faith for faith

This piece was originally titled “On the Scope of Adam’s Universal Condemnation and Its Implications on the Doctrine of “The Age of Accountability” and can be found here. I believe its content is pertinent to the subject at hand.

Though Romans 7:14-25 does not deal directly with original sin and the imputation of Adam’s guilt to his offspring, it does offer clarification as to the scope of Adam’s sin and its punishment. Romans 5:12-21, like our present text, is a very difficult passage of Scripture with regard to its subject and its complexity. In it, the Apostle deals with the very difficult subject of original sin and the universal condemnation afforded by that sin. The Apostle complicates the passage exponentially by introducing Jesus Christ as the Second Adam and by comparing and contrasting the two God-ordained heads of the human race. The passage is complicated further by the Apostle’s seemingly free use of universal and particular language, making it seem at one point that Christ is the universal head of the human race and at another, the head of a particular race. Thus the passage reads:

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Contrary to popular belief, indifference with regards to politics in the United States is not an easy position to hold. For if you express your position as thus to the non-Christian you are labeled as “un-American” and “ignorant,” and if you express it to a Christian you are labeled as “uncompassionate” and (gasp) “liberal.” And despite your greatest efforts to point your position to what you believe is its Scriptural foundation, you will be charged with misapplication since the United States is not governed by a dictator or a monarch, but it is “governed by the people.” And since citizenship in the United States means that the people are the government, then everyone, including Christians, are obligated to be actively and outspokenly involved in the political system.

And while I can sympathize logically with the sentiment that every American citizen ought to be involved in politics if indeed the American government is controlled by its citizens, I cannot help but wholeheartedly believe that the American government is not the government we believe that it is. For we are spoon-fed from the time we are old enough to hear that we live in a democracy–a government by the people and for the people. We are bombarded with the ideals of the Founding Fathers expressed over two hundred years ago, and we are taught to believe that what they expressed in ideals existed then when they first spoke them, and they exist today in our present government. And regardless what might happen on Capitol Hill or what might be signed into law in the Oval Office, we hold fast to the belief that the process at its core is democratic (i.e. citizen driven) and it is for the sake of each person’s inalienable rights (whatever that is).

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It is no great surprise that we who preach the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ are engaged in battling to preserve his Gospel two-thousand years after his Incarnation. The apostles who followed our Lord and who were commissioned by him to preach the Faith warned us of this struggle that would be ours, and even they, who were but years removed from the time of our Lord, struggled mightily with preserving the Words of Life given by our Lord to his saints, as is evinced in most of their letters written to the churches in the New Testament.

However, what is a surprise is that it has come to the point that we who have historically fought for the purity of the Gospel must fight for the Gospel even among those who name themselves among our ranks. These, of whom I am speaking, are those who have joined in what is called The Manhattan Declaration, which essentially is a united effort between the Eastern Orthodox, Catholics, and Evangelicals to support the moral cause against abortion and homosexual marriage, and for the freedom of religion. And while these are most assuredly worthy social causes that are worthy to be fought for, it has now somehow come about that these groups of professing Christians, which have historically denounced each other’s gospel, are now are supposedly joined under the banner of the Gospel to fight against these social atrocities. These who would under other circumstances declare that the other preached a false gospel that spit upon the teachings of our Lord, are somehow now joined together in the same gospel and are now fighting together for the cause of social justice.

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I know that what I am addressing is a very sensitive issue and an extremely weighty one. For the great atrocity of our day which is called abortion is nothing less that sanitized murder for sake of selfishness and convenience, and it is no less atrocious than the acts of the heathens who sacrifice their children for the sake of worship to their false gods. For abortion is essentially the same practice, except, instead of being practiced on an altar for worship of an idol, it is done on an surgeon’s table for the worship of one’s self. For we are a self-worshipping generation, and we have demonstrated that no sacrifice is too great to be placed upon the altar of our self-worship.

The vast majority of Christians view abortion in this way, and rightly condemn its practice. And among many Christians, abortion is their greatest worldly concern, and they therefore align themselves in the political arena with those politicians who claim to be against abortion in order that, by God’s grace, the practice of abortion might be made illegal. However, the issue of abortion has made many Christians adopt an “ends justifies the means” philosophy so that they are willing to throw their unabashed support behind any political candidate who stands against abortion though that person might otherwise be morally reprehensible.

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There are some things that just make your jaw drop with disgust. Take for example the case of Dr. Pierre Jean-Jacque Renelique who was recently found guilty of medical malpractice after giving “medical” responsibility to unlicensed personnel and after “failing to keep an accurate medical record.” “Failing to keep a medical record of what?” you ask. A cut-out ingrown toe nail? A mole removed from a patient’s back? A drained cyst? No, he failed to accurately document that he had his associate throw away a living baby as though it were a piece of rubbish. Upon further reading of the Associated Press article, it becomes quite clear that a living infant being tossed into a trash can is not what caused the uproar, but it was the improper disposal of the child. The medical board revoked the license of Dr. Renelique, essentially saying to him, “We do not know how you do murder children in Haiti, Doctor, but in Florida we murder our children humanely and without harming to the environment.”

In spite of this and in spite of the millions upon millions of “humane” abortions, we find that God is still true to his Word and he is still just and merciful. God’s Truth is in this way validated in his proclamations concerning the wickedness of men. For Paul writes in his letter to the Romans:

None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.¹

We find today that the state of men, despite public education, social programs, etc. is the same as it has ever been, it is simply more technologically sophisticated. We shed blood, but we do it “sterilely” and “humanely”, and in such a way that does not taint our beloved environment. We do it and explain it away with our naturalistic philosophies, suppressing the fact that the wrath of God is being stored up against such ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.

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