Considering Original Sin, Part 2 (of 2)

 

Original Sin reveals that no free moral agent apart from God is capable of infallibility and perfection. God made man with the ability to accept or reject Him; He gave us the power to refuse His offer of salvation, as many do because we prefer the lure of the sin nature’s immediate gratification, even if our pleasures are always uncertain, and sprinkled with grief while the fear of death’s approach is always on the horizon.

I believe (just my own opinion) that God permitted man free will and the Fall to demonstrate that any will apart from His own is imperfect, and therefore leads to suffering and misery. Human decision divorced from God’s leadership results in a deficient view of right and wrong, because we have excluded God: the Author of what is right and substituted conjecture, opinion, and societal norms. The world’s drama is 6,000+ years old now, and we’re none the better for millennia of rejecting God’s providence and attempting to mold the earth into a makeshift paradise.

 

But the sin nature warps us, and therefore warps our perception of what paradise should be. Our lust, our strongest, most carnal emotion, craves whatever catches our fancy. Our fallen nature makes us easily misled, prone to believe lies, creates a willingness to be deceived, and encourages a strong desire to partake in every habit that defiles the body. Those who accept God’s condemnation of sin and His judgment upon it flee to His Son for safety; we have believed and accepted that God’s will alone is fit for the government of creation; man’s efforts to dethrone Him have resulted in war and genocide. Because, when we cast off any faith in a transcendent Creator God, we suddenly find ourselves awash in an ocean of 8 billion petty gods, each vying for our will to be done.

 

Original Sin, or our sin nature, is what transforms a just government into a tyranny; it changes the sacredness of the marriage bed into wild excess and licentiousness. It lauds what God has condemned as being against nature, Romans 1:26. The Sin Nature corrupted sex, and the natural, immutable definition of man and woman. The LGBTQ movement seeks to pervert anything they deem traditional or conservative; yet neither term applies in this case. God made man male and female, Genesis 1:27. The genders are meant to be distinctly separate in terms of appearance and function, 1 Corinthians 11:14, 15. Yet we toy with the notion that men can simply decide to become women, and vice versa. We have non-binary people, transgender, people that identify as animals; et al. Choice has become the determiner of reality. Yet because I decide that I’m the pope, it does not make me so. Altering my own personal reality falls into the realm of subjective opinion (or fantasy), not objective reality. Worse, it is purely delusion, because declaring yourself a woman when you are biologically a man is patently false.

 

So, where does the Bible speak about Original Sin? As already noted, Scripture is silent about the term, “Original Sin.” Neither is the term “sin nature” in Scripture. But the apostle Paul explicitly expresses their description. Romans chapter 7 delves into man’s sin nature, with Paul using himself as the representative sinner.

 

He writes, “I was alive once without the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died,” Romans 7:9. The HCSB renders the verse, “Once I was alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came sin sprang to life and I died.” In verse 8 Paul relates that sin, like a huckster of sorts, took advantage of the arrival of the commandment to produce evil desires, desires antagonistic to the law’s revelation. He concludes that apart from the law sin is dead. But in verse 9 sin became alive (in his flesh), reacting internally to the external revelation of God’s revealed will. An external force created an internal reaction within Paul’s person. Sin isn’t something “out there;” a nebulous evil afloat in the world, personified by despots and tyrants. It abides in us, and when the revelation of right and wrong is presented to us, we often seek what is wrong. Our very nature contests God’s supremacy and wisdom, demanding that we determine truth for ourselves. But truth determined and not learned is not truth: it is subjective opinion and conjecture, and falls into the former condemnation already discussed.

 

Paul continues. “For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it killed me,” Romans 7:11. Spiritual death is the result of sin’s presence. Paul refers to his internal sin (his sin nature) as a murderer that robbed him of eternal life. The nature exists at birth, occasioned to manifest when antagonism to its will materializes; in this case, God’s divine direction concerning human nature and how we ought to function as individuals in our culture and country. Sin’s power is in the law; because as long as we remain in the flesh (that is, unsaved by the gospel of grace) we obey sin’s desires; and we know that we have chosen to obey the sin internal in us when we deliberately violate God’s revealed will. We’ve been struck dead by our own nature working in collusion with deliberate choice on our part. Paul isn’t excusing himself; he is merely revealing that in us resides an unconquerable evil.

 

For Paul, this engendered confusion. “For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do,” Romans 7:15. We strive to be “good people,” but we err; we sin. Paul, who desires to do good, and by that admission possesses adequate knowledge as to what is good, instead performs evil, or what he hates. James writes that we are tempted (to sin) when we are lured by our own desire; when we cave in to desire, it conceives and births sin, which results in death, James 1:14, 15. Our lust, our strong desire, is innate and internal. We could not be tempted from an external source unless we already possessed an internal weakness toward temptation. Adam, prior to the Fall, was not tempted. His decision to disobey was informed and deliberate. By the time we read about Cain, we learn about a man given to passion and desire. He sacrifices what he wants, becomes angry when his erroneous sacrifice wasn’t accepted, and kills his brother to assuage his anger. Sin found a breeding ground in Cain, who was all too willing to nurture its growth.

 

Paul confesses, “For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice,” Romans 7:17, 18. Paul is describing a never-ending moral dilemma that every person on earth experiences, including, or perhaps especially, the Christian. The apostle expressly states that in his flesh nothing good dwells. Sin reigns in our mortal bodies, prior to the second birth. Even then the Holy Spirit and the carnal, sinful nature of the old man contest one another for supremacy. Paul is clear: nothing good dwells in the body. Paul WANTS to do good, but does not comprehend how. Anything done apart from God is tainted by the sin nature, and disqualified as being a truly “good” act because it is not grounded in a love for Him that manifests in a love directed toward others. Love is the expression of God’s will, and God’s love is self-sacrificial. To do good, we must first learn what good means; then we are at liberty to do it. But if we refuse to come to Him who is life to learn, we remain a captive of the sin nature, to do its will. Paul mentions practicing evil, though he does not wish to. Temptation to sin exerts great pressure in us, as saints. Our thoughts, our words, our actions, can and often are tainted by sin’s presence.

 

Paul reaches a conclusion. “Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me,” Romans 7:20. He speaks about sin almost as if his body has been hijacked by its influence; he is a bystander to what comes next. Though he does not desire it, he commits it. Though he hates it, he practices it. Of course this is not a justification to sin, or a defense before God. This won’t hold up when standing before God any more than someone in court claiming “the devil made me do it.” We possess free will. True, our will is tainted by the odious nature of sin’s presence in us. It warps our thinking, reasoning, and feeling capacity to lesser or greater extent in every individual on planet Earth. This revelation, that we are not always good. That we do not always do what is good, or say what is good, or think what is good, should be an indicator that we are not good people. A truly good person would ONLY do what is good, Mark 10:18. Jesus tells His audience in unabashed terms that, even though they are evil, they still know how to discern good, Matthew 7:11.

 

The old axiom, “Why do bad things happen to good people,” ought to be more accurately translated, “Why do good things happen to bad people?” The old saying is answered by Christ, who tells us that we are not good. Paul says that nothing good dwells in us. When our Lord told certain persons, “go and sin no more,” (John 8:11, for example) it was a legitimate command, not to commend us to God, but to prevent a deeper alienation from Him, and a further deadening of conscience.

 

The conscience is the work of God written in us as a witness against the sin nature we want to indulge, Romans 2:15. The law, Paul writes, is written in the conscience of every living person. We know by God’s internal interpolation then, what is right or wrong, at least to some degree. Before the Law of Israel there was the law of conscience in Jew or Gentile; or perhaps it is better said before Jew or Gentile. This conscience is a tool and a weapon, for it further reveals the sin nature inherent in us. Paul says that we are without excuse when we exercise our judgment of right and wrong, because by doing that very thing we declare ourselves guilty of our lack of ability or willingness to abide by our own measure of good and evil, Romans 2:1.

 

Paul’s conclusion about the sin nature differs drastically from that of Pelagius (354-418 AD), a bitter opponent of Augustine’s who wrote in defense of Pelagius’ doctrine and adherents. Pelagius believed: “There is no original sin. Man can by his free will choose good as well as evil. Every one therefore can obtain happiness. In Christianity a still higher happiness is presented, for which baptism is a necessary condition. As the law was formerly given to facilitate the bringing about of goodness, so now the instructions and example of Christ, and the particular operations of grace. The latter, however, always follow the free resolution to be good. God’s predestination, therefore, is founded solely on his foreknowledge of human actions.” Much can be said about this admission, but for the purpose of our inquiry, we will focus on Original Sin. What Pelagius seems to suggest by choosing to do good rather than evil is taken in a meritorious sense. Good works commend one to God, especially baptism, which is a necessary condition for higher happiness. But according to whom? The Bible? Or Pelagius? Pelagius found Original Sin repugnant because if true, it removes human effort of ANY kind from earning the grace God freely dispenses through simple faith: the antithesis of works. If man possesses a sin nature, then he is entirely and hopelessly dependent upon God, and any works performed are tainted by said nature. Original Sin places man solely and squarely at God’s mercy. We deserve nothing, for in Adam, and by our own choice to sin, we have forfeit all. Scripture’s assessment of the human condition is drastically different from men who seek to preserve our pride and dignity by denying what is self-evident in daily life.

 

The sin nature, or Original Sin, is a doctrine and a reality in the Christian faith, revealed in both the Old and New Testaments. Moreover, it is clearly demonstrated in the world on a daily basis. It simply and adequately explains human suffering on a personal or global scale, and it is relieved by Jesus Christ, and the new birth He affects when we come to Him by faith. He takes our sin and releases us from its bondage to live freely in God’s service, as we were designed to. A person that loves God will obey God as a demonstration of that love; therefore such a person would do no harm to other people, because they too are made in God’s image, and are recipients of His grace through His Son’s gospel. If we knew God, and by knowing Him, loved Him, we would acknowledge our sin nature and submit to Him for our salvation. Only He can reach in to the human soul and heal what has been hurt, or bring to life what has died. And we are dead in sin, spiritually dead until we have newness of life in Jesus’ name, Ephesians 2:1, Acts 3:16. I pray the Lord that my study in this doctrine is at all helpful to remind us all that we are sinners by birth and choice, and it is only through Jesus Christ that we have eternal life. He paid the debt of sin we would suffer eternity apart from God for; He bled on the cross and endured separation from the Father for our sakes, because He loves us. He showed us that love is more than words; it is self-sacrificial action on behalf of another. “Love covers all sins,” Proverbs 10:12. Amen.