Romans 3:9 What then? Are we better than they? Not at all. For we have previously charged both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin.
10 As it is written:
“There is none righteous, no, not one;
11 There is none who understands;
There is none who seeks after God.
12 They have all turned aside;
They have together become unprofitable;
There is none who does good, no, not one.”
13 “Their throat is an open [d]tomb;
With their tongues they have practiced deceit”;
“The poison of asps is under their lips”;
14 “Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.”
15 “Their feet are swift to shed blood;
16 Destruction and misery are in their ways;
17 And the way of peace they have not known.”
18 “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
19 Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become [e]guilty before God. 20 Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.
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We hope to take this step by step this morning. First we want to deal with what the text is doing. We will from there consider the text as informing our Confessions. Then we want to see how the text informs the Worldview category of Christian anthropology. Then we will deal with some ancillary issues connected to this doctrine.
Here we read to St. Paul’s great peroration, by means of quoting from OT texts, touching the sinfulness of fallen man. It is concluding statement drawn from all that he has set forth starting in Romans 1:18. From that point forward Paul has labored to make the point that all men, regardless of classification or nationality are guilty sinners before God.
If we were to work through this section we would see that from Romans 1:18-32 St. Paul has made the case that immoral man is characterized as guilty sinners before God. In that section Paul teases out some of the immoralities of the ancient world and declares their odiousness and sinfulness before God.
When we get to Chapter 2:1-16 we see that man who thinks of himself as moral man does not escape the reality that he is a guilty sinner before God.
In Chapter 2:17-29 St. Paul points a finger at the religious Jews and tells them that they too stand as guilty sinners before God.
The whole thrust of this section is to convince every mouth of its sin that it may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.
It is from this section and other sections of Scripture like this section that the Christian doctrine of Anthropology or “the doctrine and nature of man” comes from.
Per this section Christians have insisted that man, in terms of his nature is sinful… or evil … or if you prefer “fallen.” The Scriptural doctrine of Anthropology is that man outside of Christ will always demonstrate his appetite for that which is wicked. Fallen man left to himself will always go from bad to worse.
This is the testimony of Scripture that we find here in Romans 3. Man is, by nature, evil.
Of course this Christian Anthropology based upon the witness of God’s Word has been placed in our confessions and catechisms.
For example the Westminster Confession of faith, relying on texts like Romans 3 teaches,
Section 2.) By this sin, they (Our first parents) fell from their original righteousness and communion with God,(1) and so became dead in sin,(2) and wholly defiled in all the parts and faculties of soul and body.(3)
(1) Ge 3:6,7,8; Ecc 7:29; Ro 3:23 (2) Ge 2:17; Eph 2:1 (3) Tit 1:15; Ge 6:5; Jer 17:9; Ro 3:10-18
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Section 3.) They being the root of all mankind, the guilt of this sin was imputed,(1) and the same death in sin and corrupted nature conveyed to all their posterity, descending from them by ordinary generation.(2)
(1) Ge 1:27,28; Ge 2:16,17; Ac 17:26; Ro 5:12,15,16,17,18,19; 1Co 15:21,22,45,49 (2) Ps 51:5; Ge 5:3; Job 14:4; Job 15:14
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Section 4.) From this original corruption, whereby we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good,(1) and wholly inclined to all evil,(2) do proceed all actual transgressions.(3)
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Ro 5:6; Ro 8:7; Ro 7:18; Col 1:21 (2) Ge 6:5; Ge 8:21 ; Ro 3:10,11,12 (3) Jas 1:14,15; Eph 2:2,3; Mt 15:19
In our Christian anthropology we then learn that fallen man is born
1.) Guilty
2.) Without original righteousness
3.) A corrupt human natureInsert Rabbit trail
As a brief rabbit trail here let us add that Anthropology is an inescapable category. Either one will own a Christian Anthropology or they will embrace a humanist anthropology. If one embraces a humanist anthropology the doctrine of sin does not go away but is redefined in a humanist direction. Instead of God’s Word being the standard for right and wrong, normative and aberrant, good and bad behavior man becomes the standard.
The unbeliever will still typically talk about “sin” or “wrong,” or “aberrant” but they use a different standard to define those realities. They will use the standard of some humanist yardstick. For example today the humanist yardstick for “sin,” “wrong,” or “aberration” is some behavior that violates some extra-biblical code.
On this score RJR has noted,
“Sin is being defined in terms of crimes against humanity, not against God, and the very obscene and wicked men like Michael Luther King, which was his real name, are being exalted as though they were saviors. When churchmen are doing this, certainly the principle of the Man of Sin is very powerful within the church.”
~ Rushdoony
“Paul’s Prophetic Discourses”
You see if we will not define sin per God’s revelation then we will allow our enemies to define sin and when God’s enemies define sin they craft it so that Christians are the ones who are always guilty of their humanist sins. It is Christians who are guilty of humanist sins of racism, hate crimes, and blasphemy.
End of rabbit trial
So, before the rabbit trail we were talking about how it is that fallen man is born.
Let us take these briefly one by one
(1) Guilty
Our anthropology informs us that as man enters into this world he enters as guilty before God.
This idea of guilt, in the way we are using it here, means because of our union with Adam man (Romans 5) is under obligation to render satisfaction to God’s justice. It means that man deserves punishment.
Man is born guilty
A debtor to God’s law
Delighting in his flawTheologian A. H. Strong wrote “Guilt comes because of what we have done personally or in Adam – it is a consequence of disobedience – ours or somebody elses.
So, a Christian anthropology teaches that sin is antagonism to God’s Holy Will. Guilt means the obligation to satisfy God’s outraged Holiness.
We see that in the text this morning. Consider vs. 19
19 Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become [e]guilty before God.
(2) Man is not only guilty but he is born w/o original righteousness
That is the whole tenor of the passage in Romans 3. Look at it again and remember that it is a peroration – a synopsis of the points he has made up to this point.
Review passage
Over and over we read of the absence of original righteousness and the presence of positive evil. What we are seeing in the text is not some kind of disease or sickness such as we too often label sin today. What we are reading is a nature … a disposition. As fish find water to be their home man apart from Christ finds sin to be their natural environment.
(3) Man’s Nature is thoroughly corrupt
We call this in our language “total depravity.”
This corruption means that all of man is vitiated. Man according to his will, reason, and love is corrupt. All of man’s faculties, passions, and powers of body and soul are corrupt.
This corruption means that there is no spiritual good in relation to God w/i the sinner at all but only perversion resting in one degree or another.
So, this is our Christian Anthropology and if this is our Christian anthropology should we be surprised to find that men conform to it? Can we really be surprised when we learn that fallen man once used 50K US Soldiers in Operation Desert Rock in a series of military tests in the 1950s aimed at understanding the effects of atomic radiation on ground troops. In total, over 50,000 U.S. soldiers were exposed to 69 radioactive blasts.
So this is our Christian anthropology and if this is our Christian anthropology can we really be surprised to find that men conform to it? Can we really be surprised when we learn that fallen men once the US Government took 600 black males w/ syphillis and told them they were being treated when in fact they were merely being observed so that the natural history of untreated syphilis” in black populations could be discovered.
Two examples. I could spend an hour giving more. This doctrine of Christian anthropology requires us to believe that fallen man is capable of anything. Of anything. Fallen man is capable to creating a false pandemic in order take over the world. Fallen man is capable of using mRNA treatment to download a biological operating system so as to control man by tagging him so that surveillance and finance are easily monitored. Fallen man is capable of being sinful enough to want to turn 99.9% of the world’s population into cattle to be controlled.
Now… here me. I’m not necessarily saying this is true, though if I was a gambling man I’d be pushing all my chips in the middle of the table. What I am saying is that as Christians, with
1.) Our Christian anthropology
2.) A Christian understanding of fallen man’s record in History
3.) Lucifer’s hatred for mankindWe should find these kinds of things hardly beyond the pale of being believable. My understanding of Christian anthropology requires me to believe that fallen man is capable of anything… ANYTHING. And all the more so when his fallen-ness is combined with finance, power, and opportunity.
So… given this is our Christian anthropology why are Christians so gullible… so credulous?
Well, I think part of the reason is that we tend to believe that everybody is like us. You sitting here today, and most of the people you know – believer or unbeliever – have been influenced by the Christian ethic. You don’t have power plus money plus opportunity and you can’t imagine people being wicked on the scale of adenchrome, comet pizza, and Epstein’s pedo Island. You just can’t imagine anybody being that wicked because you think people are just like you. Fallen people are not just like you. There are lizard people out there and their name is legion. People with no conscience. People with no sense of remorse. People with no sense of shame or guilt. People completely absent the notion of God. Lizard people.
Nietzsche called them the ubermensch … the men who were beyond good and evil. The Supermen who were responsible to give us a new ethic in a new world since God was dead.
You have to return to Romans 3 and read it again. Fallen man is capable of any and every wickedness you can imagine and that all the more so when his social-order & culture is fast deteriorating and moving away from its Christians moorings. What … do you think only primitive Aztecs and Zulus are capable of astonishing wickedness?
So, this is Christian Anthropology. Our doctrine of man. This is one premise upon which all our theology is set. And since it is so fundamental it is a premise that is constantly under assault. It was under assault in the 1st inaugural address this last week. I wonder if you heard it if you listened to the address. There was the attack, in all its glory, on Christian anthropology.
(1) “This is a great nation and we are a good people.”
(2) “We can make America, once again, the leading force for good in the world.”
This is the talk of Utopians. All Utopians believe this horse hockey. Believing that man is basically good they then can launch into their sociological projects designed to help man be as good as he can be. They can begin to “social-engineer” man.
And social-engineering means for many of the Davos Crowd transhumanism. The World Economic Forum Billionaire groupies are pushing this great reset which includes this attempt at transhumanism.
Now remember we are talking about man’s sin nature. We have looked at Romans 3. We have considered the confessions. We have defined this idea of fallen man’s sin nature in our theological language.
And now we are considering what all this means concretely. And what we are saying now is that fallen man is more than capable of seeking to social engineer mankind so that he crosses an evolutionary marker and becomes transhuman … human but more than human.
It is all there is the literature. There you find Huxley in his BNW telling us about those responsible for creating the different categories of humans needed for varied tasks.
Huxley caught the transhumanism in the birthing process. In BNW birthing became depersonalized with the use of machines and surgically removed ovaries, which are kept in incubators, to produce fetuses, who are then stored in jars on conveyor belts. These conveyor belts have been engineered to move at 33 1/3 centimeters an hour so their journey along the belt is completed in 267 days. Along the way, they are subjected to X-Rays to kill off the weak. The fetuses are also given chemicals according to there caste to condition them.
Our transhumanism today runs along different rails but it is still animated by the same anthropology. Man has determined that God is absent so man will be his own God and create a transhuman that is not only socially engineered but is also biologically engineered. It’s already happening in China with their system of social credit. Why would you think it would not come here?
You have to understand with our anthropology we understand that for the unbeliever that there is, as the text says, no fear of God before their eyes. Because there is no fear of God before their eyes they believe that all things are open to them. They become their own God. When they are considered as the Technocratic Oligarch crowd that we are dealing with their assumption as God is to see humans as a resource to be managed just like oil, or coal, or copper. Men are not to be free but are to be in bondage to the elitist technocrat. If the technocratic Oligarch believes that humans would be better managed if they were all chipped and part of a central data base then all humans will be chipped.
There is nothing wrong with this since it is the best way to manage the resource called humans. We have to understand that once man has no fear of God before his eyes then there is nothing that is out of bounds in terms of behavior.
Look… either we believe our Anthropology or we don’t. If we believe it then it is easy to believe that Government heads like Pharaoh would throw babies into the Nile river, easy to believe that Government heads like Nebuchadnezzar throw people alive into furnaces because they won’t bow down, and easy to believe that Government heads like Herod would slaughter the innocent just to try to kill Jesus, and Government heads will be more than happy to go all Transhumanism in their Great Reset NWO project.
Conclusion
However, man’s sinfulness is not the final word. Christian anthropology is answered by Christian teleology. We believe that the Kingdom has come and that evil men will be overcome. We believe that Christ having defeated the enemy in His work on the Cross intends to defeat the Fagins and the Raskolnikovs, and the Madame deFarges and the Edward Rolles Westons of the world.
Evil men don’t get the last word because our teleology of the Kingdom reminds us that Christ shall reign until he makes all his enemies his footstool. Victory over wickedness in time and space history is inevitable.
We are reminded that even when evil men wax for a period of time that though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. We are reminded that even when evil man wax for a period the Lord God Omnipotent reigns and that His Kingdom is an everlasting Kingdom which will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.
So, we are aware of the reality of our Anthropology but we understand that in Christ victory at the Cross he is now the Christus Victor who triumphs over all enemies. And we triumph in him.
