" THE ORIGIN OF OUR SINFULNESS UNDERLINES OUR NEED FOR GOD’S GRACE ."

6. Q. Did God, then, create man so wicked and perverse?
A. No, on the contrary, God created man good[1] and in His image,[2] that is, in true righteousness and holiness,[3] so that he might rightly know God His Creator,[4] heartily love Him, and live with Him in eternal blessedness to praise and glorify Him.[5]
[1] Gen. 1:31. [2] Gen. 1:26, 27. [3] Eph. 4:24. [4] Col. 3:10. [5] Ps. 8.

7. Q. From where, then, did man's depraved nature come?
A. From the fall and disobedience of our first parents, Adam and Eve, in Paradise,[1] for there our nature became so corrupt[2] that we are all conceived and born in sin.[3]
[1] Gen. 3. [2] Rom. 5:12, 18, 19. [3] Ps. 51:5.

8. Q. But are we so corrupt that we are totally unable to do any good and inclined to all evil?
A. Yes,[1] unless we are regenerated by the Spirit of God.[2]
[1] Gen. 6:5; 8:21; Job 14:4; Is. 53:6. [2] John 3:3-5.

Scripture Reading:
Gen 1:26-31
Eph 2:1-10

Also;
Canons of Dort, Chapter III/IV, Articles 1-3

Singing:  (Psalms and Hymns are from the "Book of Praise" Anglo Genevan Psalter)
Psalm 18:9,10
Psalm 40:2
Psalm 92:6
Psalm 51:3,5
Hymn 24:1,3,5

Beloved Congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ!

We confessed in Lord’s Day 1 our only comfort in life and death – a comfort so rich and glorious because it takes our attention off ourselves and our struggles, and places it squarely on the work and grace of the Lord our Savior. We added in the second Question & Answer that there is a key to enjoying the riches God gives, and that key is knowledge, knowledge of three things.

Last week, with Lord’s Day 2, we began our discussion of the first of these three, "how great our sins and misery are." We heard God say in His Word that while in His law He demands perfect love –"with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind"- we are able only to hate. So, with humility, we repeated after God His revelation about our depravity, and confessed that "I am inclined by nature to hate God and my neighbor." Today, with Lord’s Day 3, we listen farther to what the Lord tells us about our sins and misery, and so say after Him what He reveals to us on the matter.

Indeed, congregation, the material God has revealed to us about our sins and misery is not flattering to ourselves. That explains why this material is not popular. Yet we may not avoid this material, simply because it is part of God’s revelation to us. And He has told it to us so that we might marvel the more at the grace He has shown us in sending His only Son for the likes of such sinners as we are. As we listen to the sermon, let’s keep in mind what we confessed in Question & Answer 2; to live and die in the joy of this comfort we need to know first the greatness our sins and misery.

I summarize the sermon with this theme:

1. our sinfulness is not from God
2. our sinfulness is from ourselves
3. our sinfulness is overcome by God

Our sinfulness is not from God

You and I, we confess in Lord’s Day 2, are "inclined by nature to hate God and [the] neighbor." The big question flowing from this statement is this: How come? Where does this hatred come from?

We read from Gen 1 that the Lord God created us. Okay, "did God, then, create man so wicked and perverse?" That is, did God create us in such a way that we hate God and the neighbor? The Lord nips that thought in the bud, for when He looked at His handiwork at the end of the sixth day He "saw all that He had made, and indeed it was very good" (vs 31). That includes man. No, God did not create us with hatred in our hearts.

What then? May we imagine that the man and woman God created on the sixth day were "very good", as in, on the outside you could detect no flaw - but nevertheless had a manufacturer’s defect hidden somewhere inside the intricacies of their personhood? Is it so that God –like today’s automobile manufacturers, for example- had done His best in making Adam, run exhaustive tests on Him, brought in specialists from here and there, and was finally content that this was the most perfect model possible and so pronounced His divine "very good" over His handiwork? Car manufacturers will, if a given flaw arises in numerous cars, issue a recall, and that’s to say that they’ll take responsibility for the flaw. Are we to think in similar terms in relation to God’s creation of man? That is, the flaw we acknowledge in Lord’s Day 2 is actually the result of a manufacturer’s defect; God should take responsibility for it, should issue a recall?

We might like to pass the blame on to God. Yet, congregation, we may not do that, for two reasons. In the first place, the Lord makes clear in His Word that He makes no mistakes. Moses is moved by the Lord’s Spirit to say of God that "His work is perfect" (Dt 32:4). Elihu admonishes Job’s friends like this:

"Therefore listen to me, you men of understanding:
Far be it from God to do wickedness,
And from the Almighty to commit iniquity" (Job 34:10).

The psalmist adds in Ps 92 that "there is no unrighteousness in Him" (vs 6). Ps 18: "as for God, His way is perfect" (vs 30).

May we think of a mistake in what God made, a manufacturer’s defect? To let our thoughts go in that direction, beloved, is to imply that to our minds there is weakness in God, imperfection in Him. And that is to have in your minds a thought of God that does not agree with what He has revealed about Himself. It’s certainly tempting for us sinners to think that God’s work is flawed, and we may be inclined to agree with many around us who dare to have a big mouth against God, but the fact of the matter is that such thoughts or words are sin. Our place before the God of all the earth is to be humble. Never can we fault Him with less than perfect work.

The second reason for insisting that there was no flaw in God’s handiwork is what God Himself says in Gen 1. The passage tells us that God created man in His "image". The notion of ‘image’ does not mean that we look like God; it means instead that we act as God acts. The governor-general of Australia, Sir William Dean, is meant to image Queen Elizabeth. Yet we all understand well that this does not mean that he is supposed to put on a dress. It means instead that where the queen would be expected to carry out a public function in a certain manner, Sir William Dean would do it in her place, and then would do it as the queen would do it. He is to reflect her authority, her compassion, her patience, etc.

The Lord God created the human race to image Him, to reflect what He is like. As He is without flaw, so God created Adam and Eve without flaw. As He is perfectly good, perfectly righteous, perfectly faithful, etc, so He created Adam and Eve to be perfectly good, perfectly righteous, perfectly faithful. The whole notion of our being created in the image of God underscores the point that we were created without a flaw. That is why we cannot and may not lay the blame for our depravity at the feet of God. Instead, we need to echo God’s revelation and admit that "God created man good and in His image, that is, in true righteousness and holiness." Or in the words of the Canons of Dort,

"In the beginning man was created in the image of God. He was adorned in his mind with true and wholesome knowledge of his Creator and of all spiritual things; his will and heart were upright, all his affections pure, and therefore man was completely holy" (III/IV, Art 1).

As God is holy.

But, I hear you say, did God not give man the opportunity to sin? And since God let man come to a choice to do this or that, to obey or disobey, is God not somewhat responsible for man’s depravity? I mean: if God hadn’t given man a choice, we wouldn’t have sinned – and so our depravity is to some degree God’s fault? It is true, congregation: God gave us the choice, gave us room to sin. But God, sovereign Creator, says that He made us totally responsible for whatever choice we made. The fact of the matter is that there is no fault in Him; "His work is perfect." As creatures we can’t understand how He, holy God, would permit sin to enter His world, permit the creature created in His image to fall into sin. He tells us that He is God and we but creatures, tells us too that He carries no responsibility for our depravity. Yes, we are inclined by nature to hate God and the neighbor. But in no way can God be held responsible for that hatred within us.

That brings us to our second point:

Our sinfulness is from ourselves

"From where, then, did man’s depraved nature come?" God in His Word draws our attention to the events of Genesis 3. Though God had categorically said that Adam and Eve were not to eat of the fruit of that one tree over there, they ate of it anyway. The result of this disobedience was that Adam and Eve lost their innocence; when God came to them they hid themselves in shame from the presence of the Lord. And when God found them among the trees of the garden, Adam and Eve both gave themselves to selfishness, to finding fault with another. Here is the root of our depravity. While before the fall Adam and Eve were "very good" (Gen 1:31), the Holy Spirit’s assessment of all men was true of Adam and Eve directly after the fall; they were "desperately wicked" (Jer 17:9). No longer were people "very good"; the Lord God, before He sent the flood upon the earth, looked and "saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually" (Gen 6:5; cf Gen 8:21). The Word of the Lord is clear; our wickedness is rooted in the fall and disobedience of our first parents in Paradise. So all we can do is repeat after God this horrible truth; "man’s depraved nature" comes "from the fall and disobedience of our first parents … in Paradise." Or in the words of the Canons of Dort:

"rebelling against God … [man] brought upon himself blindness, horrible darkness, futility, and perverseness of judgment in his mind; wickedness, rebelliousness, and stubbornness in his will and heart; and impurity in all his affections" (C of D, III/IV, Art 1).

The origin of our wickedness lies in the rebellion of Paradise.

For our part, brothers and sisters, we can understand that this fall into sin affected Adam and Eve, made them blind, dark, perverse, "desperately wicked". After all, they were there, they committed the deed. The harder question is: what about you and me? What did we do wrong that we should become perverse, wicked, rebellious?

The apostle Paul, congregation, writes to the Romans about the fall into sin. He speaks about the fall of Adam in Paradise and then adds that "all sinned" (Rom 5:12). His point is that Adam and Eve were not the only two people in Paradise who transgressed the command of God; all men were somehow there and sinned. We can attempt to explain how we were there (and there are a few theories around to help us understand), but when all is said and done, the Lord has not told us how we were present in Paradise. He’s told us only that we all sinned in the beginning, and since He the Creator says this of us creatures, we shall have to be content with that information, and embrace it as true. So we say after God in the Heidelberg Catechism that "there" –that’s Paradise- "there our nature became so corrupt that we are all conceived and born in sin." And we say in the Canons of Dort that "man" brought upon himself blindness, horrible darkness, etc.

Where, then, does our sinfulness come from? Our sinfulness comes from the events which took place in Paradise as described in Gen 3. Yet the responsibility for our sinfulness lies not with those of generations gone by; the responsibility for my sinfulness rests with me. In Paradise I sinned, I rebelled. Never, beloved, can we point a finger at somebody else –be it of this generation or of generations long gone- and claim that our depravity is his fault. The Scripture is very clear that God holds each person fully responsible for his own sinfulness.

This is a point that can hardly be over-emphasized today. The unbelieving world does not want to know of depravity at the core of our being; common secular belief has it that we’re all good by nature and sinful conduct arises from the environment in which one grew up or the things that happened to you years ago. Over against that error we shall need to cling to the revelation of God about our corruption; sinful conduct arises at bottom from the fact that we ourselves fell into sin in the beginning.

But it’s not just unbelievers that embrace such a thought. In this world are so many who claim to embrace the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and yet they deny the doctrine of total depravity. I refer to general evangelical christendom, and think of such writers as Janet Oke, Gilbert Morris, Bodie Thoene, and the like. Today’s evangelical christendom has embraced wholesale the error of Pelagius of centuries ago. Pelagius was the British monk who insisted some 16 centuries ago that children are born pure, with no inclination to sin. Each child becomes a sinner, he said, because of the example the children see from the adults around them. Put a newborn child on a desert island by himself, and if he were to survive to manhood, he would be perfect – for he’s never seen the example of sin from others. So, said Pelagius, the cause of someone’s evil conduct is not himself or his sinful heart, but his environment. At bottom it’s the same belief as embraced by humanists, be it with a Christian coating.

Some 400 years ago Arminius picked up the same heresy and propagated it from the pulpits of the newly reformed churches of the Netherlands. The Synod of Dort rejected this notion as unbiblical, and set the matter right in the Canons of Dort. Hence Article 2 of the Chapter we read earlier:

"Since after the fall man became corrupt, he as a corrupt father brought forth corrupt children. Thus the corruption has spread from Adam to all his descendants, with the exception of Christ alone, not by imitation, as the Pelagians of old maintained, but by the propagation of a perverted nature, according to the righteous judgment of God."

And yes, that is Biblical. When David after his sin with Bethsheba reflected on how he could fall into his adultery, he was moved by God’s Spirit to say this:

"Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,
And in sin my mother conceived me" (Ps 51:5).

David’s point was not that his mother was sinning was she delivered her child, nor that she was sinning when she conceived him. David’s point here is that his depravity goes back all the way to his birth, yes, to his conception. That is, from the very start of his existence he was inclined to sin. You see, David doesn’t agree with Pelagius or with Arminius about children at birth being perfect. Rather, one’s depravity has its roots in the very beginning, in the events of Genesis 3. That is why today, when parents bring their children to church for baptism, the parents need first to acknowledge before God and the congregation that their little bundle of joy is "conceived and born in sin and therefore subject to all sorts of misery, even to condemnation" – as the first question of the Form for Baptism has it. Evil, brothers and sisters, lies deep within every child we conceive and bear.

Precisely for this reason is the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ so very wonderful! Corrupt fathers bring forth corrupt children, and corrupt mothers do too – exactly because we are all involved in the fall in Paradise. That is why God from heaven on high had to intervene in the normal cycle of things on this earth if a perfect child was to be born. And that’s the marvel of Luke 1; Almighty God sent His Spirit to come upon a woman of Israel – with as miraculous result that the Child she conceived was holy, without sin. This one, of course, could obey the law of God, for He wasn’t sinful. More, since He was Son of God He could obey the law of God for us – so that we might receive redemption. Take away Gen 3 and all its horrors from your bibles, beloved, and the need for Christ’s holy conception and birth also disappears. Insist that our little ones are not conceived and born in sin, are not "desperately corrupt" from the word Go, and the need for the miracle of Christmas disappears. But, on the other hand, insist on the horrid reality of Gen 3, and the wealth of God’s grace in Luke 2 comes into sharp focus.

We come to our third point:

We ask in the last Question & Answer of our Lord’s Day whether we are "so corrupt that we are totally unable to do any good and inclined to all evil." We answer the question with a loud "Yes". Indeed, congregation, this too is something we are repeating after God. I think, for example, of Jesus’ word in Jn 6. He said to the Jews, "No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him" (vs 44). The word ‘draw’ in this text describes what you do to a log or to a stone; to move it you need to drag it, it’s dead weight, it’s not going to cooperate. Here’s the same thought as Paul writes to the Ephesians; he tells them that they are "dead", "dead in sin." And the dead, we realize, do nothing; the dead certainly do not work along with you when you try to move them. That is why that senior brother of the congregation told young Rev deCock before the Secession of 1834 that if he had to add even one sigh to his salvation, he’d be eternally lost. The "dead in sin" can’t save themselves, nor contribute to their salvation; they need to be drawn, dragged into God’s kingdom.

This inability to save the self is something the fathers at the Synod of Dort understood well, and that’s why the fathers –in the face of the teachings of the Arminians- made confession of what God said about how radical our depravity is. They put it like this:

"Therefore all men are conceived in sin and are born as children of wrath, incapable of any saving good, inclined to evil, dead in sins, and slaves of sin" (III/IV, 3).

Whereas the Arminians of today –the Janet Okes and the Gilbert Morrises and the Bodie Thoenes, etc- would have us think that people can decide to open their hearts to God –and all the while God is the perfect gentleman who wouldn’t dare impose Himself on someone who doesn’t want to serve Him- the Lord in His Word describes us as dead. And pity the ‘gentleman’ who waits for the dead to make a move; he’ll have to wait an awfully long time!

Dead. By way of analogy: the Arminian –and your average evangelical Christian with him- will compare our fall into sin as falling off a three-story building. To fall of the peak of this church would no doubt get you a couple of serious injuries, but there’s a good chance you could call out for help – and maybe even decide for yourself whether you want any help or not. But if you fell off the top of a 70 story building, you haven’t a hope of calling out for help, let alone deciding whether you’d like to receive any help – for you’re dead. The effects of falling off that 70 story building: that’s the picture Scripture gives of our fall into sin; we’re dead, dead in sin, and so in no condition to cooperate with any who would attempt to rescue us. That is why in our Lord’s Day we state emphatically that "we are totally unable to do any good and inclined to all evil … unless we are regenerated by the Holy Spirit." We say the same thing in the Canons of Dort:

"without the grace of the regenerating Holy Spirit they neither will nor can return to God, reform their depraved nature, or prepare themselves for its reformation" (Art 3).

So radical is our fall that we haven’t a hope of a chance of helping ourselves simply because the dead cannot help themselves.

This, brothers and sisters, is what the Lord has told us in His Word, and so this is what we repeat after Him. But why, congregation, has God told us this? Surely, there’s no comfort in this for us!

But there, beloved, we’re wrong! We read that passage from Eph 2, where the Lord describes how radically lost we are, how dead. Against that black background the words of vs 4 jump out in all their riches and glory. Listen:

"But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)…" (vss4f).

Notice how pointedly the apostle sets the glory of God against the background of our depravity. While we were dead, "God who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive." That the dead come alive can never be credited to the dead; that the dead come alive is fully and totally the work of God alone. And that’s the point of confessing the material of Lord’s Day 3; our contribution to rising from our spiritual graves is zero! Yet we’re alive, able to confess the delightful material of Lord’s Day 1 – and that’s fully God’s doing! If He has made alive persons dead in sin, tell me, will this God let you perish again? Is that the kind of God He is?! Amen.