This article is the sixteenth installment in our series "Christian, What Do You Believe: The Belgic Confession of Faith." Find the whole series here.
People today are confused about sin. We affirm the inherent goodness of people while vilifying our opponents. We want to believe that our race is climbing an evolutionary moral ladder, but human evil challenges that theory. The terrible atrocities of others shock and anger us. But even we do things that we hate (Rom. 7:15). How can people be both good and evil?
Scripture’s answer starts with the sin of the first people. “God created man … in his image and likeness—good, just, and holy.” But man “subjected himself willingly to sin and consequently to death and the curse.” After his fall, Adam retained only traces of “his excellent gifts which he had received from God” (art. 14). The first man had become a sad mixture of good and evil.
But what do Adam’s actions and subsequent corruption have to do with us? The Belgic Confession offers this orthodox answer: “By the disobedience of Adam original sin has spread throughout the whole human race.” True self-knowledge requires recognizing and responding to this doctrine.
Recognize Original Sin
Original sin is the corruption inherited by all people naturally descended from Adam resulting in “disgrace, guilt, and punishment.” Two models explain how “original sin has been spread through the whole human race.” First, sin is a hereditary disease. Adam and Eve are the ancestors of the entire human race. So Job’s question is helpful: “Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?” (Job 14:4). Logically, “No sinful person can bring forth a child that is pure and without sin” because “That which is born of flesh is flesh.” Only “that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (John 3:6). Second, sin is a legal inheritance. Adam decided to become a sinner, not as a private person, but as the head of a corporation called Humanity. “One trespass led to condemnation for all men.” (Rom. 5:18). That might not feel fair. But we understand it. When Congress overspends, we all become debtors.
Original sin explains why people sin. The fourth-century British monk Pelagius taught that sin is only a matter of imitation. And surely we do learn sin from the bad examples of others, but only because sin is now suitable to our sinful natures. People sin because their hearts incline toward sin, because they are infected by it. Actual sin is the effect of the condition of sinfulness. Original sin is like a bad root system that necessarily produces a faulty tree and bad fruit (see Luke 6:43). By nature we are the branches growing out of Adam. To use a different image, “sin constantly boils forth as though from a contaminated spring.”
And original sin is sufficient for our condemnation. In Psalm 51, David does not merely condemn himself for specific sins which he has committed against Bathsheba and Uriah. He condemns himself for who he is. David says that he was a sinner before he had been born, before he had done anything wrong (Ps. 51:5). He was not conceived into a state of moral neutrality. He had an unclean heart. This universal fact doesn’t stop people from being kind and helpful. But no one escapes the curse of sin. And physical death is proof of this sad reality. The fact that everyone dies means that we all lie under sin’s curse (Rom. 5:15).
Respond to Original Sin
There are several ways you should respond to the doctrine of original sin.
Own It
If someone refuses to believe they have cancer, they will never seek the proper treatment and so they will die. Some people hear about original sin and die without a savior because they refuse to own their depravity. When Paul says, “We all have turned aside,” he makes no exceptions (Rom. 3:12). You hurt people and frustrate yourself and disobey God because you are a sinner. If you try to cover your shame without owning your sin, you might mute God’s warning but you will not avoid hell. Instead, say with Paul, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Rom. 7:24).
Don’t Rely on Church Ceremonies to Defeat It
Original sin is not “abolished or wholly uprooted even by baptism.” The Roman Catholic church, in the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, teaches that baptism remits all sins—original and actual, cancels temporal punishment, infuses supernatural grace, gifts, and virtues, and impresses upon the soul a godly character. But the Bible says that baptism must be improved, or acted upon. You must “make it fuel for … faith, hope, love, joy and obedience” in Christ. Do not suppose that you are relieved of original sin because you have been baptized or go to church or call yourself a Christian.
Find Your Life in Christ
We are all naturally in a broken covenant with Adam and have inherited his disease of sin. This is terrible news. But it prepares us for the good news that by faith we enter a new covenant with Christ. Adam “was a type of the one who was to come” (Rom. 5:14). Paul put it this way: “As in Adam all die, so also in Christ, shall all be made alive” (1 Cor. 15:22). Paul prayed for deliverance from the body of death and found it in “Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Rom. 7:25). This is the believer’s love-song about Jesus: “O wisest love! That flesh and blood, which did in Adam fail, should strive afresh against the foe, should strive and should prevail.” Original sin is “not imputed to God’s children for their condemnation but is forgiven by his grace and mercy.”
Fight Against It
Don’t ever say, “I’m a sinner in Adam. There is nothing I can do about it.” Sin wants to kill you. But you must kill it (Rom. 8:13). Martin Luther said that original sin is like a beard. Keeping it clean requires daily attention. Ask God for deepening conviction of right and wrong. Pray for wisdom to resist sin. Request an acute sense of God’s presence throughout the day. Wash yourself with God’s word. Make little decisions that can result in the formation of a godly character.
Many people resist the language of sin. But evil is all around us and within us. No one can deny that. We have inherited bad moral genes. We are growing out of the deadly root of Adam.
In subsequent lessons we will rejoice in this good news: God will not let sin have the final word in the lives of his children. One day sin will be disallowed from this earth. And even now, those who used to love sin, who still wrestle against its fallout, and who will die because of it, are joyfully learning to follow Christ in the way of faith and obedience.
Footnotes
Petrus Van Mastricht Theoretical–Practical Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2021), 3:449.
Comment on Job 14:4 in the Statenvertaling, the first Bible translation from the original languages into Dutch.
“Catechism of the Catholic Church,” articles 1263, 1265, 1266.
Packer, Growing in Christ (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1994), 143
From John Henry Newman’s hymn, “O Loving Wisdom of Our God.”
