Reflections on the Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689. 23 Aug 14 began a perhaps unbroken, orderly, and personal journey through my favorite written confession of faith. This will be my personal reflections on this beloved written codification of the Christian Faith which is according to a Baptist flavor.
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Chapter 6.2: “Our first parents, by this sin, fell from their original righteousness and communion with God, and we in them whereby death came upon all: all becoming dead in sin, and wholly defiled in all the faculties and parts of soul and body.”
Adam and Eve, as we know them, were the first parents of everyone reading this. When you think about it, though we can appear very spread out in this world, we’re really not all that different. Different colors and peoples develop through separation and breeding closer to one’s gene pool. Nations like the United States that are known for being a melting pot of numerous people groups produce another type of person usually recognizable by people from without. This confession affirms that we are all the descendants of two literal historical people.
Sin is not just a matter of quantity. It’s also qualitative. This means that a person is a “sinner” not just because of the number of sins they’ve committed, but simply in that they’ve sinned at all. There’s something else or more to it. Something we can only understand the closer we come to God.
I believe that that the case can be made that Adam was the representative head of all of humanity. When he fell in his free-willed rebellion, he became such over all of fallen humanity. Jesus The Christ is the representative head now of all of redeemed humanity. Hence it’s written: “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.” 1 Corinthians 15:22. The “all” needs to be rightly divided, but both Adam and Jesus represent separate “alls”. Paul even calls Jesus the “last Adam” saying: “So also it is written, “The first man, Adam, became a living soul.” The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.” There will not be a “third” Adam hence it’s most proper to call Jesus the “last” one. Who represents you before God today?
The doctrine of depravity is a hole shaper for the fitting pegs of a great deal of proper theology. Men are completely and utterly helpless. Adam only reproduces naturally after his kind. Christ only reproduces spiritually after his kind. Being born again is an adoption from the family of Adam to the family of Jesus. Prior to being “born again” we are dead under the sentence that surely awaits us all as sinners at our judgment. A good God will be our problem. A not so good one may be ok, but not the God of the Bible. We are wholly defiled. We need a Savior. Nothing is left in us since Adam’s fall that can profit us before God. Not our hearts, not our wills, not our minds. The flesh profits nothing- John 6:63. Ultimately, without mercy, it’s all (hevel) vanity.
Christ redeems every part of us when he redeems any part of us. We are removed from the entropy of the souls of all of mankind through the Cross alone.
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