Article IX
“Original Sin standeth not in the following of Adam, (as the Pelagians do vainly talk;) but it is the fault and corruption of the Nature of every man, that naturally is ingendered of the offspring of Adam; whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and is of his own nature inclined to evil, so that the flesh lusteth always contrary to the spirit; and therefore in every person born into this world, it deserveth God's wrath and damnation.”
Article X
“The condition of Man after the fall of Adam is such, that he cannot turn and prepare himself, by his own natural strength and good works, to faith, and calling upon God: Wherefore we have no power to do good works pleasant and acceptable to God, without the grace of God by Christ preventing us, that we may have a good will, and working with us, when we have that good will.
Romans 11:5-8
So too, at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace. And if by grace, then it is no longer by works; if it were, grace would no longer be grace. What then? What Israel sought so earnestly it did not obtain, but the elect did. The others were hardened, as it is written: God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes so that they could not see and ears so that they could not hear, to this very day.”
John 6:41-48, 60
At this the Jews began to grumble about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They said, “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I came down from heaven’?”
“Stop grumbling among yourselves,” Jesus answered. “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day. It is written in the Prophets: ‘They will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who listens to the Father and learns from him comes to me. No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only he has seen the Father. I tell you the truth, he who believes has everlasting life. I am the bread of life.”… On hearing it, many of his disciples said, “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?”
Appreciating how dependent we are on the grace of God will make us more thankful to him and more confident in his power to provide for our deepest needs.
I was just reading before the service, there at the front of the Common Worship book, the declaration of ascent that ministers are meant to make before they are ordained; that they assent to the doctrine of the Church of England, the truth of God’s word as it has been revealed in the Bible and as it’s laid out in the Book of Common Prayer, and the Thirty-Nine Articles.
And so today, we’re looking at the Article that speaks about original sin. And it says this, and you have to forgive the 17th century language:
“Original sin standeth not in the following of Adam (as the Pelagians do vainly talk;)” (We’ll think about who the Pelagians are in just a moment.) “…but it is the fault and corruption of the nature of every man that is naturally engendered of the offspring of Adam, whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness and is of his own nature inclined to evil so that the flesh lusteth always contrary to the spirit and therefore in every person born into this world, it deserveth God’s wrath and damnation.
“The condition of man after the fall of Adam is such that he cannot turn and prepare himself by his own natural strength and good works to faith in calling upon God; wherefore we have no power to do good works pleasant and acceptable to God without the grace of God by Christ preventing (that means preceding) us, that we may have a good will and working with us when we have that good will.”
Now, there are some historical debates whose outcome has had a massive impact on history from then onwards. I think of the debate between the king and the nobles in Magna Carta that kind of founded what this country was going to be like from then on.
I think of the debate between Wilberforce and the opponents of slavery.
And as I sat in the Methodist Chapel earlier on this afternoon, I thought what a huge historical difference it made to the church that the Church of England at the time decided it was wise to chuck the Wesleyans and the Methodists out of the Anglican church. Can you imagine what it would have been like if they just stayed in?
And this evening we’ll be thinking about just such a debate in the history of the church between Saint Augustine and a British monk named Pelagius in the fourth century. This was the question which they debated; can people choose to be saved without God’s intervention?
Pelagius said yes, of course they can, people can choose to be saved without God’s intervention. Augustine argued no, people can’t choose to be saved without God’s intervention. And Augustine it was that won the debate and this has had a massive impact on Western Christianity ever since.
And so in this series on the Articles we see the Anglican church firmly and apologetically sides with Saint Augustine in this debate.
So the question again; can people choose to be saved without God’s intervention? To put it another way, are humans born as a “tabula rasa”, as morally neutral? And then as they grow older, there’s a choice put before them; do you want to be saved, or do you want to not be saved? And then they weigh the options, and some people say yeah and some people say no.
So the question is, is that the right way? Is that the Biblical way to think of how people come to faith? And I think most Christians today will probably say, well of course people have a choice. Of course they’re born kind of neutral. Of course we have free will in the matter of salvation.
But as with any question like this, we must first and foremost be guided by what scripture has to say on the matter. And the Bible is surprisingly clear on this. Again and again it emphasises that human beings left to themselves will never choose to be saved without God first doing work in their hearts.
Consider these words from our first reading from the book of Romans.
“The mind governed by the flesh…”
and by that Paul means those who are not yet Christians
“… is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God.”
Now think about the implications of that. It means that those who are “in the realm of the flesh” can’t do that which is pleasing to God, and what could be more pleasing to God than wanting people to turn and be saved?
But no Paul says they can’t do that. And then these words from Jesus himself in our Gospel reading from John chapter 6:
“No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.”
And here draws as a nice polite English way of translating it. The original means drags. It means water that is drawn up out of a well.
So again, I think Jesus is wanting us to think, “does water sit there and think, no, I’m not gonna actually go into the bucket this time and be brought out of the well.” No, it doesn’t. The water is brought out of the well whether it likes it or not.
Later in John 6, Jesus also says,
“no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the father.”
And again, since Paul in Ephesians 2 says these wonderful words,
“for by grace you have been saved through faith and this is not your own doing. It’s the gift of God.”
That is, that process of being saved through faith is “the gift of God”, not a result of works so that no one may boast.
Thus I think it is clear that when it comes to what the Bible says, Augustine was in the right and Pelagius in the wrong.
And so returning to our reading from Romans 8, in verse 7, Paul says,
“the mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God.”
And that word “hostile” also gives us an insight into why it is that people who are not yet Christians do not choose to be saved. Because hostile means being in all out war. So actually the mind of the person who hasn’t been converted yet isn’t neutral.
But is it all out war against God? Is that what Paul is saying? Imagine it like this. Imagine what it’s like in North Korea. I’ve been watching some documentaries recently on YouTube about North Korea. It’s kind of morbidly fascinating. But people in North Korea have been so brainwashed since birth to believe that America is the most evil power that possibly exists and is only counting down the seconds till it can wipe out the North Korean nation.
That North Koreans would never, ever, ever think good of anything that America does. So imagine if North Korea is suffering famine and the Americans think, you know, it’d be nice to send an oil tanker full of food and aid to North Korea. You know, you can imagine the tanker pulling up in the North Korean port. But what would the locals do? What would the North Koreans do? Would they go, “I wonder, yeah, maybe we should?” No, from birth they’ve been taught the Americans are evil, so they’d think they had poisoned the food, or the oil tanker is full of troops ready to invade. They’d immediately jump to the most hostile conclusions.
What Paul is saying is that it’s like that with every human being. The world that we live in, the culture that we swim in, we’ve been brainwashed, if you like, since birth to believe that we are the ones who get to make the decisions, thank you very much. We’re the ones who get to fight right and wrong. We don’t want God to be sovereign. We don’t like the idea that we’re utterly sinful and spiritually helpless.
That’s why, and sorry, we’re flipping around between verses here, but that’s why in John chapter 6, verse 60, after Jesus has given this teaching, “nobody can come to the Father except through me; nobody can come unless the Father draws them.” Verse 60 says this,
“on hearing this, many of his disciples said, this is a hard teaching. Who can accept it? And they left Jesus.”
This is a hard teaching. That we don’t have our own free will to choose God. We don’t, actually, we don’t want that. Thank you very much, Jesus, we’re off.
And so returning to the North Korea idea, what will actually get rid of those North Koreans’ total paranoia? It’s the whole system. You know, if you went and said to one North Korean, “do you know what, you should really try to be a bit more open”, that’s not going to make any difference. The only thing that will save North Korea is total regime change. The total getting rid of the Kim dynasty and the installation of a new government.
And it’s the same with the human mind. In order to salvation for even to make sense to someone, God needs to remove the tyrannical self-worshipping power ruling the human right mind and replace it with his Holy Spirit. Only then, after God has already done the hard, transformative work in the human mind, can someone even want to be saved on God’s terms.
Now let’s think of a few things that might have occurred to you, actually. Pallagius might even have said to Augustine, “but doesn’t that make us into puppets if we have no will of ourselves to save ourselves as the article says?” Well to this, Augustine and therefore Anglicanism responds, God’s unilateral grace does not destroy the will, it liberates it.
Again, imagine the North Korean. If the North Koreans turn around, the Kim regime’s gone. They said, well, hold on, we didn’t have a choice in that. Surely, actually, once the Kim regime has gone, it’s then that they have the true choice. For the moment, they’re slaves.
It’s the same with the human mind that is in slavery to sin. Augustine’s slave, a slave is not free because he’s able to move his arms around, he’s still in chains. Likewise, sinners still make choices, but they always reject God unless God first sets them free. True freedom is not neutrality, not the tabular rasa. But true freedom is the power to love and obey God, something we’ve lost through sin and that only God can revive.
So that’s one objection. Second one, when we come to faith, we really do feel like we’ve made a free-will decision. I remember the time that I chose to say, “Lord Jesus, I want you to come into my life”. Was that really just an illusion, Augustine? Well Augustine’s response, and indeed the response of Anglicanism, is that the experience is real of coming to Christ, of choosing him, but grace is the cause.
That’s why it uses that very old-fashioned word, “the grace preventing us”. It goes before us. God’s grace goes before even a decision like that. Yes, we do freely choose Christ, but as Augustine would say, God’s grace was working in and under that choice, enabling our will to desire him.
And I think Augustine would also caution that subjective feelings are not reliable guides for theology. What we feel might be happening in us is not as good a guide as what scripture says is happening. And scripture is clear. We’re spiritually dead apart from God’s intervention. Even faith is a gift from God, and being born again through the Holy Spirit precedes belief in Jesus.
Now it’s of course not to say that there hasn’t been a large amount of debate on this over the years. And I have many friends who are evangelicals, good Bible-believing Christians who would disagree with Augustine on this. But that’s why we’re looking at the 39 Articles, because it’s saying the Anglican church has made the decision on this, and it sides with Augustine.
So to be an Anglican means to take seriously the teaching that the Western church has always adhered to through Augustine, through Thomas Aquinas, through Calvin and Luther, even to today, that God is the one who does the work of salvation in us from start to finish.
And actually that’s good news. Why is it good news? Well first of all, like we heard from our reading from Ephesians, that it’s so that no one may boast. The huge issue with the alternative is that people are saved because they’re good, because they are the ones who’ve said, you know what, I’ve got a nice little heart that says Lord, when you put your salvation in front of me, I’m gonna do the right thing. So it means when they get to heaven, God will say to them, well done, well done, you did the right thing. Some of the credit for salvation needs to go to you. Some of the people who aren’t saved, well they were bad, they were worse people. That’s why they weren’t saved because they were worse.
It’s a lot better to have the level playing field that Augustine saw, that all of us are in the same predicament. All of us are only saved through the grace of God.
But secondly and more importantly, it’s wonderfully good news because it shows that the power of salvation is not up to us. I know that if it was up to me to choose to be saved and do the right thing all the time, I would fail miserably. The fact that it’s entirely in God’s hands is a massive comfort. Because it means that God has drawn me up like the water out of the well. That I am now completely safe in his hands. And just as he has unilaterally saved me, he will unilaterally protect me and he will bring me to heaven eventually.
The reason that our Anglican forebears fought so hard for this doctrine is because they knew it is a great comfort to Christians. That God has done it all. Jesus did it all, as the hymn says,
Jesus paid it all,
All to Him I owe;
Sin had left a crimson stain,
He washed it white as snow..
The Bible repeatedly says that we may stumble, but the Lord holds us by the hand. He will see us through to the end, despite our sin. So although even today, on hearing this, many people say this is hard teaching, who can accept it? The fact is that at its heart, it glorifies the Lord Jesus and gives us great peace that our salvation isn’t up to us with the vagaries of our moods and all that kind of thing. It’s up to Jesus. He has chosen us, he will save us.