Bill Fitzhenry's Thoughts For Today…

Understanding important truths from the Bible….

Sin And Death 

Ephesians 2:1-2  NASB

And you were dead in your trespasses and sins,

² in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. 

I have been a Christian for fifty years.  In the summer of 1963 I made a deliberate choice.  I, being informed from a book that was representative of John Calvin’s doctrine, Calvin’s Calvinism, resolutely decided this was what the Bible teaches.  In the forty-nine years since that time I have not found any other way that can represent the doctrine of Scripture. 

I wrestled with what is known as “Limited Atonement,” in the light of particular Scriptures.  I also had problems with “Irrestible Grace” philosophically.  Over time, not a long period, I came to see the truths in these doctrines and have a full agreement with them. 

But there was something that became increasingly apparent by both those who agreed and those who disagreed.  The truth concerning God and salvation can be understood only to the degree that man’s sinfulness as the Bible represents it, is accepted. 

There are two books I read early along that left a lasting impression on me.  Luther’s Bondage of The Will and Thomas Boston’s Fourfold State of Man.  Both authors centered their understanding of man upon his fall into sin and the consequences. 

Luther stated as the main issue about man and salvation is man’s loss of any free will as he lives prior to conversion.  Is he responsible - yes.  Is he free to affect a change in himself toward­­­­  God or His law -  no. 

Boston showed man to be so radically evil in his nature that any change to the good must come from without.  Both would take Romans 8:7-8 as a statement to this affect.

⁷ because 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,

⁸ and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. 

The question then before Election,. Atonement, or Irresistible Grace is how dead is dead?  Or just what does Ephesians 1:1-2 say?

1.  This is directed toward believers.  “You”, those he will later describe in Vs 5 are the ones addressed.  So to begin Paul states as the history of all believers or more correctly according to Vs 5 those who “by grace have been saved”, that they have been “dead”.
2.  There is an active condition in which the deadness abides, “in your trespasses and sin”,
3. This deadness is productive.  “You formerly walked,” is descriptive of what the deadness produces.  This person who is described is active in malignant opposition to God and indulgent in every manner of sinful activity.

If this was the only description of man’s depraved separation from God, a way might be found to excuse it.  But it is ordinary in the Biblical description of the unconverted.  To deny this is to be forced to resort to something other than Scripture.  Man in the Scripture required radical renovation.  This is called regeneration, a new birth, a new creation, a new man, and there is never any explanation for this renovation separate from God’s sovereign intervention.

Titus 3:5

⁵ He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, 

John 1:13 places man’s need in such a clear light that any who deny the necessity of a sovereign unilateral intervention must either delete or deny the truth that is there. 

¹³ who were ^]born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

John states in 1:13 “Who were born”, that is those who have exercised saving faith, “not of” and he names every method man can claim.  Not by inheritance; not by human priestly action; nor by the human will or free will. It can’t be his by nature; another cannot do it for him; and he can’t do it for himself. 

Then he places an adversative, “but” those means already named being ineffectual, there is something or someone who is effectual, “born of God”.  If any of the other means work God is not necessary.  He can inherit salvation as the Jew thought he would.  He can be circumcised, baptized, confessed, catechized, or given communion by another man.  He can exercise his will to change.  He can see his need.  He can feel his deficiency.  He can make a profession, walk the aisle, meet every requirement of any church, but until God he is dead and undone. 

I read one who said that a child is not a sinner under the condemnation that I just stated until he gets old enough to knowingly sin.  In other words he becomes a sinner by sinning. 

First that you know what this is - it is a doctrine known as Pelagianism, condemned by the Church in the 5^th century.  Secondly, there is a simple question to be answered.  If babies are not sinners why do they die?  The Bible gives one reason for death, Romans 5:12. 

That reason is sin.  No sin – no death.  Where there is sin, there is death.

¹² 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—

All the truth of Grace follows from this.