You’ve probably heard the theological term, “original sin.” It is defined as “the innate tendency of all humans to sin, a condition inherited from Adam as a consequence of the Fall.” It is an attractive idea in one sense, because it allows us to put some of the blame for our sin on Adam.
Theologians who advocate “original sin” are also likely to advocate “original guilt,” the idea that we are all guilty in God’s eyes because of Adam’s sin. Adam’s guilt, allegedly, has been “imputed” to all of us.
Personally, I’ve never been able to find where those two ideas are taught in the Bible. Moreover, both raise a number of valid questions.
For example, do not the ideas of original sin and guilt seem fundamentally unjust? They advocate that all of us are guilty for a sin committed by someone who lived at least 5,000 years ago. Worse, God is punishing us for that person’s sin by cursing us with a propensity to sin, which not only means that we are more likely to sin, but we are also more likely to be punished! And here’s the real kicker: God, at least in part, is the author of our sin for which He will punish us.
That all seems quite perverse. If it is true, people who are condemned to hell at their judgment can point their finger at God and say, “You created me with a propensity to sin, so how can You now condemn me for doing what you gave me a propensity to do?”
And there are other questions that come to mind about the doctrines of original sin and guilt. Obviously, Adam and Eve did not inherit the propensity to sin from any of their predecessors (as they had no predecessors). Yet they still managed to commit sin. So why is there a need to tie our propensity to sin to Adam? If it was possible for Adam and Eve to sin without any inherited propensity, then it would seem reasonable to think that we could potentially do the same.
From where in the Bible do theologians derive the ideas of original sin and guilt? They often point to Romans 5:12:
Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned… (Rom. 5:12).
Paul plainly stated that sin entered the world through one man, and that death (I assume both spiritual and physical death) then entered the world through that man’s sin. Next, Paul said that death spread to everyone else because they, like Adam, also sinned. It doesn’t say that death spread to everyone because of Adam’s sin. Death spread to everyone because everyone sinned.
The implication is that, had everyone after Adam not sinned, death would not have spread to everyone. Moreover, nowhere does Paul say that everyone after Adam had an innate propensity to sin because Adam sinned.
As Paul continues in Romans 5, he seems to begin a parenthetical thought:
—for until the Law [of Moses] sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come (Rom. 5:13b-14).
Those who advocate original sin and guilt claim this passage supports their doctrine. Because “sin is not imputed when there is no law” (that is, God can only justly hold people accountable for their sin if He has first given them some law to obey), and because people died between the time of Adam and the giving of the Mosaic law, that allegedly proves that God was not punishing, via death, those millions of people who lived within that time frame for their own sins, but rather for Adam’s sin.
That, however, is silly, and for several reasons. One of them is that Paul twice referred in the passage to the sins of all those who lived between Adam and Moses. We can, of course, read many examples of those sins in the first books of the Bible, and also read examples of God’s punishment of people who sinned prior to the Mosaic Law. He was obviously holding them accountable for their sins.
God even once destroyed almost the entire world’s population by a flood, and it wasn’t because He was imputing Adam’s sin to them and punishing them for it. No, God did give pre-flood people His laws, and Paul earlier wrote in the book of Romans that God wrote those laws on every person’s conscience:
For when Gentiles who do not have the Law do instinctively the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves, in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them, on the day when, according to my gospel, God will judge the secrets of men through Christ Jesus (Rom. 2:14-16).
God holds everyone accountable to the laws He has written on their consciences.
All of this is to say, Paul was not arguing in Romans 5:13-14 that the death of people between Adam and the Mosaic Law proves that God imputed Adam’s sin and guilt to them. Rather, He was proving that God gave everyone laws to obey and that everyone disobeyed those laws, because everyone died, just like Adam died when He broke the single law God gave him. “Death spread to all men because all sinned,” which means that death didn’t spread to all men because Adam sinned.
Paul’s over-arching point in the passage is that Adam was “a type of Him who is to come” (Rom. 5:14). If you continue reading Romans 5, you will notice that Paul expends more effort actually showing the dissimilarities between Adam and Jesus’ accomplishments. The reason is because there is actually only one similarity between them: Both did something that ultimately affected the whole world. It seems that Paul was trying to answer a Jewish objection to his gospel, an objection that questioned how one person’s act could make multitudes righteous. And Paul’s rebuttal to that objection is that all Jews already believe that the act of one person, namely, Adam, negatively affected multitudes. Adam was the singular person in human history who opened the door to death for everyone. Jesus similarly was the singular person in human history who opened the door of eternal life for everyone.
“Original-sin theologians” read much, much more into Paul’s words, but anyone who reads the rest of Romans 5 honestly should know better, because it’s obvious that the entire passage could be used to construe many ideas that don’t harmonize with the rest of Paul’s writings. For example, they could be used (and they sometimes are) to prove universal salvation, since Paul wrote: “So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men” (Rom. 5:18-19, emphasis added). So, we should be cautious. Wise interpreters never ignore the immediate or greater context.
Often, one bad doctrine serves to buttress another, and such is the case with the doctrines of original sin and guilt. Enthusiasts argue that, since God allegedly imputed Adam’s sin to others, we should not object to the idea of Him imputing Christ’s righteousness—a legal righteousness that has no relationship to actual, practical righteousness—to others. And thus, the idea of imputed legal righteousness finds some badly-needed support. Before long, we’re hearing that God can’t see the sins committed by Christians because their sins are all “under the blood,” and that ultimate salvation (at God’s judgment) has no relationship with continued faith or obedience. But accepting all of that requires us to ignore hundreds of scriptures that prove otherwise, including many penned by Paul.
Fundamentally, we should ask what gives any New Testament reader the right to arbitrarily interpret the word righteousness purely in a legal sense that has no relationship with practical righteousness. Because we hopefully all know that the word righteousness often refers to practical righteousness in the New Testament. And we hopefully all know that everyone who is born again is indwelt by God’s Holy Spirit, who is the source of the “fruit of the Spirit” (Gal. 5:22)—which can all be summed up with the word righteousness.
Where in the New Testament is it taught that believers receive a legal righteousness that has no relationship with actual, practical righteousness? I haven’t found it. John, however, wrote:
Little children, make sure no one deceives you; the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous (1 John 3:7).
If we take every relevant New Testament passage into consideration, we can only conclude that the “gift of righteousness” (Rom. 5:17) is not a license to sin. Rather, it includes the Spirit’s conviction of sin and His drawing us to repentance, His helping the humble to repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, His forgiveness of every past sin, His breaking the power of sin over believers, His gift of the indwelling Holy Spirit who empowers believers to live righteously, His protection from inescapable sin, and Jesus’ advocacy for us when we sin as believers and make confession. Those are all components of God’s grace that help us to be righteous before God. But the idea that God grants believers a legal righteousness while they live in an unrighteous manner is not a component of any grace that God has ever offered.
But back to original sin and guilt. Isn’t everyone born spiritually dead because they inherit Adam’s sinful nature? Personally, I’m persuaded otherwise. It seems much easier to prove from the Bible that children are born spiritually alive rather than spiritually dead. Jesus said, for example, “Unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18:3) and, “Let the children alone, and do not hinder them from coming to Me; for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these” (Matt. 18:10; see also 19:14; Rom. 7:9). It is certainly possible that children are born spiritually alive and that they don’t need to be born again until they are no longer children and are held accountable for their sin as adults.
But is not the common selfishness of children an indication of an inherited propensity to sin? Not necessarily, and not any more than the common affection or honesty of children is an indication of an inherited propensity to righteousness. To the degree that they understand right and wrong, children make moral decisions, and child behavior varies across a spectrum of sin and righteousness. Children are tiny free moral agents who can (and should) be trained to associate negative behavior with negative consequences.
There is much more that could be discussed on this topic, and there is much that is mysterious to me. This little teaching only serves to introduce some counterpoints at the request of a friend. Hope it offered some food for thought!
