Cheryl Schatz

I received an email from a friend who was interested in dialogging on the issue of sin but didn’t want to post on the blog so I am going to address their concerns/questions to me here for everyone to read but to keep them anonymous.

But for me, the whole idea of “original sin”/inherited “sin nature” opens a can of worms and it appears that it perhaps perpetuates the misogynist view of Genesis in the long run. It still puts “males” at the center – in turn giving some creedance to male’s having a type of ultimate responsibility for the mess of humanity.

It isn’t “males” that brought sin into the world but one person. That one person didn’t have a sole kingship that made them responsible. In fact I am sure that if it was Eve who had sinned in rebellion she would have been charged with bringing sin into the world. This is not a male/female issue but about one sinner.

The whole doctrine seems to have originated with Augustine’s interpretation of Paul’s (my friend put in the Greek, but unfortunately my blog doesn’t allow the Greek to be shown) as meaning “in whom all sinned” in Romans 5:12. Modern translations agree that its proper meaning is “because.” According to Augustine all sinned “in Adam”, which he understood as meaning that because Adam sinned every other human being, each of his descendants, is counted as a sinner.

This is one of the ways that some have understood original sin, but this is not Biblical. Adam’s sin did not become ours. The correct translation is “because”. Here is the difference. We didn’t sin “in Adam” as if we participated in his sin. We were “in Adam” when he sinned so that the consequences of his rebellion would be felt by those who had yet to be born. We experienced the results of the poison and our DNA was changed from perfect to disposed toward sin.

For me, there is a problem with the fundamental idea that we inherit sin at birth as part of our human nature and if Christ is not “fully human” and “fully God”, then to me, Christianity has a serious flaw.

I have a problem with that too and this is not what I believe. We don’t inherit “sin”. We are sinless when we are born. But we have a bent towards sin although we have not committed any sin. Do you see the difference? I too have read from those who believe that we inherit Adam’s sin and this cannot be because God has clearly said that He does not punish the son for the father’s sin.

Here is where the doctrine of a “sin nature” creates a problem for me: if Jesus was born with a different nature than the rest of mankind, then whatever else he accomplished, he could not recapitulate our lives on our behalf.

My friend, let me say it this way. If Jesus was born with the same nature as the rest of mankind, then He couldn’t be the Savior. He had a different nature (sinless) but that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t human. It was the exact same nature as we were created to have. It was the same as the first Adam and thus Jesus is rightly called the “last Adam”. Jesus and Adam are compared in Scripture and both became human without sin. Adam changed that by rebelling, but Jesus fulfilled all righteousness without a single sin. It was the same beginning but different ending. We couldn’t say that a man who had Adam’s nature at the beginning (sinless) he couldn’t pay for our sins. I say that he had to have the original nature that God made mankind to be or we would have been left in our sins.

He could, perhaps, purchase us. But having purchased us, he could not also heal us.

Well, Adam the perfect man couldn’t heal us. In fact the Scripture says that no man can ransom another for the price is too great. But because Jesus was man AND God, as God He could heal us and as the God-man he could pay for our sins in full.

His walk was then fundamentally different than Adam’s.

His walk was not fundamentally different than Adam’s. In fact his walk was the exact same as Adam’s in the beginning. His walk was vastly different from Adam’s after Adam sinned.

If we believe that Jesus was fully human, and yet lived in this world without sinning, we have a logical and a theological problem. How do we explain that Jesus never received either the guilt of sin from Adam, or a sinful nature which caused Him to sin? “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are–yet was without sin.”

This is where Jesus was different than Adam’s end. Jesus never gave in to temptation and His temptations were “in every way just as we are” while Adam was tempted to rebel in only one thing. So Jesus was far greater than Adam and He understands all of our weaknesses.

How can we be guilty for a “corrupt nature” with which we were born, and over which we had no control, and for which we are not personally responsible?

We will be condemned for turning away God’s antidote to our sin. While we may not be able to do much about living perfectly without sin, we can accept God’s revealed word and have faith in Him. It is for rejecting God that people go to hell in the first place. And secondly we go to hell for sinning in things that we do have control of. While we cannot always control our thoughts we can control our actions. Those who commit adultery and then say that they couldn’t help themselves as they are not guilty because they had no control are simply in error.

God has placed us all under sin so that we would all be in a position to have faith in Him instead of earning our way to God. Some may say that He should not have done it this way, but it is fair that all of need God and need a Savior and if we look to Him in faith, we will receive salvation and that is fair.

It seems inconsistent with all just ideas of God that after Adam and Eve, He forms all the rest of us with a nature which with absolute uniformity leads us to sin and destruction. The claim is made, “The present state of human nature cannot therefore be its normal and original condition. We are a fallen race.” But the more I study this, that just seems to be a means to transfer the blame from God to Adam, or through the sophistry of the “Federal Headship” of Adam, to all of us as really present “in” Adam when he originally sinned, and then to find all of us “responsible” and “guilty” for the sin “we” committed “in Adam.”

I do not agree with the “Federal headship” of Adam and that we are guilty for Adam’s sin. One pastor told me that his wife had a couple of miscarriages and that he didn’t know if those unborn babies were in hell. When I balked at this statement and told him that unborn babies could not commit sin, he stated that they were guilty of sin in Adam and that if they went to hell they deserved it. Honestly I was appalled. This is not Biblical teaching. Unborn babies do not have “Adam’s sin”. They are innocent of sin and God condemns no man or baby for Adam’s sin.

I think that the error that has been taught in the name of original sin has tainted the doctrine that we have an “old man” nature that we inherited from the man who brought sin into the world. We don’t inherit sin. We inherit a sin nature. If we don’t understand that so many Bible verses don’t make sense for the “flesh” is talked about as sinful and needs to be put to death.

If there are any others who would like their questions/comments placed here but don’t want to go on the record, I don’t mind at all. Just send your questions to me and I will make sure that they are placed here anonymously.

This is such a huge topic for many people. It is important for us to think these things through Biblically as well as to reject the bad arguments of the past.