Featured Perspective

Does it?

Romans 5:12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned.

 

I agree there. The problem is our sinfulness (that sinful nature which manifests sinful actions).

 

If you are denying that we are condemned for our sinful nature then you have severely misunderstood Scripture. God re-create us, we are reborn...born from above....God gives us a new spirit. We MUST be born again.

I know that we might disagree on this passage, and that's fine (I'm not here to tell you what to believe). But I think that this is applicable to God's saving grace:

"I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your unclleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleans you. 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. And you shall dwell in the land that I gave your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God."

That, IMHO, is a NEW CREATION. Why? Because we are condemned in our old, natural, sinful natures. We must be born again. Not "stop sinning" but regeneration. The natural cannot understand the spiritual. I do not know why so many seem to deny the supernatural in conversion. It is not a decision, it is not something that we do (or cease doing), it is the supernatural work of God. This is an ontological change plain and simple.

And this is not something that I just made up. That position is not backed by centuries of scholars but by over two thousand years of Church history and by Scripture.

The reason I stand so strongly against your denial of my position (that our fallen natures are the issue and we must be reborn) is because the doctrine sits at the heart of the gospel (and your denial of that position strikes at that truth). You say that I made up this doctrine, but read the Bible and the Early Church Fathers. Read Luther, Calvin, Owen....stick with John Owen a bit....John Gill. If this is what you are denying then you are way off base, brother. Orthodox Christianity recognizes the "fallenness" of man and the necessity of a supernatural work of God in the lives of those being saved. Unfortunately sometimes our churches and online theoreticians do not.

 

I disagree. Jews were not the only ones who "sinned and fell short of the glory of God." Also, the earlier passage says the same, but specifically to the Gentiles. Native Americans were not automatically "saved" because they did not have Scripture. They also were condemned. They also had a sin nature and they also sinned.

The passage does not say that the gospel message of salvation is known by all men (it is not about Pentecost either). It says all are justly condemned. Native American tribal people were not excluded from condemnation because they did not have Bibles. And God was not unjust for condemning them because they did have a general revelation of God and like all men even their consiences are witnesses to their sin. You are mixing up "rejecting what was revealed of God" with "believing the gospel message towards salvation."

Like I said, these are two issues. All men are justly condemned because they sin against God in that a general revelation of God has been made known (and David, BTW, lived before Pentecost). ALL men have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Even ancient Native Americans.

 

I'm sitting around reading...getting ready to head to gym...and ran across this commentary. You do not have to take that passage I offered (which you "disliked"). Here's a Reformed commentator who also believes that those "who never heard" have actually heard enough to be justly condemned:

John Gill:

“the Gentiles were not without hearing of God, even whilst they were destitute of a divine revelation”; “by the light that is given to them: it is light by which that which may be known of God is manifest; and this is the light of nature, which EVERY MAN has that comes into the world; and this is the internal, it is in him, in his mind and conscience, and is communicated to him by God, and that by infusion or inspiration...the very Heathen, who have only the light of nature, and are destitute of a revelation, have no colour or pretext for their idolatrous practices, and vicious lives, nor have they, nor will they have anything to object to God’s righteous judgment against them, or why they should not be condemned” (John Gill’s Commentary)

That the lost have rejected what has been made known of God by God, and that they are justly condemned is something that you are free to reject. But it is not a product of my "imagination." Neither is the fact that we are born with sinful natures.

 

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Another imaginative fellow, I suppose. This is what I find missing so often today. A very good (IMHO) explanation not only of the necessity of the new birth but of the new birth itself. Salvation is not merely a decision made given the right information.