Tiptoe through the T.U.L.I.P. or how Adam suffered from Total Depravity

[Gamecock]

Tiptoe through the T.U.L.I.P. or how Adam suffered from Total Depravity

All Christians know the story of the Creation, of Adam and Eve and the fall. Because Adam was the Federal Head of the human race, we are all born under the Bondage of Sin. While some of our Brothers and Sisters may debate points of original sin, it is clear from a careful study of Scripture that Total Depravity had Adam in it’s grips!

Shocking? Let us reason together:



God created Adam with free will. All Adam had to do was follow one little commandment. His law was not nearly as complex as the law the Children of Israel had to follow. One little condition and we would be living in Paradise right now:

Genesis 2 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat[4] of it you shall surely die.”

Consider that! One lousy tree was all that separates man from God. Now we all know how this unfolds:

Genesis 3:6 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.

No discussion from Adam, he just took it and ate! Ate it of his own free will. What bondage free will is, it separates us from God. Because of it, we blindly follow sin, just like Adam.

​

Only when we are made alive by the Holy Spirit can we exercise our free will to seek God, to love God, to turn out Filthy Rags into rightousness!

Next lesson: Tiptoe through the T.U.L.I.P. L: Rahab, Loved by many men, and God too!

 

[Mr Potato Head]

Hmm.... that was persuasive... so now divine rape is the only method... oh... excuse me.... irresistible grace, right, my bad. I guess love is a little overrated anyways... sigh.

 

[Gamecock]

Hmm.... that was persuasive... so now divine rape is the only method... oh... excuse me.... irresistible grace, right, my bad. I guess love is a little overrated anyways... sigh.

Try and stay on track, the subject is total depravity, sin. Let's not go to on to Unconditional Election until you master this concept!

In light of the following passages, explain how we have one bit of good in us:

Psalm 51:5 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me

Jer 17:9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately corrupt; who can understand it"

Job 15:14-16 What is man, that he can be clean? Or he that is born of a woman, that he can be righteous? Behold, God puts no trust in his holy ones, and the heavens are not clean in His sight; how much less one who is abominable and corrupt, a man who drinks iniquity like water

Proverbs 20:9 Who can say, "I have made my heart clean; I am pure from my sin"?

Ecc 7:20 Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins.

Rom 3:9-12 What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all; for I have already charged that all men, both Jews and Greeks, are under the power of sin, as it is written;
​

"None is righteous, no not one; no one understands, no one seeks for God. All have turned aside, together they have gone wrong; no one does good, not even one​

Job 14:4 Who can bring a clean thing out of a dirty? There is not one.​

Jer 13:23 Can the Ethiopian change the color of his skin, or the leopard his spots? Then also you can do good who are accustomed to do evil.​

 

[Mr Potato Head]

Did I say we were good? No... but where does it say an evil man cannot accept the help offered to him?

 

[Gamecock]

Did I say we were good? No... but where does it say an evil man cannot accept the help offered to him?

Scripture please

 

[Mr Potato Head]

"Abraham believed and it was credited to him as righteousness"

 

[Gamecock]

"Abraham believed and it was credited to him as righteousness"

When God called, he believed. Let's not forget, before Irresistible Grace
worked on his heart, Abraham was a Pagan.

 

[lands21]

The unsaved man is dead in his sins (Romans 5:12). Without the power of the Holy Spirit, the natural man is blind and deaf to the message of the gospel (Mark 4:11f). This is why Total Depravity has also been called "Total Inability." The man without a knowledge of God will never come to this knowledge without God's making him alive through Christ (Ephesians 2:1-5).

 

[Romanbear]

Gamecock;
Have you ever noticed that Adam and Eve gained the knowledge of GOOD and EVIL. Yet Calvinism says man can't know the Good because it is spiritual. Hmmmm Wonder why God called it the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Adam had freewill you admit to choose good or evil yet somehow Calvinism says that man lost his free will God's word doesn't say this. does it?
In Christ;
Romanbear

 

[Gamecock]

Gamecock;
Have you ever noticed that Adam and Eve gained the knowledge of GOOD and EVIL. Yet Calvinism says man can't know the Good because it is spiritual. Hmmmm Wonder why God called it the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Adam had freewill you admit to choose good or evil yet somehow Calvinism says that man lost his free will God's word doesn't say this. does it?
In Christ;
Romanbear

Hey Roman Bear: Guess what: the word Trinity isn't in the Bible. The term free will as it pertains to salvation isn't in the Bible.



Guess what words are?






Give Up?

Election.

Predestination.



Yet those are the exact words that you twist and turn to fit your own religious paradigm.

Adam and Eve didn't have the knowledge of what Good and Evil were. But that doesn't mean it wasn't already there!



Read Ephesians 1 again without your preconcieved notions about how you are smart enough, wise enough, to "choose" Christ.

 

[Jerry_M]

Hmm.... that was persuasive... so now divine rape is the only method... oh... excuse me.... irresistible grace, right, my bad. I guess love is a little overrated anyways... sigh.

This has to be the worst mis-characterization of the doctrine of Irresistable Grace that I have ever seen. Of course, you wouldn't have an axe to grind seeing as the thread was speaking of Total Depravity, would you?

Yet, I realize that you don't understand Irresistable Grace solely due to the fact that you don't understand Total Depravity. Those who are "dead in trespasses and sins" need the miracle of the new birth, and then respond willingly to the love of God. No "divine rape" (a scurillous term, and blasphemy to boot) needed.

 

[Mr Potato Head]

Since we were dead in our sins we could not respond to God at all. Got that. But now, since we are "dead to sin" does that mean a dead man cannot reach out and grab it?? Think about it. Maybe Paul was using a metaphor for both.

 

[Received]

I accept this idea. In Revelation, there are those who are dead standing before the throne of God, being judged by Him. But if they are as the calvinists maintain, how can they be judged? The concept must clearly mean dead to the spirit of God, rather than absolutely spiritually dead, for man has a spirit regardless of His relationship to the divine. Theologians consider this synonymous to the heart, or will.

 

[Gamecock]

I accept this idea. In Revelation, there are those who are dead standing before the throne of God, being judged by Him. But if they are as the calvinists maintain, how can they be judged? The concept must clearly mean dead to the spirit of God, rather than absolutely spiritually dead, for man has a spirit regardless of His relationship to the divine. Theologians consider this synonymous to the heart, or will.

Recieved, I can't keep doing the reasearch for you!

Romans 1 18The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

 

[Gamecock]

This has to be the worst mis-characterization of the doctrine of Irresistable Grace that I have ever seen. Of course, you wouldn't have an axe to grind seeing as the thread was speaking of Total Depravity, would you?

Yet, I realize that you don't understand Irresistable Grace solely due to the fact that you don't understand Total Depravity. Those who are "dead in trespasses and sins" need the miracle of the new birth, and then respond willingly to the love of God. No "divine rape" (a scurillous term, and blasphemy to boot) needed.

You can't accept TULIP until you admit you are a filthy rotten sinner, period.

 

[Ragman]

Tiptoe through the T.U.L.I.P. or how Adam suffered from Total Depravity

All Christians know the story of the Creation, of Adam and Eve and the fall. Because Adam was the Federal Head of the human race, we are all born under the Bondage of Sin. While some of our Brothers and Sisters may debate points of original sin, it is clear from a careful study of Scripture that Total Depravity had Adam in it’s grips!

Shocking? Let us reason together:



God created Adam with free will. All Adam had to do was follow one little commandment. His law was not nearly as complex as the law the Children of Israel had to follow. One little condition and we would be living in Paradise right now:







Consider that! One lousy tree was all that separates man from God. Now we all know how this unfolds:







No discussion from Adam, he just took it and ate! Ate it of his own free will. What bondage free will is, it separates us from God. Because of it, we blindly follow sin, just like Adam.

​

Only when we are made alive by the Holy Spirit can we exercise our free will to seek God, to love God, to turn out Filthy Rags into rightousness!

Next lesson: Tiptoe through the T.U.L.I.P. L: Rahab, Loved by many men, and God too!

GC:

What is implied with your use of the term "federal head"?

RM

 

[Gamecock]

GC:

What is implied with your use of the term "federal head"?

RM

Not only was he our ancestor, but he also was brought sin into the human race from a legal prospective. It was up to him to represent the rest of mankind and he failed.

Thus we are condemed before we are even born.

 

[Rick Otto]

This about that:


“Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Romans 5:12).

God is pleased to deal with the relative righteousness of his people by proxy, or by representation. Adam, that most gifted, eligible and perfect of all men (save Christ Himself) bore us in his flesh. We are the natural children of Adam, and by God’s great decree, Adam was our High Priest after the flesh. All humans being IN Adam at the time of his transgression were also IN Adam at the time of his judgment. That judgment, a curse upon Adam and his progeny, was rightfully made by God, who examined His High Priest and found Him unrighteous and unfit for the presence of God.

While we might examine our relationship with the sin of Adam in merely spiritual terms, God, in His omniscience, has related our relationship with the fallen Adam in carnal terms. We were PHYSICALLY in Adam, therefore we are partakers of THAT sin and co-partakers in the death that results naturally from that sin. All that are subsequently born of Adam, are born of corruption - and it is for this reason that God specifically stated that the redeemer (the Great High Priest) would be born of the seed of EVE and not Adam.

In the shadow forms that God used to show us the nature and priesthood of Christ, God chose priests among men to perform the duties and rituals demanded of them. These priests were commanded to be the representatives of the Children of Israel before their mighty God. The priest wore an ephod, and upon the ephod were stones which particularly denoted ALL of those who were represented by the High Priest. There was a stone on the ephod to represent each of the tribes, so that as the High Priest was tested by God - His righteous judgment would pass upon all those who were represented. If the High Priest was evil or corrupt, then the sacrifice for all the people was not acceptable to God. If the High Priest was found righteous, then the people became partakers of that judgment as well. Note that there were MILLIONS alive in the world who were not represented by the high priest as he entered in to the Holy of Holies. Paul says it this way: “That at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world” (Ephesians 2:12). So we see that the millions of people, aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, who neither knew or ever heard that there was a coming Christ, perished in ignorance - without hope - yet still guilty in the eyes of God, being of Adam’s seed.

This shadow-picture was the way that God chose to show us the reality and necessity of our High Priest Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ was both the sacrifice AND the High Priest, passing through the veil of death; He ascended into the Holy of Holies in heaven, not without blood, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. But which people? In order for the shadow picture to hold true, all those to whom the sacrifice was applied must have been IN CHRIST as He made the redemptive act. The scripture puts it this way: “Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. For he that is dead is freed from sin. Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him” (Rom. 6:6-8). So our Great High Priest, who entered in to the Holy of Holies in Heaven, not without blood, made propitiation for the sins of ALL those who were IN HIM. But were ALL in Him? Surely not. Even the most jaded Arminian cynic would not claim that the unredeemed are “freed from sin”. Nor would any dare claim that the lost man is “dead with Christ”. The Apostle to the Hebrews states that the sacrifice would only be made ONE TIME, and that it would apply to sins “to the uttermost”, to all those who come to God by Him (Heb. 7:25).
from "Particular Redemption" by Michael Bunker in the archives at Lazarus Unbound.

 

[Jerry_M]

Some Calvinists (traducians) believe that we were actually in Adam at the time of his Fall, and thus participated in his act.

I won't argue with Federalists, since they make a good case, but, to me at least, the traducian/realist school makes more sense.

I am guilty because I participated in the Fall.

 

[Received]

I am guilty because I participated in the Fall.

But you are thereby making the claim that you were not in existence, yet you commited action, and such requires existence.

You certainly participated in the fall; but it is against all common sense to assert that we participated in the act.