem.

The Lord saw the wickedness of man was great on earth, and that every
intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. ~Genesis
6:5

All of these symptoms are rooted in a serious heart problem. I also learned something else about the condition of my heart.

For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person. ~Matthew 15:19-20a

My heart problem had infected and corrupted every area of my life. My severe condition affected my desires, my relationships, my thoughts, and my actions. In fact, my condition was so bad, it left me in comatose state, as if I were dead, unable to do anything spiritually good.

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked,
following the course of this world, following the prince and power of the air,
the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience. ~Ephesians
2:1-2

You may ask, since my condition was so serious, how was I healed? Well, I must tell you it was nothing I did. No exercise or any change of my life or habits could get rid of my deadly heart condition.

"And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you.
And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of
flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes
and be careful to obey my rules. ~Ezekiel 36:26-27.

In seventh grade, I received a new heart. This new heart was a clean heart that caused me to love God and to obey God. I am so thankful for this great heart transplant, that at the time, I didn't even know I needed.

I wish someone would have informed me of my condition earlier. I was told about every week that I needed to "accept Jesus" because he could make my life better, but nobody ever told me that my original condition was deadly. As I began to do more research on this severe heart condition, I discovered that I was not the only one who is born with it, nor was I the only one who was not aware of it. It turns out, they 100% of all of humanity is born with this severe heart condition, and is unaware of the seriousness of their inherent condition.

Please help get the word out to everyone about their severe heart condition before it is to late. They too can receive the great heart transplant that I also had graciously received!

Born to Be Wild!

I've often heard preachers proclaim that the reason why children lie, and act like little heathens, is because they learn the behavior from their parents. While this observation might be true to some degree, it misses the fact that even children who are born to the most saintly parents will inevitably lie, steal, pout, lust, hate, and be disobedient to their parents.

Reformed Christians understand that this problem is due to the fact that children are born sinners. We teach the doctrine of Original Sin. We believe that children are born with a fallen and sinful nature inherited from Adam. The Scripture confirms this, Psalm 58:3 tells us: "The wicked are estranged from the womb: they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies." In Psalm 51:5, David wrote, "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me."

Despite what experience has shown and what Scripture teaches, not everyone agrees that children are born sinners. I once had a heated discussion about this topic with a preacher who subscribes to Church of Christ (Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement) theology. He contended that children are "born innocent and they chose to become sinners." He was very insistent that in everything "life is choices" and to him the idea that a child was a natural born sinner was untenable.

In our local newspaper, another Church of Christ preacher recently published a diatribe against the doctrine of Original Sin. He too proclaimed that children are born innocent and later choose to be sinners. Such theology is not exclusive to the Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement alone, it prevails in some form or fashion in much of modern evangelicalism.

Unlike the modern evangelical world, that is apparently suffering from what R.C. Sproul has called a "Pelagian Captivity", the Anglican Bishop J.C. Ryle understood the true nature of children; in a sermon entitled "A Right Understanding of Sin," Bishop Ryle states:

"The fairest child, who has entered life this year and become the sunbeam of a family, is not, as his mother perhaps fondly calls him, a little "angel" or a little "innocent," but a little "sinner." Alas! As that little infant boy or girl lies smiling and crowing in its cradle, that little creature carries in its heart the seeds of every kind of wickedness! Only watch it carefully, as it grows in stature and its mind develops, and you will soon detect in it an incessant tendency to that which is bad, and a backwardness to that which is good. You will see in it the buds and germs of deceit, evil temper, selfishness, self-will, obstinacy, greediness, envy, jealousy, passion, which, if indulged and let alone, will shoot up with painful rapidity."

In light of these things, it is vital that we evangelize and disciple our children! The Lord's disciples were rebuked for not allowing the children to come to Him. Let us not make a similar mistake in our day by failing to evangelize them (even from the cradle) due to a theological error that teaches that they are born free from the guilt of Adam's Sin and/or that sinning is a learned behavior! Though children are born sinners, there is hope for them through our Lord Jesus Christ!

"Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven." --The Lord Jesus Christ

(As a side note: Tomorrow my son Cordell will be Baptized. I praise the Lord for what He has done in his young heart!)