33 truthseeker,

You said:

Where in the bible does it say we ‘naturally inherited his rebellious nature? After all, if an inherited nature is required to sin, then where did Adam get his, since he sinned?

Adam did not have an “old man” nature. Adam had free will and he chose to exercise his free will to rebel against God. But the fact that Adam did not have an “old man” nature and still chose to sin in this one area does not exclude our “old man” nature that we received at the fall of Adam.

And if a sinful nature is requisite for sinning, then logically and in a parallel vein of thinking, a righteous nature would be required for choosing righteousness.

I have never heard anyone say that a sinful nature is required for one to sin. After all the devil was created as Lucifer without sin. He chose to sin by his own act of free will without a sin nature. However after he chose to sin his nature has completely changed into a nature where he cannot tell the truth as his nature is fully that of distortions and lies.

Yet, no mention is made of us inheriting a righteous nature so we can choose salvation. You rightly say that “Christ’s obedience brought us to righteousness by his actions…,” it says nothing of our coming to righteousness by having some kind of inherited righteous nature.

I am not claiming that our coming to righteousness means that we have a righteous nature that has been put on us. Doesn’t this seem like what many Calvinists are saying? I am not a Calvinist.

However it is true that once we have come to faith in Christ, He creates in us a new nature. If we need that “new man” with its new nature, then surely there was something deficient about the “old man” as his inherent lusts.

Yet, the very same logic is being used to say that we choose sin because we have a sinful nature.

I am not making this argument. What I am saying is that it is easy for us to chose sin because we have the “old man” nature. We are not forced by this nature to sin so there is no excuse.

Adam seemed well able to choose to sin without having any mention of a sinful nature. I think then, that we are totally capable of sinning, in like manner, without having a ’sin nature’.

This does not follow that because Adam was created without the “old man” nature, that we too have no “old man” nature. The fact is that although Adam was created without sin and lived without sin for a time, after he sinned, he had an “old man” nature that made God kick him out of the garden so that he would not continue in sin and eat from the tree of life.

I hope this helps.