This forth article starts out with the glories of the creation. That God in the beginning created all things and declared them to be “Very Good”. That man himself was created in that beautiful image and likeness of God himself. In citing Ecclesiastes 7:29
“Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions.”
We see the pattern from creation to the fall. “God hath made man upright…” But in his desire for self he has “…sought out many inventions.” It is the inventions of man that got us in trouble in the garden and that continued to this day to be our downfall. We invent a God after our own image rather than fall in worship to a god who transcends man. We invent a religion of works dependent on the will of man, and yet these 17th century Baptists knew full well that “Salvation is of the Lord”…and so they boldly proclaimed. We have a tendency to blame Adam for our sinful nature once we have come to accept that he stood in our place in the garden. But we would have done no better. As Ecc 7:29 states, “God hath made man upright”, the word for “Man” in that verse is the same root Hebrew word that is translated Adam. It is Adam who was made upright, had we been there to represent our self we could have fared no better. Since that day none have been created upright, but have been conceived in sin and brought forth in iniquity. We are standing in peril of the judgment of the very sin that we want to deny. We must come to grips with that sin by way of repentance, agree with God about that sin and see that our nature is bound in sin until he looses it. At that time we can then find the satisfaction for that sin in the person of Jesus Christ who also stood in my stead and place when he died for those very sins that I could not pay for. He (the second Adam) has set in motion a new creation to restore to even better than the original the place of man in relationship to God. The fall is a tragic event that we cannot gloss over and must not take lightly. But it was an event that did not take God by surprise and he has more than satisfied the need for restoration and reconciliation in the person and work of Jesus Christ.
*******************************
ARTICLE IV
(1) In the beginning God made all things very good, created man after His own(2) image and likeness, filling him with all perfection of all natural excellency and uprightness, free from all sin.(3) But long he abode not in this honor, but by the (4) subtlety of the Serpent, which Satan used as his instrument, himself with his angels having sinned before and not(5) kept their first estate, but left their own habitation; first(6) Eve, then Adam being seduced did wittingly and willingly fall into disobedience and transgression of the Commandment of their great Creator, for the which death came upon all, and reigned over all, so that all since the Fall are conceived in sin, and brought forth in iniquity, and so by nature children of wrath, and servants of sin, subjects of(7) death, and all other calamities due to sin in this world and for ever, being considered in the state of nature, without relation to Christ.
1) Gen. 1; Col. 1:16; Heb. 11:3; Isa. 45:12
2) Gen. 1:26; 1 Cor. 15:45-46; Ecc. 7:29
3) Psa. 49:20
4) Gen. 3:1, 4, 5; 2 Cor. 11:3
5) 2 Peter 2:4; Jude 6; John 8:44
6) Gen. 3:1, 2, 6; 1 Tim. 2:14; Ecc. 7:29; Gal. 3:32
7) Rom. 5:12, 18, 19; 6:23; Eph. 2:3
1 comment:
Post a Comment