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.
NEXT-
Chapter 7, paragraph 3d: “…man being now utterly incapable of acceptance with God upon those terms on which Adam stood in his state of innocency.”
I don’t know of a single respectable denominational stance that does not affirm the “utter incapability” of fallen men to attain salvation by intellectual assent. Not one. Christianity traces the source of all problems back to what we rightly title as “The Fall”. This is when Eve and Adam committed high treason on behalf of us all.
Adam’s fall was not an advancement of humanity. It did not “make love possible” as the synergist bizarrely demands. It was the loss of love. It was the loss of freedom. It was the sin of all sins. The first couple reproduced fallen humanity ever since.
Adam’s relationship to God from his start was one based entirely in perfection. In a sense, righteousness was a non-issue before The Fall. Since The Fall it is the issue. They were given a commandment that would eventually lead to their sin when they rebelled against it. They were “innocent”. Naked and unashamed. They were in a state of “innocency”. Then they sinned. Because we all now enter life under the curse of Adam’s sin, we are not at all able to stand as he first did. That’s what this part of the confession is affirming. He started on a level where we can’t at all start. We begin from our start as criminals shown guilty by all the evidence. If we want to try to stand on our own laurels before God, we’re like people with a million-dollar debt vainly attempting to negotiate away a dollar of it.
We are utterly incapable to be accepted by God as we are. We must be made acceptable. How does that happen? It happens only through the Cross of Jesus Christ. He purchased a pardon. The Cross is the reconciliation of man to God. It promises something even greater than what was lost in Adam. It is the plenary means by which God justifies the outrageous scandal of his perfect forgiveness. Why would God ever forgive Adam? Because of what the Son has done. You, reader, are this very day either in Adam or you’re in Jesus.
Leave a Reply