----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mark K LaCour" <lacour1@...>
> MARK:  It most certainly does treat sin as a condition.

Now who's imposing a viewpoint on the text?

> CHAD:  > Adam "did his job."  Yep.  And according to Romans 6:23, he
> "earned" his wages.
>
> MARK:  The above was put in quotes in keeping with your flawed analogy.
> Adam had no "job," and needed to earn no "wage."  It's a little bit funny
> that you can find Adam in Romans 6:23 concerning wages but can't find
> Adam in Romans 6:23 when it comes to "free gift of eternal life."

After the fall, Adam needed eternal life as a "gift" just like anyone else.

> CHAD:  So... how is death a "wage" and life wouldn't have been?  What you
> say about one, *must* be true for the other.
>
> MARK:  Must?

Yep.  Paul's eschatology is "built" on parallel dualism.  What's true for 
one *must* be true for the other.

>It's only a "must" for you, as the very text you cite
> differs.

No it doesn't.

>Here is Paul's chance to parallel "wages" of sin with the
> "earned" life of Jesus Christ, and he doesn't call it that.

He's already done that in Romans 5:10.  He doesn't parallel wages with 
earned life at this point because it's impossible for fallen man (not 
pre-fallen) to earn eternal life.  His concern is with how fallen man who 
has "earned" death can possibly access eternal life, not about whether 
eternal life must be earned.  That's a point he's making in Romans 10:5.

> CHAD:  And how is it gracious to have a death threat hanging on your
> every act of obedience?
>
> MARK:  I'm not sure what you're talking about here, but if you're talking
> about Adam in the garden it's no different than me or you having the
> threat of eternal damnation hanging over us if we don't pursue after a
> holiness without which NO ONE will see the Lord.

I don't have that threat hanging over me.  Christ already took care of it by 
placing himself under the graceless threat himself.

>It's still all of
> grace.

It wasn't for Christ.

>It's been that way since the garden.  I'm not dispensational in
> the way God dispenses grace -- pre-garden versus post-garden.

Neither am I.  What you'd like us to believe is that Christ's relationship 
as the Last Adam with God was of "grace through faith".  What's true of Adam 
must be true for Christ in order for Christ to be any kind of an Adam.  And 
Christ certainly needed no grace. And this is the Shepherdian heresy: Christ 
needed faith just like Adam.  Faith is only always in lieu of sinful man's 
inability to access God on his own merit.

Chad Bresson
Xenia, OH