It has been said that forbidden
fruit creates many jams. The jam of all jams was created in the Garden of Eden –
the original sin. I am sure it tasted pretty good. Then came the aftertaste –
their eyes were opened! They realized that their first act of disobedience was in violating the one and only prohibition in the Garden! Adam and Eve had something in common with evil. The
damage was already done, and the rest is history. Forgiven they were (cf. Gn 3:21), but the ripple effect of their rebellion is still rippling...
They immediately had seen the
unseen – their nakedness. They covered up and tried to evade God by hiding, chased
by petty and pathetic rationalizations and excuses for their sinful actions. Listen
to Adam, “Then the man said, ‘The
woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate’”
(Gn 3:12). Adam
blamed his sin on God and Eve! We see no taking of any personal responsibility
on Adam’s part, only poor judgment and blaming others for it.
Hear Eve, “The serpent
deceived me, and I ate” (Gn 3:13). She was right; she was “deceived” (1 Tim 2:14), but it
was the serpent’s fault according to Eve. They both couldn’t deny that they both
pulled the trigger of their own lusts and “ate” the forbidden fruit. Take away
the serpent, and there is no deception. Take away Eve, and Adam wouldn’t have
been in this predicament! This is so us. Who created the environment, God! Wasn’t
it God who put the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden (cf. Gn
2:9)? Here come the ripples! When will we ever learn that fearing God is better
in every way imaginable than living with the ripple effects of sinful behavior?
Did we hear someone say, “Heaven?”
Ever identify or empathize with
another struggling with situations created by their willful sin? So much so
that telling them the truth is perceived as abrasive, insensitive, uncaring, self-righteous,
or judging!? We are all sinners; we all sin; so what right do we sinners have to
judge another sinner, right? It sounds “sound,” logical, rational, and the
right thing to do – judge not, that is (contrast Jn 7:24). Where is the fear of
God in the lives of His people? Why is there sensitivity to sin rather than
holiness? Who do we think wants believers not to concern themselves with the
fear of God (cf. 2 Cor 7:1) or being holy (1 Pet 1:15-16)? It sure isn’t coming
from God!
All sin is failing to live under the authority of God’s
Word. The only way to deal with the
ripples is to submit to the authority of the Word. Failure to do so is only a
fleshly attempt to repair the collateral damage. Ironically, it is in yielding
to the sinful nature that gets us into deep trouble in the first place, and it
is the same flesh we resort to in attempting to repair it! Is that crazy or what? “Go
ahead! Throw the fox back in the hen house to fix the problem!” For Adam and
Eve, it was making a leaf covering and hiding; yeah, that was the best the
flesh could do in the spur of the moment. It took, however, more than that to
address the gravity of their situation, our situation...
Now the ripples of their disobedience
are another matter. It didn’t end with two animals having to die (Gn 3:21) and the
expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden (Gn 3:24); it is still rippling today.
We are all in a state of dying (Rom 5:12), and creation is still groaning and
moaning as if in travail (Rom 8:22)! We desperately need to look to God for the
fix of our willful rebellion as believers (cf. 1 Jn 1:9), not to the flesh.
We can blame Adam for our sinful
nature since he was the representative of the human race that got all of this
business with sin and death started; this is the federal headship view. We
might be one of those who share in the blame, bearing the responsibility of
sin and death entering the world along with Adam; this is the natural or
seminal headship position. We may even be of the camp that embraces the notion
that all of this talk about Adam and sin is nothing more than a bunch of
nonsense because Genesis chapters 1-11 are only metaphorical or symbolical or figurative; this
is the liberal point of view. They all share a common thread, however; every
man will die whether you believe Adam is real or a myth. We may give a
theological reason; we can be certain that the world will give a biological
one.
For all intents and purposes, our
discussion between the two schools of theological thought on why we are sinners
will only be an introduction. Either we are in possession of a sinful nature
indirectly because of Adam as our representative head, or the reality of our
sinful nature is directly due to being in
and with Adam participating in the original sin in the Garden. Say what?
Now granted the latter may sound
a bit odd, but it really is a question of who was there at the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil that cataclysmic day: literally Adam and Eve only or
Adam and Eve literally and all of us figuratively? Don’t laugh just yet; this
is a view held by many evangelical scholars today!
It may come as a surprise that the
Apostle Paul, under the guidance of the
Holy Spirit during inspiration, mentions
both individual responsibility and representational accountability in Romans
chapter 5, as we will see later, but he makes no offer on either one. Does
his silence indicate another providential paradox? It wouldn’t be surprising.
The more you explain something the more schools of thought grow proportionately.
The point is we are all going to die sooner or later if we are not part of the
rapture generation. Since we are all descendants of Adam, we are in Adam, and
Paul makes it crystal clear, “In Adam, all die” (1 Cor 15:21a). Let me share
some commonalities of the federal headship and the seminal headship views.
A. Both the federal
and seminal hold to a historical view of Adam as a man and not metaphorical by
the liberal crowd. It is true; the first couple was not your typical Garden
variety type; they were created directly by God and sinless. They were historical
people as real as you and me. Job (Job 31:33), Moses (Gn 2:19), the Chronicler
(1 Chron 1:1), Jesus (alluded to Adam indirectly: Mt 19:4-6; Lk 10:6-9), Luke (
Lk 3:38), Paul (1 Cor 15:45), and Jude, half-brother to Jesus (Jude 1:14) all thought
of Adam as human. The point here is not that these character “witnesses” were
defending the historicity of Adam, but naturally treating Adam as if he was
real.
B. Both positions literally
subscribe to the idea that Adam and Eve are the parents of mankind. All descendants of Adam are “in Adam,” transcending all racial and ethnic barriers,
made in the image of God, now marred by sin and unrecognizable in man. People
struggle with the idea of total depravity. Perhaps they do not want to think of
themselves as such low estate, capable of committing the vilest of sins known
to man.
It is
too undignified and offensive to them. To the holiness of God, however, our sinful
nature is repugnant and reprehensible. So much so He gave His only begotten Son
to satisfy the penalty of man’s sin in order to provide a way for man to escape
his helpless spiritual mess. We must never lose sight of the gravity of our
sin, to do so would be highly inadvisable and unwise.
The truth is sin has corrupted us to the very atoms making up our body: 7x1027 or 7 billion, billion, billion atoms!1 Our intellect, emotions, and volition have been corrupted and compromised by sin. Sin has a debilitating effect on all of us. In some way, we can get a vision of man’s spiritual appearance before regeneration by visualizing Jesus’ physical appearance on the cross.
From
the grandeur of Adam being created in the image of God (Gn 1:26), his very rebellion
marred that spiritual image deplorably by dissipating and degrading it to such
a degree that it was unidentifiable from its original appearance (Gn 1:27); what
we walk away with from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is death and
depravity, totally, in all our parts, and Jesus took all of that ugliness of
our sin and shame to the cross and died for us (2 Cor 5:21) in order that we
can become a new creation in Christ by faith (2 Cor 5:17). It was a radical
offer with extreme results.
In
the process of Jesus becoming sin for us, His visage was marred beyond
recognition as He suffered, bled, and died for us. His death was so horrific
that He was not even recognizable as Jesus of Nazareth (Isa 50:6; 52:14). When
we sin against God as a believer, our sinful nature comes into human sight. It is
a hideous-looking creature, figuratively speaking, that can never be
domesticated but only eradicated through the Divine act of glorification. The only way to beat
the beast within down here is found in Gal 5:16. The more Christlike we become;
the more the image of God is renewed and reflected in us to others. Being a new
creation and being renewed are glorious truths. The flesh or sin nature will remain untameable and at the ready to spring back into life.
C. Both viewpoints
believe that there are two types of death as the result of sin contained in the
clause, “You shall surely die,” (Gn 2:17): spiritual death (Gn 3:7, 8; Rom
6:23) and physical death (Gn 5:5; Rom 5:12; 1 Cor 15:21a).
D. Both propositions maintain that all men are born sinners having a sinful nature (Psa 51:5; Rom 3:23).
Adam and Eve sinned and became sinners; their descendants sin because they [we]
are sinners (1 Cor 15:21a).
E. Fortunately, both theories hold
that the remedy for man’s separation from God and the penalty for sin is in
Christ alone (1 Cor 15:22b; Rom 5:19, 21; 6:23b).
Both Federal and Seminal views
share many things in common, but where they digress from each other orbits
around who is to blame for the entrance of sin into the world (Rom 5:12, 19-23): Adam
alone or all of mankind? I am almost positive you will relate to the federal
headship position more than the seminal view initially, but relating is not the
litmus test for validity. Where we see the divide is when the federal headship
view speaks of “in Adam,” and the natural or seminal headship takes it a step
further, in Adam with Adam. Under
federal representation, Adam was making the choice directly to partake of the
fruit for all of mankind (though he didn’t realize the extent of the ripple at
the time); under seminal participation, Adam was directly making the choice to
rebel while we were making the choice indirectly in and with Adam (equally
ignorant of the extent of the ripple effect).
This is the most challenging to
understand with the natural or seminal participation view. I mean; how in the
world was the human race in Adam when there were no other people on the face of
the earth? Fast forward to today; how can we
really be in Adam making that decision to rebel against God thousands of
years ago anyway? This is where we can easily dismiss this view due to appearing
outlandish. I don’t want to suggest that I understand seminal headship with
crystal clarity, but for me, the seminal participation viewpoint addresses some
things better than the federal headship view.
So, let me briefly present each view
and whet your appetite for further research. Theological discussions naturally
run deep and complex on this subject. My shallow inquiry is not meant to sway
you either way even though I hold to seminal participation in explaining what
is inherent in being human, and I am not suggesting it is not without its
challenges as well. With that said, I also am not inclined to denigrate those
who hold to the federal headship view for I know some very good men personally
and academically who prefer it over seminal participation.
Whatever view you decide to run
with, we are in Adam; we have a sinful nature; and we are going to die because we
are sinners. There is a remedy to getting out of this humongous jam! Both views agree on these
truths. <><
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| To Part 6 |
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1.
http://education.jlab.org/qa/mathatom_04.html
