The Creed - I Believe In Christs Substitutionary Death Part 1

I BELIEVE in Godthe Father Almighty, Maker

The Creed
of heaven and earth: And in Jesus Christ his only
Son, our Lord; who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born
of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified,
dead, and buried; he descended into hell; the third day he rose
I BELIEVE in CHRIST‘S
again from the dead; he ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the
SUBSTITUTIONARYholy
right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence he shall come to
judge the quick and the dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost; the
DEATH
catholic church; the communion of saints; the forgiveness of sins;
the resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting. Amen
Part 1

I BELIEVE in Godthe Father Almighty, Maker
of heaven and earth: And in Jesus Christ his only
Son, our Lord; who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born
of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified,
dead, and buried; he descended into hell; the third day he rose
again from the dead; he ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the
right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence he shall come to
judge the quick and the dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost; the holy
catholic church; the communion of saints; the forgiveness of sins;
the resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting. Amen

―Of all the dispositions and
teachings of thinkers and
ethicists, the one doctrine that I
have no sufficient counter for is
Jesus on that Cross.‖
- Gandhi
The Creed – I Believe in Christ‘s Substitutionary Death

Key Question…
―Why Did Jesus Have to Die?‖
…and what did it accomplish?


First Step –
Understand the Depravity of Man


John Wayne Gacy was put to death by lethal
injection in the early morning hours of May 10,
1994 for the rape and murder of 33 young men
and boys, 29 of whom he buried in the crawl
space beneath his own Chicago home between
the years of 1972 and 1978. After his death,
he was delivered into the hands of Dr. Helen
Morrison to perform a very unique autopsy.
Dr. Morrison had previously interviewed Gacy,
along with many other serial killers, in an
attempt to isolate personality traits that were
common among such ruthless murderers. Now
at the request of Gacy‘s family, Dr. Morrison
was going to remove the brain of the notorious
serial killer in hopes of discovering some sort of
physical abnormality that would provide
answers for why Gacy destroyed so many
innocent lives.

quot;He is a serial killer when he is a
fetus, even as soon as sperm
meets egg to create the genes of
a new person‖
-Dr. Helen Morrison

• Determinism: human actions are
caused by another, not by one‘s self.
• Indeterminism: human actions are not
caused by anything.
• Self-Determinism: human actions are
self-caused.


―The heart is more deceitful
than all else And is
desperately sick; Who can
understand it?‖
- Jeremiah 17:9

―You cannot
slander human
nature; it is worse
than words can
paint it.‖
- Charles
Spurgeon

Man Created in God‘s Image
quot;Then God said, ―Let Us make
man in Our image, according to
Our likeness; and let them rule over
the fish of the sea and over the
birds of the sky and over the cattle
and over all the earth, and over
every creeping thing that creeps on
the earth.‖ God created man in
His own image, in the image of
God He created him; male and
female He created them.―
(Genesis 1:26-27)


Man Created in Man‘s Image
quot;When Adam had lived one
hundred and thirty years, he
became the father of a son in his
own likeness, according to his
image, and named him Seth.‖
(Genesis 5:3)

quot;Behold, I was brought forth in
iniquity, And in sin my mother
conceived me.‖
(Psalm 51:5)
Depravity is a condition passed from sinful parents to their children


quot;Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and
that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.‖
(Genesis 6:5)

― The fool has said in his heart, ―There is no God.‖ They are corrupt, they
have committed abominable deeds; There is no one who does good. The
Lord has looked down from heaven upon the sons of men To see if there are
any who understand, Who seek after God. They have all turned aside,
together they have become corrupt; There is no one who does good, not even
one.‖
(Psalm 14:1-3)

quot;Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, And in sin my mother conceived me.‖
(Psalm 51:5)

quot;Indeed, there is not a righteous man on earth who continually does good and
who never sins.‖
(Ecclesiastes 7:20)

quot;―For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries,
fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders.‖
(Matthew 15:19)

quot;for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,‖
(Romans 3:23)

quot;Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world,
and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because
all sinned‖
(Romans 5:12)

quot;If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the
truth is not in us.‖
(1 John 1:8)

―Whatever weakens your reasoning,
impairs the tenderness of your conscience,
obscures your sense of God, or takes
away your relish for spiritual things, in
short – if anything increases the authority
and the power of the flesh over the Spirit,
that to you becomes sin however good it is
in itself.‖
- Suzanna Wesley on Sin

What is ―Depravity‖…?
Diaphtheirō: ―To cause someone to become perverse or
depraved, as a type of moral destruction—‗to deprave, to pervert,
to ruin, to cause the moral ruin of‖

quot;If anyone advocates a different doctrine and does not agree
with sound words, those of our Lord Jesus Christ, and with the
doctrine conforming to godliness, he is conceited and
understands nothing; but he has a morbid interest in controversial
questions and disputes about words, out of which arise envy,
strife, abusive language, evil suspicions, and constant friction
between men of depraved mind and deprived of the truth, who
suppose that godliness is a means of gain.quot;(1 Timothy 6:3-5)


―The Moment Lyle Reloaded‖
―The moment in the course of the Menendez
brothers' double murder when Lyle and Erik
had emptied their shotguns into the bodies of
their parents, but realized their mother was still
alive, crawling around in the blood…. Mom was
alive and whimpering and, as Maury puts it,
poor-little-rich-boy Lyle quot;went out of the
house and then came back in to blow away the
mother‖ …quot;That was the crushing blow for the
whole abuse defense,quot; he said. quot;That jolted
audiences. There's been a backlash. Abuse
defenses are now looked at cynically, and
audiences are falling back on the old beliefs in
good and evil.quot; They are, moreover, capable
of making subtle philosophic distinctions
between modes of evil‖
- Ron Rosenbaum, Staring into the Heart of
Darkness

quot;For all of us have become like one who is
unclean, And all our righteous deeds are
like a filthy garment; And all of us wither
like a leaf, And our iniquities, like the wind,
take us away.quot;
(Isaiah 64:6)


Depravity‘s Effects

Spiritual Death Physical Death Eternal Death
―And you were dead in ―Therefore, just as quot;Then death and Hades
your trespasses and through one man sin were thrown into the lake
sins,‖ entered into the world, and of fire. This is the second
(Ephesians 2:1) death through sin, and so death, the lake of fire.
death spread to all men, quot;And if anyone‘s name
because all sinned‖ was not found written in
(Romans 5:12) the book of life, he was
thrown into the lake of
fire.‖
(Revelation 20:14-15)


Two Witnesses to Sin – Holy Spirit

quot;And He, when He comes, will convict the world
concerning sin and righteousness and judgment;
concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me; and
concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father
and you no longer see Me; and concerning judgment,
because the ruler of this world has been judged.quot;
(John 16:8-11)


Two Witnesses to Sin – Conscience
quot;For when Gentiles who do not have the Law do instinctively the
things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to
themselves, in that they show the work of the Law written in their
hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts
alternately accusing or else defending them,quot;
(Romans 2:14-15)

quot; But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall
away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and
doctrines of demons, by means of the hypocrisy of liars seared in
their own conscience as with a branding iron,quot;
(1 Timothy 4:1-2)


Can Natural Mankind
Recognize Their Depravity?


A man came to a preacher and said ‗You
talk about how heavy sin is, but preacher, I
don‘t feel a thing.‘ The preacher thought
for a minute and then asked, ‗If we put
400lbs of weight on a corpse, do you think
he‘d feel it‘?


―It is a public scandal that gives
offense, it is no sin to sin in secret.‖
- French Dramatist Moliner


―In every society, no matter what
its cultural underpinnings, there is
a code of ‗oughtness‘‖
- Ravi Zacharias


Brief History of the Depravity Doctrine
Pelagius (c. 354 -420) taught
that human beings are born
innocent, just as Adam was
created. They inherit no sin from
Adam, but sin like Adam. Only
our sins are imputed to us.

His views were condemned by
Council of Carthage (416-418)
and opposed by Augustine.


From the Fourth Century,
Augustinian thought stressed
the doctrine of the depravity of
man and the nature of evil as a
privation of the good that God
originally created.

This influence continued all the
way up to the period of the
reformation (1400-1500‘s)


Martin Luther defended the
doctrine of depravity during the
Reformation period against
one chief rival – Erasmus – and
his Christian humanism
teaching that began to elevate
the nature of man beyond his
depraved state. Luther and the
reformers were successful
against Erasmus.


Jacob Arminius (1560-1609), one
of the reformers, taught that all
people are born depraved and
cannot on their own power obey
God. Humans are born with a bent
toward sin and cannot avoid physical
death. One‘s own sin ratifies
Adam‘s sin, but Adam‘s sin is not
imputed to us. We are in Adam
potentially or seminally. The image
of God is effaced in man.


Moderate Calvinism teaches that we
inherit a judicial guilt from Adam and
we are legally connected to him;
Adam‘s sin is imputed to us. All
humans apart from salvation suffer
spiritual death and will face physical
and eternal death. But in order for
God‘s grace to overcome depravity,
there must be a cooperation between
the free will of man and God. The
image of God is effaced in man, but
he can respond to God.


Strong Calvinism teaches that we
inherit a judicial guilt from Adam and
we are legally connected to him;
Adam‘s sin is imputed to us. All
humans apart from salvation suffer
spiritual death and will face physical
and eternal death. Man cannot
cooperate with God; rather God
delivers ‗irresistible grace‘ against
man‘s will and saves him. The image
of God is erased in man – he cannot
respond to God on his own.


A Quick Critique of Strong Calvinism
quot;―Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those
who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children
together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and
you were unwilling.quot;(Matthew 23:37)

quot;―You men who are stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and
ears are always resisting the Holy Spirit; you are doing just as
your fathers did.quot;(Acts 7:51)

―Where there is no freedom of choice, there can be neither sin
nor righteousness‖, A. W. Tozer,
The Freedom of the Will in That Incredible Christian.


Pleiganism Arminianism Moderate Strong Calvinism
Calvinism
State at birth Innocent Totally depraved Totally depraved Totally depraved
(conscience (conscience (conscience
corrupted) corrupted) destroyed)
Ability Can obey Cooperate with Cooperate with Cannot cooperate
God God God with God
Guilt None Potential Judicial/actual Judicial/actual

―In Adam‖ Not at all Potentially Legally/naturally Legally/naturally

Inherited from Bad Propensity to sin; Propensity to sin; Necessity to sin;
Adam example necessity to die necessity to die necessity to die
What is One‘s own One‘s own sin One‘s own sin and One‘s own sin and
imputed sin Adam‘s sin Adam‘s sin
Spiritual Retained Effaced Effaced Erased
image of God
Effect of None Sufficient for all Irresistible on the Irresistible on the
grace willing unwilling


The Renaissance (―rebirth‖ or
―revival‖) of the 14th – 17th
centuries elevated man to the
center of reality instead of
God. A century later, the
Enlightenment arrived and it
pushed mankind‘s reason and
man himself to full center stage.
Gone was the thought of
depravity. Modernity stressed
reason and ruled out revelation.

Today, sin is out and the sinner has
become a patient to be secularly
treated. Abraham Maslow, the
famous American psychologist, said,
―As far as I know we just don't have
any intrinsic instincts for evil.‖
Echoing his statement is Carl
Rogers who, along with Maslow is
credited with being the founder of
the humanist approach to
psychology, said, ―I do not find
that…evil is inherent in human nature‖


―The usual moral distinctions between good and bad are simply drowned in a
maudlin emotion in which we feel more sympathy for the murderer than for the
murdered, for the adulterer than for the betrayed, and in which we have
actually begun to believe that the real guilty party, the one who somehow
caused it all, is the victim, and not the perpetrator of the crime.‖ – Robert Fitch


―For several decades, we psychologists looked upon the whole
matter of sin and moral accountability as a great incubus, and
acclaimed our liberation from it as epoch-making. But at length
we have discovered that to be free from sin is also to have the
excuse of being sick, rather than being sinful. [We are in] danger
of becoming lost. This danger is, I believe, betokened by the
widespread interest in existentialism, which we are presently
witnessing. In becoming amoral, ethically neutral, and free, we
have cut the very roots of our being, lost our deepest sense of
selfhood and identity, and with neurotics themselves find
ourselves asking, quot;Who am I? What is my deepest destiny?―
- Hobart Mowrer onetime President of the American Psychological Society


Gross takes his reader back to 1941 when the
Nazis rolled into the town of Jedwabne where Poles
and Jews had been peacefully living side by side for
many years. Once the Germans arrived, the Poles
asked the simple question ―Is it permitted to kill the
Jews?‖ Summarizing parts of Gross‘s book in a
2001 Newsweek article, George Will states, ―A
head was hacked off and kicked around. To escape
the killers, women fled to a pond and drowned their
babies, then themselves. But most were burned alive
in a barn while the town was searched for the
surviving sick and children. A witness: ‗As for the
little children, they roped a few together by their legs
and carried them on their backs, then put them on
pitchforks and threw them onto smoldering coals.‘‖
Will ends his article by answering the question that
was on everyone‘s mind: ―So, again: Why in
Jedwabne did neighbors murder their neighbors?
Because it was permitted. Because they could.‖

―I freed Germany from the stupid and
degrading fallacies of conscience and
morality … we will train young people
before whom the world will tremble. I want
young people capable of violence –
imperious, relentless, and cruel.‖
- Adolf Hitler

―Looking at the world at no distant date,
what an endless number of lower races will
have been eliminated by the higher civilized
races throughout the world.‖
- Charles Darwin


quot;as it is written, ―There is none righteous, not even one;
There is none who understands, There is none who
seeks for God; All have turned aside, together they
have become useless; There is none who does good,
There is not even one.‖ ―Their throat is an open grave,
With their tongues they keep deceiving,‖ ―The poison
of asps is under their lips‖; ―Whose mouth is full of
cursing and bitterness‖; ―Their feet are swift to shed
blood, Destruction and misery are in their paths, And
the path of peace they have not known.‖ ―There is no
fear of God before their eyes.‖quot;
(Romans 3:10-18)
We are not sinners because we sin, we sin because we are sinners


Depravity does not mean that man
is as bad as he can be … Rather it
means that man is as bad off as he
can be.
quot;I have come as Light into the world, so that everyone who
believes in Me will not remain in darkness.quot;
(John 12:46)


What is the Solution?


The Cross

Solves the Problem of Penalty

The New Birth

Solves the Problem of Spiritual/Eternal Death

Problem Number One Solved

quot;For if while we were enemies we were
reconciled to God through the death
of His Son, much more, having been
reconciled, we shall be saved by His
life.quot;
(Romans 5:10)
Problems Two and Three Solved

―For certainly, Christ is
much more powerful to save
than Adam was to ruin‖
- John Calvin


What were the results of Dr.
Helen Morrison‘s examination of
the brain of John Wayne Gacy?

Simply that he had a normal male
brain.

No defects.

No abnormalities.

No excuses.


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