A quiz over a quote: “You were steeped in sin at birth.”\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Who said it? (Besides every Calvinist preacher you ever cared to listen to … ad nauseum.)<\/p>\n\n\n
An Old Testament prophet?<\/p>\n\n\n
Jesus?\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
The Apostle Paul?\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
No, No, and No.<\/p>\n\n\n
But it does come straight out of the Bible.<\/p>\n\n\n
Correct answer?\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
A group of Pharisees – the bad guys of John’s Gospel in particular and the New Testament in general.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
In the 9th chapter of John, Jesus heals a man born blind and the man ends up in hot water with the local Pharisees. In the course of having the Pharisees grill him over his healing, he gets a little sassy, questioning their logic in rejecting Jesus out of hand as God’s Messiah.<\/p>\n\n\n
He tells them, “If this man – Jesus – were not from God, he could do nothing.” (v.33)<\/p>\n\n\n
This ticks off the Pharisees royally: “You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!” And they threw him out. (v.34)<\/p>\n\n\n
You can hear the self-righteous condescension spilling out along with the words.<\/p>\n\n\n
But surely we are not to see this “steeped in sin at birth” as being a faulty theology arising from the Pharisees’ own hubris, right?<\/p>\n\n\n
Couldn’t this be sound biblical theology, but merely in the wrong mouths?\u00a0A broken clock being right twice a day, and all that?<\/p>\n\n\n
I suppose one could make that argument … if Jesus had not already weighed in on the topic himself when he and his disciples first encounter this blind man at the side of the road:<\/p>\n\n\n
John 9:2 His disciples asked Jesus, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n
3 “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,’ said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.”<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n
True, Jesus is not saying the guy had never sinned in his lifetime, just that his blindness was not the result of some sin he or his parents committed.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Still, Jesus’ focus was not on condemning the man and playing up this guy’s experience of existing in some profound state of unrighteousness.<\/p>\n\n\n
Jesus’ focus was on restoring his sight.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Simple.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A quiz over a quote: “You were steeped in sin at birth.”\u00a0 Who said it? (Besides every Calvinist preacher you ever cared to listen to … ad nauseum.) An Old Testament prophet? Jesus?\u00a0 The Apostle Paul?\u00a0 No, No, and No. But it does come straight out of the Bible. Correct answer?\u00a0 A group of Pharisees […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10814"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10814\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10815,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10814\/revisions\/10815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}