Letter (Part 1)

Very recently I wrote a letter to a man I talked to on campus. I thought I would put it on here, because it deals with some things that I believe are fundamental to Christianity. I wrote it in three parts and it may not make sense too much for some and so if you'd like to talk about it just lemme know, I'm game. Basically this is broken down by the issues we talked about in somewhat of the same order.

I. The Federal Headship of Adam and Christ

Since at the time I spoke to you I could not come up with the verse to say that, other than I knew that it was “somewhere” in the Bible. I know it to be a Biblical truth and yet I did not have any verse ready to prove it.

Adam representing all Man
We must first acknowledge that Adam was the representation of all man. For the Bible says, “And God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth’ ” (Gen. 1:26 KJV). God states that He will make man in His image, and so who did He create? Adam - the first man. Adam is now understood to be the whole race of man, considering the fact that he was the only person in that race at the time. You and I were not created from the dust and born a full grown man, but yet we are made in that same likeness, because we to are man, who is made in the image of God.

The Curse carries on through Adam
Next, we must say that the curse given to Adam and to Eve is the same curse for all men. Gen 2:17 says “for in that day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” The specific death God was talking about wasn’t physical, because obviously Adam did not die that day physically, but he died spiritually. And the Bible clearly states that all men have acquired this. Not only the fact that the Bible says that all will chose sin (Psalm 14, Romans 3) and that all fall short (Romans 3:23) and that all are by nature children of wrath (Eph 2:3), it clearly declares that all the curse of the sin committed by Adam spread to all men. Starting in Romans 5:12 “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for all have sinned: (For until the law sin was in the world: but sin is imputed when there is no law). Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come. But not as the offence, so also is the free. For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many.” It continues to Romans 5:18, “Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life. For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.” Also, 1 Cor. 15:22 says the same thing. Why is it so much a stretch to say that because of one man’s sin, it brought condemnation to all of man? And yet by one man’s righteousness, all can be made righteous through Him because 1 Cor 15:45-47, it says that Christ is the second Adam.

Never a Neutral State
(He believed that man is born in a neutral state)
Nowhere in the discourse of the Bible does it ever say anything that would lead one to think that man is in a neutral state. The whole purpose of John 3 is to state the fact that one must be “born again” in order to see the Kingdom of Heaven, because flesh is born according to the flesh which is sinful (which is Adam cf. 1 Cor 15:46), but only the spirit born of the Spirit is born again (Which is Christ cf. 1 Cor 15:46). The simple fact, that Romans 3 states, “There is none righteous, no, not one: There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable: there is none that doeth good, no, not one.” This is taken from Psalm 14. All choose sin; you are not neutral at birth, and then you might actually by some chance be a good person. Obviously there must be something in our nature to make all turn to sin. The Bible explicitly says, “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). It is within our nature to chose sin over righteousness from birth, “Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.” (Eph 2:3). Jeremiah 13:23, “Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil.”

Psalm 51
Psalm 51 is a clear indication of it, though I know that you do not believe the verse is speaking of being born a sinner, and that it is the sin that surrounds him that he speaks of. But keeping it in context as you said, David just sinned against God, he is not going, “God, I was a perfect child brought into this world of sin,” no, he is lamenting at how much of a sinner he really is, how he was born a sinner, and unless God has His mercy on him, he will die a sinner.

Personal Accountability
You brought up Ezekiel 18:20, “The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son.” This does, of course, state that the righteous shall live, no matter the iniquity of the father, as verse 19 says if he keeps the statutes and commandments of the Lord he will surely live (spiritually) the curse of Adam is still upon him physically, and so he does not live in this world eternally, but in the Kingdom of God. The verse is referring to the personal accountability of ones actions, (that accountability will come when the person understands good from evil and will always choose evil, until God reveals His truth). If you read on in the rest of the verse, “the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him” (vv.20b). If a man is righteous keeping the commandments of the Lord he is not going to be held accountable for his father’s actions. I am not about to say that I will be judged because of the sins committed by anyone else, I am born in a sinful nature, but I myself am accountable to my own sins which I commit and will give an account before God for those sins. Man’s fall in the garden is not saying that I will be judged for all of Adam’s sin and for all of Eve’s and for all of Seth’s and so on, but God gave Adam a commandment, that if he were to eat from that tree, fellowship between God and man would be broken, and it was broken for all men because Romans 5 says so. The sin for me is not Adam’s actual eating of the fruit, but because he did all mankind fell, making us all separated from God and out of fellowship with Him (thus being an unbeliever) which is our sin. And because we are apart from God, unless he intervenes, we do not care for the things of God (Psalm 14:2), and He can chose to save us or leave us in our condemned state. Obviously men are not born into fellowship with God, or else there wouldn’t be any unbelievers.

For God’s Glory
I gave you the example of John 9 where the blind man is healed and the disciples say to Jesus, “Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, “Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.” And you shut it down because you thought I was speaking metaphorically, which I may have. But I am making the point that this man was born blind, the same as all of us are born spiritually blind. 2 Cor speaks of the blindness before knowing Christ, and it is the same. Only Christ can remove that blindness. But metaphorically or not, the man wasn’t made blind because of anything he had done or his father; he was made blind like all of us were for the Glory of God to be shown.

Conclusion of Point I
On this point I do not agree with anything that says I was born neutral. And to disagree with me on that point does nothing to hurt any kind of theological stance I have. If the Bible were to tell me that I was born a good person and that I am a good person, that would probably be something I wouldn’t fight, but it doesn’t. You take nothing from me because I have already taken it all from me and placed all the glory with God. Plus verses like Romans 6:17 that tell me that I am a slave to sin (not, ‘once neutral and then enslaved later’) before becoming a slave to righteousness just do not make any sense anymore.