ARE WE BORN WITH A SIN NATURE AND UNDER WRATH?

This is the question of “original sin,” and it involves several questions. Are we born:

·       Guilty of Adam’s sin?

·       Under the wrath of God?

·       Without the ability to choose God?

·       Are we born with a sin nature?

Even though these questions divide Bible-believing Christians, we cannot ignore them. Too much is at stake:

·       Some beliefs about original sin seem to compromise God’s righteousness, making it seem that He condemns those who had no choice but to reject Him.

·       They also seem to undermine the Bible’s teaching about our guilt and culpability, if we were born sinners without a chance to come to God.

Because of the weightiness of the stakes, we have to carefully examine the Bible’s teachings regarding the impact of Adam’s sin and the Fall upon humanity. When we examine Genesis 3, we do not find any explicit evidence in support of the four top insinuations that humanity had inherited a “sin nature” (although we are certainly born with the capacity to choose sin) or that they are born guilty of Adam’s sin. Instead, we observe the advent of sin and death and banishment from the perfectly sustaining environment, the Garden of Eden.

Certainly, Adam and Eve did not need a “sin nature” in order to sin. Rather, they willingly sinned. They succumbed to their own temptation. Perhaps also, we do not have to have a sin nature to explain the fact that we sin?

What do we mean by a “sin nature?” Even though Cain sinned, it doesn’t seem that his nature had compelled him to sin. Even though it was now after the Fall, God informed the sinner Cain that he is accountable for his sins. He had not followed God’s direction and had made an incorrect offering:

• "Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it." (Genesis 4:6-7 ESV)

According to God, Cain, a child of the Fall, was fully responsible for his behavior. Nor did Cain respond: “God, you really can't blame me because it was you who imposed upon me a sin nature.”

In fact, James warns us against excusing our sin:

• Let no one say when he is tempted, "I am being tempted by God," for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his OWN desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death. (James 1:13--15)

God didn’t insert into our DNA evil desires. Instead, we have to take responsibility for these desires and to flee from them. Nor were we born dead in sin, unable to do otherwise! Instead, James claimed that death only occurs once our own desire gives birth to sin.

Therefore, we should not rationalize our sin, thinking "Adam or my upbringing made me do it." Instead, we have to fully confess that our guilt is our own, as David had done (Psalm 32).

Is it possible that we are born incapable of choosing God and even doing what is right? It seems that Scripture also deprives us of this excuse:

• For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. (Romans 1:18--20)

We are without any excuse for rejecting God. Consequently, we cannot disown our guilt in rejecting Him: “I was born with a sin nature. Consequently, it was not possible for me to choose God.”

In fact, Israel had many excuses, but they never resorted to this excuse. It was not even on their radar. Why not? It must have been unthinkable. Nor did they understand this as part of their revelation from God. Instead, when Israel wandered into sin, God had always laid the complete blame on them.

Superficially, it might have seemed that Israel did have a Scriptural excuse for their sins. After all hadn’t God hardened them? He had instructed Isaiah to preach to Israel:

·       “Keep on hearing, but do not understand; keep on seeing, but do not perceive.  Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.” (Isaiah 6:9-10)

However, this wasn’t God’s verdict upon an innocent people. Instead, He was merely giving them over to their already hardened hearts (Romans 1:24-28; Psalm 69:22-23) so that they would reap the very thing that they had sown. There was no indication that they had been born this way.

Besides, ignorance provided no excuse for Israel’s sins (Romans 1:32; 2:14-16). Consequently, after the Israelite had become aware that he had sinned unknowingly, he was not let off the hook. He was still required to sacrifice an animal and to make reparations.

In addition to this, God had often claimed that He had given Israel everything they needed for blessedness:

·       “Let me sing for my beloved my love song concerning his vineyard: My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; he built a watchtower in the midst of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it; and he looked for it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes. And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. What more was there to do for my vineyard, that I have not done in it? When I looked for it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes?” (Isaiah 5:1-4)

God claimed that there was nothing more He could have done for Israel. We see no evidence that God had deprived Israel of the ability to come to Him. Instead, they had been blinded by the hardness of their own hearts. Consequently, God laid the entire blame on Israel for their sins:

·       “Yet I planted you [Israel] a choice vine, wholly of pure seed. How then have you turned degenerate and become a wild vine?” (Jeremiah 2:21)

They hadn’t been born degenerate but became degenerate! In a song that God had given Moses to teach to His people to testify against them, He blamed Israel for their degeneracy:

·       “The Rock, his work is perfect, for all his ways are justice. A God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and upright is he. They have dealt corruptly with him; they [Israel] are no longer his children because they are blemished; they are a crooked and twisted generation.” (Deuteronomy 32:4-5)

Solomon also confirmed this verdict:

·       See, this alone I found, that God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes. (Ecclesiastes 7:29)

According to Scripture, each one of us is at fault and not God. The consistent message of Scripture is that we deserve His condemnation:

·       Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things. We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things. (Romans 2:1-2)

I am convinced that spiritual maturity requires us to take full responsibility for our sins without making any excuses, like, “I was born into sin and couldn’t have done otherwise.”

Lastly, we are without excuse because Jesus brought light into the world and confirmed it through His miracles:

·       “If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have been guilty of sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin [of hating Jesus?]. Whoever hates me hates my Father also. If I had not done among them the works that no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin, but now they have seen and hated both me and my Father. But the word that is written in their Law must be fulfilled: 'They hated me without a cause.'” (John 15:22-25)

Also, it seems that we were born free from His wrath and not spiritually dead:

• And I was alive apart from the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died; and the commandment, which was unto life, this I found to be unto death: for sin, finding occasion, through the commandment beguiled me, and through it slew me.” (Romans 7:9-11; 6:16)

Paul, speaking for all humanity, claimed that he had been spiritually “alive” at the time he was born – no indication that he had been born under God’s wrath. Only later did sin spiritually slay him. Likewise:

·       They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. (Ephesians 4:18-19)

Notice that we had been “darkened,” not because we were born this way, but because of our “ignorance” due to our “hardness of heart.” Were we born with this hardness? No! It is because they had “become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality.”

Was this God’s fault for bringing us into the world in this condition? There is no indication of this. Instead, our hearts had “become calloused.”

The Problem Verses

Psalm 51:5 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.

It is impossible to understand this verse literally in the sense that David was blaming his mother. The entire Psalm rejects the idea that David had been blame-shifting to his mother or mitigating his guilt by claiming that he had been born with a sinful nature. Instead, it should be understood hyperbolically. David is merely confessing that he had been sinning from the earliest.

Ephesians 2:3 Among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

This verse does not say that we were born “by nature children of wrath.” In keeping with the context, it would seem that we had become “children of wrath.”

Romans 5:18-19 Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous. (also, 1 Cor. 15:22)

These verses are not explicit about how Adam’s sin led to our condemnation and death. In keeping with the parallel Paul draws between Adam and Jesus, it seems best to understand that, as life in Jesus requires an intermediary step of faith, so too would death through Adam would also require an intermediate step (our own sins):

Jesus’ Atonement à through faith à Justification

====================

Adam’s sin à through our own sin à Death, Condemnation

Paul seems to endorse this parallel between Adam and Jesus:

·       Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—(Romans 5:12)

Death came to us because we embraced Adam’s sin through our own sins. Humanity’s relationship with her God had also been disrupted. We had been expelled from a perfect relationship, a perfect environment, and from the tree of life into a harsh environment, where we would be enslaved by the “fear of death” (Hebrews 2:15).

I prefer this understanding because it doesn’t impugn God’s righteousness and places the entire blame on us, where it belongs.

Besides, the skeptic understandably claims: “God has no right to judge me for rejecting Him. He had stacked the deck against me.”

This challenge gives the skeptic a formidable excuse. I think that, in love, we must deprive him of this unbiblical excuse. Instead, our God is perfectly just. There is no unrighteousness in Him. Paul implies that if God had been unjust in just one way, He would have disqualified Himself from judging the world:

·       But if our unrighteousness serves to show the righteousness of God, what shall we say? That God is unrighteous to inflict wrath on us? (I speak in a human way.) By no means! For then how could God judge the world [if He is unrighteous]? (Romans 3:5-6; Genesis 18:25; Deuteronomy 32:4)

Bringing us into the world without any capacity to choose God and then condemning for not doing what we couldn’t possibly do doesn’t comport with any understanding of justice. Nor does it agree with Biblical revelation. Instead, the entire Bible requires us to take full responsibility for our sins, rather than blaming God, the Fall, or our parents.