LBCF 1689 Reflections (part 72)

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 6.3: “They being the root, and by God’s appointment, standing in the room and stead of all mankind, the guilt of the sin was imputed, and corrupted nature conveyed, to all their posterity descending from them by ordinary generation, being now conceived in sin, and by nature children of wrath, the servants of sin, the subjects of death, and all other miseries, spiritual, temporal, and eternal…”

I cannot imagine a more consistent truth with what I observe in the world all around me. Who doesn’t need some legitimate explanation for the foulness that we see in the world around us? Who can look at war and not feel absolutely horrified? There must be a root reason why men rape children? Why are men and women prostitutes? How can a mommy (and a daddy) ever hire a contracted killer to slaughter her baby in her own womb? How can a man depart from his wife? Why so many lies? Why this spiritual entropy all around us in every area? There has to be a satisfactory explanation for the rampant sexual immorality around us?! Why do men deny that God even exists? Why are there idolaters not submitting themselves to the only God who any man anywhere at any time has ever seen?! What an insane world! Why do we not need to teach our kids to be selfish? Why do we have to teach them kindness? The precise manifestation of the SIN nature we all have isn’t common. Sometimes our SIN manifests itself very differently from one person to another, but all sins (big and small) have their root in the fallen human heart. Jesus says, “…things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and those defile the man. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders”, Matthew 15:18-19. It’s because God says through Jeremiah that “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked…” and so then asks, “…Who can know it?” that God says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding” in the Proverbs. The Bible diagnosis us exhaustively. Many men are too proud to go to the doctor. Scripture diagnosis this universal corruption perfectly well by taking it back to the original Fall of Adam. Us being born into SIN is often called “Original Sin”. It is easily statistically verifiable. 10 out of 10 people die. 10 out of 10 people die because of their sin. The Fall was your fall too. If in Christ, his raising can be your raising. The Fall started all things bad. The underestimation of this event is at the root of many theological mistakes. This confession here affirms it properly. Notice the comprehensive categories affirmed as having been touched. The Fall touches everything.

We’re like our father Adam. No one can deny that children take on the characteristics of their immediate parents. With interventionary exceptions, children behave as their parents do. In the spiritual realm, with no exceptions, we act like our father Adam without spiritual intervention. Believers, by the power of the Holy Spirit will act more and more like their adoptive heavenly Father as they grow up in their new lives. Consider 1 Corinthians 6:9-11’s demonstration of the changes in nature: “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.” Grace changes everything, reader. Jesus says, “A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit” in Matthew 7:18 specifically to demonstrate the change in nature from Adam to Christ in the lives of believers…the same people in view in verse 11 of 1 Corinthians 6 cited above.

Despite how dispersed we are on earth since Babel, there remains a uniform wickedness in the hearts of all men. Outside of the Resurrection of Jesus this is no hope to repair it. Jesus’ work on the Cross is the restoration of all things. All sinners, all seas, all animals, all realms. Everything stained by sin will be eternally perfected by the finished work in perfection of the Son of God.