Grace Notes 2024-07-10
I sense the need to address you this week on a neglected Biblical teaching known theologically as “Original Sin”. Before moving to a definition, I will start with some relevant Scripture Passages.
Genesis 3 describes how our first parents were beguiled by the devil and failed to trust in the goodness of God and the trustworthiness of His Word. They wanted to determine good and evil for themselves. By their disobedience they lost their state of innocence. Death became a new reality, just as they had been warned. Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden. This is called the “Fall”. That is, man fell from the lofty heights of life, innocence, and glory.
King David, the great psalmist of Israel, composed the lyrics describing the fallen human condition this way: “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me” (Ps 51:5). The Apostle Paul understood this predicament as well. In chapter 5, verse 12 of his letter to the Romans he echoed the Psalmist’s verse: “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.” In verse 19 Paul writes, “For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous.”
Original Sin is described this way in the Augsburg Confession: “It is taught among us that since the fall of Adam, all human beings who are born in the natural way are conceived and born in sin. This means that from birth they are full of evil lust and inclination and cannot by nature possess true fear of God and true faith in God.”
Suffice it to say, our conversations would be markedly different when it comes to sexual morality if we acknowledged and believed this doctrine! We would recognize that we still struggle to trust in the goodness of God and the trustworthiness of His Word…
Since You Asked…
What is the meaning of the Incarnation? The word incarnation is taken from Latin term incarnatio. It literally means “taking flesh” and in the Christian Faith it refers to God becoming human. In John 1:14 we learn of God the Son becoming flesh with the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. Indeed the child born to Mary was a man, but it is the insistence of the Christian Faith that Jesus was also fully God. He is sometimes called the God-Man. Without ceasing to be fully divine, inseparable and equal to God the Father and God the Holy Spirit; God the Son also fully assumed our humanity in the womb of the Virgin Mary. In this way Jesus mediates God to man and then also represents man to God. The mystery of the Incarnation becomes a necessary means by which Jesus’ death and resurrection accomplishes our salvation.