Original Sin

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Great stuff, folks. Will respond soon. Busy with family!

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Originally Posted by shazeep

don't get me wrong; original sin exists. i have no problem with that. but when it was made into a doctrine, "Original Sin"--incidentally, over the objections of many, splitting a Council, and the Est'd church at the time apart--it became, i am convinced, our downfall.

If Paul taught it it must be doctrine.

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Originally Posted by jfrog

I suppose it depends on what you mean by original sin.

Sin nor a tendency to sin was passed down to us from Adam. However, as we are all sons of Adam we all take part in his curse, natural death. That curse is upon us whether we sin or do not sin. I mean even Jesus died.

Romans 5:12 "...so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:"

Romans 5:19 For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.

There is no other verse that will back this thought up: Adam sinning did not make us sin.

No, but it made us sinners.

Therefore I conclude the best reading of Romans 5:19 is that one man's disobedience made us as sinners before God and likewise one man's rightouesness made us as righteous before God. What I have posted here is the clear teaching throughout romans, that we are not righteous but that we are counted as righteous because of Christ's righteousness.

Right. That is original sin.

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Originally Posted by thephnxman

Do you believe, then, that all children who die are accursed and go to "hell"?

No, because although SIN is in a person, it is not "activated" until a moral commandment is introduced, which Paul referred to in Romans 7:7-11. And infants cannot comprehend a moral commandment.

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Originally Posted by shazeep

no kidding, arg
Amen, that is the question--good stuff, Gd. I believe when they "ate" they "died," to God--spiritually, that is; the only kind God cares about, imo.

Not totally true. The Hebrew in Genesis 2 literally says IN DYING YOU SHALL DIE. It's more than "surely die." It speaks of a process. DYING. They died both spiritually and physically due to sin.

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Originally Posted by Godsdrummer

There is another view that many Christians seem to ignore, that being that scripture speaking of death does not mean natural death. But separation from relationship with God.
Yes I have heard the detailed explanations of Gen 2:17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
When God said this that what is meant is that man would begin to die. But God did not say that he said "in the day you eat you shall die" and we know from the story that as soon as Adam and Eve ate there was a change in the way they viewed God and each other. First they realized they were naked and then they hid from God. This happened the very moment they ate the fruit.
I must ask the question, why are we so wrapped up in the natural death, and resurrection, when we should be more about the new life Christ death brought to mankind in this life?
Did not Jesus say he came to bring life and that more abundantly? Was this speaking of eternal life or this life?

It is both physical death and spiritual death. ALL DEATH came from sin, not just one kind.

It is for this reason that after Romans 5 speaks of death due to Adam, in Romans 6 we read JESUS LITERALLY HAD TO PHYSICALLY DIE on the cross to take our deaths upon Himself, of which we partake in baptism. We're baptized into his physical death not a spiritual one. he did not have to die spiritually alone for us to be baptized into his death. he had to physically die. If it is only spiritual death, then why use physical death as the penalty as though physical death had nothing to do with sin and Adam would have physically died, anyway?

NATURAL death is as much a result of sin as spiritual death. We're wrapped up in it because of what Paul taught, not just in Romans 5 but Romans 5 through 6 with physical death of Christ to redeem us.

Heb 9 says all of us are appointed to die once, and that is why Christ died once in our stead.

Heb 9:27-28 KJV And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment: (28) So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation.

[shazeep]

i find little to argue with there; yet it begs the question why we don't abate physical death by redemption?

Originally Posted by Lafon

Sean, Paul's words of Ephesians 2:2 & 5, that is, the phrases "who were dead in trespasses and sins" and "we were dead in sins," are what we refer to as "figures of speech," a word or phrase for one thing that is used to refer to another thing in order to show or suggest that they are similar.

If Paul was stating that we were truly "DEAD," then what possible way would the likes of you and I ever had to even come to an understanding of our lost condition or to petition God for forgiveness? Are the dead capable of thought, speech, or the ability to speak? Of course not! So we see we were NOT literally "dead" in our sins, else we would have been rendered utterly incapable of even knowing that we were lost sinners!

ok, i maintain that the spiritually dead are dead to God; yet even those are still obviously capable of thought and speech, and may desire the Spirit. My reasoning here is that God has power over mortal life, but grants choice in the spiritual life, iow physical death is meaningless to God--and possibly our preoccupation with it is an indicator of this--and Spiritual death--which we only see poorly, if at all--is all that matters to God.

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Spiritual death is very real. When the bible speaks of dead in trespasses and sins, it refers to spiritual alienation from God. And when we are saved we are baptized into HIS DEATH to resurrect into newness of life right now. We are alive from the dead after having been baptized into His death. And Rom 6:11 says we must reconcile ourselves to be alive unto God, so we can then render ourselves to Him as those alive from the dead.

[shazeep]

see the way in which the doctrine, however, has impeded this in the West; for your soul's sake, imo.

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Originally Posted by shazeep

see the way in which the doctrine, however, has impeded this in the West; for your soul's sake, imo.

We're talking bible, not "western" doctrine.