Theology Essay

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Theology Essay
“How might our understanding of human nature and of sin affect our understanding of salvation through Jesus Christ?”

My understanding of human nature, sin and of our salvation is affected by what I know of each, to answer this question I split the question into four parts. This will help me to answer how my understanding of salvation through Jesus Christ is affected by my understanding of sin and human nature. 1. What is Sin? 2. What is our human nature? 3. What is salvation? 4. What is my understanding of all this together?
What is Sin?
For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23)
In Hebrew it’s called Chattah and in Greek it’s named Hamartia; (Conner, 1988), it means to have “fallen short” or to have “missed the mark”. Sin is an infectious disease that runs down to our very being and core (Grenz). The origin of sin is from before Adam and Eve sinned, the original sin was from Lucifer or the devil. This is also known as the mystery of iniquity, (2nd Thess 2:7), There are many questions surrounding why Lucifer sinned but we must realize that some of the answers God has reserved for himself.(Deut 29:29) (Conner, 1988). The next known sin after that is of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and how when tempted by Satan they took a bite of the forbidden fruit, (Gen 3:1-7). Which cause God to remove them from the Garden of Eden as they now had sin in their life
The consequences of that one action had much greater effect than just what happened to Adam and Eve; by being disobedient they in turn affected all of us for we are all now born into sin and now face the consequences of Sin. There are four consequences of sin (Grenz). They are * Alienation * Condemnation * Enslavement * Depravity
Alienation:
God created us to have a relationship with him; but sin robs us of that natural relationship that we are meant to have with him. It takes us from being his friend to being his enemy (Romans 5:10a) we flee from God; instead of running to the cure we are trying to control the disease. Sin doesn’t just rob us from having a relationship with God but in turn it also in robs us from ourselves, we are able to sense that we are not being who we are meant to be and in the end make ourselves our own worst enemy (Grenz).
Condemnation:
As being sinful Creatures and carrying it in us has made us as humans Condemned; which means that we have a sentence waiting for us. This sentence is to be a guilty sentence due to the fact that having sin in our lives leaves God with no alternative (John3:18). He cannot be near sin or with it.

Enslavement:
Sin in itself has made us slaves to it, we do not rule over sin, it rules over us (Romans 7:21-23) this means that we are already naturally predisposed to sin, so when it comes to making a decision or taking action our human mind will naturally move towards sin, it is through The holy spirit that we are able to start to take action and change that.
Depravity:
Sin in its radicalness has made us as humans powerless to it; that we ourselves are not able to fix the situation that we are in, we don’t have the cure; instead we go looking into other realms trying to find it e.g. work, success, money, pleasure. When simply means the fact is that sin has robbed us from righteousness and because of that we cannot fix the problem of sin that the cure is not the way we think it is. And because we try to look for what we think is missing in other things we fall more into the trap of its power and move even further into depravity and away from what it truly is that we need; God
Sin has robbed us away from all that God wanted for us; from what he wanted us to enjoy with him, it makes us constantly fall short of what we are meant to achieve; his plan is for our life, it’s a disease that we ourselves are not able to fix no matter what we try and do to solve it. It has fixed itself into our very bones. Becoming a playing part in our human
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