Cedarville Magazine Spring 2017

9 / 38

There is no place for racism in the Christian church. As
believers, we should be leading the way against racism
of any kind.
Gender Identity. Did God create us male and
female or did He not? If He created us male and female,
then it is not up to us to choose what we want to be.
We must embrace the truth: It’s not how we feel on
any particular morning; it’s how God created us. We
understand that; we embrace that; we live the life that
God has given us.
Marriage. If God established it, if it’s God’s design,
then no man can put asunder what God has developed.
Going back to Genesis 1:27, it’s all there. God created
in His image. God created male and female. Sexual
expression should also then be limited to this context.
We should be leading the way to say sex-trafficking, the
pornography industry — all of that has to stop.
HOW DOES IT AFFECT THE DOCTRINE
OF SIN?
Without a literal creation and a literal Adam and
Eve, how did sin enter humankind? Why is it that all
have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God? How
did death enter the world? Did God create a world that
evolved to such a point that it had death, chaos, and
destruction and then, all of a sudden, He proclaimed
it was good? That’s not what the Genesis record tells us.
Genesis tells us that He created the world, He
created it for a purpose, and it was very good. We
sinned. We created the mess we have today. God, out of
His love, sent His Son to provide penal, substitutionary
atonement on the cross so He could redeem this world,
restore it, and make it the way it should be. This is the
biblical record. With no explanation for sin, what do
we need to be saved from? What are we going to be
saved to?
HOW DOES IT AFFECT THE DOCTRINE
OF SALVATION?
The first Adam’s sin was imputed to us. We all fell.
You say, “That’s not fair.” Don’t go there too quickly.
You may think it’s not fair, but it’s the second Adam’s
righteousness that has been imputed to us — that’s
God’s grace. We want the doctrine of imputation so that
we can have Christ’s righteousness imputed to us. It’s
not our own works. We can’t earn it. We must repent of
our sins, place our faith in Christ, and God will impute
Christ’s righteousness to us. Can it really be that easy?
God, in His gracious love, has said so. If we have no
union with the first Adam, how do we have union with
the second Adam?
The story of creation, the fall, redemption, and
restoration rises and falls on creation and a historic
Adam and historic Eve. We are all in the first Adamwith
death. There’s a second Adam who was resurrected. If
there is no resurrection, we are of all people most to be
pitied (1 Cor. 15:19).
It all comes down to authority. Did God actually say?
We look at creation and we understand that God created.
That God created the animals and gave Adam delegated
authority. That the devil, who had already rejected God,
looked up to God and said, “I want to be God.” And God
looked back at the devil and said, “Not in my lifetime,”
and kicked him out of heaven. That devil, in the form of
the serpent in the Garden of Eden, deceived Eve, who in
turn gave the forbidden fruit to Adam, thus setting the
entire order of creation on its head.
This same Satan is still trying to distort the biblical
worldview, the biblical narrative, and the sources of
authority. And we must stand and say, “No. That’s not
right.” God created this earth. God created Adam and
Eve. God used the biblical record to tell us what He
wanted to tell us about Himself. It is God’s revelation.
It is authoritative. It is inerrant. It is what we must stand
on. And so, the real question is “Did God actually say?”
Recognize today that these theological questions
are not trivial. They’re not trite. These questions involve
wrestling with supernatural enemies, and we must stand
and say that — for us, for this institution—we will stand
for the Word of God and the Testimony of Jesus Christ.
Thomas White became Cedarville’s 10th President in 2013. He
earned his Ph.D. in systematic theology from Southeastern
Baptist Theological Seminary. He is the author and editor of
numerous publications, including the recently released First
Freedom: The Beginning and End of Religious Freedom
(B&H Academic).
Follow him:
Subscribe at
Gary Varvel is a national award-winning political cartoonist
for the Indianapolis Star. He is the father of Ashley (Varvel)
Day ’06. Cedarville Magazine commissioned Varvel to
illustrate the need of a real Adam and Eve in the Gospel story.
God used the biblical record to tell us what
He wanted to tell us about Himself. It is God’s
revelation. It is authoritative. It is inerrant. It is
what we must stand on.
Cedarville Magazine | 9