Theological Term of the Week

original sin
The sinful state and condition in which all human beings are born, which includes both imputed guilt (the guilt of Adam’s sin counted as their own) and inherited corruption (a disposition toward sin).

• From scripture:

  Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned— 13 for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. 14 Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.

  15 But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. 16 And the free gift is not like the result of that one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. 17 For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.

  18 Therefore, as one  trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. 19 For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous. 20 Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, 21 so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 5:12-21 ESV)

  And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. (Ephesians 2:1-3 ESV)
  

• From The Westminster Shorter Catechism, Question 18:

  Q. 18. Wherein consists the sinfulness of that estate whereinto man fell?
  A. The sinfulness of that estate whereinto man fell, consists in the guilt of Adam’s first sin, the want of original righteousness, and the corruption of his whole nature, which is commonly called original sin; together with all actual transgressions which proceed from it.

• From Big Truths for Young Hearts by Bruce Ware:

  Because Adam was the first man, and all the rest of us, throughout all of history, have come from Adam, then God saw all of the rest of us connected to Adam and his sin. So, when Adam sinned, all of us who come from Adam would receive sin in our own inner lives (our natures). We  are born into this world, then, with sinful natures that trace back to the sin of Adam. And when Adam sinned, all of us who come from Adam also received God’s judgment of death, the punishment for sin that God gave to Adam and all who come from Adam. Adam’s sin, then is our sin. Adam’s sinful nature results in our having sinful natures. And Adam’s guilt and condemnation carry over to our being guilty and deserving death.

• From Systematic Theology by Wayne Grudem: 

  When we first confront the idea that we have been counted guilty because of Adam’s sin, our tendency is to protest because it seems unfair. We did not actually decide to sin, did we? Then how can we be counted guilty? Is it just for God to act this way?

  In response, three things may be said: (1) Everyone who protests that this is unfair has also voluntarily committed many actual sins for which God also holds us guilty. These will constitute the  primary basis of our judgment on the last day…. (2) Moreover, some have argued, “If any one of us were in Adam’s place, we also would have sinned as he did, and our subsequent rebellion against God demonstrates that.” ….

  (3) The most persuasive answer to the objection is to point out that if we think it is unfair for us to be represented by Adam, then we should also think it is unfair for us to be represented by Christ and to have his righteousness imputed to us by God. For the procedure that God used was just the same, and that is exactly Paul’s point in Romans 5: 12-21….

Learn more:

1. R. C. Sproul: Adam’s Fall and Mine
2. Jonathan Edwards: The Great Doctrine of Original Sin Defended
   
3. Curt Daniel: Original Sin (mp3)
4. S. Lewis Johnson: The Imputation of Adam’s Sin to His Posterity (mp3 and more)
   
5. Tom Hicks: Problems with Denying Imputed Guilt
6. Here at this blog: Quiz on Original Sin
   

Related terms:

• federal head
• imputation
• total depravity

Filed under Anthropology 

Do you have a a theological term you’d like to see featured here as a Theological Term of the Week? If you email it to me, I’ll seriously consider using it.

I’m also interested in any suggestions you have for tweaking my definitions or for additional (or better) articles or sermons/lectures for linking. I’ll give you credit and a link back to your blog if I use your suggestion.

Clicking on the Theological Term graphic at the top of this post will take you to a list of all the previous theological terms organized in alphabetical order or by topic.

Theological Term of the Week

fall (of man)
Adam’s and Eve’s disobedience in the Garden of Eden to God’s command that they not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil—a rebellious act that resulted in God’s curse upon Adam, Eve and all their offspring.

• From scripture:

  Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.

   He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” 2 And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, 3 but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” 4 But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. 7 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.

  8 And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” 10 And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” 11 He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” 12 The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” 13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

  14 The Lord God said to the serpent,

  “Because you have done this,
  cursed are you above all livestock
  and above all beasts of the field;
  on your belly you shall go,
  and dust you shall eat
  all the days of your life.
  15 I will put enmity between you and the woman,
  and between your offspring and her offspring;
  he shall bruise your head,
  and you shall bruise his heel.”

  16 To the woman he said,

  “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing;
  in pain you shall bring forth children.
  Your desire shall be for your husband,
  and he shall rule over you.”

  17 And to Adam he said,

  “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife
  and have eaten of the tree
  of which I commanded you,
  ‘You shall not eat of it,’
  cursed is the ground because of you;
  in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
  18 thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
  and you shall eat the plants of the field.
  19 By the sweat of your face
  you shall eat bread,
  till you return to the ground,
  for out of it you were taken;
  for you are dust,
  and to dust you shall return.”

  20 The man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living. 21 And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.

  22 Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” 23 therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. 24 He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life. (Genesis 3 ESV)

• From The Belgic Confession Article 14:

  We believe that God created man from the dust of the earth and made and formed him in his image and likeness—good, just, and holy; able by his own will to conform in all things to the will of God.

  But when he was in honor he did not understand it and did not recognize his excellence. But he subjected himself willingly to sin and consequently to death and the curse, lending his ear to the word of the devil.

  For he transgressed the commandment of life, which he had received, and by his sin he separated himself from God, who was his true life, having corrupted his entire nature.

  So he made himself guilty and subject to physical and spiritual death, having become wicked, perverse, and corrupt in all his ways. He lost all his excellent gifts which he had received from God, and he retained none of them except for small traces which are enough to make him inexcusable.

• From ESV Study Bible, Biblical Doctrine: An Overview:

  Sin entered the human race in the Garden of Eden through an attack of Satan, who led Adam and Eve to doubt God’s word and trust their own ability to discern good and evil (Genesis 3). Sometime prior to this, Satan (a fallen angel) must himself have rebelled against God and become evil, though Scripture does not say much about that event. Satan’s strategy was to bring disorder to the created order by approaching Eve and getting her to lead her husband away from God. Adam, so it appears, allowed his wife to be deceived by failing to take up his God-ordained responsibility to lead and protect her. Satan then questioned God’s goodness, wisdom, and care for Adam and Eve by suggesting that God was a miserly legalist in his prohibition of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. Satan then simply lied, saying, “you will not surely die” (Gen. 3:4). Such deception and rebellion against God stem from a failure to trust him and be satisfied with him and his commands and arrangements. Satan and our first parents demanded autonomy and rejected God’s authority, and this has been the source and shape of human sin ever since. Unbelief, pride, and selfishness lead us to think we know better than God and to try to put ourselves in his place. All people, in their fallen condition, are indeed “lovers of self … rather than lovers of God” (2 Tim. 2:3, 4).

• From Systematic Theology by Louis Berkhof: 

  The first sin of man was a typical sin, that is, a sin in which the real essence of sin clearly reveals itself. The essence of that sin lay in the fact that Adam placed himself in opposition to God, that he refused to subject his will to the will of God, to have God determine the course of his life; and that he actively attempted to take the matter out of God’s hand, and to determine the future for himself. Man, who had absolutely no claim on God … cut loose from God and acted as if he possesed certain rights as over against God. The idea that the commands of God was really an infringement on the rights of man seems to have been present already in the mind of Eve, when, in answer to the question of Satan, she added the words, “Neither shall ye touch it, ” Gen. 3:3. She evidently wanted to stress the fact that the command had been rather unreasonable. Starting from the pre-supposition that he had certain rights as over against God, man allowed the new center, which he found in himself, to operate against his Maker. This explains his desire to be like God and his doubt of the good intention of God in giving the command. Naturally different elements can be distinguished in his first sin. In the intellect it revealed itself as unbelief and pride, in the will, as the desire to be like God, and in the affections, as an unholy satisfaction in eating the forbidden fruit.

Learn more:

1. Tim Challies: Fall
2. Theopedia: The Fall
3. J. I. Packer: The Fall
4. GotQuestions.org: How did the Fall affect humanity?
   
5. Bob Deffinbaugh: The Fall of Man in God’s Perfect Plan 
6. J. Gresham Machen: The Fall of Man
7. A. A. Hodge: Of the Fall of Man, of Sin, and of the Punishment Thereof
8. S. Lewis Johnson: The Fall of Man (mp3) 

Related terms:

• federal head
• original sin
• sin

 Do you have a a theological term you’d like to see featured here as a Theological Term of the Week? If you email it to me, I’ll seriously consider using it.

I’m also interested in any suggestions you have for tweaking my definitions or for additional (or better) articles or sermons/lectures for linking. I’ll give you credit and a link back to your blog if I use your suggestion.

Clicking on the Theological Term graphic at the top of this post will take you to a list of all the previous theological terms organized in alphabetical order or by topic.

Theological Term of the Week

justification
A judicial act of God in which he pardons sinners and accepts them as righteous on the basis of Christ’s work on their behalf, which includes both his representative obedience to the law and his representative endurance of the penalty for their disobedience.

• From scripture:

  But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— 22 the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. 26 It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

  27 Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith. 28 For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law. (Romans 3: 21-28 ESV)

  Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith…. (Philippians 3:8-9 ESV)

• From The London Baptist Confession, 1689, Chapter 11:

  Of Justification

  1. Those whom God effectually calleth, he also freely justifieth, not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins, and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous; not for anything wrought in them, or done by them, but for Christ’s sake alone; not by imputing faith itself, the act of believing, or any other evangelical obedience to them, as their righteousness; but by imputing Christ’s active obedience unto the whole law, and passive obedience in his death for their whole and sole righteousness by faith, which faith they have not of themselves; it is the gift of God.

  2. Faith thus receiving and resting on Christ and his righteousness, is the alone instrument of justification; yet it is not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no dead faith, but worketh by love.

  3. Christ, by his obedience and death, did fully discharge the debt of all those that are justified; and did, by the sacrifice of himself in the blood of his cross, undergoing in their stead the penalty due unto them, make a proper, real, and full satisfaction to God’s justice in their behalf; yet, inasmuch as he was given by the Father for them, and his obedience and satisfaction accepted in their stead, and both freely, not for anything in them, their justification is only of free grace, that both the exact justice and rich grace of God might be glorified in the justification of sinners.

  4. God did from all eternity decree to justify all the elect, and Christ did in the fullness of time die for their sins, and rise again for their justification; nevertheless, they are not justified personally, until the Holy Spirit doth in time due actually apply Christ unto them.

  5. God doth continue to forgive the sins of those that are justified, and although they can never fall from the state of justification, yet they may, by their sins, fall under God’s fatherly displeasure; and in that condition they have not usually the light of his countenance restored unto them, until they humble themselves, confess their sins, beg pardon, and renew their faith and repentance.

  6. The justification of believers under the Old Testament was, in all these respects, one and the same with the justification of believers under the New Testament.

• From Systematic Theology by Wayne Grudem: 

  The practical implications of the doctrine of justification by faith alone are very significant. First, this doctrine enables us to offer genuine hope to unbelievers who know they could never make themselves righteous before God: if salvation is a free gift to be received through faith alone, then anyone who hears the gospel may hope that eternal life is freely offered and may be obtained.

  Second, this doctrine gives us confidence that God will never make us pay the penalty for sins that have been forgiven on Christ’s merits. Of course, we may continue to suffer the ordinary consequences of sin (an alcoholic who quits drinking may still have physical weakness for the rest of his or her life, and a thief who is justified may still have to go to jail to pay the penalty for his or her crime). Moreover, God may discipline us if we continue to act in ways that are disobedient to him (see Heb. 12:5-11), doing this out of love and for our own good. But God can never nor will ever take vengeance on us for past sins or make us pay for the penalty that is due for them or punish us out of wrath and for the purpose of doing us harm. “There is therefore now no condemnation for those that are in Christ Jesus” (Rom 8:1). This fact should give us a great sense of joy and confidence before God that we are accepted by him and that we stand before him as “not guilty” and “righteous” forever.

• From J. I. Packer in Sole Fide: The Reformed Doctrine of Justification:

  Of all the Reformers’ many biblical elucidations, the rediscovery of justification as a present reality, and of the nature of the faith which secures it, was undoubtedly the most formative and fundamental. For the doctrine of justification by faith is like Atlas. It bears a whole world on its shoulders, the entire evangelical knowledge of God the Saviour. The doctrines of election, of effectual calling, regeneration, and repentance, of adoption, of prayer, of the Church, the ministry, and the sacraments, are all to be interpreted and understood in the light of justification by faith, for this is how the Bible views them. Thus, we are taught that God elected men from eternity in order that in due time they might be justified through faith in Christ (Rom. 8:29f.). He renews their hearts under the Word, and draws them to Christ by effectual calling, in order that he might justify them upon their believing. Their adoption as God’s sons follows upon their justification; it is, indeed, no more than the positive outworking of God’s justifying sentence. Their practice of prayer, of daily repentance, and of good works springs from their knowledge of justifying grace (cf. Luke 18:9-14; Eph. 2:8-10). The Church is to be thought of as the congregation of the faithful, the fellowship of justified sinners, and the preaching of the Word and ministration of the sacraments are to be understood as means of grace because through them God evokes and sustains the faith that justifies. A right view of these things is possible only where there is a proper grasp of justification; so that, when justification falls, true knowledge of God’s grace in human life falls with it. When Atlas loses his footing, everything that rested on his shoulders collapses too.

Learn more:

1. GotQuestions.org: What is justification?
2. Phil Johnson: Justification: Defending the Heart of the Gospel (pdf)
3. Philip Eveson: The Great Exchange
4. S. Lewis Johnson: Riches of Divine Grace: Justification. 
   
5. John Piper: Justification and the Diminishing Work of Christ (mp3)
6. Here at this blog:
   
   1. Making It Legal
   2. Christ’s Active and Passive Obedience in Our Justification
   3. Quiz: Justification (Answers 1, 2, 3, 4)

Related terms:

• active obedience of Christ
• double imputation
• imputation
• passive obedience of Christ

Filed under Salvation.

Do you have a a theological term you’d like to see featured here as a Theological Term of the Week? If you email it to me, I’ll seriously consider using it.

I’m also interested in any suggestions you have for tweaking my definitions or for additional (or better) articles or sermons/lectures for linking. I’ll give you credit and a link back to your blog if I use your suggestion.

Clicking on the Theological Term graphic at the top of this post will take you to a list of all the previous theological terms organized in alphabetical order or by topic.