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Intimacy in the Spirit
  
You must be born again to enter into the kingdom of God.
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ORIGINAL SIN IS IMPUTED...SCIENCE PROVES THE BIBLE IS TRUE!!! Jul 5, 2008 1:58 pm
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The problem with communicating the doctrines of imputation and justification to today's audience is that these words are rarely used and in the case of justification, not used today in everyday language with the same meaning as they have theologically.

1. Definition: The action of the justice of God whereby either condemnation or blessing is assigned,credited, or attributed to a human being. There are two categories of imputations: real imputations and judicial imputations.

2. Real imputations credit something to a person which truly belongs to him; thus, an affinity exists between what is received and the one receiving it. Real imputations include: Adam's original sin to the sin nature at birth (Rom. 5:12-21), eternal life to the human spirit (1 John 5:11-12), blessings in time to the righteousness of God in us (Eph. 1:3; 1 Cor. 2:9), and blessings in eternity to the resurrected believer
(2 Cor. 5:10). Here we will deal only with he first, real imputation of original sin to the sin nature.

3. Judicial imputations occur where the justice of God credits to a person what is not antecedently his own. There is no harmony, agreement, or affinity between the imputation and the object of the imputation, i.e., our personal sins to Christ on the cross (Rom. 8:31-32) and Christ's perfect righteousness to the believer at the point of salvation (Rom. 4:3-4; 2 Cor. 5:21).

Here we will focus on only the imputation of our personal sins to Christ on the cross and the imputation of His perfect righteousness to the believer.
4. Imputation derives from the Latin, imputare, "to reckon, to charge to one's account." The English means to charge someone with a fault or responsibility, or simply to credit something to someone. The Greek logizomai, has the same basic connotation. It is important to recognize that imputation is a legal or forensic concept, as such it does not refer to a concrete substance someone has or owns, but to something which one has legally. Thus imputation would not be used of giving a gift or giving something concrete to a subject, i.e., John imputed a bottle of perfume to Mary for Christmas, would not be correct.

5. Secular Usage in the New Testament
Philem. 1:18 But if he has wronged you in any way, or owes you anything, charge that to my
account

6. The first real imputation: Adam's original sin to the sin nature at birth.

a. Historical Survey
Pelagian view: Pelagius was a British monk in the 5th century who substituted the word
imitation for imputation. He argued that God creates every soul directly and each soul at
birth is innocent and untainted by Adam's original sin and is not guilty of Adam's sin until each person imitates Adam's sin. Thus men are not born sinners and under condemnation
and that death is not the result of sin.

Pelagianism is the forerunner of Arminianism and was condemned at the Council of Carthage in AD 418. Arminianism DOCTRINE TEACHES THAT MAN HAS A FREE WILL, HUMANISTIC TEACHING.

Arminianism: Jacob Arminius (1560-1609) Arminius is taught that man is not guilty because of Adam's sin. Each voluntarily and purposefully chooses to sin, only then does God impute sin to them. Rom 5:12 is not viewed as all humanity suffering the effects of Adam's sin.(WHY BECAUSE MAN CAN CHOOSE....IF MAN CAN CHOOSE WHY DOES HE NOT CHOOSE TO OBEY THE LAW? WHY DID JEUS DIE FOR THE SIN NATURE...THE BIBLE SAYS HE WHO KNEW NO SIN BECAME SIN THAT WE MIGHT BE MADE THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD IN HIM. ARMINIANISM IS TAUGHT IN MUCH OF MODERN DAY CHRISTIANITY.)

Adam is our representative, but the sin nature is passed on genetically so that AOS is imputed to that sin nature at birth. Rom. 5:12-16

It is the sin of Adam, that condemn us. 2Cor. 5:19 namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation.

7. The first judicial imputation is the imputation of our personal sins to Christ.
a. We are born in the image of Adam after the Fall, We share his original sin by real
imputation and his sin nature by genetic transmission. Thus we share his spiritual death, His sin is our sin, his sin nature our sin nature, his condemnation our condemnation. Rom. 5:14.

b. Christ is in the image of Adam before the fall.

c. Since Jesus was born of a virgin, there is no reception of a sin nature or imputation of
AOS.

d. God the Father imputed all our sins to Christ on the cross, Rom. 5:15.

8. The second judicial imputation is that of Christ's divine righteousness to man, Rom. 5:16.

9. The result then is that man is declared righteous, he is not made righteous, sin is not overlooked, it is not just as if I had never sinned. He is declared by God to be righteous not because of what he is or will be but solely because he possesses the righteousness of Christ.

10. Two Old Testament illustrations:
a. Abraham was justified by faith before the events of Gen 15:6. The Hiphel perfect of the
verb 'aman means that this verse is a reminder of Abram's previous justification is for the
blessings mentioned in Gen 15.
b. The new turban and garments placed on Joshua is a picture of the believer clothed in the
perfect righteousness of Christ, Zech 3:1-5.

Dr. Robert L. Dean, Jr.
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THE SIN NATURE IS GENETIC...ONLY JESUS HAD NO SIN Jul 5, 2008 1:44 pm
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The term "original sin" is a term used to describe the effect of Adam's sin on his descendants (Rom. 5:12-32). Specifically, it is our inheritance of a sinful nature from Adam. The sinful nature originated with Adam and is passed down from parent to child. We are by nature children of wrath (Eph. 3:2).

Some Bible commentators, hold the position that the sin nature is passed down through the father. Support for this position is found in the fact that sin entered the world through Adam, not Eve. Remember, Eve was the one who sinned first. However, sin did not enter the world through her. It entered through Adam. Rom. 5:12 says, "Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned."

The concept behind this is called Federal Headship. This means that a person (a father) represents his descendants. We see this concept taught in Heb. 7:9-10, "And, so to speak, through Abraham even Levi, who received tithes, paid tithes, 10for he was still in the loins of his father when Melchizedek met him."

We see in Hebrews that Levi, a distant descendant of Abraham, is said to have paid tithes to Melchizedek when Abraham was the one offering the tithes, not Levi. What this means is that there is biblical support for the idea that the sin nature was passed down through the father. Since Jesus had not literal, biological father, the sin nature was not passed down to Him. However, since He had a human mother, he was fully human but without original sin. Jesus has two natures: God and man.

Col. 2:9 says, "For in Him dwells all the fullness of deity in bodily form." Jesus received His human nature from Mary, but He received His divine nature through God the Holy Spirit. Therefore, Jesus is both God and man. He was sinless, had no original sin, and was both fully God and fully man.

CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS
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SCIENCE CONFIRMS THE SIN NATURE IS INHERITED Jul 5, 2008 1:37 pm
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KEEP IN MIND THAT THIS IS A SECULAR NEWS PAPER FOLKS AND YET AS JESUS SAID....THE CHILDREN OF THE WORLD ARE IN MANY WAYS WISER THAN THE CHILDREN OF THE KINGDOM. NO,YOU FREE WILLERS..ACCEPTING JESUS DOES NOT SAVE...JESUS SAVES BY HIS GRACE WHEN HE MAKES A PERSON BORN AGAIN OF HIS HOLY SPIRIT. MANY ACCEPT JESUS AND ARE NOT SAVED. THEY ARE ONLY RELIGIOUS...HAVING A FORM OF GODLINESS BUT DENYING THE POWER OF THE HOLY SPIRIT TO MAKE ONE A NEW CREATURE IN CHRIST...JESUS SAID YOU MUST BE BORN AGAIN TO ENTER INTO THE KINGDOM OF GOD HE DID NOT SAY REFORM YOUR LIFE OR ACCEPT HIM INTO YOUR HEART. MANY CULTS ACCEPT JESUS AS SAVIOR. NO IT IS NOT ENOUGH TO SAY THAT YOU KNOW JESUS BUT DOES HE KNOW YOU?? ARE YOU BORN OF HIS INCORRUPTIBLE SEED? DO YOU BELIEVE ON HIM...PSUEDO IN THE GREEK....IS HE YOUR LORD AND SAVIOR BY THE NEW BIRTH? YOUR SIN NATURE WILL SEND YOU TO HELL....THAT IS SATAN'S NATURE.....YOU MUST HAVE GODS NATURE LIVING IN YOU TO BE SAVED....

Joh 1:13 Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

As a story of creation, the Book of Genesis long, long ago crumbled under the weight of science, notably Darwin's theory of natural selection. But Genesis isn't just about the beginning of the human race. It is also about the beginning of evil--about how and why sin and suffering entered human experience and stayed there. And here the verdict of science is more ambiguous. In some ways, the Bible's account of evil actually draws strength from the very Darwinism that undermined its account of history.


This doesn't mean that paleontologists have found hominid bones with "Adam" stamped on them along with evidence that Adam disobeyed God, thus condemning the rest of us to lives of toil and hardship. But it does mean that this biblical story line, as transmuted by later thinkers into religious doctrine, has produced some ideas that resonate with modern Darwinian theory. In particular, the Christian doctrine of original sin makes more sense as evolutionary psychologists learn more about why people do bad things.

The doctrine of original sin says that at birth we all inherit Adam's sinfulness. This is partly a claim about blame,it holds us accountable for Adam's sin even before we've done anything wrong-but it is also a claim about human nature; it says we are inclined to do wrong, that we have a hereditary dark side. As St. Augustine put it in the 5th century A.D.: After Adam sinned, our "soiled" and "corrupt" nature was "already present in the seed from which we were to spring."

As scientifically minded nitpickers have noted, there is a flaw here. The idea that Adam's choice of cuisine somehow affected biological inheritance involves the generally discredited Lamarckian notion that acquired traits get transmitted genetically. Still, a more generic version of Augustine's assertion--that sin results from biological drives passed through the human lineage ever since its origin--makes scientific sense.

By Darwinian lights, the classic sins, such as gluttony, lust, greed and envy, are the unchecked expression of impulses that arose by natural selection. During evolution, individuals with strong innate yearnings for food, sex and material goods did a better job of surviving and reproducing than individuals less drawn to these things. So we inherited genes conducive to such yearnings. In the same manner, anger (another of the deadly sins) became a naturally engrained tool of survival, aimed, for example, at those who would take our food or our mates.

In the essentially pre-technological context of human evolution, impulses such as gluttony, greed, even lust, were often blunted by scarcity. Only amid the material abundance that came with agriculture and grew thereafter could self-indulgence regularly reach grotesque levels. (Sodom and Gomorrah lay in the fertile plains. Their residents sinned amid plenty while Abraham herded his flock in rustic innocence on dryer terrain.) Similarly, anger acquired a new layer of evil with the invention of knives and spears, to say nothing of guns.

The biological roots of sin are not by themselves a news flash from the frontiers of science. More than a century ago, Thomas Huxley, Darwin's popularizer, lamented the fact that evolution has given all children "the instinct of unlimited self-assertion"--"their dose of original sin." But the past few decades have brought a deeper Darwinian understanding of human nature, and some of its pioneers believe Huxley underestimated our badness.

But first the good news. Evolutionary psychologists say our "moral sentiments" do, as Darwin speculated, have an innate basis. Such impulses as compassion, empathy, generosity, gratitude and remorse are genetically based. Strange as it may sound, these impulses, with their checks on raw selfishness, helped our ancestors survive and pass their genes to future generations.

Now the bad news. Contrary to a misconception that flourished in Darwin's day, these impulses did not give this boost to genetic proliferation mainly by furthering the overall "welfare of society"--and certainly not by furthering the "welfare of the species." As a result, humans don't naturally deploy our "moral" impulses diffusely--showering love and compassion on any needy Homo sapiens in the vicinity. We tend to reserve major doses of kindness either for close kin (the result of an evolutionary dynamic known as "kin selection") or for non-kin who show signs of someday returning the favor (a result of the evolution of "reciprocal altruism").

This finickiness gives our "moral" sentiments a naturally seamy underside. Beneath familial love, for example, is malice toward our relatives' rivals. Remember the woman in Texas who plotted to kill the mother of her daughter's rival for a cheerleading slot? Fortunately, she's an extreme example. But she's an example, nonetheless--as any father or mother, on honest reflection, will admit.

The grimness of this new Darwinian worldview has been stressed by the biologist George Williams, whose 1966 book Adaptation and Natural Selection laid its theoretical foundations. Rather like the World War II physicists who were horrified by the weapon they had invented, Williams blanches at the view of human nature and of natural selection that he helped usher in. "Mother Nature," he says, "is a wicked old witch."

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of our nature is our natural blindness to it. According to some evolutionary psychologists, we are "designed" by natural selection to conceal selfish motives from ourselves--indeed, to unconsciously build elaborate moral rationales for our selfish behavior. Thus do wars routinely feature two sides convinced that they are in the right.

Even at the level of pettier sins--lust, greed--we are naturally good at making our actions seem just. How many spouses are lured into infidelity, even desertion, by the conviction that they married the "wrong" person the first time around or that this person has "changed"? These often delusional rationales are (to put it a bit metaphorically) our genes "trying" to get us to do the kinds of things--infidelity, betrayal--that during evolution helped propel them into the next generation. Hence the human dimension of our animal behavior: it feels so rational and right. Lots of animals are violent, treacherous and nasty, but only one convinces itself that God approves.

Which brings us back to Eden. Adam and Eve eat from the tree of knowledge because they have pretensions of divinity. "Your eyes will be opened," the serpent promises, "and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." Thus the original sin is often described as a kind of hubris--"the pride which sprang from [our] likeness to God," as one scholar put it. By the lights of evolutionary psychology, an essential human weakness is indeed a tendency to be seduced by our seemingly godlike rationality into thinking we can readily know good and evil; our downfall is a lack of philosophical humility, a smug assumption that our "moral" intuitions can be trusted as a guide to true morality. The effects have ranged from homicide to genocide.

Certainly, as even Williams stresses, our moral sentiments have lots of upside, including a heartening plasticity. They can be deployed less self-servingly than they were "designed" to be deployed. Darwin himself often felt pangs of concern about the plight of slaves, even though there were none in England to reciprocate his empathy. And consider the flush of compassion we feel upon witnessing, via TV, famine that is a hemisphere away. When moved by such images to donate money or canned goods--the rough opposite of greed and gluttony--we are in some Darwinian sense "misusing" our equipment of reciprocal altruism; the equipment is being "fooled" by electronic technology into (unconsciously) thinking that the victims of famine are right next door and might someday reciprocate. But that doesn't diminish the act. Our capacity to thus distort biological purpose, to prevail over our selfish heritage, is a deep source of hope and a glimmer of true goodness.

Still, to prevail comprehensively--to frustrate all or even most of the subtle selfishness built into us--takes massive, ongoing effort and painful self-knowledge. The difficulty of the exercise lends a kind of credence to what some Christians see as the upshot of their doctrine of original sin: that people are born in need of a salvation gained through repentance. To put it in secular terms: so deeply hidden from natural introspection is our badness that moral reform requires a solid jolt of enlightenment, sharp and persistent awareness of our inherent baseness.

Moral reform may or may not come as Christians prefer--in the course of accepting Jesus as savior. But certainly Jesus said some things that could lead even an agnostic toward it. He asked us to doubt the moral basis of all hatreds--even of our enemies--and to doubt our frequent feelings of moral superiority, our illusion of clarity. ("You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye; and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye.") Other religions also preach universal love and harsh self-scrutiny. Buddha said, "The fault of others is easily perceived, but that of one's self is difficult to perceive."

There remains one basic, unbridgeable divergence between religious doctrine and Darwinism: according to Genesis, nature is in essence benign. In the beginning, there were no thorns, and snakes spent their time not biting people but chatting with them. Only when man fell to temptation did the natural world receive a coating of evil. But according to Darwinism, the evil in nature lies at its very roots, instilled by its creator, natural selection. After all, natural selection is chronic competition untrammeled by moral rules. Heedless selfishness and wanton predation are traits likely to endure. If these things are sins, then the roots of sin lie at the origin--not just of humankind but of life.

Yet this dark, Darwinian view of nature has its saving grace. True, it doesn't let us imagine some idyllic time when nature was benign and the human heart pristine--a time when, as Augustine believed, human flesh had not yet been corrupted by raw desire and self-absorption. On the contrary, our distant evolutionary past was a time when desire was even rawer than now, and self-absorption less nuanced.

Still, there's something hopeful about a hideous past. Though our great intelligence and our elaborate "moral" sentiments were created solely for the purpose of genetic proliferation and not for true edification, they now interact in strange and unpredicted ways, and the occasional burst of moral progress breaks through. People like Jesus and Buddha come along and say radical things that somehow stick in the world's consciousness. And the most animal of institutions--such as slavery--do seem slowly to die out. Who knows where this could lead? Personally, I'd rather see Eden on the horizon--however dimly and elusively--than in the rearview mirror.

SCIENCE AND ORIGINAL SIN
Sunday, Jun. 24, 2001 By ROBERT WRIGHT
TIME
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SCIENCE CONFIRMS THE SIN NATURE IS GENETIC Jul 5, 2008 1:18 pm
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Genealogy is increasing in popularity as genetic studies allow people to learn about their family origins. The diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders is improving as the role of genes is studied and exposed.

And the knowledge of our genes, and those of other species, may eventually help us to answer one of the hardest questions of all – ‘what is the essence of life’?

Our likelihood of developing a mental disorder is affected by a combination of our genes and our environment – nature and nurture. Genes are more influential in some disorders, such as schizophrenia, than others. By comparing the DNA of affected and unaffected individuals, it is now possible to identify the actual genes involved. Hopefully the identification of these genes will provide a secure foundation for better diagnostic and therapeutic approaches. Research is still in its early stages but there have been some notable achievements - some of the genes that are involved in susceptibility to dementia (e.g. Alzheimer's disease and Huntington's disease) have already been identified.

New genetic technologies such as DNA testing can be extremely useful in investigating our family origins. The core aim of genealogy is to help us trace our ancestors and to understand where we come from and with whom we share certain traits. It can also shed light on the origins of genetic diseases such as Tay-Sachs disease and sickle cell anaemia and may be used to trace carriers. Revealing our genetic origins may assist us in understanding our identities.

It is well established that addictive disorders have a strong genetic background. Multiple, and in part interacting, genes are likely to be responsible for the disease phenotype, making the search for underlying alleles a challenging and complicated task. Linkage analyses and association studies have failed to unequivocally identify underlying genes. Conversely, genome sequencing and the systematic search for polymorphic marker loci have yielded dense chromosome maps so that, along with automated genotyping, the identification of individual genes will soon become possible. Initial results provide hints that regulators of gene expression might play an important role in addiction.

n many cases, a single defective gene is not sufficient to cause a disorder. Yet many of the common diseases of adult life, such as diabetes mellitus, hypertension, schizophrenia, and most common congenital malformations, such as cleft lip, cleft palate, neural tube defects, have a strong genetic component to their occurrence. In these examples it is thought that a large number of genes each act in a small but significant manner to predispose an individual to the genetic condition.

Polygenic genetic disorders are those which are caused by the impact of many different genes, each having only a small individual impact on the final condition. Multifactorial traits are those which result from an interaction between multiple genes and often multiple environmental factors.

SCIENCE DAILY TO LEARN MORE ABOUT GENETICS
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The Doll Maker Jul 4, 2008 12:01 pm
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In a little village, there lived a crafts man by name Ébun, who made wooden dolls for children.

Ébun was so naturally gifted in his handwork that his fame spread to all the neighboring villages. People from all over the region came to buy wooden dolls from him or bring their broken dolls for repairs. He carefully studied the broken dolls and looked for the best way to mend it such that it looked exactly the way it was when he first made it.

Ébun had a little daughter for whom he made a very beautiful doll on her tenth birthday. The little girl was so much in love with her little doll that she always played with it along with her friends. One day while playing with the doll, the wooden doll got broken and the little girl cried and ran to her father with the broken doll. When she got to him she complained that her doll's arm got broken while she was playing with it. The father took time to listen to her complaints and then told her to leave the doll with him and come back later for it.

The little girl said "no daddy you don't understand, all I want you to do is carve out another arm and polish it, and then use some glue or nail and join it back that's all !!. The father still tried to explain to her to leave the doll with him and come back after sometime for it because he made the doll and he knows how best to mend it when it is broken. The little grew impatient and said to her father, "Daddy, you are not doing it the way I want, you are too slow." With that statement the little girl grabbed the doll and left her father's workshop. The father called after her but she wouldn't come back, and he felt so sad.

Like that little girl, most of us take our problem to God and then try to dictate to him how He should solve them for us. We often fail to realize that God made us and He understands how best to handle all our daily problems. We must leave our problems at His feet and let him take care of them for us.

Author Unknown

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What Are You Doing God? Jul 4, 2008 11:54 am
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When I was little, my mother used to sew a great deal. I would sit at her knee and look up from the floor and ask what she was doing. She informed me that she was embroidering. As from the underside I watched her work within the boundaries of the little round hoop that she held in her hand. I complained to her that it sure looked messy from where I sat.

She would smile at me, look down and gently say, Son, you go about your playing for a while, and when I am finished with my embroidering, I will put you on my knee and let you see it from my side.

I would wonder why she was using some dark thread along with the bright ones and why they seemed so jumbled from my view. A few minutes would pass and then I would hear Mother's voice say, "Son, come and sit on my knee."

Then Mother would say to me, "My son, from underneath it did look messy and jumbled, but you did not realize that there was a plan on the top. It was a design. I was only following it. Now look at it from my side and you will see what I was doing."

Many times through the years I have looked up to heaven and said, "Father, what are You doing?" He has answered, "I am embroidering your life."

I say, "But it looks like a mess to me. It seems so jumbled. The threads seem so dark. Why can't they all be bright?"

The Father would speak to my heart "My child, you go about your business of doing My business, and one day I will bring you to Heaven and put you on My knee and you will see the plan from My side.

Author Unknown

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THE BEE STING Jul 4, 2008 11:47 am
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A vacationing family drives along in their car, windows rolled down, enjoying the warm summer breeze of the sunny day. All of a sudden a big black bee darts in the window and starts buzzing around inside the car. A little girl, highly allergic to bee stings, cringes in the back seat.
If she is stung, she could die within an hour.

"Oh, Daddy, " she squeals in terror, "it's a bee! It's going to sting me!"

The father pulls the car over to a stop, and reaches back to try to catch the bee. Buzzing towards him, the bee bumps against the front windshield where the father traps it in his fist. Holding it in his closed hand, the father waits for the inevitable sting. The bee stings the father's hand and in pain, the father lets go of the bee.

The bee is loose in the car again. The little girl again panics, "Daddy, it's going to sting me!"

The father gently says, "No honey, he's not going to sting you now. Look at my hand."

The bee's stinger is there in his hand.

Jesus says to us, "Look at my hands."

He has Satan's sting,
the sting of death,
the sting of sin,
the sting of deceit,
the sting of feeling worthless.
Jesus has all of those stingers in His hands.

When you see that nail-scarred hand, realize that, on your behalf, Jesus took all the pain that Satan could throw at Him. He reduced Satan to a big black bee that has lost its stinger,all Satan can do is buzz. That's the victory that Jesus won.

1 Cor. 15:55 "Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?"

AUTHOR UNKNOWN


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THE LAW FRUSTRATES (DISCHARGES) THE GRACE OF GOD. Jul 3, 2008 1:07 pm
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TO FRUSTRATE IS A LEGAL TERM...IT MEANS

Frustration of purpose has the effect of discharging the promisor from his or her obligation to perform, in spite of the fact that performance by the promisee is possible, since the purpose for which the contract was entered into has been destroyed. For example, an individual reserves a hall for a wedding. In the event that the wedding is called off, the value of the agreement would be destroyed. Even though the promisee could still literally perform the obligation by reserving and providing the hall for the wedding, the purpose for which the contract was entered into was defeated. Apart from a nonrefundable deposit fee, the promisor is ordinarily discharged from any contractual duty to rent the hall.

In order for frustration to be used as a defense for nonperformance, the value of the anticipated counter performance must have been substantially destroyed and the frustrating occurrence must have been beyond the contemplation of the parties at the time the agreement was made.

SO YOU SEE IF YOU OBEY THE LAW THEN YOU FRUSTRATE OR DISCHARGE THE CONTRACT OF GRACE.


Galatians 2:21 - "I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain."

"Frustrating the grace of God,"—and "making the death of Christ to be in vain." And greater sins are not to be committed by men: the greatest sin, "the unpardonable sin", is expressed in words very like to this, Heb. 10:29—"Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden underfoot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite to the Spirit of grace?" And making Christ's death to be in vain

Frustrate is to despise reject , bring to nothing disannul cast off to do away with, to set aside, disregard to thwart the efficacy of anything, nullify, make void, frustrate to reject, to refuse, to slight.

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THE GRACE OF GOD SAVED A WRETCH LIKE ME THE HOUR I FIRST BELIEVED. Jul 3, 2008 12:53 pm
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GOD'S GRACE IN JUSTIFYING THE SINNER

EXPERTS FROM A Sermon by Robert Traill

Galatians 2:21 - "I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain."

THE LAW DEMANDS THAT YOU DO SOMETHING, GRACE DEMANDS THAT YOU EXCEPT SOMEONE.

This is the greatest error in our churches today. Most churches don't deny justification by faith, but they demand works in order for them to keep their faith, or to keep their standing with God.

First, Paul's argument against mingling the works of the law with faith in justification, is taken from the practice of the believing Jews. What way did they take to be justified? We who are Jews by nature, and not sinners of the Gentiles, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ; even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law; for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified, vr. 15, 16.

Secondly, his next argument is taken from the bad effect and sad consequence of seeking righteousness by the law, vr. 17, But if, while we seek to be justified by Christ, we ourselves are also found sinners, is therefore Christ the minister of sin? God forbid. If so be we that have sought righteousness in Jesus Christ, if we have yet any dealings with the law in point of righteousness, we are found sinners still; and if a justified man be found a sinner, why then Jesus Christ, instead of delivering us from the bondage of the law, is found a minister of sin.

In 1 John it states, if we say we have no sin, we lie and do not the truth. If we claim to be justified by faith, but we still find that we are sinners, because of our old sin nature that is still prevalent in our flesh, then is Christ the minister of sin? God forbid! The greatest mystery of salvation is how that God can be just, and at the same time justify the sinner.

Thirdly, his third argument is yet strongest of all, and some way the darkest, vr. 20. For I through the law am dead unto the law, that I might live unto God. in other words "For my part, all the use that I got of the law, the more. I was acquainted with it, it slew me the more, and I died the more to it, that I might live to God; all that the law can do to me in point of justification, is only to condemn me, and it can do no more" and whenever the law enters into a man's conscience it always does this: When the commandment came, sin revived, and I died: the commandment slew me (Rom. 7:9, 11 )

The law is like a schoolmaster, it points us to Christ, then after that Christ comes, the glorious gospel of the Grace of God shines in our hearts. The letter of the law killeth, but the spirit maketh alive. We were dead in trespasses, but now we're alive in Christ. Is it a wonder that Christ came to give us life more abundently? John the Baptist was the end of the law, Christ was the new and living way.

Fourthly, his next argument is taken from the nature of the new life that he led, vr. 20. I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me." Words of extraordinary form, but of more extraordinary matter: words that one would think seem to be some way cross to one another: but yet they set forth gloriously that gracious life that through Christ Jesus is imparted to justified believers. "Christ died for me, and I am crucified with Christ; and yet I live no not I but it is Christ that lives in me, and Christ lives in me only by faith."

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DO YOU REALLY HAVE A FREE WILL? ARE YOU FREE TO CHOOSE WHATEVER YOU DESIRE??? Jul 3, 2008 12:07 pm
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God created man with "free will"....? REALLY!? He did? Let me ask you. Think of one time or example in either history, or, in the future where a man has managed to thwart the will of God with his (man's) own will. You can't can you. This is because man does not have a "free will"

Man does have the ability to make choices. Man does not have a will which is "free" to do
what it pleases. We (mankind) never have been, and we never will be, able to circumvent or subvert in any way, shape, or manner, the will of almighty God. We need to carefully think about and consider the meaning of words before we use them. Wouldn't you agree?

It is God's will which will be done on earth and in Heaven. Not man's. Man is only "free" to make choices. You can not say man has a "free will" and then limit it's capability and potential. That is not a "free will" because it is not "free" to do as it wills.


Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Secular humanistic definition of free will.

"To have free will is to have what it takes to act freely. When an agent acts freely-when she exercises her free will-what she does is up to her. A plurality of alternatives is open to her, and she determines which she pursues. She is an ultimate source or origin of her action. So runs a familiar conception of free will."

To make choices, volition[

Proponents of noncausal accounts generally hold that every action is or begins with a basic mental action. A decision or a choice is typically held to be an example of such a mental action. An overt bodily action, such as raising one's arm, is held to be a nonbasic, complex action that is constituted by a basic mental action's bringing about a certain motion of one's body. The basic action here is often called a volition, which is said to be the agent's willing, trying, or endeavoring to move a certain part of her body in a certain way.

"Finally, there is freedom of moral and rational responsibility - that freedom, whatever it turns out to be, that is part of human action and agency, in which the human being acts as an agent who is in some sense the originator of one's own actions, and in this sense, is in control of one's own action. This type of freedom serves as a necessary condition for moral, and some would say, intellectual responsibility.

In both instances you will notice there is no distinction made in the degree of human action. Whether it be raising one's arm or leaving the room, or eating from the tree that God commanded one not to eat of, an action has an agent. The agent is either acting of his own accord (freely) or acting in some way in which he is compelled to act (not freely). If the agent is truly compelled to act, then he has no free will, and cannot be held responsible for his actions. If he acted of his own accord, he is responsible.

When Christians say that man has no free will it simply means that apart from the exertion of the grace of God no one willingly comes to faith in Christ. Left in our natural fallen state we would all choose to rebel, due to our corrupt natures. Rom 8: 7, Rom 3:11,12 John 3:20 We use this phrase only in a redemptive sense. Man's bondage to sin after his fall (2 Tim 2:25) rendered him morally incapacitated and without the Spirit 1 Cor 2:14 impotent and hostile to the things of God. Jesus explains that were it not for God's help, the natural man would be without hope.

"No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him" - John 6:44

The natural man makes choices according to his heart's desire ... So when Christians speak of man not having a free will it needs to be made clear that this is specifically referring to the fact that no one would come to Christ without God exerting His grace. Our will is bent against it. Left to our free will we would choose to suppress the truth Rom 1:18-20 since we naturally hate the light and "will not come into the light" John 3:19

We depend entirely on God's grace for salvation. No contribution we make helps atone for our sin as long as we remain in our unregenerate state. Jesus paid that in full. Therefore, by God's grace, we must repent of trusting in our good works and recognize that were it not for grace alone that we would all justly deserve God's wrath.

it is important to note that this means man is not seen as either a machine or a puppet of God, according to the Scriptures. But man's will is based on his inner character so he will always chose in accordance with who he is by nature. The character is that whole complex of personal inclination, motives, desires and principles which go to make up what the scripture calls the heart. Prov 4:23, Matt 12:34-35, Mark 7: 21 In other words, after the fall, man still has the ability to make any choice he likes, as long as it is within the boundaries of his nature.

the ultimate choice to do the will of God and be pleasing to the Father from the innermost heart and soul is no longer a desire of man's fallen nature. By nature he rages against any such idea and will not submit to God. The Scriptures are abundant in their clarity in pointing this out. Matt 12:34-35, Mark 7:21; Matt 7:17-18 Luke 6:43-45 Romans 6:16-20, 7:1; Rom 8: 7- 8

So when we speak of man's inability and loss of free will it only describes man's natural condition apart from any grace exerted by God to restrain or transform man. Man cannot reform himself in such a way as to perfectly obey God or believe His gospel apart from God mercifully applying the new birth. So, in effect, man has lost his free will to believe the gospel without divine assistance. So Pagans can make beautiful things like art, music, poetry, build cities, and do many excellent and commendable things through common grace. He does this through his free will. But the ultimate good or ability to obey God, to love Him and to believe on Him was lost as a result of the fall. The blame for this rest squarely on our shoulders, not God's.

So humans have a free will to do whatever they want. But by nature they would never want God as He has revealed Himself. Rom 1:18, Rom 3:11 Free will, without grace, would always chose to disobey our Lord. The new birth changes the disposition of man's heart so that he might willingly turn from trusting in his good works and place his faith in Christ alone for salvation.

John Hendryx
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