The Reality of Sin

Chapter 10 of Authentic Christianity covers WLC questions 21-29. I will not put them up here for obvious reasons... 

Anyway, Dr. Morecraft starts out our study of 'the reality of sin' with the heading "The Origin of Sin".

In no way can God be considered its source, although He has, in fact, foreordained whatsoever comes to pass in time....It would be blasphemous to speak of the holy God as the author of sin....There is and can be no unrighteousness in the holy God, who is light, and in whom is no darkness at all. He cannot be tempted with evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone to evil (James 1:13). (651-652)

Sin originated with Satan, the Tempter (Gen. 3:1). (652)

Satan is a created reality. Jesus considered him to be a real, personal being (Mark 1:13), and so did His apostles (Eph. 2:1–3). He is thoroughly wicked and malicious. There is nothing in him to admire at all. His purpose is to overthrow God’s plan and kingdom, and to take God’s place in the world. He is a created being with many powers superior to those of man; but, being a finite creature, he is no rival or
threat to God. He is not omniscient, omnipresent or omnipotent. In fact, he is under the restraints of the sovereignty of God (Job 1) and he is fatally wounded and curtailed in his influences and activities by the cross of Christ and the preaching of the gospel. (652)

[O]riginally, Adam and Eve were created perfectly holy and yet capable of choosing evil. They had the power to remain upright, but they also were capable of falling. (652)

The fall was included in God’s plan so that we would gain far more in Christ than we ever lost in Adam. Adam was in a holy and happy condition before the fall, but there was always the possibility of falling away. Now, in Christ, believers are increasingly holy and happy, and someday we will be perfectly so. In addition,
there is no possibility of our falling away from this saved condition, now or ever. (653)

The temptation was a shrewd and evil conspiracy against God and man. Satan injected unbelief into Eve’s mind so as to produce actual disobedience. He attacked the integrity, goodness, power and truthfulness of the Creator, by asking Eve: “Indeed, has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden?’”...Satan attempted to make God look like a fool before man, so he could make man look like a fool before God. (654)

At the fall, God held Satan responsible for tempting man; but he also held Adam and Eve accountable for entertaining and embracing the temptation in their hearts (Gen. 3:14–19). God did NOT look at their sin in any of the following ways: (1) The existence of evil in man by virtue of the fact that he had a physical body, thereby
robbing sin of its ethical character and blaming the Creator of the body with the evil; (2) The unavoidable result of created limitations, which obliterates the distinction between moral evil and simple mistakes; (3) An illusion resulting from human ignorance, which would reduce phrases, as “moral behavior,” to meaninglessness; (4) The lack of God-consciousness resulting from the soul’s unfortunate connection with a physical organism, which makes man sinful because of his createdness; (5) Simple ignorance of the truth which education would remedy, which is contrary to the fact that sin is transgression against the law of God; (6) The opposition of our lower animal appetites to our gradual evolutionary development, which is an attempt to define sin without considering the fact that sin is a revolt against God and a breaking of His laws. 
All of these views of sin make sin a metaphysical, not ethical, problem for man, rooted in his own created humanness.(654-655)

Adam tried to escape the responsibility and consequences of his sin in environmentalism, i.e., the idea that man is what his environment makes him, thereby shifting the blame for his sin away from himself...Adam was blaming God for his sin as the cause of his problems....Human beings are totally accountable to God their Creator and Judge for all their actions and attitudes. (655)

"Can Satan force us against our will to sin? A. No, he tempts us and knocks at the door without, but our will and lust opens the door. Satan is [the] midwife that helps forward the birth but our will and lust is father and mother to all our sins." 6 Samuel Rutherford, Rutherford’s Catechism (Edinburgh: Blue Banner Productions, [1886] 1998), 24. (656)

Secondly, what is the character of sin?

Put very simply in the words of the Larger Catechism Q. 24: “Sin is any want [lack] of conformity unto, or transgression of any law of God.” The “law of God” is comprised of the commandments of the God, who is the one Judge, King, Lawgiver and Redeemer (Isa. 33:22), which He has given to all people in all ages and in all situations as their rule of life, individually and corporately; and which are revealed in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. (658)

Biblical Law is the one and only standard from God which defines sin for us, so that we can distinguish accurately between good and evil...Unless Biblical law is used to determine what is good and what is evil, we have no reliable standard, and man himself will become the final authority in all things, which always leads to tyranny. If God’s law is rejected, there can be no moral absolutes, no reliable authority to distinguish morality from immorality, except fallen human subjectivity, which “is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.” (658)

Man’s first act of disobedience can be described in many ways; but, primarily, it was a rejection of God as the supreme and final authority for life. (659)

Satan presented several lies to Adam and Eve:

[1] God is not in control of things. He does not know infallibly how things will turn out. There is no universal government, no absolute law to which all people are accountable. (660)

[2] They chose to believe that obedience to God’s Word enslaves a person and
cramps his life; and that obedience to self over God is true freedom. (660)

[3] Adam and Eve chose to believe that they, like God, had the ability to determine
good and evil without reference to God or to His Word. (661)

[4] ...fallen man can live beyond God’s standard of good and evil and beyond the consequences of doing evil, because he himself can know for himself and in himself what constitutes good and evil. (661)

How then is sin transmitted? Why are we sinners because Adam sinned? Dr. Morecraft uses Romans 5: 12-19 to explain this.

The history of the human race can be summed up in terms of what has happened because of Adam and what has happened because of Christ. This means that salvation is not simply a matter of forgiveness. It is a radical change in our whole
position before God: formerly we were “in Adam” and now we are “in Christ.” We have become members of the new kingdom, the new age, the new race, the new humanity, covenantally represented in Jesus Christ, just as we were a part of the fallen and condemned race, covenantally represented in Adam. (663)

In Romans 5:12–19, Adam is presented as the head of the fallen race. His actions were not exclusively private. He was a “public” person and his actions were those of a representative. He acted for those whom he represented; and he represented the entire, fallen, human race (1 Cor. 15:22)....All sinned in Adam our representative! His transgression affected his immediate descendants (Gen. 5:1–6:6) and everybody else since then (Rom. 3:23). (664)

In the following passages, Dr. Morecraft explains how "our covenantal relationship with Adam" affects us:

First, Adam’s sin, as our representative and covenantal head, constitutes all his descendants as sinners....And it gives us actual sinful human natures, which we inherit from our ancestors all the way back to Adam....In fact, we were constituted sinners in Adam’s loins....We sin because we are born sinners, which sinful nature we inherited from Adam. (664-665)

Second, Adam’s sin brought death and the reign of death to all his descendants. (665)

Third, Adam’s sin brought condemnation and divine judgment upon all his descendants, because of their culpability in his transgression. (665)

Returning to Romans 5...

The good news of this passage is that Christ has come to be the head of a redeemed race of people, those who believe in Him as their Lord and Savior. (665)

This representative-principle in the Bible has many important implications.
(1) THE SIGNIFICANCE OF HUMAN ACTIONS... (2) THE SOLIDARITY OF PARENTS AND CHILDREN: The actions of parents do affect their children....
(3) THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF UNIVERSALISM: “All” and “many” in Romans 5:12–19 represent two groups of people—all the many who are in Adam, and all the many who are in Christ.... (4) THE HEADSHIP PRINCIPLE ILLUSTRATED IN LIFE: The divinely delegated headship of husbands, parents, elders and civil magistrates demands submission as illustrative of our submission to Christ, our New Covenant Head. (5) THE SOLIDARITY OF THOSE IN CHRIST: Jesus deals with believers as parts of a whole body, as well as individuals.... (6) THE UNITY OF THE BIBLE: God deals with people from first to last on the same principles of grace, faith and Christ... (7) THE SOLIDARITY OF THOSE IN ADAM: We must expect the unregenerate to continue to conspire against and oppose the Church of Christ. (666-667)

The next topic is "The Consequences of Sin.

Fallen man’s entire life, personally and culturally, is devastated by sin. His whole life is marked by TOTAL DEPRAVITY and TOTAL INABILITY. (667)

Total depravity refers to the fact that “[e]very aspect of man’s being is affected and governed by sin. Mind and body, reason and emotions, will, sexuality, and all things else are changed, altered and warped by the Fall.” 18. R. J. Rushdoony, Systematic Theology, 1:445–446. (667)

To speak of total depravity is not to say that all people are as depraved as they can be, but that all people are sinful throughout every aspect of their being. (668)

Total inability has reference to the fact that sin has totally incapacitated  unregenerate man from delivering himself from his sinful plight, and from doing anything that is pleasing to God as long as he is in that unregenerate condition: “the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for IT IS NOT EVEN ABLE TO DO SO; and those who are in the flesh CANNOT please God” (Rom. 5:7–8, emphasis added). (669)

So then, a fallen human being is totally depraved and totally unable to deliver himself from his depravity. (670)

To be a little more specific on how sin affects us daily:

Fallen man has also lost his fellowship with God.... This close fellowship with God is restored only in the reconciling work of Jesus Christ (Eph. 2:16). (671)

God placed a curse on the central roles of fallen man and woman. He cursed the ground for Adam’s sake (Gen. 3:17), and He cursed child-bearing for Eve’s sake (3:16). Now, no fulfillment is to be found in these central roles and functions, which are so essential to the life of man and woman. Man was created to find contentment in meaningful work, but, apart from Christ, there are only “thorns”
and “sweat,” with a loss of meaning and purpose and calling. Woman is to find fulfillment in child-bearing, but apart from Christ, there is “pain” in childbirth and frustrating, embittering rivalry with man. (671-672)

The entirety of unregenerate, fallen human existence is under the fiery anger of Almighty God. (672)

Man’s only hope is to run to Jesus for refuge from the anger of God because Christ has taken the anger of God against sin in Himself and has removed the curse from all who receive Him as Lord and Savior (Gal. 3:13–14). (672)

What is the anger of God? It is comprised of three elements. (1) His great displeasure at all sin...(2) His passionate resistance to every will set against
His own will...(3) His fierce, judicial attack on all resistance and rebellion against Him in attitudes or actions... (672)

God’s anger is not arbitrary, irrational, impulsive or unjust. It is His eternal detestation of all sin in His universe. It is His holiness, offended and insulted by our sin, stirred to activity against it. It is, as someone has said, “the onslaught of the holy God asserting and establishing His absolute claim to dominion.” 22. http://tinyurl.com/ygsu5kw (673)

Dr. Morecraft points us to the things that can happen to man in this life as the result of God's righteous anger: 

(1) Because of God’s anger, He often blinds the minds of the unbelieving, as a righteous judicial response to the willful refusal of man to use his mind and life for God’s glory.

(2) In His judgment on people and their cultures, God sometimes “gives them over to a reprobate mind” (Rom. 1:24, 26, 28).

(3) In His holy anger God sometimes punishes the wicked by sending upon them “a deluding influence so that they might believe what is false in order that they all may be judged who did not believe the truth, but took pleasure in wickedness” (2 Thes. 2:11–12).

(4) Often God responds to the persistently disobedient who harden their hearts and stiffen their necks against Him, by hardening their hearts even harder, thus completing in judgment what the sinner had begun in rebellion.

(5) God’s wrath can also constantly terrify a sinner and make him a miserable slave to that terror, driving him to irrationality (Isa. 33:14; Gen. 4:13; Matt. 27:4).

(6) According to Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28, God sends a large variety of effects of divine wrath upon a rebellious culture: poor health, malignant diseases, and war (26:14–17), famine and economic collapse (26:18–20), wild animals (26:21–22), the devastations of war (26:23–26), national destruction, exile and slavery (26:27–39).

(7) God’s wrath brings death: “the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23).

(674-676)

Then he speaks of hell.

The most horrifying punishment of sin is what awaits the unbelieving sinner after death in HELL. It is a reality. (676)

Hell is a place and condition of unimaginable torment, misery, pain and woe....The existence of those in hell will be nothing else but one of sorrow, regret and uncontrolled and unceasing anger and rage, requiring unceasing punishment. (676)

Hell is a place of unquenchable fire. (676)

Hell is an actual, never-ending existence of wicked human beings in excruciating, everlasting fire, as a just punishment for their sin. (677)

Hell is a place where both the body and the soul of the wicked are tormented forever, with no hope of cessation or escape. (677)

He concludes with these thoughts:

You must come to grips with this truth which is as clear as daylight: HELL AWAITS THE IMPENITENT UNBELIEVER. (678)

Be more afraid of sin than you are of hell. (679)

There is also as short appendix, entitled "Predestination and Sin" from which I will just briefly quote:

Because God is the omniscient, all-wise and omnipotent God, He is able to render the actions of man certain without compelling or forcing man to do what is contrary to his will. All the actions of man are free and spontaneous on man’s part and predetermined by God. When man sins, he does so freely without any compulsion on the part of God. (682)

"Because sin is revolt against God and His Law, sin is totally an alien and impossible concept to ascribe to God, in commission or in origin, i.e., moral origin. The question [Is God the author of sin?] thus is not an admissible one…. Man being
a creature, he is totally the “product” of God’s creative purpose, and thus totally subject to the will and law of his Maker. Sin is a rejection of creaturehood and a demand for transcendence over and beyond the limitations of the creature.
This is the root and origin of sin." 4. Rushdoony, Systematic Theology, 1:443–44. Emphasis added. (683)

With that, Chapter Ten is concluded.

      Racheal

P.S. I had to chuckle when I hit page 666...it may seem rather obvious, but the real reason is because Savannah and I have a "666" game we play which we started several years ago watching elevator numbers at the Shades of Green resort in Orlando. A dear friend kept looking at us like we were nuts while we added, subtracted, multiplied, and divided the ever changing floor numbers on the elevators to come up with the number 666. It seems like this sleepiness-induced "silly" game was prompted from a book Mama was reading at the time.