Epistle
of the Church Gathering in Jesus’ Name
602 Oak Knoll, San Antonio, TX 78228
July 2010
Revival Meeting
August 6 thru 15, 2010
with evangelist Jon Castillo
Every night at 7:00 and Sunday mornings at 11:00
Youth Trip
July 17 thru 24, visiting Puebla and Acambaro, Mexico
Men’s Meeting
October 15 & 16, hosted by the Church at South SA
Sunday Thanksgiving Open Meeting
November 28, dinner on the grounds
And please mark your 2011 calendar with our changed mission conference setting:
Mission Conference
July 17 thru Jul 24, 2011
The Significance of an Extraordinary Indictment
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.
12 And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.
Genesis 6
The Bible states unequivocally over and over that all men are sinners. And it almost goes without saying. Experience with ourselves and others in daily life leaves us with the intuition as certain as the law of gravity. It is nigh universally confessed as a fact. Here and there a humanist may deny it, but they do lock their doors like the rest of us. Nor is it too hard to admit. It is rather easy to confess guilt in a guilty crowd, or to confess yourself a sinner if “everybody is a sinner.” It seems to be less significant than confessing a unique guilt.
Yet the fact as the Bible puts it that “all have sinned” is quite a significant fact. Moses declares it here first, not as if God discovered this only then, ten generations after Adam and Eve, but as common knowledge that God was also aware of. God saw what Moses knew and assumed all his readers also knew, that all men are evil, and declared the fact as the motivation for the then impending judgment. If there is any surprise registered here it is only the extent of the crisis, that wickedness was great in the earth. But the declaration here, of the sinfulness of the human race, is so matter-of-fact, unreserved and comprehensive, that it provides more than a justification for God’s wrath in the flood. By indicting the whole race as thoroughly guilty it actually exposes the true nature of our guilt, and surprisingly betrays the foundation of salvation itself.
Consider the significance of the measure. God saw that wickedness of man was great in the earth, but it didn’t start out that way. The first sin was relatively mild by our reckoning. But wickedness grows. Sin is not just an accounting principle, or an accumulation of demerits that must be balanced. Sin is a dynamic principle that spawns and spreads its spores to the four winds. It is a “viral,” contaminating, exponential principle. It won’t go away and it won’t sit still. If one act spawns a thousand, there is simply no limit to any sinner’s guilt. It is because of this principle that Paul saw sin’s “entry” into the world as the significant act in the drama of condemnation (Rom. 5:12). It isn’t about how many sins nor how serious the sins each person is guilty of. The guilt of one sinner simply can’t be measured.
Consider the significance of the seat. The imagination of their thoughts was evil. Evil is in the heart. Parents looking for sympathy from a judge commonly say their son isn’t bad, just that he makes bad decisions. From the heart of a parent, and even in the mindless philosophy of some modern judges, this may be understandable, but in the concrete world of reality good boys don’t make bad decisions. Jesus said “from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts.” Bad hearts make bad decisions. “As he thinketh in his heart, so is he,” said Solomon. Sin isn’t a mistake. Sin is a “way of thinking,” and your way of thinking is your way of “being.” Guilt is on the inside long before the act. And if the imagination and thoughts are evil, guilt is real even before any choice is made.
Consider the significance of the consistency. Every man, every thought, only evil, continually. Apparently, any conflict of conscience going on in man is only superficial. God said every thought was only evil. This means in God’s eyes every good deed done and even every pang of compassion was also sin. Isaiah said our “righteousnesses” are as filthy rags. Practically we can’t understand this, but God declares it to be so. Deny it if you must, but according to God your smug, self-satisfying sense of “relative” decency is a pathetic façade.
Consider the significance of the totality. All flesh was corrupt. If every time you flip a coin it lands on heads you are not likely to assume you are enormously lucky. You will know after a few tosses that something is wrong with the coin. You will examine it, and expect to find two heads. From a moral point of view, if every child chooses wrong there must be something wrong with the children. To us a baby looks innocent, but to God it looks corrupt. It hasn’t sinned yet, but apparently this is not a very promising argument in its defense. Self-righteous deists and faith-mocking skeptics vilify the Bible’s God for “visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children,” but face it believer, if every single human is a sinner and every single thought is a sin, something more than a long series of poor choices is going on.
Humanists deny the fact that babies are sinners even if it requires denying the existence of any objective morality, and some Christians find themselves agreeing with them, even if it requires tweaking countless statements in the Bible. But given the facts as we know them, that every child sins of his own volition when tempted, the only conclusion is that there is something inherently wrong with children from the moment of conception.While high-minded unbelievers, who I find tend to posture as moralists far more than the “holier than thou” religious folk, cry “unfair,” and believers alike resist the thought that children are sinners and therefore subject to the consequences and punishment of their wicked fathers even before they actually sin themselves, the fact is so obviously correspondent with reality that the fully developed doctrine of original sin as found in Paul’s theology is logically undeniable. Emotion argues that babies cannot be guilty of anything. But facts are stubborn things.
Nevertheless, this fact, that all men are sinners, and consequently, babies are sinners too, and that the essence of our guilt was inherited from Adam before we were born, is actually the underpinning of God’s plan of salvation. How did Paul put it?
1 Corinthians 15:22 For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.
The key concept in salvation is that little word, “in.” Our guilt is inherited because we were in Adam. No doubt God attaches more importance to fatherhood than modern Americans, who barely honor the best of parents, but inherited guilt is not an abstraction or a metaphor. It is a fact based on reality. We were literally in Adam when Adam sinned, just as Levi was in Abraham when Abraham tithed to Melchizedek (Heb. 7.9).
The fact of our condemnation is not because we sinned of our own volition. True, our own decisions and our own works determine the degree of our condemnation, but not the fact of it. We began our earthly life already condemned in Adam. This is not unfair. This is the immeasurable mercy of God. Because we are condemned in Adam salvation is made possible in Christ. Believers in Christ are “born again” into Christ, and in Christ they don’t make themselves righteous, they find themselves so, just as in Adam they didn’t make themselves sinners, they found themselves so. Believers in Christ are not righteous by their own works but begin their spiritual lives righteous in fact, every whit and only as righteous in Christ as they were guilty in Adam.
Whether or not you can endure the implications of universal condemnation in Adam, this is the reality. It takes faith to embrace the truth. The boundless wisdom of God that is found even in the very nature of our condemnation leaves me nearly breathless. Through it salvation is possible. Through it there is no spiritual difference between the self-disciplined moralist and the profligate prostitute. All are condemned alike, and all must be saved alike. The foundation of our guilt leaves no room for self-righteousness and no hope in religion, while the foundation of our redemption leaves no room for boasting and no despair in the deepest gutter or on the brink of death. The unrevealed plan of salvation was betrayed in the very denunciation of wickedness intending only to justify God’s wrath. As it turns out, God can’t even be angry without revealing his mercy.