Is Sin an Active or Passive Agent in Our Body?

 About a month ago I got intensely curious about sin. There’s a lot of it going around, lol. Holy Spirit took me to Romans 7:7-25

With great help from the Holy Spirit and Greek scholar Bill Mounce, it has been brought to my attention that sin is an active agent in the body. Mounce talks about a time his nephew preached an excellent sermon on James 4:1 which says (according to the translation you have), “What accounts for the quarrels and disputes among you? Is it not this—your desires that are at war in your members?” The translation I prefer to go with says, “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?” (NIV)

To me, this is a major revelation which deserves some technical attention with translation, so here’s Mounce:

“I know that the word “members” doesn't refer to members of the church, but the Greek is plural. ἐν τοῖς μέλεσιν ὑμῶν. These constructions are always interesting because they can refer to things among the group, and one of the uses of μέλος can refer to people who make up a group. “We who are many are one body in Christ, and individually members (μέλη) who belong to one another” (Rom 12:54; cf. 1 Cor 12:27; 2 Cor 12:5, 26; Eph 4:25). This is the second definition in BDAG.

And yet, many of the uses of μέλος in the New Testament refer to individual parts of our body. “So also is the tongue a small member, yet it boasts of great things” (James 3:5). “For just as the physical body is one yet has many members (μέλη), and all the members (μέλη) of the body, though many, are one body, so also is the body of Christ” (1 Cor 12:12). BDAG’s first definition is, “a part of the human body, member, part, limb literally, of parts of the human body.”

I had always assumed James was saying that the source of quarrels and disputes among a group of Christians was that people’s desires were at war with other people, but my nephew saw μέλεσιν as the individual members of each individual body. Most translations agree with him. “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?” (NIV) “What is the source of wars and fights among you? Don’t they come from your passions that wage war within you?” (CSB)

This creates a helpful picture of the battles we all face with sin. Sin is an active agent in our body, affecting every part of who we are. It creates such dissension within us that our internal battles produce Paul’s quandary: what he wants to do, he doesn't, and he doesn't want to do, he does. Sin’s battle plan is to affect every individual part of who I am, turning one part against another.

I think I shared this in an earlier blog, but one of the most helpful discussions I had along these lines was with Tom Schreiner. I had been thinking of sin as a passive agent, sitting around looking for opportunities to lead us down the wrong path. But Tom helped me see that sin is very active, very deliberate, a foreign agent that is alive inside each one of us and is aggressively working to accomplish it's purposes. As Paul writes, “It is no longer I myself who do it (i.e., sin), but it is sin living in me” (Rom 7:17). This reminds me of those Science Fiction movies where the alien goes into the human body, is nurtured by the body, and ultimately controls the body.”

Wow!

This should all lead us to go easy on ourselves and others and pray daily (minute by minute even) for God’s protection and healing. Sin is so much bigger than what I understand or attribute, but thanks be to God so also is His grace in the blood of Jesus Christ, and the ministry of Holy Spirit. I’m starting to agree with and relate to how Paul concluded Romans 7, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Rom. 7:24–25).

Source: https://www.billmounce.com/blogs/mondaywithmounce/sin-active-and-foreign-agent-your-body-james-4-1

Going Beyond the Gun Debate

By Jim Daly, President of Focus on the Family

Jim Daly has said what I have tried to articulate in my own heart. "We have a tourniquet-level problem – a sick culture, crumbling families, and an abandonment of basic values and decency – and we’re attempting to treat it with band aid solutions that do nothing to address the cause." 

Photo courtesy of www.PBS.org

Last week’s extraordinary public debates about guns, both at the White House and at CNN’s Florida Town Hall, were highly emotional and contentious events. Over a week after the catastrophic carnage in Parkland, Florida, debate concerning what to do about it is raging red-hot, and understandably so. People committing violent acts with guns is a growing epidemic, particularly in schools. Since early January, in addition to Florida, there have been school shootings in Texas, Louisiana, Kentucky, Alabama, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

In response, students around the country have been marching in protest and sharing their thoughts, demanding that legislative action be taken to end the escalating violence. At the White House, Andrew Pollack, an understandably distraught father whose daughter Meadow was murdered in Parkland, Florida, pleaded with President Trump.

“How many schools, how many children have to get shot?” he asked. “It stops here, with this administration and me, because I’m not going to sleep until it’s fixed.”

These parents and students are asking reasonable questions. They figure that doing something is better than doing nothing.

It’s wise to examine existing gun laws and ask if there changes or additions that need to be made, and also ask whether the myriad of relevant laws already on the books are being adequately enforced. This is the role of our legislature. But if the debate starts and stops there, the heartbreaking and horrific events of February 14th will happen again.

That’s because at its core, the current debate has to be about more than guns. What’s being protested is a symptom of a much larger problem. You cannot legislate away evil. No laws on the books can change the human heart.

What these students should be protesting and discussing is the lost culture they’ve inherited from us. It’s a lost culture that mocks or ignores God and His timeless teachings, living for only carnal pleasures and temporary thrills.

These students now protesting are demanding we talk about and enact more gun control legislation – because we live in this lost culture where increasingly people can no longer control themselves.

History suggests that freedoms are taken away from people who cannot manage them.  This is how freedoms die, when a culture is no longer morally able to exercise those freedoms in a proper and responsible manner.

We’re living through a moral freefall, but few in positions of influence are willing to talk about it. Instead, we hear much talk about its symptoms (like gun violence), and many of these same people want to ban the very things that will lead to healing and revival.

Those with a fervent and sincere faith are mocked and marginalized rather than respected and uplifted for their deeply help religious convictions.

Vice President Mike Pence was maligned the other day by Joy Behar on ABC television for acknowledging that he prays for wisdom and waits to hear for guidance from the Lord.

“It’s one thing to talk to Jesus,” Behar told her audience. “It’s another thing when Jesus talks to you … That’s called mental illness … Hearing voices.”

It’s ironic that the popular television host is lampooning the idea of God communicating wise counsel. I would point out to Ms. Behar that Jesus preached against murder – yet many think it’s illegal for high school students to hear that teaching.

I also can’t help but note that many of those who are demanding more gun laws in an effort to protect innocent life find it entirely acceptable that 4,000 innocent lives are lost each day at the hands of abortionists. More than 55 million babies have been legally killed in the U.S. in the last few decades, and yet our societal elites seem genuinely befuddled why life is viewed so cheaply by those who resort to those shocking incidents of violence.

I realize this is a complex discussion, but let’s get it all out on the table. Where is the Left’s grief for these children? Senator Schumer (D-NY) was high-fiving his colleagues after blocking a vote on the pain-capable bill limiting abortion to the first twenty weeks of development. Most developed nations don’t allow abortion past 12-13 weeks.

What’s more, those who champion the ideal of families with both a mother and a father are regularly dismissed as being hopelessly out of touch with modern mores. Yet, six of the deadliest mass shootings committed in the United States since 2005 were committed by young men without fathers in the home. In addition, studies show that young men without dads are roughly three times more likely to carry a gun and deal drugs than those living with a father.

The opioid crisis is devastating the country on numerous levels. In fact, experts identify it as the primary factor in causing life expectancy in the US to drop for the first time in many years. At the same time, those of us who oppose the legalization of marijuana are somehow socially square and standing in the way of progress.

We have a tourniquet-level problem – a sick culture, crumbling families, and an abandonment of basic values and decency – and we’re attempting to treat it with band aid solutions that do nothing to address the cause.

It was John Adams who famously remarked that “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Was our nation’s second president foreshadowing our current crisis? Was he pointing to the fact that someday – maybe today – we would no longer be trusted with these freedoms because we can no longer control our wrong impulses to harm others?

President Adams was identifying the key issue which undergirds all our freedoms. I pray that we heed his warning. History is clear: godlessness and immorality leads to an outbreak of evil.

Source: http://jimdaly.focusonthefamily.com/going-beyond-gun-control-debates/?refcd=594702&utm_campaign=594702&utm_medium=email&utm_source=announcements

Pelagianism

Pelagianism views humanity as basically good and morally unaffected by the Fall. It denies the imputation of Adam's sin, original sin, total depravity, and substitutionary atonement. It simultaneously views man as fundamentally good and in possession of libertarian free will. With regards to salvation, it teaches that man has the ability in and of himself (apart from divine aid) to obey God and earn eternal salvation. Pelagianism is overwhelmingly incompatible with the Bible and was historically opposed by Augustine (354-430), Bishop of Hippo, leading to its condemnation as a heresy at Council of Carthage in 418 A.D. These condemnations were summarily ratified at the Council of Ephesus (A.D. 431).

Discussion

Pelagius was a monk from Britain, whose reputation and theology came into prominence after he went to Rome sometime in the 380's A.D. The historic Pelagian theological controversy involved the nature of man and the doctrine of original sin.

Pelagius believed that the consequences of Adam and Eve’s sin (the Fall) were restricted to themselves only; and thereby denied the belief that original sin was passed on (or transferred) to the children of Adam and thus to the human race. Adam's sin merely "set a bad example" for his progeny and Jesus "set a good example" for mankind (thus counteracting Adam's bad example). Pelagianism teaches that human beings are born in a state of innocence with a nature that is as pure as that which Adam was given at his creation.

As a result of his basic assumption, Pelagius taught that man has an unimpaired moral ability to choose that which is spiritually good and possesses the free will, ability, and capacity to do that which is spiritually good. This resulted in a gospel of salvation based on human works. Man could choose to follow the precepts of God and then follow those precepts because he had the power within himself to do so.

The controversy came to a head when Pelagian teaching came into contact with Augustine. Augustine did not deny that man had a will and that he could make choices. But, Augustine recognized that man did not have a free will in moral issues related to God, asserting that the effects original sin were passed to the children of Adam and Eve and that mankind’s nature was thereby corrupted. Man could choose what he desired, but those desires were influenced by his sinful nature and he was unable to refrain from sinning.

Pelagius cleared himself of charges, primarily by hiding his real beliefs; however, at the Council of Carthage in 418 A.D., his teachings were branded as heresy. The Council of Ephesus in 431 A.D., again condemned Pelagian doctrine and it was banished in the Greek portion of the church. However, in the West, the teachings held on, primarily in Britain and Gaul.

Pelagian teaching was replaced with Semi-Pelagianism which sought a middle ground between Pelagianism and Augustinianism, but it too was condemned at the Second Synod of Orange in 529 A.D. However, elements of Semi-Pelagianism continued in the Western (Roman) church. It emerged again after the Reformation in modified form in Arminianism which was rejected by the Reformed churches at the Synod of Dort in 1618-1619 A.D.

 Source: http://www.theopedia.com/pelagianism

Autopsy of a Moral Fall

"Now when evening came David arose from his bed and walked around on the roof of the king’s house, and from the roof he saw a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful in appearance.So David sent and inquired about the woman. 

And one said, 'Is this not Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?' David sent messengers and took her, and when she came to him, he lay with her; and when she had purified herself from her uncleanness, she returned to her house."

(2 Samuel 11:2-4)

A Few Thoughts on Free Will

By John Piper

Before the fall of Adam sinless man was able to sin. For God said, “In the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Genesis 2:17).

As soon as Adam fell, sinful man was not able not to sin, since we were unbelieving,and “whatever is not from faith is sin” (Romans 14:23).

When we are born again, by the power of the Holy Spirit we are able to not sin, for “sin will have no dominion over you” (Romans 6:14).

This means that what Paul calls “the natural man” or “the mind of the flesh” is not able not to sin. Paul says this in Romans 8:7-9

The mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. (See also 1Corinthians 2:14).

How then shall we think of free will?

It is not a saving power. In his freedom to will, fallen man cannot on his own do anything but sin. Such “free will” is a devastating reality. Without some power to overcome it’s bent, our free will only damns us.

We could stop here and turn with joy to the gospel truth that God overcomes our resistance, gives us life, wakens our dead inclination for Christ, and freely and irresistibly draws us to himself (John 6:44, 65; Acts 13:48; Ephesians 2:5; 2 Timothy 2:25-26).

But it sometimes helps to answer objections. One common objection is that, if we “cannot” do what is right, and “can only” do what is sin, then we are not acting voluntarily and cannot be praised or blamed.

Here is part of John Calvin’s answer to this objection:

The goodness of God is so connected with his Godhead that it is not more necessary to be God than to be good; whereas the devil, by his fall, was so estranged from goodness that he can do nothing but evil.

Should anyone give utterance to the profane jeer that little praise is due to God for a goodness to which he is forced, is it not obvious to every man to reply, “It is owing not to violent impulse, but to his boundless goodness, that he cannot do evil?”

Therefore, if the free will of God in doing good is not impeded, because he necessarily must do good; if the devil, who can do nothing but evil, nevertheless sins voluntarily; can it be said that man sins less voluntarily because he is under a necessity of sinning? (Institutes, II.3.5)

Date: July 8, 2009 Source: http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/a-few-thoughts-on-free-will)