Original sin and its effects

Born into it

The last lesson told how the first man and woman turned away from God. What has that ancient story to do with us? A great deal, Scripture says. Sin is not just a string of bad choices we make now and then; it is a condition we are born into. David, confessing his own sin, traces it back to the very beginning of his life.

Surely I was brought forth in iniquity; I was sinful when my mother conceived me.

Psalm 51:5

He is not blaming his mother. He is admitting how deep his sin runs. Matthew Henry comments that "the truly penitent will ever trace back the streams of actual sin to the fountain of original depravity" Matthew Henry. Paul gives the same diagnosis of everyone, himself included.

All of us also lived among them at one time, fulfilling the cravings of our flesh and indulging its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature children of wrath.

Ephesians 2:3

Scripture describes this condition in several ways. Paul tells his readers, "you were dead in your trespasses and sins" (Ephesians 2:1). "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure" (Jeremiah 17:9). Jesus said that "everyone who sins is a slave to sin" (John 8:34), and Chrysostom calls this "the hardest kind of servitude, from which God only can rescue" Chrysostom. The mind of the flesh, Paul says, does not submit to God's law, "nor can it do so" (Romans 8:7). We cannot climb out by our own strength.

In Adam and in Christ

Why is everyone born this way? Paul traces it to Adam.

So then, just as one trespass brought condemnation for all men, so also one act of righteousness brought justification and life for all men. For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.

Romans 5:18-19

Adam's sin did not stay with Adam. "In Adam all die" (1 Corinthians 15:22), and through one man's disobedience the many were made sinners. The church calls this original sin: sin that goes back to our origin and lies at the root of human life, not only on its surface. Christians explain the link with Adam in different ways, as we shall see, but they agree that the link is real.

The Reformation churches often call this depravity ‘total’. The word is easily misheard. It does not mean that every person is as wicked as possible. It means that no part of us is untouched: mind, will, desires and body all bear the marks of sin, so that nothing in us can make us right with God. Nor has God's image been erased. After the flood God forbids the shedding of human blood, "for in His own image God has made mankind" (Genesis 9:6), and James warns against cursing people "who have been made in God's likeness" (James 3:9). Fallen human beings can still love, work, build and make beautiful things. What they cannot do is bring themselves back to God.

Paul's comparison does not end with Adam, who was "a pattern of the One to come" (Romans 5:14). Death reigned through one man; those who receive the gift of righteousness "reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ" (Romans 5:17). And "where sin increased, grace increased all the more" (Romans 5:20).

Pelagius and Augustine

In the early fifth century a sharp controversy brought this teaching into focus. Pelagius, a monk usually said to have come from Britain, taught that Adam's sin harmed his descendants by its bad example, not by passing on a damaged nature. God's grace, as Pelagius understood it, was the gift of our nature and free will, the law, forgiveness, and the teaching and example of Christ; with these, anyone could keep God's commands. Augustine answered that the whole human race was wounded in Adam. By misusing its free will humanity ruined both itself and its freedom, and no one can so much as will the good unless God's grace first renews the will Augustine, Enchiridion.

The church rejected Pelagius' teaching, and in the West it largely followed Augustine. The Council of Carthage in 418 condemned Pelagius' teaching and confessed that Adam's sin reaches his descendants and that grace does not only forgive past sins but gives real help not to sin Council of Carthage (418). A century later the Council of Orange (529) confessed that every good will, and the very beginning of faith, come from grace Council of Orange. For all Pelagius' moral seriousness, the church judged that he had made the illness too shallow. An example can show the way, but it cannot raise the dead.

What do we inherit?

All the historic churches confess that Adam's sin damaged the whole human race. They differ over exactly what we inherit from him.

The Lutheran and Reformed churches, following Augustine, teach that we inherit both guilt and corruption. The Augsburg Confession says that since the fall all are born "without the fear of God, without trust in God, and with concupiscence", and that this inborn disease is truly sin Augsburg Confession, Art. 2. The Heidelberg Catechism teaches that through our first parents' fall "we are all conceived and born in sin" and can do no good unless we are born again by the Spirit of God Heidelberg Catechism, Q7–8. The Westminster Confession states that "the guilt of this sin was imputed; and the same death in sin, and corrupted nature, conveyed to all their posterity" Westminster Confession, ch. 6.

The Catholic Church also confesses original sin, but describes it as a state we contract rather than a sin we commit. Humanity lost the original holiness and justice in which Adam was made; human nature is not totally corrupted but wounded, and inclined to sin Catechism of the Catholic Church, 404–405. The Council of Trent taught that baptism remits the guilt of original sin, and that the inclination which remains, called concupiscence, comes from sin and inclines to sin but is not itself sin in the true and proper sense Council of Trent, Decree on Original Sin. In its Decree on Justification the same council taught that after the fall free will was weakened but by no means extinguished Council of Trent, Decree on Justification.

The Orthodox churches usually speak of ‘ancestral sin’. From Adam we inherit mortality and corruption, and with them a weakness that makes us prone to sin, but not Adam's personal guilt John Romanides, The Ancestral Sin. Many Orthodox theologians read the end of Romans 5:12 differently from Augustine, whose Latin Bible said that all sinned ‘in him’: death spread to all, they say, and all who are subject to death go on to sin.

The Wesleyan tradition teaches original sin and total depravity firmly, and holds them together with prevenient grace: grace that goes before salvation, given to every person, awakening the conscience and enabling a response to the gospel John Wesley, The Scripture Way of Salvation. Wesleyans often point to "The true Light, who gives light to everyone" (John 1:9).

These accounts differ, but they stand together on what matters most: no one can save himself, everyone needs Christ, and grace always comes first. The question continues in Grace and election.

The doctrine of original sin can sound bleak, but it is honest. It explains why good intentions are not enough, why even our best efforts are tangled up with self, and why the same troubles return in every generation. A true diagnosis is a kindness: when the illness is beyond our cure, we can see how great the cure must be. For the tender question of children who die young, see What happens to children who die?, and on sin itself, What is sin?.

Practice