....that "public admission" is by scholars, not the GC...: sorry.

Tom,
What I’m saying is that love and selfishness are principles - principles which determine the way we act or react, which govern our unconscious impulses, which influence our feelings, which control our passions, which rule our character.
If newborns have feelings, impulses, actions, reactions, they must be controlled either by love or by selfishness.
The problem is not seeking to feed oneself, but your feelings, impulses and reactions when you wish your needs met and when they are not immediately met.
Selfishness, or love to self, is just the principle of “me first.” And “me first” is the principle every human being, except Christ, was born with.
Animals are also governed by the principle of “me first.” But, of course, they do not have a carnal mind.


Internal foes are generated by the carnal nature, and they occur because of idols and darling sins present in the heart.

“Every obstacle, every internal foe, only increases your need of Christ. He came to take away the heart of stone, and give you a heart of flesh. Look to Him for special grace to overcome your peculiar faults. When assailed by temptation, steadfastly resist the evil promptings. . . . Cry to the dear Saviour for help to sacrifice every idol and to put away every darling sin. “ {AG 84.5}

“There are idols within and idols without; but God sends the Holy Spirit as the reprover of sin, that his people may be warned of their apostasy, and rebuked for their backsliding.” {NPU Gleaner, April 21, 1909 par. 5}

“In the battle with inward sin and outward temptation, even the wise and powerful Solomon was vanquished.” {PK 82.2}

We must strive daily against outward evil and inward sin, if we would reach the perfection of Christian character. {RH, May 30, 1882 par. 1}


He didn’t face any idols and darling sins which posed inward temptations.

"Divine mind"?...: He lived a human life despite his joint nature; that's no divine mind, but the Holy Spirit given him from his Father indwelling him, the Son of man.

Submitting daily to the Spirit means that he possessed a sinful human mind which he daily equally denied. "The mind of Christ" is the exercise of opting for the spirit rather than the sinful mind & flesh of human existence. Christ teaches us to put that old man to death as we opt for the Spirit. This was a positive requirement of salvation he fulfilled in his own life, of course.

As for "it's the nature that produces the choices": We are not born sinners! We were created with free choice, and God offers the power of salvation from sinful choices: Jesus took that offer and lived a perfect life as our Saviour. Sinful nature does not obligate us to sin...!

Gal 5:17 spells doom for our sinful flesh, and Jesus perfected the formula before we experience it, too.

Tsk, tsk...
Christ with a sinful mind? This is absurd.
Colin, what part of Christ was His divine nature?


It does. Sinful nature delights in sin. That's why you have to be born again.

If that be the case, then he did not save us from them in us, and so he failed in the mission of his name's meaning...! "...Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins."

In other words, attaining perfect Christian character is ruled out, and Adventism is dead....

...if that be the truth.

But, that is not the truth of the Bible and original Adventist teaching on Jesus, as we all know , there being now confusion and at least two schools of thought. Adventism needs the original position of the church restored to have the full gospel truth - amen! - as I've presented from the beginning of my posts on this Sabbath School lesson.

If this were true, it would apply to fetuses as well (let's say age 6 months, to use your guess, which is fine). So, under this hypothesis, any impules, action, or reaction that a 6 month old fetus would have must be controlled by love or selfishness, but this doesn't make sense.

Many of the impulses and reactions we have, even at our advanced age, are unconscious, like reflexes, digestion, all sorts of things. The brain conrolls all of these things, and it take a long time before a moral aspect enters into play.

I don't see how one could reasonably ascribe a moral aspect to anything a 6 month old fetus does.

Similarly with cats and other animals. They act on the basis of instinct. It's not immoral for a cat to meow because its hungry.



The feeling would be one of hunger, for a cat, or newborn, and the impulse or action would be to try to attract the attention of the one who could provide food to provide it.



A 6 month old fetus does not love at all. Whether you use Webster, or Ellen White, to define "love," the 6 month old fetus does not have it.



"Me first" is a moral principle. Animals have no concept of morality. The are guided by the instinct of self-preservation.



But a 6 month old fetus does? What's the difference? (between the 6 month old fetus and the cat, in terms of morality)



You're conflating different concepts. One concept is "sinful flesh." "Carnal mind" is another concept. The flesh, of itself, cannot act contrary to the will of God. The mind can.

"Carnal nature" involves the participation of the mind. "Sinful flesh" (or "sinful nature") does not. It's very important that we be careful and precise in our use of terms!

For example, Christ took our sinful nature; we can say that. However, Christ did NOT take our carnal nature. Never does inspiration state this, although many times we are told that Christ took our sinful nature, or sinful flesh.

Our flesh generates temptations, and our mind serves as an inbetween. The flesh, of itself, cannot act contrary to the will of God because the higher powers of the mind are involved whenever we make moral decisions. Christ had the same flesh we have, with the same generated temptations, but when these temptations passed by the higher powers of His mind, He always said, "No." So Christ never participated in sin, and so did not have a carnal, or sinning, nature.



We have all (other then Christ) sinned, so we have temptations based on both the fact that we have sinful natures and sinful pasts. We need to overcome both types of temptations.



If this were true, we would have no hope in overcoming these things. Our only hope in overcoming is in Christ. We cannot hope to do more than He did!, to overcome in areas where He didn't overcome.

We're not asked to do what Christ did, and more, in addition to that, but rather, to make His victory ours.

...Correction

He bore in his body sinful inclinations, and a family history of sinning from which he was not excluded: "the great law of heredity" worked on him.

Yes, he was burdened with corruption and the habits of cherished sins, but he was burdened with sinfulness itself, and he resisted it by the power of God which makes us children of God and him our Saviour, righteous by faith.

Another correction..., of a correction. lol Missed the editing deadline... : It should read...

If He were not of the same flesh as are those whom He came to redeem, then there is no sort of use of His being made flesh at all. More than this: Since the only flesh that there is in this wide world which He came to redeem is just the poor, sinful, lost, human flesh that all mankind have; if this is not the flesh that he was made, then He never really came to the world which needs to be redeemed. For if he came in a human nature different from that which human nature in this world actually is, then, even though He were in the world, yet for any practical purposes in reaching man and helping him, he was as far from him as if He had never come, for, in that case, in His human nature He was just as far from man and just as much of another world as if He had never come into this world at all....

The faith of Rome as to the human nature of Christ and Mary and of ourselves springs from that idea of the natural mind that God is too pure and too holy to dwell with us and in us in our sinful human nature; that sinful as we are, we are too far off for Him in His purity and holiness to come to us just as we are.

The true faith--the faith of Jesus--is that, far off from God as we are in our sinfulness, in our human nature which He took, He has come to us just where we are; that, infinitely pure and holy as He is, and sinful, degraded, and lost as we are, He in Christ by His Holy Spirit will willingly dwell with us and in us to save us, to purify us, and to make us holy....

"When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman." Gal. 4:4.

"And the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all." Isa. 53:6.

We have seen that in His being made of a woman, Christ reached sin at the very fountain head of its entrance into this world and that He must be made of a woman to do this. Also there was laid upon Him the iniquity, in the actual sins, of us all.

Thus all the sin of this world, from its origin in the world to the end of it in the world, was laid upon Him--both sin as it is in itself and sin as it is when committed by us; sin in its tendency and sin in the act: sin as it is hereditary in us, uncommitted by us; and sin as it is committed by us.

Only thus could it be that there should be laid upon Him the iniquity of us all. Only by His subjecting Himself to the law of heredity could He reach sin in full and true measure as sin truly is. Without this there could be laid upon Him our sins which have been actually committed, with the guilt and condemnation that belong to them. But beyond this there is in each person, in many ways, the liability to sin inherited from generations back which has not yet culminated in the act of sinning but which is ever ready, when occasion offers, to blaze forth in the actual committing of sins. David's great sin is an illustration of this. Ps. 51:5; 2 Sam. 11:2.

In delivering us from sin, it is not enough that we shall be saved from the sins that we have actually committed; we must be saved from committing other sins. And that this may be so, there must be met and subdued this hereditary liability to sin; we must become possessed of power to keep us from sinning--a power to conquer this liability, this hereditary tendency that is in us to sin.

All our sins which we have actually committed were laid upon Him, were imputed to Him, so that His righteousness may be laid upon us, may be imputed to us. Also our liability to sin was laid upon Him, in His being made flesh, in His being born of a woman, of the same flesh and blood as we are, so that His righteousness might be actually manifested in us as our daily life.

Thus He met sin in the flesh which He took and triumphed over it, as it is written: "God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh." And again: "He is our peace,...having abolished in His flesh the enmity."

And thus, just as our sins actually committed were imputed to Him that His righteousness might be imputed to us, so His meeting and conquering in the flesh the liability to sin and in that same flesh manifesting righteousness, enables us in Him, and Him in us, to meet and conquer in the flesh this same liability to sin and to manifest righteousness in the same flesh.

And thus it is that for the sins which we have actually committed, for the sins that are past, His righteousness is imputed to us, as our sins were imputed to Him. And to keep us from sinning His righteousness is imparted to us in our flesh as our flesh, with its liability to sin, was imparted to Him. Thus He is the complete Saviour. He saves from all the sins that we have actually committed and saves equally from all the sins that we might commit dwelling apart from Him.

This brings out that *both* by heredity and imputation Christ was "laden with sin." It's true that Christ had no "darling sins" or "idols" of His own to overcome, but He had ours!



1.With the terrible weight of the sins of the world upon Him, Christ withstood the test upon appetite, upon the love of the world, and upon that love of display which leads to presumption.

Elsewhere EGW points out that it was this very fact, that Christ had the weight of the sins of the world upon Him, that made these temptations so difficult. Christ had *two* important aspects of temptation to overcome, "laden with sin" by "imputation and heredity" as Jones put it.

2.If we have in any sense a more trying conflict than had Christ, then He would not be able to succor us.

The "in any sense" portion of the quote we wish to take notice of. For example, if we had "darling sins" and "idols" to face that in now way impacted Christ, that would be a sense that we have a more trying conflict than Christ had.'

"We have nothing to bear which He has not endured." This makes the same point. Nothing to bear (including "darling sins" and "idols")

3."From the time of Adam to that of Christ, self-indulgence had increased the power of the appetites and passions, until they had almost unlimited control. Thus men had become debased and diseased, and of themselves it was impossible for them to overcome. In man's behalf, Christ conquered by enduring the severest test. For our sake He exercised a self-control stronger than hunger or death."

This brings out that self-indulgence had increased the power of the appetites and passions. This is in the context of the temptations that Christ overcame and the nature that Christ assumed. Christ's assumed human nature thus involves far more than trivial factors such as being weak physically, or getting tired. It gets to the actual nitty-gritty that impacts us, and makes our temptations so difficult.