Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, we're so grateful for this morning. We're so grateful, Lord, for the Lord's Day, where we can gather together together. Lord, and glorify your name and worship you. Lord, we are blessed above all people. I pray today, Lord, that you would open our eyes and open our ears, Lord, to hear wonderful things out of your word. Send your Holy Spirit and enliven our hearts, Lord, we pray in Jesus' name, amen. All right, so this morning we're going to be embarking upon Chapter 6 of our Confession of Faith, the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith. And we're going to be dealing with the fall of the fall of man, of sin, and the punishment thereof. And this is five paragraphs in Chapter 6. So this topic today actually forms, or is a very important topic that helps form the backdrop of our understanding of the gospel. So this is a very important subject. Thus far in our confession of faith, we've looked at the doctrine of scripture, the doctrine of God, of God's decrees, and how he accomplished and accomplishes his decrees through creation and providence. So we're turning our attention now to man and to talk about how God made man upright, yet his falling into sin and its accompanying misery, punishment, and the effect that it's had on all of us, his children. So a proper understanding of man and the nature of his fallen condition has a major impact on how we understand the gospel. So it's important that we get this right. It's so important that a false understanding of the fall of man and its impact can result in a complete departure from biblical Christianity. And we've seen this in the past. The heresies of Pelagianism, the Pelagianism that came about in the fourth century and semi Pelagianism thereafter in some ways find their origin in not correctly viewing the fall of man and the condition of man because of that. Now Pelagianism, named after Pelagius, who was a British monk in the fourth century, denies that the fall of Adam affected his posterity as to the goodness of their moral nature and ability to live up to God's righteousness apart from the grace of God. He saw man as basically good. unaffected by the fall of Adam. He looked at newborn babies as blank slates with the innate power to choose either good or evil in the same way that Adam and Eve had the power to choose between good and evil before the fall, unaffected by a fallen nature. Thus, Pelagius denied original sin. In other words, the sin nature was not passed down. He didn't believe that the sin nature was passed down from Adam. to his posterity. Semi-Pelagianism, it's a later modification of Pelagianism, acknowledged original sin, so they didn't go as far as Pelagius, but believed that the unaided human will in itself was in itself able to move toward God as the first step in salvation, which makes God's grace contingent upon a human work. Basically, they saw the will as unaffected, unfallen, if you will. This, in effect, destroys God's grace because grace is a gift of God, not of works, as it says in Ephesians chapter 2. Now, as many of you know, Arminianism smells a little bit like semi-Pelagianism because of the way that they view the human will. But it gets there. Arminianism gets there in a more orthodox way than semi-Pelagianism does. Classic Arminians are not Pelagians or semi-Pelagians because they accept original sin and deny the native, and that's the key word, the native ability to choose God and righteousness without the aid of grace, which comes from the preaching of the gospel. So classic Arminians believe that God's grace is required. Yet the grace of God, in their view, is not efficacious for salvation. Rather, it just frees the will to accept or not the good news. Thus, grace may be resisted and prevailed over by the human will. Classic Arminianism is wrong because it leaves salvation up to the human will, but it's still much better than Wesleyan Arminianism, which is probably more common in our day, which sees the sacrifice of Christ as dispensing a prevenient grace to all men by freeing all men's wills, putting them in a neutral state, and enabling them to come to Christ without any particular efficacious work of the spirit. In other words, the efficacious work of the spirit has already been done to all men. It puts all men in this savable state where their will is freed, liberated, if you will. Thus, just as in classic Arminianism, man may boast over another man because he improved his grace, while those who are lost have not. This places salvation at the behest of the will of man and not the will of God, as the Apostle John so clearly says in his gospel when he explains whose will controls the new birth, John 1.13 says that those who are born again, which were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. So technically, Arminianism avoids the heresy of denying original sin and the corruption of the whole man. Nevertheless, they have found a way to place man in the same place as semi-Pelagianism by making the will of man reclaimed from its corruption and placed in a neutral position through what they call prevenient grace. To avoid the heresies of Pelagianism and Semi-Pelagianism, as well as the false teaching of Arminianism, we need to properly understand the fall of Adam, original sin, and the punishment thereof. We will look at this topic under two headings today, the nature of the fall and the result of the fall. We'll start with the nature of the fall. Let's read paragraph one of chapter six in our confession as we think about the nature of the fall. It says, although God created man upright and perfect, and gave him a righteous law, which had been unto life had he kept it, and threatened death upon the breach thereof, yet he did not long abide in this honor, Satan using the subtlety of the serpent to subdue Eve, and then by her seducing Adam, who without any compulsion did willfully transgress the law of their creation and the command given unto them in eating the forbidden fruit which God was pleased, according to his wise and holy counsel, to permit, having purpose to order it to his own glory. The first part of this paragraph briefly describes what many theologians describe as the covenant of works. Some other theologians would call it the Edemic Administration, but I like the covenant of works because it describes what it is. It says, God created man upright and perfect and gave him a righteous law which had been unto life had he kept it and threatened death upon the breach thereof. The reason this is called a covenant of works is that the means of life was through the works of Adam. Life was maintained and glory would be obtained through works. He had to obey God's particular commandment so as to avoid death, and implied in God's threat of death was the promise of reward, which would obtain in a more blessed condition than that in which Adam was created. The tree of life in the Garden of Eden represented this promise, which we see more clearly by scriptures comparing Adam and Christ as representative heads. Christ obtained the reward that Adam failed. This idea is developed more in the book of Romans in chapter five, that Christ and Adam are both representative heads of their respective offspring. Now some may object to this, saying that Adam was already upright and perfect, so how could more be desired? Did God create Adam in some sense that was not good? To claim a covenant of works with a reward of a higher life, if obedient, doesn't cast aspersion on the goodness of God's creation. Adam was created good, and yet he was made for a state of life that is greater than that with which he was first created. For one, Adam was subject to fall into sin. To be put in a position not subject to falling into sin is a higher and a more blessed estate. freedom from the possibility of death, a glorified body, a greater communion with God are all improvements upon the state in which man was first created. These are in fact the blessings that Christ the second Adam obtains for us and the blessings which Adam could have had or could have obtained through obedience to the covenant of works. So this arrangement of the covenant of works was God's design to bring about his purpose for man. We all know that Adam didn't attain to glory through his own obedience and that in God's wisdom he was to provide a second Adam who would earn the blessing of glory and that those who trust in him may receive his benefit of eternal life free from the possibility of death granted communion with God and a glorified body. What is the covenant of grace to us through the fulfillment of the covenant of work? What is the covenant of grace to us? What we call the covenant of grace was actually the fulfillment of the covenant of works through Christ. Christ is the one who fulfilled the works that we owed. The second Adam. Now let's briefly look at how Adam fell. Because Adam and Eve were made perfect and upright, the test of obedience must come not from the moral law, which by nature they were inclined to keep. They were made righteous. They were made holy. They wouldn't be inclined to commit those kinds of sins But they were tested with what we might call a positive command. The evil of eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was not intrinsic. Eating fruit is not intrinsically wicked. God had created them to eat fruit. What made eating this particular fruit wicked was only the fact that God commanded them not to eat it. taking advantage of this opportunity, beguiled Eve by telling her a lie, causing her to question the goodness of God. And she took the fruit and ate. Of course, Adam, being with her, willfully followed her into this sin and in an act of high treason against God, took the fruit from his wife's hand, and he, too, ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, of which he was commanded not to eat. Now, this is a description of what we call sin, what the Bible calls sin. The Baptist catechism defines sin as any want of conformity unto or transgression of the law of God. The Apostle John wrote, sin is the transgression of the law. And this is exactly what Adam and Eve did. They sinned against God. They broke his holy commandment. So Adam and Eve, by sinning against God, fell from their innocence and came under the curse of death, which God, coming to them, explained death as a cursed existence upon earth, separation from the presence of God, and the destruction of their bodies in due time, returning to the dust of the ground, which things are the subject of the second heading in our outline, which is the result of the fall." What happened? What happened because Adam and Eve fell into sin? Let's read paragraphs two and three in our confession. It says, 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. Paragraph three, they being the root, and by God's appointment standing in the room and stead of all mankind, the guilt of 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, unless the Lord Jesus sets them free. Paragraph two and three assert that by our first parents' sin, they fell from their original righteousness and into a state of corruption and death and that all their posterity by ordinary generation fell with them because they were in them as our confession words it now notice the words by ordinary generation we want to exclude Christ from this curse of a sinful nature Christ was not born with a sinful nature that's why that phrases in there. But this natural organic connection is not the only way we share in the original sin. Paragraph three goes further and asserts a federal or representative relationship between Adam and his offspring. It says that he, by God's appointment, stood in the room instead of all mankind. That is, he was our representative in the covenant of works. Adam stood in our place. This is an amazing proposition to consider. Think about that for a minute. This seems contrary to our sensibilities. It doesn't seem fair to us that God would curse all men on account of one representative man, one man. But I think we know that this concept isn't totally foreign to us. We accept the fact that we are citizens of a nation which are represented to other nations by a federal government. If our government chooses to enter a war, as we did, say, in World War II, it affects the whole nation, and we all must live with the consequences of those choices, whether good or bad. So we are represented, even in this time and place, by our own government. Parents represent their own children. There's many ways in our world where we, this idea of federal headship or representative headship is true. So God saw fit in his own good pleasure to make Adam the head of all humanity, the representative of all men. His success or failure was for all of us. The blessings or consequences of his actions we were to inherit. And we see this concept in Romans 5, verse 12. It says, whereby as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. This is speaking of even people that haven't actually sinned, they still die, and they die because they sinned in Adam. By one man, sin entered into the world, and death by sin. This is clearly saying that in Adam's first sin, we all sinned. And the guilt of that sin which brings death has passed upon all of us, all of the posterity of Adam. Romans 5.16, for the judgment was by one to condemnation. Verse 17, by one man's offense, death reigned by one. Romans 5, 18. By the offense of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation. Couldn't be any clearer. By one man's disobedience, many were made sinners. That's in verse 19. 1 Corinthians 15, 22 says, for as in Adam, all die. In Adam, all die. We're all in Adam. That's why we die. And verse 49 says, We have borne the image of the earthy. He's speaking of Adam here. We are in his image, if you will. Corrupted, sinful, under the guilt and curse of that original sin. The concept of Adam representing humanity is explicitly taught in scripture. I don't think we can deny that. In fact, it's because of this truth, however sad in the case of Adam's headship, It's because of this that we can have hope in Christ. Christ is presented as the representative of believers or of God's elect before God because he's our federal head and we receive all his benefits because what he did, what he did, we did in him. Just like we sinned in Adam, we're righteous in Christ if we're part of the elect. It says this in Romans 5 19, For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous. It cuts both ways, doesn't it? Let's turn our attention to a phrase in paragraph two, speaking about the effect of Adam's sin, where the confession says that the children of Adam are wholly defiled in all the faculties and parts of soul and body. We call this reality total depravity. That is that mankind are fallen in all the aspects of their being, body, mind, will and emotions. And those who are unregenerate, the body is the servant of sinful passions. The mind is bent towards evil. The will is choosing sin over righteousness and the emotions are dead to the life and the glory of God. Listen to a few scriptures that confirm these realities and literally we could go on all day. There's many scriptures that speak of this. But in Jeremiah 17, 9, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. This is the state of the heart. It is deceitful and desperately wicked. Who can know it? Romans 3, 10 through 12. As it is written, there is none righteous, no, not one. There is none that understandeth. There is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way. They are together become unprofitable. There is none that doeth good. No, not one. Ecclesiastes 7, 20. for there is not a just man upon earth that doeth good and sinneth not. Ephesians 2, 2 and 3, wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience, among whom also we all, he's speaking of Jews and Gentiles, believers or unbelievers, we all had our conversation or our manner of life in times past in the lust of our flesh fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind and we're by nature the children of wrath even as the others. We need to be careful and not misunderstand though this concept of total depravity. The word total is referring to the totality or all aspects of our being, not that we are as depraved as we could be. Some people misunderstand that and think that we're as wicked as we possibly could be. That's not the case. God's common grace restrains the evil in man such that even unbelievers can do what we might call civil righteousness. Such as caring for their own children, working for a living, saving someone at the risk of their own life, respect for authority and many other good and humanitarian deeds. Yes, even including the external worship of God. Totally depraved doesn't mean that there is no civil righteousness. Yet these things are all tainted by sinful desires and ungodly motivations. It is the difference between the righteousness of the Pharisees and the righteousness that God requires. Matthew 520 says this, For I say unto you that except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven. No doubt the Pharisees had much civil righteousness. It's not enough. It's tainted. It's corrupted by sin. Even if the right thing is done, it's not done with the right motivation. It's still sinful. In fact, Jesus found the self-righteousness of the Pharisees as particularly repugnant. Unless our good deeds are done for the ultimate glory and worship of God, that he might be honored, that he might be thanked, that he might be glorified, then they really aren't truly good deeds. Total depravity is a crucial truth that Pelagianism, Semi-Pelagianism and Arminianism either deny or compromise. Unless we agree with God that it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure and that we were born again not according to the will of the flesh nor of the will of man but of God as John says then we bring Glory to man as the difference maker in our salvation, the one who makes the difference, the one who made that ultimate choice. He's just a neutral, has a neutral will and he can choose for himself and therefore he separates himself from all the rest because he had the good sense to choose God and faith over the others. There's room for boasting there. Moving on, we must make a few remarks about the judgment of God upon sinners. Paragraph three asserts that all the children of Adam are now conceived in sin, and by nature the children of wrath, the servants of sin, the subject of death, and all other miseries, spiritual, temporal, and eternal, unless the Lord Jesus sets them free. Basically, this is saying that the human race is born into this condition of sin, death, and judgment, and that there is but one way of escape, and that it's through the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. But for the intervention of God, we are on our way to the final judgment of God upon this rebellious race. We're racing towards judgment. Unless Christ has intervened, that's where we are heading for the wrath of God for all eternity. Think about the human race in terms of kind begetting kind. Adam fell, and as a fallen man, he has begotten a race of fallen men. Lions do not give birth to lambs, and neither did fallen Adam beget unfallen men. We must be born again if we're to overcome our natural sinful estate. We must be born from above. This is why Jesus put so much importance upon being born again. He said, ye must be born again. This brings us to paragraph four, which says, from this original corruption, whereby we are utterly indisposed, disabled and made opposite to all good and wholly inclined to all evil, do proceed all actual transgressions. This is making a distinction now between original sin and actual transgressions. Not that the original sin was not an actual transgression, but that our sin that we personally commit spring from this original sin. It could be said this way, we don't sin to become sinners, we sin because we are sinners. We sin because we are by nature corrupted. We are by nature, it says, the children of wrath. We have been conceived and born in sin, as David said. This is the source of our personal acts of sin, the original sin, and it being conferred upon us. The guilt and the corruption of that sin is the cause of our actual sins. True repentance unto life is an acknowledgment, not just of some particular sin, but that we are sold to sin, that we are unable to justify ourselves, that we are in fact evil by nature. The publican who couldn't lift his eyes to heaven said, God be merciful to me, a sinner. He was repenting of himself. What he was by nature, he was a sinner. This was his identity. Thank God that he has mercy upon sinners. We didn't just mess up. We're corrupted. We need salvation. Our whole man needs renovated. We need to be born again. Finally, let's look at the last paragraph of chapter six. It says, the corruption of nature during this life doth remain in those that are regenerated, and although it be through Christ pardoned and mortified, yet both itself and the first motions thereof are truly and properly sin. This paragraph is an acknowledgement that Christians still sin, and that we still sin because of the remaining corruption of our Adamic nature. The death of the old man or the sinful flesh doesn't happen in its fullest degree all at once. We're not totally eradicated of the effects of the fall when we come to Christ, when we're born again. Think about it like we think about the death of Adam as we see the death of Adam in scripture. When he sinned, there was an immediate separation from God and he was cast out of God's presence. He was cast out of the Garden of Eden. Yet the physical expression of the death he was due came over the course of many years as his body decayed and eventually died. If not for the mercy of God, he would have continued to experience the greatest fulfillment of death, which would be hell itself. But this is how the sinful flesh dies. It was dealt a death blow by Christ. by our union with him in his death and resurrection. We are reckoned as dead to sin and alive unto God, as Romans chapter six says. Nevertheless, the presence of sin has not yet passed away. As Adam's mortal body weakened over time and then died, so it is with sin. It still remains until the death of our mortal bodies, when sin will then be finally and totally destroyed. That'll be a glorious day, will it not? I know death is looked at as a terrible thing, and it is. It's a curse, it's a terrible thing, but the sting of death has been removed. There is a blessing in death, and that is when our sinning stops. In that sense, we can look forward to it. I want to leave this topic on a positive note. Yes, it's depressing to think about the fall of man into sin and the punishment that we're due. It can be more discouraging to think that all of this sin and punishment came about at the hand of Adam, our representative. But the good news is that just as Adam represented us into sin and death, Christ represents all who believe as the second Adam, the one who vicariously gives to us his righteousness and life. Let's think about that. We identify as Christians, we identify with Christ. We're born again in Christ. We no longer identify as the children of Adam. We're the children of God. I want to close by reading from Romans 5, 15 through 21, which speaks of this glorious truth. It says, for if through the offense of one many be dead, that's sad news, much more the grace of God and the gift by grace which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many. And not as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift, but the judgment was by one to condemnation, but the free gift is of many offenses unto justification. For if by one man's offense death reigned by one, much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ. Therefore, as by the offense of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation, even so by the righteousness of one, the free gift came upon all men under justification of life. For as by one man's disobedience, many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous. Moreover, the law entered that the offense might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. that as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord. We're baptized into the Lord Jesus Christ, into his death, buried with him, and then we're raised to walk in newness of life. We are totally identified in Jesus Christ. Amen.