Good morning to all of you, and a welcome to all of our guests, especially. Shepherd's Conference is indeed upon us, and in the spirit of Shepherd's Conference, and expecting that we'd have several guests with us, I thought I'd do something a little different this morning, rather than preach a sermon. This morning I'm going to teach a seminar. We are going to theology class this morning. I want to do a version of a message that I did for Sundays in July not too long ago entitled, The Garden and Our Guilt, Why All People Are Born Sinners. Now, before you run for the exit and prove yourselves to be sinners, I want to make the observation that we are all born sinners, aren't we? By nature, every human being comes into this world sinful. In Psalm 51 5, David says, behold, I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin my mother conceived me. He says he was sinful from his very conception. There was never a time when I was and my sinfulness was not. He says something similar in Psalm 58.3. He writes, the wicked are estranged from the womb. Those who speak lies go astray from birth. So our corruption does not need to be stepped into. It doesn't need to be learned. We are born this way. Paul says the same thing in Ephesians 2, 3. He says we are by nature children of wrath. Nothing at all has to happen to us to make us this way. We are born in such a way that by nature if nothing and no one were to intervene, we would be just recipients of the wrath of God against our sin. Now how did this happen? The effects of sin are all around us. The world is in complete and utter chaos. And not just that, the effects of sin are not just outside of us, but inside of us. We hate, and lust, and covet, and envy. We are jealous, and bitter, and unforgiving, and spiteful. How did we get this way? What got us into this mess, and how do we get out? Well, sin got us into this mess, and as unpleasant as it is, it's necessary for the believer to study the doctrine of sin. just as the glory of the stars is only enjoyed against the dark contrast of the night sky, so also the glory of our salvation is only enjoyed against the black backdrop of our sin. If we underestimate the severity of humanity's natural state and the gravity of our need before a holy God, we will inevitably underestimate the sovereign power of God's remedy and the glory of His salvation. Conversely, if we're going to worship God for the fullness of His saving work in our lives, we must devote ourselves to understanding man's fall into sin, as well as the effects of that fall on the whole of mankind. And so that's what we'll do. I have slides for you this morning because we're gonna go a little deep. But the slides will be available to you. We thought, how could we get them to you ahead of time? So you just have them on your phone. That didn't work out. They'll be up when the audio is up. But this is just for you to follow along because it's a little bit heavier than normal. But I think that it's worth it, again, to understand the depths from which or into which we have fallen to see the heights to which we have been rescued. To understand the gospel by which we've been saved, we need to understand the state from which we've been saved. And so I think that this is absolutely essential for every believer in Christ. But before we jump right into there, we need to be reminded, just for a moment, of man's original state. Man's original state. We have to grasp that state from which we've fallen before we can grasp our fall into sin. And we remember that Genesis 1, 31 says that God made man very good. Ecclesiastes 7.29 says that God made man upright. This means that Adam and Eve were not morally neutral creatures. They were created in what the Reformed tradition has called original righteousness, or untested righteousness, or others would call it innocence. There was no bent in human nature to sin. There was nothing native to the constitution of Adam that was corrupt in any sense. And therefore, if it weren't for sin, Adam and Eve would never have had to die. The wages of sin is death, Romans 6.23. And so if there was no sin, there would be no death. Mortality is an intrusion into the nature of man. It is not original to our nature. But even though man was created very good and morally upright, Adam did not exist in the highest possible state of righteousness that man could attain. Why do I say that? Because Adam's original righteousness was a fallible righteousness. That is to say, it was possible for Adam to fall from such a state. And of course, he does fall from that state. In Adam's original state, he was both able to sin and able not to sin. But that state of being able not to sin, but also being able to sin is not a state of perfect blessedness. It is not the eternal life which sinful humanity receives through salvation in Christ. Praise God that our final state of righteousness in heaven will not be one from which we can fall. In the eternal state, glorified believers will not be able to sin and able not to sin. We will be unable to sin. And so while Adam's original state could in some sense properly be called original righteousness, his original righteousness was not an immutable righteousness. It was not an infallible righteousness. It was a righteousness from which he could and did fall. And so that brings us to man's probation. In the wisdom of God, God was pleased to test this original, fallible, untested righteousness of man. And this test, if passed, would have exalted man from his state of untested, fallible righteousness to a state of confirmed, infallible righteousness, a state from which he could not fall, a state of eternal life. And God did this by way of the commandment he gave to Adam in the garden, which we see in Genesis 2. Genesis 2, starting in verse 15, then Yahweh God took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. Yahweh God commanded the man saying, from any tree of the garden, you may eat freely, but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat for in the day that you eat from it, you will surely die. So this was the test that would either confirm Adam's righteousness or be the cause of his undoing. If Adam disobeyed this command, both he and those he represented would be cursed by sin. And of course, we know that that's actually what happened. But I'm going to argue that the threat of death for disobedience clearly implies the promise of life for obedience. The threat of death for disobedience clearly implies the promise of life for obedience. If Adam obeyed this command, he would have lived. he would have passed the test. He would have confirmed his righteous status and secured eternal life for himself and for those whom he represented. Passing from a state in which he was able to sin, able not to sin and able to fall into a state in which he would have been not able to sin and not able to fall. Now, there's some controversy over this because some people say that the alternative to death for disobedience was not a reward for obedience, but merely the continuation of life in the garden in his present state. The problem with that, though, is that man would then be in a perpetual state of testing. Always able to sin, able not to sin, and able to fall. Never enjoying the perfect communion with God, which can only arise from an assured security of eternal life from which he could not fall. Do you understand why I say that? Why the perfect communion with God is impossible apart from an assured security of eternal life? Think about your own relationship with Jesus. If you thought that you might actually finally be lost, that you're confident that you've trusted Christ, but you're not confident that you won't do something in the future to totally blow it, to totally destroy your salvation. If you were in a state in which you believed that covenant could be broken based on something that you did, there would not be that blessed assurance that is the cream of all of life. Not just knowing God, but knowing that you know God. Not just being saved, but knowing that you're saved. Imagine in a marriage, if there was a certain threat that we're kind of walking on eggshells here, and the least missed step, or maybe it's not the least missed step, but if it's a big enough missed step, it might be that my wife would leave me, or my husband would leave me, Right? If there's always this notion that, well, she's got one foot out the door, how is that communion going to be? It's certainly not going to be as sweet and secure as the communion between husband and wife where you know we are in this till we die, right? The pledge of covenant faithfulness that's unbreakable provides a stronger avenue for communion. Say it this way, that the stronger the union, the greater the communion. Well, if your union is tenuous, your communion will be necessarily as tenuous. And so Adam, mankind, does not need a state of communion with God in which we might be able to fall at some later state. Yes, Madam was free from sin, but if he was not free from the anxiety which would necessarily come from the notion that, okay, if I don't do this, if I don't keep obeying, I'll cast myself and my posterity into utter ruin, that is not the eternal life to which you and I even enjoy now, because we can't fall. We are able to sin, but praise God, we are not able to fall away from Christ. Nothing will separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus. So, again, able to sin, not able to sin, and able to fall, is to never enjoy the perfect communion with God that only arises from an assured security of eternal life from which we cannot fall. And so according to this line of reasoning that says, no, Adam wouldn't have been confirmed and righteous as he would have just continued in this state of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil being there and being a test for him. Well, that would mean that if Adam managed to obey all of his life, the tree would have still been there during the lives of Cain and Abel. And if they managed to obey their children after them and theirs after them, it could still be here today if all of humanity had refused to eat the fruit. But then if someone did eventually eat of it, that would have been through that person that sin entered the human race. And of course, that person would have been the representative of all humanity, which is an office that Scripture restricts to Adam and Christ alone. But besides this, think about it from this angle. The natural relationship between God and man meant that Adam was already duty-bound to obey the law of God that was written on his heart. Simply by virtue of Adam's being a creature, Adam owed obedience to his creator. He was to love God with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength. He was to worship Him only, making no idols out of anything in the creation. And when Adam's neighbors came along, he was to love them as himself, not murdering them, not stealing from them or coveting what was theirs, not violating the sanctity of marriage. This law was written on Adam's heart by nature. And it was a reflection of God's own perfect character. Why not commit adultery? Because God's perfectly faithful. Why not steal? Because God doesn't take what's not His, but provides for all. and so on throughout all of the commandments of the law. They reflect something of the nature of God. So obedience to this law would have resulted in the continuation of Adam's being in his present state in the garden. That law was not attended with any promise of reward. God didn't say, love me with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and when you've done that sufficiently, I will confirm you in righteousness and move you from a state of fallible righteousness to infallible righteousness. No, when Adam obeyed the law written on his heart, love God, love neighbor, he could only say, Luke 17 10, I'm an unprofitable servant, I've done that which was my duty to do. So if obedience to the law written on Adam's heart would have already resulted in his continuing in his state of original fallible righteousness, the question is why would God add the command not to eat of the tree? Something that was not inherently sinful. Why not commit adultery? Because God's always faithful. Why not eat from this tree? Well, it has nothing to do with who God is in his character except that God says, I'm Lord and I reserve this for me. There was nothing inherently evil about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil or its fruit. The only reason to add such a command is that the implied promise of life was of a different character. than the law that already was written on his heart. Adam already had a law, which if he obeyed it, resulted in the continuation of his present state. Why should this arbitrary prohibition to not eat of this particular tree repeat the same state of affairs? Well, the answer is it doesn't. This command was a law of a different sort. This prohibition signaled a specific administration. a different arrangement. It was a probation of Adam's untested righteousness which, if obeyed, would have resulted in the conferring of eternal life, of a righteousness that could not be lost or forfeited by sin. It was of a similar arrangement as what's expressed in Leviticus 18, verse five, where God told Israel, so you shall keep my statutes and my judgments by which a man may live if he does them. A man may live if he keeps my commandments. But of course, man doesn't keep God's commandments. This is a hypothetical that never obtains in the lives of sinners. but the arrangement is nevertheless the same. Perfect obedience to the law of God would result in eternal life. Commenting on this verse, Paul writes in Romans 10, 5, for Moses writes that the man who practices the righteousness which is based on law shall live by that righteousness. Perfect obedience results in eternal life. And you see passages like that in Matthew 19, 17, where Jesus says to the rich young ruler, you know, keep the commandments and you'll have life. Romans 7, 10 says, and the commandment, meaning the commandment of the Mosaic law, which was to result in life. proved to result in death for me. So in fact, the law brings death because when it meets with sinfulness, it kills us. But Paul calls the law that which was to result in life. Perfect obedience would result in eternal life. And friends, eternal life is not eternal testing. And we see more evidence of this in this notion that there is an implied promise of life for obedience in the punishment that was eventually brought upon Adam for disobedience. In Genesis 3.22, after Adam has sinned and man has fallen, God says, behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil. And now he might stretch out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever. I argue that that verse implies that eating from the tree of life would immediately confer eternal life. And God says, we don't want that to happen. Adam and Eve have forfeited eternal life by disobedience to the law, so he cannot have access to the tree of life, which would confer eternal life upon him. I think that that means that Adam and Eve had not yet eaten from the tree of life. Some disagree on that, they say Adam and Eve would have had to continually eat from the tree of life in order to maintain the life that God had intended for them even in the garden. But there is no sense of that in the grammar of the text. The grammatical way to say that is there is no iterative aspect in the verb tenses there. Iterative, like to do it over and over again. Take. Eat and live forever are all what grammarians call cow perfects, right? Which is consistent with the idea that eating from the tree of life would be a singular event that would have conferred eternal life upon man. It's not that he would often take and often eat and thus sort of get recharged and live forever, but that he would take, eat, and live forever. They're very punctiliar actions. And so disobedience to the commandment given by God resulted in death, which sentence is carried out by cutting off mankind from access to the tree of life. So if disobedience brought death by the removal of the tree of life, well then it follows that obedience would have brought life by granting access to the tree of life. Shall I say that again? If disobedience brought death by the removal of the tree of life, it follows that obedience would have brought life by granting access to the tree of life. And so I believe it is a sound inference to say that the probationary arrangement between God and man consisted of both an explicit threat of spiritual death for disobedience and an implicit promise of spiritual life for obedience. an explicit threat of spiritual death upon disobedience, and that's, of course, exactly what happened, but also an implicit promise of spiritual life upon obedience. We learn later that Adam's disobedience had consequences for all of those whom he represented, Romans 5, 19. Through the one man's disobedience, the many were constituted sinners. But just as Adam represented the human race for ill, So also, if he had obeyed, he would have represented the human race for blessing. Had Adam kept the stipulations of this arrangement and passed his probation with a period of obedience, he would have secured eternal life for all those whom he represented. And again, we're dealing in hypotheticals here, of course. That could never have actually happened because the triune God had decreed for the Son Himself to enter His own creation and be glorified by His sin-bearing atonement on the cross. That was always plan A. That was never not going to happen. It couldn't have happened another way. But we consider the hypothetical to accurately draw out the details of this arrangement in the garden. Again, an explicit threat of spiritual death upon disobedience and an implicit promise of spiritual life upon obedience. passing from a state of untested, mutable, fallible righteousness to a state of confirmed, tested righteousness in which he would have enjoyed security and from which he could not have fallen. This is the time in class where I usually ask if anybody has questions. Not you, Pete. You're not allowed. I hope you're hanging with me so far. Now, because God constituted Adam to be the representative of the entire human race, when Adam fell into sin and died, all of humanity fell into sin and died as well. It's often articulated by the memorable rhyme, in Adam's fall, we sinned all. This is what Christian theology calls the doctrine of original sin. An original sin does not properly refer to the first sin ever. It refers to that sinful condition that every son or daughter of Adam is born with. That sinfulness that is the root and fountain of all our sinful acts. You see, we are not sinners because we sin. We sin because we're sinners. And the doctrine of original sin is a cardinal doctrine of the Christian faith. The gospel is the heart of Christianity and the need for the gospel is established by mankind's relationship to the sin of Adam in the garden. If that relationship is muddied or undermined, then we lose the ground and foundation for scripture's assessment of all mankind as sinful and in need of that gospel. We also confuse precisely how our salvation works because we misunderstand the problem that the gospel was designed to solve. So this is important. And the classic text for this is Romans 5, verses 12 to 19. In this text, Paul is demonstrating that there is a parallel between the guilt and condemnation of all who are united to Adam and the righteousness and justification of all who are united to Christ. And the key verse is verse 12. Paul writes, therefore, just as through one man, Adam, sin entered into the world, and death through sin, which is to say that death is the consequence of sin, before sin there was no death. And so death spread to all men because all sinned. And then the verse kind of trails off at that point. It breaks off there and leaves the reader hanging for a while. And Paul says some other things on the in-between, eventually gets back to his train of thought. But therefore, just as through one man, sin entered the world and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned. So this death that came as a result of Adam's transgression, Paul says, spread to all people. And the reason it spread to all people is because all sinned. And I'll come back to that thought, but we'll keep going for a moment. Verse 15 says, by the transgression of the one, Adam, the many, humanity, died. Verse 16, the judgment arose from one transgression, the sin of Adam, resulting in condemnation. Verse 17, by the transgression of the one, death reigned through the one. Verse 18, through one transgression, there resulted condemnation to all men. And verse 19, through the one man's disobedience, the many were made, or better translated, constituted or appointed sinners. So the point is plain, Adam's one transgression of eating the fruit of the tree from which he was commanded not to eat brought condemnation to all people. All human beings are born sinful, alienated from God and in need of salvation because what Adam did counted for all humanity. That is to say, we have the imputation of guilt and the transmission of corruption. Imputation is a forensic legal term, has to do with legal declarations, not transformations of substance, right? Imputation involves a change of status, not a change of nature. It's the opposite of the concept of infusion or impartation, right? To be imputed guilty is not to have corruption imparted or infused into you. It's to say that before the standard of the law, you are regarded as guilty and sentenced to condemnation. A judge's guilty verdict doesn't make a man guilty. It declares him to be guilty before the law. The term itself comes from the Greek word logizimae, which appears profusely in Romans chapter four. Romans 4.3, Paul quotes Genesis 15.6 concerning God's justification of Abraham saying, what does the scripture say? Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. Credited. Some translations say counted or reckoned. Paul's explaining that Abraham was not justified before God by his own works. It's not as if Abraham performed some sort of God-pleasing ritual and was transformed into a more righteous person. Abraham trusted God's word. He looked outside of himself, outside of his own resources, and he laid hold of God's promises with the empty hand of faith. And as a result, God counted him to be righteous. His legal status before the law changed. He was credited with a record of righteousness that was not natively his. Now, if we took that concept and applied it not to the imputation of righteousness, but to the imputation of guilt, we wouldn't use the term credited, we would use the term debited. Abraham believed and it was credited to him as righteousness. Romans 4, well the point that Romans 5 is making is that Adam sinned and it was debited to us as guiltiness, as condemnation. You see the conceptual parallel there? It's not that we ourselves have committed or even participated in the action that is imputed to us, it's that we are counted as having done the action even though it was performed by someone else. And we see that very concept in Romans 5, 18 and 19. Through one transgression, there resulted condemnation to all men. Through one man's disobedience, the many were made sinners. And the NAS translates kafistehmi as made in verse 19, but it's better translated constituted or appointed. It's used that way in Acts 6, 3 and Titus 1, 5 to speak of appointing deacons and elders. Men's natures aren't transformed from layman substance to deacon or elder substance, right? They're the same person they always were, they're just appointed to an office. And so it's best to translate Romans 5.19, through the one man's disobedience, the many were appointed sinners or legally established or constituted as sinners. So how did all men get to be sinners? We were constituted to be sinners through the disobedience of the one man, Adam. And that constitution or that appointment is imputation. Then alongside the concept of the imputation of guilt, there is the concept of the transmission of corruption. The transmission of corruption. The imputation of guilt is purely forensic, right? Just as legal declarations. But the transmission of sin refers to the inherent deprivation and corruption of human nature. This is the transformation of nature, the pollution, the corruption that truly changes us. Guilt is imputed by divine decree. Corruption is transmitted through ordinary generation as a sinful and corrupt human nature is passed down from parent to child. And Genesis 5 illustrates this. Genesis 5.3 says that Seth is fathered in Adam's own likeness according to his image. In other words, the nature that Adam passes down to his son is like his own, it's human nature. and given the fact that the fall has corrupted human nature so that man is a sinner by nature even before he's a sinner by choice, the human nature that Adam passes down to Seth is a corrupt, sinful human nature. And what's the evidence of that? Well, the theme song of the human race that's presented for us in Genesis 5. Genesis 5.5, so all the days that Adam lived were 930 years and he died. Verse eight, Seth, and he died. Verse 11, Enosh, and he died. Verses 14, 17, 20, 27, and 31, and he died, and he died, and he died, and he died. Adam sinned and earned death for himself. He fathers children in his own likeness, in his own image, and then he dies. Then his children die, and their children die. Genesis 5 is the clear contrast of Genesis 2 & 3 from pre-fall humanity to post-fall humanity. Adam's sin has brought corruption to every member of the human race and so they die. And that corruption reaches a fever pitch in Genesis 6, 5, when God sees the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and every intent of his heart was only evil continually, and Adam's natural descendants now have a ruling propensity to evil. And so when you think of the doctrine of original sin, you should think in those four categories, the imputation of the guilt of Adam's transgression, we're counted guilty of Adam's sin, the loss of original righteousness, what we ought to think of as the fall from the original state of blessedness we enjoyed in the garden, the transmission of the corruption or pollution of sin and the passing down of a sinful human nature, and then the actual acts of sin that proceed from that corrupt nature. So we inherit both the guilt and the corruption of Adam's sin. As 1 Corinthians 15, 22 says, in Adam, all die. Which is to say, by virtue of our legal union with Adam, our representative head, his actions count for our actions. Again, Romans 5, 19, through the one man's disobedience, the many were constituted sinners. And notice Paul's word choice there. He doesn't say, through the one man's disobedience, the many were constituted guilty. No, that's the sense. He says, we were constituted sinners. Hamartaloi, committers of hamartia, workers of iniquity. We were counted as if we actually committed the sin that Adam committed. Now, it doesn't say we actually committed that sin, as if our union to Adam was essential rather than legal, and we could be said to do everything that Adam did because we were in his loins somehow. It says that in Adam, by virtue of our legal union to Adam, his actions counted as if they were our actions. And therefore, we were debited with his guilt. And then as a consequence of our being counted guilty of Adam's sin, the corruption of that sin is transmitted to us through ordinary generation. Does that make sense? We were counted guilty of Adam's transgression and that imputation of guilt issued in the actual corruption of our nature. Now, one of the most significant debates in the discussion of original sin concerns the prepositional phrase in Romans 5.12. Again, the text says, therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, which is to say death entered through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned. And the word because translates the Greek prepositional phrase ephho. the preposition epi and then the relative pronoun ho contracted to the ff sound because that's the way the language works. So in the most literal renderings, you could translate that upon which. Though no major translation opts for that because that doesn't quite communicate what we understand. King James translates it, for that, right? Death spread to all men, for that all sin. But even that sounds foreign to the way that we talk today. And that illustrates the difficulty in giving the proper sense of the word or the phrase. There has been considerable debate over the best translation of that throughout church history, and in some cases, one's view of the theology is affected by one's view of the translation. Early on, especially with the influence of the Latin Vulgate, the Latin translation that was sort of the authoritative translation of the Roman Catholic Church for years and over a millennium, They translated with the locative view, which is to say, in whom, so let me give you, I think it's on the slide, so this shouldn't be terrible. The Vulgate translated, ephho pontes haemarton, as in quo omnes pecaverunt, which in English is in whom all sinned. And that translation became the basis for what's called the doctrine of realism. This view rejects the idea that all people were counted to be in a representative union with Adam and so guilty of his sin. Instead, realism claims that all people were really or actually in Adam when he committed his sin. The idea is something to the effect of this. All of human nature, they say, existed in an unindividualized unity in the person of Adam. In other words, Adam's human nature was human nature because he was the only human there was. And they argue that since that nature is the stuff from which each individual human being derives his nature, we were in some sense really in Adam physically when he committed that sin. And therefore we inherit his corrupt nature. So realism teaches that original sin consists in our inheriting Adam's corruption through natural generation, but not in having his guilt imputed to us. They say it would be wrong for the sins of the father to be counted against the sons unless the sons actually sinned as well. Here's how John Murray describes that view. It's not his view, but here's how he's describing it. In brief, the position is that human nature in its unindividualized unity existed in its entirety in Adam. That when Adam sinned, not only did he sin, but also the common nature which existed in its unity in him. And that, since each person who comes into the world is an individualization of this one human nature, each person, as an individualized portion of that common nature, is both culpable and punishable for the sin committed by that unity. Adam's stuff is our stuff. We came from his stuff, so whatever he did with his stuff is what we did with our stuff. And one of the more common texts that realists employ to defend their view is Hebrews 7.10, which speaks about how because Abraham paid tithes to Melchizedek, it can be said that Levi, the father of the Levites, the priest to whom tithes were paid, that Levi himself paid tithes in Abraham for, the text says, he was still in the loins of his father when Melchizedek met him. So because Levi was seminally in the loins of Abraham and Abraham's action could be said to be his action. In the same way, because Adam's nature was human nature, they say, then because we were in his loins, his sin corrupted human nature and that corrupt human nature was passed to us. That's why this view is often called seminal headship. But we reject the doctrine of realism. We reject a merely seminal headship as an explanation of original sin, and there are a number of reasons for this. First, just dealing with the text of Hebrews 7.10, this interaction between Abraham and Melchizedek has absolutely nothing to do with the doctrine of original sin. Scripture nowhere speaks the same way of Adam and his descendants as the author of Hebrews does about Abraham and Levi in this passage. There's no text that says that we as Adam's descendants were in the loins of our father Adam as he stood trial in the garden. It's just not there. We're told quite the opposite actually. We're told that by one man's transgression, the many were counted righteous. And we were counted such, not because we were physically in Him as some undifferentiated mass of human nature, but because Adam is the legal representative whose actions count for those who are united to Him in precisely the same way that Christ is the legal representative of those whose actions count for those united to Him. And that'll become clearer in a moment. Besides, though, this undifferentiated human nature argument, I would argue comes very close to the concept of pre-existence. Natures don't act, right? Persons act by means of natures. And so, unless we are somehow reckoned as pre-existing persons by virtue of our common human nature, The realist argument doesn't hold water. Well, I did it in Adam because his nature is the same as my nature, but I'm not Adam though, right? My nature may have been the one, the same kind of nature, Adam subsisted in the same kind of nature as I subsist in, but the fact that he did something in his nature doesn't mean that I did something in my nature. Person's act, not nature's. Secondly, just grammatically, the locative view of epho as in whom, which is the basis of the realist view, is grammatically unlikely. It would require that the antecedent of that relative pronoun in Romans 5.12 be 21 Greek words removed. That's not impossible. Greek word order is not like English word order. But it is a long way away, and so that's a strike against it. The burden of proof would be on the proponents of this view to demonstrate why such an unusual construction should be allowed. Also, on grammatical grounds, when Paul speaks of union with Adam, and especially of union with Christ, he doesn't use the preposition epi, he uses the preposition en. For example, in 1 Corinthians 15, 22, we've already mentioned, in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive. That's en, not epi, which is the preposition here. Third, and this really is the heart of my objection to realism or seminal headship, the realist or seminal view cannot account for the parallelism between Adam and Christ that is the substance of Paul's entire point in Romans 5, 12 to 19. His entire point is to explain how Christ's work can count for the believer. How is it just for God to impute the righteousness of Christ to the Christian? That's what he's just outlined in Romans 4.1 to 5.11. And his answer is that, you know, can we really be sure that Christ works and count for us? That sounds like it's not necessarily fair for us to just be let off for something that he did. And Paul's answer in verses 12 to 19 of chapter five is to explain, you should have no problem with the idea of the imputation of the actions of a representative head to those who were united to him because that's exactly what happened with Adam. The imputation of righteousness in Christ follows the exact same pattern of the imputation of guilt in Adam. And so we must ask the question, Is Christ's righteousness passed to His people seminally? Is it because we were somehow really in Christ's loins that His works of obedience counted for ours? Well, of course not. Christ fathered no natural children. Our union with Christ is not natural or seminal, it's legal. Christ is the legal representative of all who are united to him. The lived out record of his righteousness is imputed to our account so that his obedience is counted as our obedience. In the same way, Adam is the legal representative of all who are united to him. The lived out record of his disobedience in the garden is imputed to our account so that his guilt is counted as our guilt. And so John Murray, who we just appealed to before, he says again, it is admitted by the realist that there is no realistic union between Christ and the justified. On realist premises, therefore, a radical disparity must be posited between the character of the union that exists between Adam and his posterity on the one hand, and the union that exists between Christ and those who are his on the other. but I say no such radical disparity can exist because the entire burden of everything that Paul is saying in Romans 5 is to draw a parallel between how Adam and Christ function as the two heads of humanity. Yes, they're different in that union with Adam brings condemnation and union with Christ brings justification, but the point is the mechanism by which Adam and Christ bring guilt or righteousness is exactly the same. Because Romans 5, 12 to 19 is explaining Romans 4, 1 to 5, 11. And yet, we are not infused with righteousness through some sort of essential union with Jesus in justification. No, we're counted righteous in Christ, imputed righteous. And so in the same way, we are counted guilty in Adam. A fourth reason why realism doesn't work, namely, its inability to account for why we would be guilty of just one of Adam's transgressions rather than the rest of his sins. In other words, we were just as much in Adam's loins when he committed the rest of the sins of his life. And yet, Romans 5.16 says, judgment arose from one transgression. Verse 18 says, it was through one transgression that there resulted condemnation to all men. And again, verse 12 says, all sinned at one point in time, not at the multiple points in time throughout Adam's life. And besides even that, we were no more in Adam's loins than we were in Noah's loins or our own father's loins. Why aren't we guilty of their sins as well? Or are we? Why am I not guilty of every sin from everybody to whom I had a seminal connection? Their nature was the same kind of nature as mine. I'm directly descended from them. Why aren't I guilty of their sins?" Why would it be that we're guilty of just this one single transgression of Adam? Well, the answer is because God constituted that particular act of disobedience as standing in a special relation to everything else that Adam did. That's why Eve isn't the fountain of our guilt and corruption, even though she was consubstantial with us and sinned first. Eve had our same human nature. Why is it that through one man sin entered the world? Well, because Adam stood in special relation to God. He was our federal head. It's that legal federal union that is the ground of our imputed guilt. and not just a seminal union that is the ground of our transmission of corruption that accounts for original sin. All right, all of that was in response to the locative view, in whom, that the Vulgate translated. Another view, as how to translate that phrase, is the consecutive view, with the result that all sinned. In other words, Adam sinned, and as a result of his sin, we are given his corrupt nature, and everybody else sinned too, and that's why everybody eventually dies. This is sometimes linked to a view called immediate imputation, which we'll talk about in a moment. But for now, just note that while it's true that the spiritual death of Adam's condemnation does produce actual deeds of sin, that's not what Paul is talking about in Romans 5.12. The consecutive view says that spiritual death leads to sin. Adam sins, his death of spiritual corruption is passed to all men so that we're all born with a sin nature, and then we sin as a result of that. But Paul actually says the opposite in Romans 5.12. He says sin leads to death, not death leads to sin. Look at it. Through one man, sin entered the world, and death through sin. So the preferred translation of this prepositional phrase is causal, which is how the majority of sound English translations translate it. LSB, NASB, ESV, CSB, the Net Bible, New King James, even the NIV all translate Romans 5.12 as, and so death spread to all men because all sinned. This fits with how Paul uses the phrase in 2 Corinthians 5, 4. He doesn't often use this phrase, but one of the places he does use it is in 2 Corinthians 5, 4, which says, for indeed, while we are in this tent, we groan, being burdened, because we do not want to be clothed, but to be, or excuse me, we do not want to be unclothed, but to be clothed. So that wouldn't work if we tried out the other translations on it. Well, in this tent we groan being burdened because, or excuse me, being burdened in whom we do not want to be unclothed. No, that doesn't fit. Or we're in this tent and we groan being burdened with the result that we don't want to be unclothed. No, we don't want to be unclothed because. or burden rather, because we don't want to be unclothed. So it's not without difficulty, that's why there's been a longstanding controversy. But even on grammatical principles alone, because all sin, the causal view, is the best way to translate this phrase. And that becomes even more plain when we consider the exegetical and theological implications of that translation. This is key. So back to 512. Just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned. Now I ask you, in what way and in what sense did all people sin? Verse 12, with the result that death spread to all men. One answer, there's two answers to this, one is called mediate imputation. I reject this position, but mediate imputation teaches that Adam's sin causes his corrupt nature to be passed to all mankind, who then commit acts of sin in keeping with their sinful nature, and who are therefore subjected to the penalty of death. So on this view, you are not immediately guilty of Adam's transgression. The guilt of that sin is imputed to you immediately, not immediately. It's imputed to you by the mediation of a corrupt nature, which causes you to sin, and then you're held guilty for your own sins and not Adam's sin. So immediate imputation says not, you're corrupt because you're guilty. It says you're guilty because you're corrupt. Adam's sin got you a corrupt nature, your corrupt nature caused you to sin, and your personal acts of sin have made you guilty, and so you die because the wages of sin is death. Again, short version, you're guilty because you're corrupt. Now this isn't as bad as realism, but it still falls afoul of the text. I don't have time to give you all the reasons it's wrong, so I'll give you the most important one. It simply misreads the grammar of Romans 5.12. Those who hold to immediate imputation read Romans 5.12 as if it said this, and so death spreads to all men because all sin. Death spreads to all men as a matter of course because all eventually sin as a matter of course. The reason why people die is because they themselves sin in the likeness of Adam. Except one, that explicitly contradicts Romans 5.14. which says death reigned over those who had not sinned in the likeness of Adam. And two, that's just not how this verse is to be translated. Romans 5.12 does not say that death spreads to all men because all sin. Those verbs are not in the present tense or the imperfect tense. Paul is not merely teaching that as a matter of course, death spreads to all men because all men eventually sin. Let's look at this closely. There are three verbs in verse 12, with a fourth implied. Paul says, sin entered into the world. He says that death entered through sin, and though the verb is not repeated, it's clearly implied, right? Death through sin, death entered through sin. He says that death spread to all men, and he says finally that all sinned. Now all of those verbs are in the aorist tense. They're all grammatically parallel to one another. And that means that we are constrained by the context to interpret them all in the same way with respect to their time. One is not gonna be in the past where the other one's gonna be in the present, right? Whatever they are, they stand and fall together because they're all the same tense and they're all one right after another. If Paul wanted to say one of these actions happens over and over and one of these actions happened one point in time, there was a very easy way to do that and that's just simply to change the tense. But he didn't change the tense. Same tense all the way through. All right. Normally, verbs in the aorist tense are translated in the simple past. He sinned. Death entered. And the New American Standard translates them that way here. Sin entered. Sometimes though, just to be confusing, the aorist can be used to refer to present tense events that happen as a matter of course. Grammarians call that the nomic use of the aorist. In other words, depending on the context, an aorist verb could be translated, not in the past time, but as a proverbial present. So if the context allows, the grammar of this verse could be translated, death spreads to all men because all sin, and the immediate imputation people rejoice. They say that's what I wanted to say. Everybody dies because as a matter of course, everybody sins. But is it best to interpret these as proverbial heiress here? The answer is no, it's not. The context won't allow that because again, what's true for one of these verbs has to be true for all of them. And the first one shuts the door on that idea. It is not Paul's intent to say, just as through one man sin enters the world, Sin doesn't enter the world over and over again. Sin entered the world at a specific point in the past, namely at the moment that Adam sinned in the garden. And therefore, context demands that the other Aorist verbs in this verse be interpreted the same way. Through one man, sin entered into the world, and death entered through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned. So the verse is translated correctly. All people sinned at a particular point in the past. Now the question is, when did all people sin? Every one of Adam's natural posterity, which includes people who are gonna be born tomorrow, who haven't done anything yet. At what point in the past did all people sin? Well, the answer has to be that they sinned when Adam sinned. that their sin was Adam's sin. All people sinned in Adam, not because they were some sort of unindividualized substance in his loins, but because they were united to him. They were counted to be united to him, such that, as the representative head of those united with him, his actions counted for their actions. Again, 1 Corinthians 15, 22, in Adam all die. By virtue of the union between Adam and his posterity, the guilt of Adam's sin is counted to be theirs. Romans 5, 19 once more, as through the one man's disobedience, the many were constituted or reckoned or counted or imputed sinners. Adam was the representative head of humanity such that, God counted the actual disobedience of Adam against all of those who were in him, all who were united to him, which is to say every human being who ever lived or will live except for Jesus, the second Adam. Adam's guilt is immediately imputed to his descendants. Now that is what's called representative headship or immediate imputation. Death spread to all men because all sinned. And again, Romans 5.14 says that death reigned even over them that had not sinned in the likeness of Adam. The immediate imputation view says we're guilty because we're corrupt. We sin, our death spreads to us because we've sinned. Paul says the spiritual death of separation from God reigned over those who had not sinned in the way that Adam did. This means that death did not spread to all men because of their personal actual sins. At least not alone. So why do we all die, Romans 5, 17? By the transgression of the one, death reigned through the one. Adam's sin was counted to be our sin. His guilt was counted to be our guilt and therefore his death of separation from God is counted to be our death. Adam's sin brought death to men because all were counted to have sinned in Adam their representative. And that does fit perfectly with Paul's comparison between Adam and Christ in Romans 5, 12 to 19. Just as we are not counted righteous in Christ because we were in the loins of Christ when he obeyed and suffered on our behalf, so also we are not regarded corrupt because we were in the loins of Adam when he disobeyed. just as justification is not a process whereby Christ restores us to an uncorrupted human nature from which good works proceed and provide the basis of our righteousness. So also our original condemnation was not a process whereby Adam's transgression corrupted our human nature which only condemns us after we engage in sinful deeds. No, Christ's righteousness is counted to be ours by virtue of our legal union with Him. So also, Adam's condemnation is counted to be ours by virtue of our legal union with Him. So how can we sum up? All humanity sinned in Adam by virtue of the legal union that we had with him. All humanity is imputed with Adam's guilt and therefore in Adam, all die. Because sin not only brings legal guilt but also practical corruption, human nature is corrupted by sin. And that practical corruption of sin is transmitted through natural generation or procreation. So we inherit both the guilt and the corruption of Adam's sin. Our actual corruption following from our imputed guilt. This is why we are the way we are. This is why the world is the way the world is. And the only hope, the only remedy for the imputation of Adam's guilt is two more imputations. Why in the world did I go through all of that complex if-then reasoning out from this view prepositions in Latin and all sorts? Why have I done this? Because if you get the relationship between Adam and his people wrong, you will get the relationship between the second Adam and his people wrong. When you understand that we are immediately guilty of Adam's sin, you will understand the only remedy for the imputation of Adam's guilt is two more imputations. One, the imputation of our disobedience to Christ, who bears the punishment of his people on the cross and so pays the penalty that our sins deserve. And then number two, the imputation of Christ's obedience to us through faith alone. Adam's sin provides an actual lived out record of human disobedience, which was counted to be ours through our union with him. And that became the legal basis upon which God justly constitutes all men guilty. In the same way, Christ's life of obedience provides the actual lived out record of righteousness which is counted to be ours through our union with Him and becomes the legal basis on which God justly constitutes guilty believers righteous. That's worth saying again, okay, one more time. Adam's sin provides an actual lived out record of human disobedience, which was counted to be ours through our union with Him and became the legal basis on which God justly constitutes all men guilty. In the same way, Christ's life of obedience provides the actual lived out record of righteousness, which is counted to be ours through our union with Him, and becomes the legal basis on which God justly constitutes guilty believers righteous. That's the gospel, friends. Our entire eternity depends upon getting that right. And the foundation for that gospel, the imputation of Christ's righteousness, is the garden. It is the imputation of Adam's sin. And so I pray that understanding how you got into this mess from the beginning drives you all the more to Christ, both in faith and in grateful worship for how the last Adam overcame where the first Adam has failed. Let's pray. Father, we confess to you that Jesus Christ is the Lord of the mind. And we come to church, yes, to be encouraged, yes, to raise songs of praise, yes, to fellowship with one another, but also to be taught and discipled in the truths of the scriptures. And we thank you for the truth of imputed guilt, not because we rejoice in our separation from you in our father Adam, but because of how it lays the foundation for our recovery through the imputation of righteousness through Christ the last Adam. I pray that these complex topics would be the delight of the child of God to study and peer into insofar as the word of God gives us revelation. And oh, we believe it does. I pray that we would discipline ourselves to understand what you have said and what you have not said in the midst of teaching that does not meet the standard of what you have said to us in the scriptures. Give us discernment so that we would discern truth from error, that we would discern right from almost right, and that we would put all our hope and trust in the actual revelation of God. I pray that where there has been faulty teaching that you would grant repentance, humility to acknowledge that, and grace to turn. And I pray that the truth itself would look attractive to your people. That though it seems unfair that we could be counted guilty for somebody else's deeds, It doesn't seem all that unfair that we could be counted righteous for another person's deeds. And yet that is what we have in the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ our Savior. because of His life, because of His death, because of His resurrection and ascension and session at the right hand of you, Father. We are said to have done all those things with Him and in Him, died with Christ, raised with Christ, ascended with Christ, seated with Christ in the heavenly places. So I pray that the truths of these matters would be a fount for our worship and that we would be protected against plausible, fine-sounding errors that would draw our minds away from the truth. Lord Jesus, we love you. We thank you that, as we'll hear in just a moment, that you are our good shepherd from Psalm 23. And I pray that as you are Lord of the heart, you would be Lord of the mind and lead your people into the truth we ask in Jesus' name. Amen. For more information about the ministry of the Grace Life Pulpit, visit at www.thegracelifepulpit.com. Copyright by The Grace Life Pulpit. All rights reserved.