22/11/2007

  • Do you think people are inherently good or bad?

    There is no inherent good at all in man.  To assume people have any inherent good tends toward the Arminian heresy.  God did originally call us, one of his created beings, good because He assigned His Creation good. (Genesis 1).   However, inherently, that is, in and of themselves, all people are bad (i.e, unrighteous) due to the Fall, which rendered Adam and his successors as no longer having any "virtue of the kind of of thing it is".  After the Fall, our only "virtue" was that we were children of wrath with inherent bad to the extent of total depravity, and even later, the Lord God "repented" from having made humans (Genesis 6:6-7).   Even when the person saved, that goodness (righteousness) is not inherent but entirely foreign and imputed from the inherent goodness of the only Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.  As He Himself said clearly, "Why callest me thou good?  There is none good but one, that is, God." (Mk 10:18, cf Ps 53:1-3)

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Comments (3)

  • Good answer! That is the answer to this Question definitely. :)

  • Flying Irish,

    Good! ;)

    Radical depravity is one of the most comforting things. I love Psalm 16:2-3

    Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge. I say to the LORD, "You are my Lord;
    I have no good apart from you."
    As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones,
    in whom is all my delight.

    Have you seen the youtube video, "John Piper is bad"?

    And thanks for your comment on Ron Paul. Morally libertarian is a term with which I'm not so familiar. However, I'm more interested in your comment on the state establishing "Protestant Reformed Christianity as the religion of the State". I think I'm somewhere between kindergarten and fourth grade when it comes to this church-state relationships. I'm trying to better understand the role of the church, but the inescapable consequence is that I have to think about the state, too. I have a good friend with anabaptistic kinds of thoughts, and he asks me questions that make me think, which I appreciate.

    I believe in the mediatorial kingship of Christ over the nations. I think it's in the Bible, I see it in church history, I've been taught it from the womb, and it makes me happy. Since third grade (in my analogy), I've had a hard time imagining a converted king rejecting everything Christ's disciples have taught him once he sits back down on his throne. Another funny thought would be Jonah being upset because God had converted a nation. "You're only supposed to convert INDIVIDUALS! Not nations!"

    But I'm not very far along in how to apply the mediatorial kingship of Christ. I want to live it out more, and look at the state in light of that (without neglecting the "weightier matters"). So, I'm much wanting to read Messiah the Prince. What books have you found to be helpful about these things?

  • God did originally call us, one of his created beings, good because He assigned His Creation good. (Genesis 1).

    I tend to think this word "good" means "good for the purpose it was intended for".  Remember, God said it was not good that Adam should be alone.  When He said that, He'd already created the whole world and everything in it, and it was all perfect, flawless, and unstained by sin and the curse, yet something was not good.  To me, this means that God uses the word "good" to mean "good for His purposes".  When Peter implored Christ not to go to the cross, that was done, presumably, out of the noblest of good intentions (love for Jesus), yet it was not good (indeed, it was Satanic) because it was not God's purpose.  Something is only good if it accords totally with the purpose God has intended it for.  Sort of casts a different light on the whole question of whether predestination is a "good" doctrine, doesn't it?

    In Christ, and for the gospel of the kingdom,
    Brett

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