BY DR. JOHN SULLIVAN
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR-TREASURER
FLORIDA BAPTIST CONVENTION

Man’s weakness brings guilt and separation to all

In the past few weeks, we have examined sin—defining it as failing to meet God’s standard or ideal. Sin is also an insincerity of mishandling God’s truth and rebelling against God. This week, we will conclude the Doctrine of Sin by looking at the consequence of sin and original sin.

CONSEQUENCE OF SIN

Sin brings guilt. Perhaps no other passage is as heart wrenching as Isaiah’s revelation of God’s holiness found in Isaiah 6. Something in his encounter with God confronts the prophet with the realization that he is undone. He is faced with an unraveled, unmanageable, loosened thread in his life that he cannot pick up. Something is wrong besides the awareness of guilt and sin.

Or consider Simon Peter’s response when he cried out on the shore, “Lord, I’m a sinful man.” Sin brings guilt, an objective dimension that all is not right plus a subjective dimension of awareness.

The prodigal son is another classic illustration. The prodigal is away from home, at a distance from his father. There was real tangible objective distance between the young man and his father. The son makes a decision to return home and his father forgives him. While the boy will consciously feel guilt, he can now live with it because he is home. It’s as if the father said, “Come home Son and we will live down this guilt together.” He had been forgiven but still experienced haunting times of subjective guilt.

Sin brings self defeat, despair and anxiety. These characteristics are felt because we are less than we need to be or God would have us to be. Blaise Pascal, 17th Century philosopher and mathematician said, “Man is a fallen king, and no one is unhappy about not being a king, except a fallen king.” There is biblical room for glory in our anxiety because our value has been witnessed.

Sin does bring suffering and death. When there is sin, there is suffering. This is the normative pattern.
—There are times when suffering is not due directly to sin, such as Job. Other times, God allows suffering.
—There are times that Christ simply refused to debate the issue of suffering.
—There is a suffering caused by sin.

ORIGINAL SIN

Original sin means that man has inherited an inclination, a bias, an affinity, a leaning, a tilting, a tendency toward sin which makes it inevitable that man will choose sin. Yet he still has the freedom to choose.

The phrase “original sin” is not found in the Bible. However, something of a doctrine of original (heredity, radical) sin is needed even if the Bible was a newspaper or history book. It is basic—man sins.

Biblical revelation gives evidence of this great truth. Psalm 51:5 finds David saying, paraphrased, “I was born in the middle of a sinful, wicked world, even my home was tilted.” In Ezekiel 18:19-20, the prophet said, “The soul that sinneth, it shall surely die!” Ezekiel faces the fact that sin has invaded life and man must decide what to do with it. “Your sins will affect others, but you will die for your own sin.” (Jeremiah 31:29-30).

In Romans 3:23, Paul gives a biblical basis whereby we can conclude that sin is universal. He acknowledges both the fact and consequence of sin. He does not say that man sins by sheer determinism hovering over his head. But he is saying, “I look around and this is what’s happening.” He then rushes in with the gospel that says the strength of Christ will enable you to do better.

“Therefore as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin and so death spread to all men because all men sin.” (Romans 5:12)

Adam serves as the basic illustration of this doctrine. He was confronted with temptation. The scales were balanced, but when Adam sinned he tilted the scale toward sin for his next choice.

His sin caused the human race to be so spiritually weakened that it cannot walk. Just as a man with crippled legs still carries with him the hope of walking; sinful man can only walk in the power that God gives him to walk.

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