Sin and Death

The world we inhabit contains an endless array of contrasts. Every human life is born out of crisis, proceeds in conflict, and invariably ends with irreversible loss. Yet, there is astonishing goodness. Between the boundaries of birth and death, breath-taking wonder combines with utter misery, sublime beauty with callous cruelty. Ecstatic joy, deep satisfaction, and heart-capturing tenderness, are bound up with terrible agony. The human plight presents a mixed picture: absurdity and grandeur, splendour and pathology, purity and misery, terrifying madness and the tenderness of true love. Life is far worse than we ever feared and much better than we dare dream. Children tend to grow up believing that the world is sane, sensible, ordered, and moral. Adults recognize that this is not actually so. This world is neither fair nor ultimately friendly. Decay, injustice, insanity, and rottenness run all the way through. Moreover, if death’s apparent boundary is everyone’s absolute terminus, permanent health and satisfactory justice simply never happen. ‘History,’ wrote Joyce, ‘is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake. … The ways of the Creator are not our ways.’² In the Bible, as in life, tragedy is real. Even at Scripture’s apex, there is not entirely ‘unclouded light.’³ There is a Biblical conception of tragedy.

What is Wrong

Coming to terms with life’s contradictions takes a lifetime’s experience. Also required are certain central ideas, handled with careful clarity. One of these is sin. It is very bad news, and so something we find difficult to accept and painful to consider. Much of the problem here is that our very sinfulness prevents us from understanding the truth about it. But sin’s nature and reality are so fundamental that across the whole span of the Bible’s storyline, out of hundreds of chapters and hundreds of thousands of words (757, 349 words in the English Standard Version), only two brief sections of text – those opening and closing – are actually without it. ‘Preoccupation with sin is one of the hallmarks of Biblical religion.’⁴

So critical a role does the notion of sin play within the structure of Biblical thought that, from one angle, the whole Christian faith can be approached as a quest to analyze the problem and provide a solution to it. Certainly, the concept of sin is hard-wired into Biblical approaches to wisdom. Wisdom deals with the effective application of knowledge, and the idea of sin in all its many-sided reality is a basic tool with which to understand and interpret the horrendous evils that we face, throughout the world, from others, and (not least) within ourselves. According to Scripture’s diagnosis of the human condition, sin is the root problem. Life in this world is inexplicable without it. Without an accurate and clear concept of sin we actually cannot understand ourselves.

Showing the Solution

Furthermore, Biblical teaching about sin is the point of departure for its teaching about salvation. ‘The primary purpose of Christ’s mission was to deal with sin.’⁵ The very meaning of ‘Jesus’ expresses this: ‘he will save his people from their sins’ (Matt 1:21). It may be counterintuitive but rigorous teaching about sin is actually a dark road to the light, as the following paragraph explains so helpfully:

‘The Biblical view of sin could scarcely be more repellent to twenty-first century culture. We want to believe that we are basically good, that we can fix ourselves. We do not want to hear that we, in ourselves, are fundamentally misguided, totally corrupt, utterly helpless. Yet it is only when we come to realize we cannot fix ourselves that we will be prepared to look outside ourselves for help and to depend on Christ. Only when we know how great our problem is will we see how great the Saviour is (Luke 7:40-43). Only when we see that people are helplessly addicted and enslaved to sin will we give them the one thing with the power to turn and liberate their hearts: the gospel (Rom 1:16). The biblical view of sin is, therefore, the bringer of liberty, joy, and compassion when coupled with the announcement of its antidote – the gospel.’⁶

In fact, the reality of God’s forgiveness ‘is the basis for the knowledge of our sinfulness.’⁷ This needs to be stressed. Outside of Jesus Christ, although we may seem to have some knowledge of our failings, in reality, we are blind to our blindness. Our Christian knowledge of sin is again an act of faith. To know sin properly it is not enough to look at self, for self-knowledge is uncertain and relative. Jesus Christ’s ministry shows that sin is the truth of all human existence. Even the most religious of his day were totally blind to who he was and why he came. They accused him of being a rank outsider, an inferior half-breed, a Samaritan, and demonized (John 8:48).

The Old Testament had already borne eloquent testimony to our problem of self-blindness. ‘The heart is deceitful above all things, and it is desperately sick: who can know it?’ (Jer 17:9). Sinning makes us slaves to sin, and that slavery includes a deep blindness about who we really are and what really is the goodness of God. ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin’ (John 8:34). And in that terrible context, Jesus promised that ‘the truth will set you free.’ And that truth is only found in him, when we become his disciples. ‘So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free”’ (John 8:31-32). We cannot even look at the law apart from Jesus Christ, as Paul so eloquently shows in Romans 1 to 8 and Galatians. Outside of Jesus Christ we will be our own blind judges. It is from Jesus we learn that human-person is the human-person of sin, and what sin is, and what it means for humankind.

Jesus Christ as Judge, then, discloses the sinfulness of sin. He bears his fan or winnowing fork in his hand, thoroughly purging his floor and gathering the wheat into his barn, burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire (Matt 3:12). As Judge, however, he shows himself to be the Kingdom of God, the reign of God, the Lord amongst us, who also redeems. It is his judging of sin that gives us true insight into our sin and, above all, by his death and resurrection frees us from it. In that capacity as, the redeeming Judge, we can truly see ourselves as we really are. As John Calvin exhorted his congregation, let us learn to search out our want and need in the face of Jesus Christ.⁸

This Jesus directs us to the Scriptures to illuminate our understanding (Matt 5:17-18; Luke 4:16-21; 2 Tim 3:14-17). For the Bible’s overall approach to healing the human condition begins by helping us to appreciate and accept what is wrong with us. Recognizing the problem enables understanding and appropriate action. Biblical teaching concentrates on sin in order to present God’s remedy for it, so accurate understanding about sin and its consequences is vital to human welfare. The sharper our sense of sin, the deeper our appreciation of God’s grace in the Lord Jesus Christ. ‘Let us therefore recognize our wretchedness so as to find the cure.’⁹

2.1 THE ORIGIN OF SIN

Not From God But Within God’s Allowance

Where sin originally came from, and how and why it came forth, are mysteries to which the Bible provides no complete explanation. Evil could not have come from a perfectly good God. But by creating a world into which evil could emerge and did indeed enter, God created the possibility of sin. Being all-knowing, it came as no surprise to him. Sin was contained within his decree. He deliberately decided to allow it. ‘All “permission” is an act of God’s will; he willed to permit it.’¹⁰ Clearly, its emergence was within his counsel.¹¹ But the Creator’s intention in permitting evil, and at some level or in some way willing evil, is a good intention.

We say ‘good,’ because God is himself nothing but Good, the source of all goodness and being and meaning. God is, as it were, Good with a capital ‘G.’ Sin and evil are a rebellious flight away from God, and thus from all goodness and meaning, that is, into darkness and therefore into ultimate unintelligibility. To put it another way, because they are in flight away from God, sin and evil are irrational. Therefore, we cannot hope to have any final, clear, rational knowledge of sin and evil in the way we can have for faith in God, for righteousness and love. Indeed, Paul cautions us: ‘be wise as to what is good and innocent as to what is evil’ (Rom. 16:19). With that in mind, then, we can only seek to view the possibility and existence of sin in the light of the goodness of God – but with caution, for in the end, sin is incomprehensible.¹²

God Wills Different Things in Different Ways to Bring Good Out of Evil

Augustine’s treatment of Biblical teaching concerning these matters is not unhelpful. ‘For the Omnipotent God … would not allow any evil in his works, unless in his omnipotence and goodness, as the Supreme Good, he is able to bring forth good out of evil.’¹³ The Creator ‘foreknew that evil things would arise out of good,’ and that it would then be for ‘his most omnipotent goodness even to do good out of evil things rather than not to allow evil things to be at all.’¹⁴ Augustine is saying that God judged it better to bring good out of evil than to not permit any evil to exist. ‘[T]he God and Lord of all things,’ Augustine explained, ‘so ordained the life of angels and men that in it he might first of all show what their freedom was capable of, and then what the kindness of his grace and the judgment of his righteousness was capable of.’¹⁵ So, God willed the prospect of sin and fall, because it was preferable that sin should exist and be overcome by God than that sin should never be allowed to exist at all. The issue is paradoxical, for sin is against the will of God but ‘never outside of or beyond’ the will of God.¹⁶ God wills different things in different ways.

‘As the Supreme Good, he made good use of evil deeds … In [the] very act of going against his will, his will was thereby accomplished. … [I]n a strange and ineffable fashion even that which is done against his will is not done without his will. For it would not be done without his allowing it – and surely his permission is not unwilling but willing – nor would he who is good allow the evil to be done, unless in his omnipotence he could bring good even out of evil.’¹⁷

The Difference Between Obedience and Disobedience

But this is not to say that God compelled or made anyone to sin. ‘For just as He is the Creator of all natures, so He is the giver of all powers. Not of all wills, however; for wicked wills certainly do not come from Him, because they are contrary to nature, which does come from Him.’¹⁸ Having said this, it is important to recognize that the sinful choices of God’s creatures are subject to God’s will; ‘they have no power except what He has granted.’¹⁹ In allowing sin to occur, God’s purpose is to overthrow it, outdo it, outbid it, overcome it, and bring greater good out of it. For in the process of overcoming sin, God shows the difference between sin and its opposite, between disobedience and obedience, mistrust and trust, unbelief and faith.

‘He arranged things to demonstrate in the experience of the intelligent creation, human and angelic, how great a difference there is between the private conceit of the creation and the Creator’s protection. … God preferred to leave [the possibility of sin] in their own power, and thus to show both what evil could be accomplished by their pride, and what good could be accomplished by his grace.’²⁰

Sin Had no Part in the Original Creation

Creation and fall, then, are completely different to one another. Sin cannot be attributed to the nature of creation. Nor can sin be blamed upon God. Out of absolutely nothing, God created a ‘very good’ world (Gen 1:31). Sin had no part in the original nature of created things. ‘God made man upright’ (Eccl 7:29). God’s human creatures came into existence in a state of innocence, situated in an entirely excellent environment. ‘The evil can therefore only come after the good, can only exist through the and on the good, and can really consist of nothing by the corruption of the good.’²¹ Sin is parasitic. ‘The good is necessary even for evil to exist.’²² Sin is therefore clearly not a condition of created nature but the desecration of it. ‘To the extent that it clearly falls within God’s purpose and will, we could say that up to a point and in some sense it had to be there. But then certainly it always had to be there as something that ought not to be there and has no right to exist.’²³

2.2 Diabolical Sin

Sin and Evil First Began in The Mind and Will of the Devil

Having said this, sin entered into creation very soon after the beginning of the world. ‘Creation and fall … differ from each other in nature and essence, but chronologically they are close together.’²⁴

The Bible traces the absolute beginning of sin and evil to the mind and will of the devil. Its account of the creation and fall of angels is fairly reticent, though. Genesis assumes the revolt of Satan but does not provide a report of it. It seems that we are told only as much as is necessary for us to adequately appreciate the nature and origin of humanity’s fall. Nevertheless the matter is extremely important, for the sin of a group of angels near to the beginning of the world is the point at which evil first entered into creation. ‘Sin did not break out on earth in the first instance, but in heaven, in the immediate presence of God, and at the foot of his throne. The thought, the wish, the will to resist God arose first in the heart of the angels.’²⁵ ‘The devil,’ Jesus said, is ‘a liar’, ‘was a murderer from the beginning’ (John 8:44), and ‘has been sinning from the beginning’ (1 John 3:8). From the flow of the Genesis text, it seems unlikely that the fall of the angels should be understood to have occurred between the beginning of creation in Genesis 1:1 and the completion of creation in Genesis 1:31. If this is correct, the angelic revolt took place at some point following the sixth day of creation and before the fall of man.²⁶

The Sin of Spiritual Creatures

There are several passages describing created spiritual beings who sinned and came under God’s judgment. These texts tell us:

(1) The straightforward fact that a contingent of angels sinned (2 Pet 2:4).

(2) The nature of the angels’ sin was (a) abandoning their given ‘position of authority’ and (b) departing ‘their proper dwelling’ (Jude 6).

(3) The extent of the angelic sin affected a third of their company (Rev 12:3-4).

(4) The essence of angelic rebellion is said to be pride and conceit, literally ‘being puffed up’ (1 Tim 3:6).

(5) Two additional reasons of the original angelic sin are suggested: envy of God (Gen 3:5) and dissatisfaction with their God-given status (Jude 6). This discontent in condition and situation was presumably by comparison with the position of either God or humanity, or possibly, both God and humanity.

There is also strong allusion to satanic-level rebellion and fall in two passages of the prophets (Isa 14:12-15; Ezek 28:2-10). The precise reason why such sin should have entered into the mind of these angels without outside influence and without any prior existence of evil is unexplained. Its inception must have begun somewhere in the imagination, but how sin became a reality among some of the spiritual creatures is hidden from us. Yet

‘no other account seems possible. Everything that is not the Creator is created by him. He creates all things “good.” Therefore, if there are bad creatures, they must have become bad; as it is with humans so it must be with spirits. But if the devils were once good spirits, what can they then have been but angels? … The fall of angels is indeed inconceivable, but so is evil as such; nevertheless evil occurs.’²⁷

Sin Did Not Start With People

Biblical teaching is unique in tracing the original emergence of sin and evil into existence solely by the decision of intelligent spiritual creatures. Sin did not start with people, but its beginning is traced back to the mind and will of angels. Sin and evil on earth were preceded and prompted by sin and evil above the earth. Sin first emerged into existence beyond us, among ‘the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places’ (Eph 6:12). This means that the absolute origin of evil is external to humanity. Satan sinned, tempted Adam and Eve, and they sinned. The angels who sinned were not influenced or tempted to sin by others. Their sin originated entirely within themselves. This is significant difference, for by contrast with the angels who sinned completely by themselves, ‘man did not come to the transgression of the law of God by himself exclusively but was moved to it from outside himself.’²⁸ The power of darkness is ‘cosmic’ rather than merely human (Eph 6:12).

Satan’s Spokesman

So, far from being mythological or symbolic, Genesis presents the snake in Eden as a genuine and real animal, stating by way of introduction that ‘the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made’ (Gen 3:1). Later, ‘that ancient serpent’ is twice identified with ‘the great dragon … the devil and Satan’ himself, together with the explanation that this is ‘the deceiver of the whole world’ (Rev 12:9, 14). We are told that ‘war arose in heaven’ and that the outcome of the fight between ‘Michael and his angels … against the dragon and his angels’ was this: ‘he [the devil/Satan] was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him’ (Rev 12:7, 9). The Gospels tell us that ‘unclean spirits’ (demons) may on occasion enter animals (Mark 5:2, 11-13 and parallels) On this basis, it may be assumed that the devil manipulated and possessed the actual snake in Eden, determined to employ it for his own malign ends. The serpent effectively acted as a ‘spokesman’ for Satan.²⁹

2.3 Human Sin

Sin Entered the Human World Through the First Human Couple

Nonetheless, the Bible relates sin’s entry into universal human experience through the primal sin of our first parents, the first human couple, Adam and Eve. Through the actions of two actual individual persons the human race turned against God. The Genesis narrative treats them as personally and substantially responsible for this. At various points in Scripture beyond Genesis, Adam and Eve themselves are quite obviously regarded as a real historical figures (1 Chron 1:1; Luke 3:38; Matt 19:4-6; Mark 10:6-8; Rom 5:14; 1 Cor 15:22, 45; 1 Tim 2:13-14; Jude 1:14). The subsequent flow of Biblical events, narrative, and storyline indicates that Adam and Eve’s catastrophe was a real historical event that actually happened. The real historicity, existence, and identity of the first human pair is assumed through the Bible’s storyline of historical succession. They are placed in concrete historical relation to other historical persons, not least in relation to Jesus Christ himself (Rom 5:12-21). Within the framework of Biblical and redemptive history, Adam and Eve are integral figures. To deny their real actual historical identity as individual persons that existed and acted as the Genesis account reports is contrary to Scripture.³⁰

What Was at Stake in God’s First Command

Genesis suggests that that this primal human sin occurred a relatively brief time after their creation. God had presented them with a choice during a period of probation. They were on trial, put to the test. The dilemma they faced was couched in terms of a direct instruction: ‘the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die”’ (Gen 2:16-17). The meaning of ‘the knowledge of good and evil’ is likely this: ‘to determine good and evil, right and wrong, by oneself, and refuse to submit to any external law. It is … to desire emancipation from God.’³¹ What is at stake here is how humanity proceeds in relation to God, dependently or independently, obediently or disobediently, submissively or rebelliously, conforming to God’s command or violating it. The temptation set before Adam and Eve was to become autonomous, independent of God, self-governing, self-determining, to ‘be like God, knowing good and evil’ (Gen 3:5) in the sense of deciding and defining what is good and what is evil for themselves. This would amount to the refusal of the creature to accept and to trust that the measure of good and evil is determined by the character and will of the Creator. Setting oneself up as arbiter of right and wrong – declaring moral independence – is tantamount to the revolt of the creature against the Creator.

‘God made this prohibition, in order to show that the nature of the rational soul ought not to be in its own power, but in subjection to God, and that the soul guards the order of its salvation through obedience, but corrupts it through disobedience. That is also why he called the forbidden tree “the tree of the knowledge of God and evil.” For when man touched it in defiance of the prohibition, he would experience the penalty of sin, and so would know the difference between the good of obedience, and the evil of disobedience.’³²

The Nature of the First Temptation

In issuing the directive that God did, uncomplicated obedience must have been within the capacity of Adam and Eve. They were ‘able not to sin, able not to die, able not to abandon the good.’³³ Presumably the order was intended to provide opportunity for the positive use of freedom, which was supposed to be exercised in trusting obedience to God. Adam’s created goodness in the image of God was such that ‘his understanding was adorned with a true and saving knowledge of his Creator, and of spiritual things; his heart and will were upright, all his affections pure, and the whole Man was holy.’³⁴ By comparison with all that had already been granted to Adam – ‘every tree of the garden’ (Gen 2:16), ‘dominion over’ ‘the sea,’ ‘the heavens,’ every living thing, the entire face of the earth, ‘and every tree with seed in its fruit’ (Gen 1:28-29) – the limit specified was moderate and should have been bearable. Yet, despite the clarity of God’s commandment, and despite the equally clear and grave seriousness of its accompanying warning, Adam and Eve were enticed to sin and they succumbed. The suggestion to cast aside God’s ruling came from the serpent, and therefore from outside of themselves. From Adam and Eve’s point of view, evil approached them from the unknown. Temptation itself came to them from an external source. They were led astray. Indeed, under the influence of Satan, the command of God is made the occasion of temptation to them. The serpent took what God intended purely for good and perverted it, turning it into something very bad. The text presents the tempter’s motive as manifestly malign and its express purpose as the deliberate instigation of disobedience. The serpent’s ultimate objective was evidently an attack upon God through the destruction and death of humanity.

The serpent’s assault began by introducing uncertainty, firstly about the clarity of what God had told them (Gen 3:1, 4) and secondly about goodness and integrity of God’s intentions for them (Gen 3:5). The process of temptation was gradual and moved through a number of stages. Uncertainty encouraged unease and then suspicion and mistrust about God’s motive. Tension mounts under an accumulation of cynicism. Bavinck’s exposition is excellent:

‘First, the proscriptive command which God has given is represented as an arbitrarily added burden, an unfounded limitation on man’s freedom. Thus there is sown in Eve’s soul the seed of doubt concerning the Divine origin and the justness of the command. Next that doubt is developed into unbelief by means of the thought that God has given the command lest man become like Himself, knowing good and evil even as he. This unbelief in turn serves the imagination and makes the transgression appear to be, not the way of death, but the way to everlasting life, to equality with God. The imagination then does its work on the inclination and effort of man, so that the forbidden tree begins to take on another guise. It becomes a lust to the eye and a desire to the heart. Desire, having thus conceived, banishes the will and bears the sinful deed. … In this simple but profound psychological way Scripture tells the history of the fall and of the origin of sin. In this way sin continues to come into being. It begins with the darkening of the understanding, continues with the excitement of the imagination, stimulates desire in the heart, and culminates in an act of the will.’³⁵

So, behind the transgression of Adam and Eve lay Satanic deception. Evil suggestion – temptation – prompted illicit enjoyment, consent, and action.³⁶ Their action, born out of wrongful desire (Gen 3:6), was deliberate disobedience to the Creator’s direct instruction. Whilst their sin involved bodily appetite – they ate – behind their sinful act lay sinful thoughts in the mind (doubt, disbelief) and sinful impulses in the heart (pride, covetousness).³⁷

Sin is A Kind of Madness

Scripture provides no fuller explanation for the first human sin, beyond being deceived by the devil and tempted to disobedience. Questions about why Adam and Eve would allow themselves to be tempted, and why they could possibly consent to so manifest a deception, are unaddressed. Why would Eve prefer the serpent’s twisted version of reality to that of the perfectly good Creator? Why would Adam assent to his wife’s obviously illicit offer? Why would both, given an environment of paradise, choose to reject the manifest goodness of God (Gen 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31). Genesis 3 makes no attempt to rationalise their sin or to make it comprehensible. This is most likely intended to render sin itself and the first sin in particular not understandable. There is an insanity about sin. It is not rational, but foolish and reckless. It is a riddle that defies comprehension. Sin is absurd and incomprehensible, a kind of madness. It is by definition senseless and inexplicable.³⁸ In this manner, Scripture effectively presents sin as a terrible fact and as a miserable reality, but as a fact and a reality that is absolutely illegitimate and entirely invalid. Disobedience to God is by definition wholly unreasonable. Sin is irrational, nonsensical, and unfathomable. It is totally intolerable yet actual, completely inexcusable and unacceptable but nonetheless real and tangible.³⁹ ‘Here we arrive at the boundaries of our knowledge; sin exists, but it will never be able to justify its existence.’⁴⁰

Freedom, Responsibility, and Personhood

Adam and Eve’s situation is distinct from ours. They did not (as we do) have a sinful nature. They did not (as we do) inhabit a sinful world. Their environment was idyllic. Their initial sin was perpetrated in paradise. In that sense – and this is a critical difference between them and us – there was no prior point of human contact.

Clearly, though, Adam and Eve did have a proneness and propensity to sin. The created perfection of Adam and Eve was not impervious to evil. It was childlike innocence, but not indifference. Their created innocence did not mean that they were unreceptive to sin or placed beyond the reach of evil. They had no inward urge toward sin, but their innocence could be altered. A fall into sin was possible. They were neither immune to deception nor oblivious to temptation. They were open to ruse, to scam, to subterfuge. Evil penetrated their condition by trickery.

This does not however lessen the seriousness of their offence or the dreadfulness of the outcome. Their innocence involved duty and responsibility under God (Gen 1:26-28). Their innocence also included the dignity of a genuine capacity to choose. God’s words of direct personal command presented the Creator’s instructions together with a warning of the death penalty for disobedience (Gen 2:16-17). The command assumes that Adam possessed some significant power of choice. There was some significant freedom – free agency – in their innocence, in that they were neither compelled to choose obedience nor obligated to opt for disobedience. This measure of freedom in the ability to choose, a real capacity for self-determination, is part of what distinguished them from the other earthly creatures. The exercise of will and self-determination was much of what gave God’s initial image-bearers individuality and personality. At creation,

‘God … endued the will of man with that natural liberty, that is neither forced, nor, by any absolute necessity of nature, determined good, or evil. Man, in his state of innocency, had freedom, and power to will and to do that which was good and well pleasing to God; but yet, mutably, so that he might fall from it.’⁴¹

So, innocence clearly included openness to outside influence, including evil influence. But although they were deceived by evil power (Gen 3:13; 1 Tim 2:14), nobody made them choose wrongly. They did that for themselves. In this they were responsible for their decision. They were supposed to choose what was right. Their sin was not a slip in the wrong direction. It was not a mishap or an accident. The serpent introduced doubt which was allowed to develop into disbelief, and on this basis their decision was made to revolt. Genesis describes their attempt to evade responsibility for their decisions (Gen 3:12-13). But the power to choose, owning a real measure of freedom, having the ability to deliberate and decide and select right or wrong, entailed accountability and responsibility.

3. THE NATURE OF SIN

Biblical Terms for Sin

The many scriptural terms for sin compose a colourful and highly detailed picture. The Hebrew Bible alone (that is, the Old Testament) deploys as many as fifty different words to describe the character of sin and define its essence.⁴² The New Testament’s vocabulary for sin is also diverse. Evil’s enigma and complexity may be part of the reason for such a diverse vocabulary. As the treatment of sin is so various and mixed, pinpointing its essence is a considerable challenge. Although many attempts have been made to boil down Biblical teaching about sin to one particular idea, there is no single stand-alone principle.

Within the Bible’s analysis of what sin is and what sin does, the following terms are among the most prominent: disobedience, injustice, law-breaking, evil desire, failure, perversity, wickedness, rebellion, revolt, trespass, transgression, unbelief, and unrighteousness. Other terms include alienation, banishment, betrayal, burden, boasting, corruption, coveting, debt, defiance, degeneration, deviation, disloyalty, disorder, disruption, distortion, error, falling, foolishness, guilt, hostility, impurity, iniquity, lawlessness, offence, opposition, pollution, rejection, refusal, sickness, stupidity, uncleanness, unfaithfulness, ungodliness, violation, and weight to be carried.

Piling up words like these is brutal and distressing, yet Scripture’s accounting for sin’s character and consequence additionally draws on a broad range of imagery, for example, dirt, defilement, uncleanness, adultery, and decay. The Bible’s story-line too depicts sin’s nature and power in embodied real life terms across all kinds of genres, in numerous ways, on myriad occasions, in narratives, stories, prophecies, prayers, praises, visions, and letters. Together these expressions, terms, and images portray a wholescale disarray and destruction of interpersonal love and Divine-human relations. Their combined effect expresses a sense of ‘deep damnation.’⁴³

Offence Against God

Sin comprises a departure from the will of God. It is trespass upon territory forbidden by God, transgression of law instituted by God, disobedience to commandments issued by God, rejection of authority established by God. Sin is enmity and averseness to God. It is the abandonment and rejection of God-given status. Sin is the dismissal of God’s standards of right and wrong, the repudiation of ethical norms designated by God. It is unrighteousness. It is moral abuse and moral misuse. Sin certainly involves moral wrongdoing, but it is a theological more than merely moral category. Sin is, essentially, offence against God. In terms of internal inclination, sin is distorted and mis-directed desire. In terms of external action, sin is disobedience. ‘Sin is knowingly breaking God’s command and flows from a heart that rebels against God.’⁴⁴ It is all-told revolt against God. It is evil before God and evil in relation to God.

Different Kinds of Sin

There are of course a very varied range of different sins. There are sins of body, corresponding to humanity’s physical and sensual nature. There are sins of mind and will and spirit. It is significant that spiritual sins such as envy, pride, and hatred are viewed as fundamental, heinous, and damaging as bodily sins. ‘There are personal and individual sins, but there are also common, social sins, the sins of particular families, nations and the like. Every class and status in society, every vocation and business, and every office and profession brings with it its own peculiar dangers and its own peculiar sins.’⁴⁵ But their very variety of different sins confirms their interrelation. All sins spring from the same original source, hostility to God. The distinctive evil that sin is derives precisely from antagonism to God. When we sin against our fellow human beings, we are directly repudiating and disdaining the goodness and love of God, for out of that love he has created all of us in his image, to live beside him in dependent fellowship with him and inter-dependent fellowship with each other. That is why racism and tribalism is, ultimately, blasphemy.⁴⁶

‘No’ to God

Accurate understanding of sin, then, begins with God. ‘The fall of Adam and Eve into sin signifies their rejection of God’s lordship over their lives.’⁴⁷ Sin is then fundamentally, ‘a state of hostility to God and rebellion against him.’⁴⁸ Sin expresses hatred for God and resentment of him. Sin is vertical breakdown first, from which horizontal disarray, and deepening interior deterioration follows. Fractured fellowship runs in three directions, towards: 1) our Creator, 2) other creatures, and 3) ourselves. But the opposing, defiant ‘no’ to God is most basic to the spirit of sin. It is no light imperfection but positive malice, the detestation and wilful violation of the Creator’s commands. The General Confession in the Morning Office in the Book of Common Prayer captures the Biblical sense of sin thus:

‘We have erred and strayed from [God’s] ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. We have offended against [God’s] holy laws. We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; And we have done those things which we ought not to have done; And there is no health in us.’

Violation of God’s Law

Always sin has a direct and immediate relation to the law of God. It is at heart ‘lawlessness’ (1 John 3:4) and it is ‘through the law [that] we become conscious of sin’ (Rom 3:20). In fact, God’s law ‘is the only source of the knowledge of sin and its only measurement.’⁴⁹ The Apostle Paul admitted that his own sinfulness became apparent to him through the command against covetousness (Rom 7:7; cf. Exo 20:17). It is God’s law is that defines and determines what sin actually is, namely ‘any want of conformity unto, or transgression of, the law of God.’⁵⁰ God’s law is not arbitrary – it indicates God’s nature and being. Therefore, ‘nonconformity to God’s law in status, disposition, and act’ expresses animosity toward him.⁵¹ The matter of sin is a personal and relational matter. It is moral and spiritual revolt.

Rejection of God’s Goodness and Love

As God’s law expresses God’s character, his law is a matter of love. Law originates from love and is fulfilled by love. The ‘great and first commandment’ is this: ‘“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” … And a second is like it, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets”’ (Matt 22:37-40). So the formal aspect of sin is its violation of God’s law, the moral aspect of sin is its wrongdoing against God, and the material and relational aspect of sin is its rejection of God’s love.⁵² Sin is any act or attitude that is in opposition to God. It is the mistrust and betrayal of God, expressive of ingratitude and disloyalty to God.⁵³ Sin in summary then refers to the repudiation, violation, and deformation of personal fellowship with God, whose eternal nature is infinite-personal love (John 17:24). In simpler definition, sin is the rejection of God’s goodness. It is, in essence, the rejection of God’s love.⁵⁴

4. THE CONSEQUENCES OF SIN

4.1 Wrath and Judgment

How God Feels About the Rebellion of his Creatures

The wrath of God is the emotional element of his opposition to sin and evil. Wrath and anger are how God feels about the rebellion of his creatures. God’s anger is his affective reaction and emotional response to sin. God’s wrath is the response of his holiness and love and righteousness. In that holiness, love, and righteousness, God’s attitude toward sin and evil is not and cannot be detachment, indifference, or unconcern but outrage, indignation, and displeasure. It is sin which makes creatures subject to their Creator’s wrath. It is an affective concept, emotional antagonism, fierce, passionate hatred of rebellion and revolt. Sin is something that God loathes. He is repelled and revolted by it. Wrath is God’s personal, living, practical, and judicial hostility to sin. If sin is being at war with God, wrath is God being at war with sin. Wrath is ‘aroused in the context of offence … [but] not ill-tempered or irrational.’⁵⁵ It is strongly retributive, issuing in painful punishment inflicted in a spirit of moral indignation and outrage.

We witness the expression of God’s wrath for the first time as his curse falls on the serpent and then also on the ‘ground,’ the earth, the created order within which mankind would have to live, walk, and work (Gen 3:14, 17). A little later, God’s curse fell upon Cain following the murder of his brother (Gen 4:11).

Whilst God is repeatedly said to be ‘slow to anger’ (Ex 34:6; Num 14:18; Neh 9:17; Psa 86:15; 103:8; 145:8; Joel 2:13; Nah 1:3), he is also repeatedly said to ‘abhor’ and detest evildoing, wickedness, and violence (Psa 5:5-6; 11:5), as well as robbery, injustice, oppression, and exploitation (Isa 61:8; Amos 5:21).

Human hatred of God (Rom 1:30) provokes God’s clear hostility (Exod 20:5; Deut 7:10). The anger of God is his personal hostility toward the rejection of his love and his active opposition to the abuse of his goodness. To indicate the extreme intensity of God’s anger at sin, his wrath and indignation is sometimes said to ‘burn’ (Exo 22:24; 32:10-11; 2 Ki 23:26; Psa 78:49; 89:46). God’s wrath expresses itself in horrors including war, hunger, plague, disease, and devastation (Deut 28:22; 2 Sam 24:1, 14; Jer 25:37-38; Ezek 6:11-14).

God’s wrath is specifically intended to cause distress, dismay, terror, and fear (Psa 78:49-51; 90:7-12; Isa 2:17-19; Ezek 32:31-32). The wrath of God is essentially and fundamentally threatening. It is supposed to be frightening. Beyond punishment, the prospect of wrath is intended to sober up sinful people, to bring them to their senses, to make them fearful in the proper way, to bring them to repentance, to cause them to seek God’s forgiveness and mercy. Indeed, being subject to God’s wrath should be our ultimate nightmare (Isa 5:25; 9:12, 17, 19, 21; 10:4-6; 13:9, 13; 30:27; 34:2; 55:14-16; 59:18; 63:1-6; 66:15-16, 24). Having said this, although God’s anger at evil certainly is extreme, severe, and furious (Exo 15:7; Lev 26:28; Deut 29:28; Psa 2:5), the wrath of God

‘is never a spontaneous outburst, but a reaction occasioned by the conduct of man. … [T]he anger of God is not a blind, explosive force … but rather voluntary and purposeful, motivated by concern for right and wrong. … The anger of God must not be treated in isolation, but … as one of the modes of God’s responsiveness to man. … It is conditioned by God’s will; it is aroused by man’s sins. It is an instrument rather than a force, transitive rather than spontaneous. It is a secondary emotion, never the ruling passion.’⁵⁶

God’s Care for Right and Wrong

Biblically informed appreciation of God’s wrath strengthens, rather than weakens, appreciation of God’s love. God’s hatred of sin arises from his love for humanity. The wrath of God is ‘righteous indignation … it is impatience with evil’⁵⁷ arising from his love of life and goodness. His love for these is such that anything that harms or damages them cannot be tolerated. Indifference would signal a lack of care. God cannot be unconcerned by evil. He cannot be impartial or neutral regarding sin. His anger at evil is moved by his care. God’s concern for the welfare of his creatures moves him to wrath. He is angry at anything that harms, hurts, damages, or threatens the things he loves. God’s goodness is such that he must hate evil.

‘For God to be angry is not out of character for him but an expression of his nature in relation to particular circumstances. The God who loves us as his creatures also hates us as sinners who have rebelled against him, because he cannot tolerate us in that condition. The paradox is that he hates us because he loves us.’⁵⁸

‘[I]n some ineffable way,’ Calvin wrote, ‘God loved us and yet was angry toward us at the same time, until he became reconciled to us in Christ.’⁵⁹

On a Global Scale

God’s wrath operates on a global scale, being ‘revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth’ (Rom 1:18). The reach of God’s anger is universal: ‘The hand of our God is for good on all who seek him, and the power of his wrath is against all who forsake him’ (Ezra 8:22). It is a rule without exception: ‘for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury. There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil’ (Rom 2:8-9).

We are of course instinctively reluctant to consider the hostility of God to sin with suitable seriousness. Yet, the reality is that ‘the church, not to say, the broader culture is most in need of the Biblical teachings with which it is most uncomfortable.’⁶⁰

The magnitude of God’s outrage and the intensity of his indignant reaction and opposition against sin and evil is impossible to accept without revelation. Here is Owen:

‘The world is full of confusion, full of tokens of God’s displeasure, full of judgments, full of dread; yet the world understands nothing of all these. Bring these works of God to the word of God, and we shall understand them. We shall understand the world is full of sin and provocation, that God is displeased, that he is taking away rest from men, — shaking everything within and without. Those who know not the word of God understand nothing of these works, but are filled with a multitude of vain thoughts.’⁶¹

Whenever and however it appears, God’s anger at sin is always appropriate, always with good reason, always warranted. There are hundreds of Biblical texts bearing this point out. Sin is very sinful, and evil is very evil. God is at points said to be sorrowful, wounded, grieved at sin. Still, countless verses insist that ‘vengeance’ has its place. Vengeance in God is not the ‘revenge’ we often see in ourselves which seeks to inflict pain and hurt beyond what is deserved, but is justice, where the punishment is fair and reasonable, meeting the level of the offence or crime. God’s vengeance is ‘an eye for an eye, and a tooth for tooth’ (Lev 24:20).⁶²

God’s anger demonstrates intense and profound regard for right and wrong. Wrath has a purpose, to signal God’s antipathy and objection to whatever is bad, wrong, odious or iniquitous. Actually, the wrath of God is

‘the end of indifference! The message of wrath is frightful, indeed. But for those who have been driven to the brink of despair by the sight of what malice and ruthlessness can do, comfort will be found in the thought that evil is not the end, that evil is never the climax of history.’⁶³

The Creator is Judge

Linked to God’s wrath are the practical realities of God’s judgment. We first witness this in action as he passes sentence, ‘as if from his judgment-seat,’⁶⁴ upon the serpent and then upon Eve and Adam (Gen 3:14-19). God pronounces a series of miserable consequences ‘because’ of the actions of these three figures (vv. 14, 17).

Judgment is an aspect of God’s governance. It is elemental to his rule over all things. God’s universal authority to judge the world stems from his position of absolute lordship in relation to the world. He is the Creator. The earth and its inhabitants are his creation. He is ‘God Most High, Possessor of heaven and earth’ (Gen 14:19, 22) and therefore ‘Judge of all the earth’ (Gen 18:25). God’s law is the standard by which he judges.

The universal reign of God, his almighty exaltation and Kingship ‘over all the peoples’ is directly connected with God’s love of equity, justice, and righteousness (Psa 99:1-4). In fact, God is the source of justice and the guardian of righteousness, for justice and righteousness are inherent to God’s very nature and characterise God’s ways (Gen 18:19) They are the ‘foundation of his throne’ (Psa 97:2). Judgment is a reflection of God’s character and the instrument of God’s holy love. Justice and righteousness are completely essential to personal relationships and social life. They are the moral expression of God’s committed love (Psa 33:5).

The Purpose is Putting Things Right

Judgment in action entails condemnation of what is wrong and vindication of what is right. In judgment, God discriminates between guilt and innocence. The goal of God’s judgment is the restoration of equity and harmony. In the face of injustice and wrong, in an environment of disruption and disorder, God’s judgment is his activity aimed at setting things right and putting the world in order.

Judgment expresses something completely fundamental about the relation in which God stands with respect to his sinful creatures. In it God considers people’s attitudes and actions, their thoughts and deeds, in order to make an assessment and reach a verdict about them. It is a thoroughgoing process, proceeding on the basis of God’s complete knowledge about all matters. God’s assessment occurs on the microscale of each human life as well as on the macroscale regarding all of history. ‘God’s judgment attends to the heart and to the full circumstances of a person. A person is judged according to their deeds and to what the whole person has become as a result.’⁶⁵ Ultimately, God’s judgment concerns the relational and personal substance of each of his creatures, either of trust and obedience or of rebellion and disobedience.

The judgment of God is the way in which the rule of God’s kingdom is implemented. With respect to sin and evil, God’s rule is established first through their overthrow, punishment, destruction, and death, and second, by the replacement of these evils with forgiveness, restoration, re-birth, and eternal life. The judgment of God demonstrates that sin is not ultimate. It ensures that in the face of injustice, justice will prevail, that in the face of evil, good will triumph, and that in the in face of evil, good is bound to win. ‘Judgment protects the idea of the triumph of God and of good. … Judgment means that evil will be disposed of authoritatively, decisively, finally. Judgment means that in the end God’s will will be perfectly done.’⁶⁶

God’s judgment stresses our accountability, responsibility, and worth. ‘The truth of divine judgment on human wrong is necessary in a moral universe, upholding the goodness of God, respecting the dignity of humanity.’⁶⁷ In judgment, God provides public disclosure and affirmation of ‘those values on which the common life of society depends.’⁶⁸ On the basis of perfect wisdom, knowing exactly how and when to act for the best, God’s judgment of sin gives rulings that set things decisively in order and put matters permanently right.

The occasion of God’s judgment is both now in history, during the course of this present life, as well as ultimately and decisively at the ‘day on which he will judge the world’ (Acts 17:31) before ‘the great white throne’ (Rev 20:11-15).

4.2 Guilt and Punishment

The Feeling and Fact of Guilt

Following the first sin of the first human couple, the most immediate result was an altered state of consciousness: ‘the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked’ (Gen 3:7). There followed a sudden shift to shame, their anxious anticipation of humiliation and disgrace: ‘the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God’ (Gen 3:8).

Adam and Eve’s behaviour demonstrated a deep awareness of failure. They knew in an instant that what they had done was wrong. They sensed their guilt, and this made them fearful: ‘I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself’ (Gen 3:10). They had of course been warned. Disobedience to God’s command would bring terrible consequences. They knew and understood this, so their anxiety and fear grew in anticipation of bearing those consequences.

But in Biblical teaching guilt is a far more serious issue than a mere feeling of failure. Guilt is much more than conscious sensitivity to personal shortcoming. Guilty feelings are an inward matter arising from an alarmed conscience. Bitter, aching awareness of guilt may be deeply debilitating and distressing (Psa 32:3-4; Luke 22:61-62). A false feeling of guilt can be hugely damaging, but a true sense of guilt before God and others has value when it alerts us to the fact of real wrong. The pain of guilt that may accompany or follow violation of God’s law functions properly when it produces a constructive, healthy response, the confession of sin, turning to God in faith and repentance.

The Objective State of a Person’s Relationship to God’s Law

In Biblical teaching guilt is an essentially judicial matter, relating to a court of law. Guilt is a legal term implying criminal responsibility that results from violating law, whether human or Divine. Guilt describes the state of a person’s relationship to God’s law when that law has been broken, the line crossed, the matter transgressed. In the matter of guilt before God, there is no law outside of God that compels God’s assent. Rather, God’s law reflects God’s being and character. So, the subjective sense of true guilt signals the objective state of guilt resulting from sin. Sin itself is an offence against God (Psa 51:4). It is the breach of God’s law and the rejection of God’s love. Objective guilt is incurred through any type of sinful attitude or action that makes a person liable before God and worthy of condemnation by him. Objective guilt occurs as a solid spiritual fact whenever God’s law is broken. An objective state of guilt arises through doing anything that ‘by the LORD’s commandments ought not to be done’ (Lev 4:13). To fail in one respect of God’s law is to ‘become guilty of all’ (Jas 2:10).

This is not to say that objective legal guilt is not a personal matter. It certainly is. The violation of God’s commandments and the breach of God’s law and is a violation and breach of personal relationship with God. Sin is relational betrayal. Legal breach of God’s moral standards by human beings created by God occurs exactly within the context of personal relations with himself that he has established. Guilt before God is therefore the objective legal, moral, and relational state of a person who has violated God’s laws, whether knowingly and intentionally, or unknowingly and unintentionally.

The law of God exists for the benefit of the people of God. With all its accompanying principles and values, God’s law is intended to establish and promote the well-being of his creatures. The purpose of God’s law is to instruct, lead, and guide people in relation to him and in relation to one another. God’s law is supposed to preserve and protect the welfare of individuals and communities. Objective guilt has collective and communal implications (Lev 4:3; Deut 24:4; Josh 7), but much the greater emphasis is upon individual guilt and personal responsibility (Ezek 18). The teaching of Christ concerning the fulfilment of God’s law heightened awareness of the depths of personal guilt and responsibility by linking sinful behaviour to its roots in sinful attitudes and motivations (Matt 5:17-32).

Real Wrong Cannot Be Ignored

The law of God is laid down in words of command and promise spoken directly by God and placed on public record. God stated the consequences of obedience (blessing) and the consequences of disobedience (curse), and he has expressed these matters very clearly in extensive detail (Gen 2:17; Deut 28:1-68). Being true to himself, God stands by what he has said. To do otherwise would be to deny himself. God has said that sin is deadly. It is ‘unthinkable that God, the Father of Truth, should go back upon his word regarding death … He could not falsify himself … [but must] maintain … His consistency of character with all.’⁶⁹

To be true to his word and consistent in justice, God must pronounce judgment of guilt and act against the guilty, for this is what he has expressly committed himself to do, in his own words, in accord with his own character. He cannot simply excuse or overlook objective evil. To disregard and ignore wrongdoing would be a denial of his nature. To turn a blind eye to sin would be actually unloving. In the matter of guilt before God, God himself is the adjudicator and Judge. He is the one who determines accountability and responsibility, guilt and liability. To pay no attention to the objective guilt of his creatures, to declare their innocence despite the facts, would be a total miscarriage of justice. That is something God absolutely cannot do. People are held legally responsible by God for their attitudes and actions in relation to him, and responsible too for the consequences that result.

‘Every sin, both original and actual, being a transgression of the righteous law of God, and contrary thereunto, doth, in its own nature, bring guilt upon the sinner, whereby he is bound over to the wrath of God and curse of the law, and so made subject to death, with all miseries spiritual, temporal, and eternal.’⁷⁰

For this reason, removing guilt before God is beyond the power of the offender. Certainly, the offender must recognize their sin, confess their guilt, and demonstrate remorse through compensation (Lev 5:5-7). But removal of guilt requires the means God himself has established, namely atonement through blood sacrifice, a ‘sin offering’ (Lev 5:6-10; 16:1-34). Astonishingly, God promises that he himself will atone for our sins (Psa 78:38; Eze 16:62-63). That is what happened when God himself in the Person of his Son, Jesus Christ, died on the cross (Rom 3:25; Heb 2:17).

A Debt to God

Guilt before God entails debt to him. Indebtedness to God requires forgiveness by God (Matt 6:12) through personal repentance and faith in Jesus Christ, on the basis of his suffering and death being a sacrificial blood offering (Matt 26:28; Heb 9:22; 10:1-19). Nothing forces God’s hand in this matter and, besides our sin and guilt, nothing from us contributes to it. The forgiveness of sins, the removal of guilt, and the declaration of innocence is an entirely free ‘gift … to be received by faith’ (Rom 3:24-25).

Condemnation and Punishment Are Justly Deserved

Guilt and punishment are causally related, for guilt resulting from sin is the basis of condemnation. Guilt deserves condemnation. Condemnation in turn entails liability to penalty, that is, payment through punishment. Punishment as a term appears first in the case of Cain (Gen 4:13) and then in the case of Sodom (Gen 19:15). But the linkage of sin and punishment appears at the very outset in the case of Adam and Eve, before the entry of sin, when disobedience to the command of God is said to result in death (Gen 2:17). This reality, the punishment of guilt, the idea that sin and wrongdoing leaves one condemned to punishment by payment of a painful penalty continues throughout the Bible. There are countless occasions in Scripture where objective guilt is met with deliberate Divine punishment.

Punishment for sin in the present life is provisional. The punishment of sin in its ultimate form is endless misery, eternal conscious torment (Matt 25:46; 2 Thess 1:9; Jude 7; Rev 20:10, 14-15). The final damnation of wickedness in hell stands as an everlasting expression of God’s retributive justice. The decisive instance of payment for guilt through retributive punishment is the death of Christ as a penalty for sin. This permanent display and exercise of God’s judgment upon sin is what the blood of Christ was shed to avert in the case of those whom come to trust him.

The judgment of God prescribes gifts and rewards, penalties and punishments, applied appropriately according to circumstances and deeds. Such are the principles by which God governs and rules the world. In this way the moral structure and order of God’s world is maintained and restored. Righteousness is to be rewarded with blessing and well-being. Wickedness must be made an end of. Justice requires that the guilty suffer and that the innocent prosper. Sin deserves punishment. Justice requires it. The justice of punishment for sin rests upon the objectivity of good and evil, right and wrong, vice and virtue, all being grounded in the holy character of God. The Judge of all the earth shall do what is right (Gen 18:25).

The Purpose and Goal of Punishment

Punishment involves the infliction of pain and suffering upon lawbreakers and offenders. The idea of blood vengeance appears early in the Bible, and is based upon the objective wrong of doing harm to someone made in God’s image (Gen 4:10-11; 9:6). In Scripture, the law of retribution requires that punishment be inflicted as vengeance for wrongdoing. The immediate purpose of punishment is then twofold: (1) retribution, to make amends for past wrongs, and (2) deterrence, helping maintain just relations between each other and God by discouraging future wrongs (Deut 19:20). The overall goal of punishment is also twofold: (1) the demonstration of objective moral order, and (2) the restoration of justice. Ultimately, then, divine punishment points towards restoration of good order, reconciliation, to once again living in loving obedience to God and loving service of each other. That is achieved in the salvation Jesus Christ has brought (2 Cor 5:16-21).

All Are Responsible and Accountable to God

Integral to this is human responsibility. Man’s intellectual and moral capacity combined with his power of self-determination, choice, and willing, render him responsible to God for what he does. Persons as creatures are under absolute obligation to God to do what God regards to be good and right and to not do what God reckons bad and wrong. It must immediately be said that true good, the greatest good, the good of all goods, is fellowship with God.

Individuals are accountable for what they do and for what they do not do. The whole world is accountable to God (Rom 3:19). Reward for well-doing and punishment for wrong-doing are built into the moral structure of God’s universe. Hope and fear are the inner sense of anticipation and expectancy for one or the other. Conscience is an internal consciousness of moral sensitivity. The sense of satisfaction for virtue and the conscious sense of guilt for wrong are hard-wired into the human constitution.

‘If [God] did not punish sin, he would give to evil the same rights he accords to the good and so deny himself. The punishment of sin is necessary so God may remain God. God cannot … let sinners, instead of submitting to his law and obeying it, defy it and in effect making themselves God’s equals. Punishment is powerful proof that only justice has the right to exist, that only God is good and great.’⁷¹

4.3 Suffering and Death

Pain and Suffering Are a Result of Sin

Following the original sin of mankind, the death sentence is pronounced (‘to dust you shall return,’ Gen 3:19). Death’s universal inevitability is then recorded and registered at length (Gen 5:5-31). But the event of physical death does not occur immediately upon sin coming into the world. Bodily death is delayed for a while, but other awful penalties are issued in advance of it: fear, guilt, shame, pain, curse, frustration, futility, waste, loss, grief, struggle, toil, and banishment (Gen 3:7-24). Soon followed envy, anger, malice, murder, barefaced lying, a further curse, further futility, regret, fugitive-status, restlessness, and wandering (Gen 4:8-16). Agony and anguish and anxiety became constants in human experience, a kind of death in themselves, effectively ‘a preparation for death, a continuous death.’⁷² For all, ‘sin is crouching at the door’ (Gen 4:7). The sheer aggressive threat of sin became ever-present and never-ending. Into life came sorrow and suffering, summed up with pity and sadness: ‘Cain went away from the presence of the LORD … east of Eden’ (Gen 4:16).

Sin and suffering are bound up with one another. Evil results from sin and suffering results from evil. As an interim punishment for sin came ‘the miseries of human life, from the first cries of infants to the final groans of the dying.’⁷³ Scripture likens the distress of appalling circumstances to a real and present experience of ‘Sheol,’ death’s bleak, shadowy, and unknown underworld (2 Sam 22:6; Psa 18:4-5). This does not mean that all specific suffering may be directly linked to a source in some specific sin, though a good deal can. But generally sin and suffering are connected, both directly and indirectly, and because of the evil caused by sin, suffering is both inevitable and universal.

The Whole Creation Subject to Futility

Pain, struggle, and suffering are so completely integral to sinful human experience that we can scarcely imagine what it would mean to live without them. The scale of suffering ranges from private griefs to wholescale calamities. The quantity of pain in the world beggars belief. Some miseries result from personal wrongdoing, yet much pain, most pain even – accidents, aging, illness – is obviously beyond individual control and simply unavoidable. Because of ‘the central place humans occupy in creation,’⁷⁴ the entire natural world was caught up in and impacted by the effects of human sin. The very ‘ground’ has been cursed by God (Gen 3:17), the whole order of creation subjected to futility (Rom 8:20).

Whilst there is in Scripture no overall explanation of suffering that is valid for every situation, nonetheless, the essential connection between human suffering and human sin remains. Pain and suffering, like death itself, has always been a normal part of fallen human experience, but in terms of created human nature it is an abnormal and unnatural experience. Pain followed the sin of the first couple and became a universal constant (Gen 3:1-19). Current life is marked by affliction and catastrophe, heartache and horror, injustice and trauma, decay and tragedy. What happens between the boundary lines of birth and death is deeply unsatisfactory. Existence in a world of sin is immensely confusing and can be very unfair, in that not just the guilty but the innocent also suffer. The whole earthly creation and every creature inhabiting it becomes subject to decay, transience, vanity, frustration, and futility (Psa 89:47; Eccl 1:2-12:8; Rom 1:21; 8:20; Eph 4:17; 1 Pet 1:18). Because it sets its face against this state of affairs, the wrath of God, then, is to be welcomed because it punishes injustice and points to its final removal and the victory of restored right-relationships in love. But, we do well to ‘welcome’ it with trembling.⁷⁵

Life is Corrupted But Not Dissolved

Having said this, God’s life-giving intention does not disappear. From the first, God’s preservation and protection even extends to the murderous (Gen 4:15). So, the fallen human condition encompasses the best and the worst. ‘The earth on which we live is not a heaven but it is not a hell either. It stands between the two and has something of the quality of each.’⁷⁶ Human life is corrupted and cursed but not instantly dissolved. God’s goodness to all the world provides conditions appropriate to fallen humanity in all its magnificence and squalor. Otherwise of course we would not survive. God’s mercy remains still ‘over all that he has made’ (Psa 145:6). Certainly, suffering is neither original nor ultimate in God’s purposes. With the entry of the new creation God promises to ‘wipe away every tear … and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things [will] have passed away’ (Rev 21:4). Until then, however, tragedy and trauma threaten each moment.

Death is the Appointed Penalty For Sin

The full penalty for sin is a kind of living death in which spiritual death precedes physical death and eventually culminates in eternal death (John 8:21, 24; Eph 2:1; Rev 2:11; 20:6, 14; 21:18).⁷⁷ In Scripture, death derives from the judgment of God. The sentence of death is punishment for disobedience. ‘The wages of sin is death’ (Rom 6:23). Death is decreed and appointed by God as the payment and penalty for sin, for ‘from the power of the law and by its sanction was it ordained that man should die once.’⁷⁸

Death itself is devastating. Generally people fear it. We may attempt to deny it, deconstruct it, or distract ourselves from it, and although it can sometimes be postponed, death is impossible to prevent. There is nothing we can do about it.

It is this – the sheer fact of death as Divine punishment imposed in payment for sin – that the serpent openly contradicts (Gen 3:3). But physical and spiritual death as a judgment and penalty and punishment for sin, established and exacted by God, is stated explicitly (Gen 2:17; 3:3, 19; Ezek 18:4, 20; Rom 5:12; 6:23; 1 Cor 15:21; Eph 2:1, 5) and assumed implicitly (Gen 3:22; 6:3; Psa 90:7-10).

Death is Terrible and Inevitable

Because of this, in the Bible generally death is portrayed as unnatural and terrible. If humanity had not sinned, death would not have been necessary. Death is not a natural consequence of human nature but it is the legal consequence of sin: ‘the termination of a miserable life shall be death. … For this accursed life of man could be nothing else but the beginning of death.’⁷⁹ Even when very wicked people die, God is said to take no pleasure in it (Ezek 18:23). In this sense death is always untimely, though premature death may signal God’s particular judgment (Gen 38:7, 10; Psa 55:23; 1 Cor 11:29-30). Two individuals only, Enoch and Elijah, are spared it (Gen 5:24; 2 Ki 2:11). Death is likened to a shroud and veil of mourning ‘cast over all peoples … [and] all nations’ (Isa 25:7). It is the way of all flesh, inevitable yet unnatural.

For fallen humanity, death is life’s unavoidable end. Because everyone sins, death is our common destiny, ‘the way of all the earth’ (Jos 23:14; 1 Ki 2:2). ‘The living know that they will die’ (Eccl 9:5). ‘The bodies of men, after death, return to dust, and see corruption.’⁸⁰ The point of physical death marks the soul’s separation from the body: ‘[human] souls (which neither die nor sleep), having an immortal subsistence, immediately return to God who gave them.’⁸¹ But in terms of humanity’s created nature and destiny, death is abnormal. Death is depicted as the rule and reign of tyrannical power (Rom 5:14, 17). The devastation of death is such that it is described as the dominion of the devil, who is ‘the one who has the power of death’ (Heb 2:14). It is the ultimate aggressor as a ‘rider’ of a ‘pale horse’ intent on killing by means of terrible violence, ‘sword,’ ‘famine,’ ‘plague,’ and ‘wild beasts’ (Rev 6:8).

Annihilation and Death are Different

Annihilation and death are different. Annihilation is to be erased from existence, obliterated, rubbed out, to cease to be. Death is punishment, misery, separation, suffering, and torment.⁸² It is an inherently destructive force.

For the godly, regardless of the actual process of dying, death itself may be peaceful (Gen 25:8; 49:33; Acts 13:36), likened to a homecoming (Gen 35:29; Num 20:26; Deut 32:50), or to falling asleep (Acts 7:60; 1 Cor 15:6, 18, 20; 1 Thess 4:14-15). For the believer, death marks a departure and a transition to gain something altogether better with Christ (Phil 1:21, 23). To die in Christ is to rest (Rev 14:13) and to give oneself up into God’s hands (Luke 23:35; Acts 7:59). Yet nonetheless death remains undesirable to the Christian. Death remains terrible for the believer because through it the physical body is painfully taken apart and destroyed (2 Cor 5:1; 2 Pet 1:14), together with the severing of connection and contact with all goods, loves, and relationships belonging to this world. Paul expressed things this way: ‘My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account’ (Phil 1:23-24).

‘[S]ince, according to Scripture, the deepest meaning of life is fellowship with God, the deepest meaning of death must be the disruption of … fellowship with God … and this disruption is spiritual death. … the death that came upon man and woman at the Fall must have included spiritual death … As a further consequence, every human being since the Fall is born in a state of spiritual death … At the time of the Fall humankind also became subject to what we call eternal death – that is, eternal separation from the loving presence of God.’⁸³

Three Dimensions of Death

There are then three forms of death resulting from sin:

(1) Spiritual death – the breakdown and termination of communion and fellowship with God and his people.

(2) Physical death – the breakdown and termination of bodily function, marking the point of the human body’s separation from the soul.

(3) Eternal death – the irretrievable breakdown and cessation of contact with God and all good.

All forms of death terminate in hell, a permanent fixed state combining everlasting banishment, destruction, and punishment.⁸⁴ It is the prospect of this which causes such deep dread. The ‘fear of death’ leaves us ‘subject to lifelong slavery’ (Heb 2:15). We fear it as an ultimate enemy (1 Cor 15:26). Its reality provokes extreme worry verging on terror, conscious or subconscious. We do fear death and we fear what follows. ‘[I]t is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment’ (Heb 9:27).

As a consequence of sin, human beings are then not merely weak but dead (Eph 2:1). Only when it is understood that sinful human beings are not only spiritually defective but actually spiritually dead is it possible to appreciate the need for spiritual rebirth and renewal. The remedy for physical death is bodily resurrection and the remedy for spiritual death is absolute regeneration by the Spirit of God (John 3:3, 5, 8).

4.4 Corruption and Pollution

The Changed State of Human Nature

The reality of sin is deeper than deeds. Through the sin of Adam there was a change in the state of human nature. In Adam’s fall, the human constitution was ruined, and ‘brought under the necessity of death.’⁸⁵ The shift was completely fundamental, being ‘a corruption of the whole nature, and an hereditary disease, wherewith infants themselves are infected even in their mother’s womb, and which produces in man all sorts of sin, being in him as a root thereof.’⁸⁶ Sin became a congenital disorder afflicting all subsequent human beings at the core of their being as persons.

‘Our first parents … became dead in sin, and wholly defiled in all the faculties and parts of soul and body. They being the root of all mankind … the same death in sin and corrupted nature conveyed to all their posterity descending from them by ordinary generation. From this original corruption, whereby we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to evil, do proceed all actual transgressions.’⁸⁷

Universal Inner Depravity

All people are born with an inherent and systemic depravity, an inbuilt tendency to evil, profoundly flawed, biased towards harm, averse to God and at enmity with him. This state of sin and corruption means that the source and origin of our own actual sins is located within us. Sin resides as a destructive driving force inside us. Our very hearts – the centre of ourselves as persons – are evil and deceitful (Jer 3:16; 7:24; 17:9). This innermost corruption and pollution are what defiles a person (Job 14:4; Matt 7:16-18; 15:19-20).

No doubt, bad example plays its part. We do imitate others. But the effect of outside influence is not decisive. We do not sin primarily because of poor ancestry, difficult circumstances, bad company, inadequate education, a polluted environment, or evil society. These provide occasion and opportunity. Certainly, there is sin outside of us in others, and there is undoubtedly wickedness above us, among ‘the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places’ (Eph 6:12). Yet nevertheless in Biblical perspective the most significant source of sin is ‘within,’ at the very foundations of our being and nature as individual persons: ‘out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person’ (Mark 7:21-23). Sinfulness is so fundamental that our very nature is sinful (Eph 2:3), and every aspect of our being is spoiled, appetites, desires, impulses, motivation, reason, will. Pollution and corruption are ‘diffused into all the parts of the soul.’⁸⁸

The Most Significant Source of Sin is Within

Because our total nature is depraved, sins and evils emerge involuntarily, without our intention, against our wishes. Under pressure they arise, in temptation they erupt. Personal realization that wickedness emerges from within us, from beneath conscious awareness, rising up from the unconscious depths of the human heart, is bitterly painful. Which of us knows nothing of the shock, the strange sense of unbelief, at significant wrongs for which we are personally responsible? ‘The thing that haunts a man the most is what he isn’t ordered to do.’⁸⁹ We tend to shift blame from ourselves to others, and to transfer guilt and responsibility for our own misdoings away from ourselves, attributing our plight to unfortunate events, perhaps, or social conditions, or financial pressures, or even to the residue of some base animal appetite or instinct.⁹⁰ No doubt, sin entails elements of each of these factors. ‘If sin lurks in circumstances, in society, in sensuality, in the flesh, in matter, then the responsibility is to be charged to Him who is the Creator and Sustainer of all things. And then man goes scot free.’⁹¹ Scripture however traces the genesis of sin to a perversion of will. It diagnoses the core problem as a corruption of the heart. The origin of sin is located in the creature and its essential nature is identified in terms of personal fault and spiritual revolt. Left unchecked and unaddressed, sin destroys us from within.

4.5 Alienation and Inability

Ruined Relations

The essence and purpose of human life is a fullness of loving personal relations. Interactive communion with God and fellowship with other people is what it means to be at home in the world and to belong. Sin is the activity which ruins relations between God and humanity. Objective relational breakdown results in a fixed state of separation from God (Isa 59:2). Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden of Eden, the place where they had known God’s company and friendship (Gen 3:23-24). In the aftermath of murdering his brother, Cain moved away from the presence of God (Gen 4:16). The people of Israel were cast out of God’s presence into exile in Babylon (2 Ki 24:20). These and other instances symbolize the state of human estrangement from God, living as foreigners under conditions of conflict and tension in a ‘far country’ (Luke 15:13). Sin makes us strangers to God, strangers to one another, strangers even to ourselves. In a state of divorce from their Creator, sinners are confused, disoriented, fugitives, out of place, refugees, a long way from home.

Hostile and Helpless

In and of itself, however, separation is too light a term to describe the relational ruin resulting from sin. Sin not only puts us at a great distance from God but alienates us from him. If loving fellowship with God and other creatures is the purpose of being human, alienation is sin’s primary relational effect. The Apostle Paul speaks of human beings outside of Christ and away from God’s presence as ‘separated’ (Eph 2:12), yes, but more than this, as ‘strangers and aliens’ (Eph 2:19), ‘alienated from the life of God’ (Eph 4:18). In another place, Paul links estrangement from God with aggression towards God, ‘alienated and hostile in mind’ (Col 1:21). Alienation from God is a state of separation from God plus enmity and averseness to him. Included within alienation from God is alienation from other people with its mixture of paranoia and aggression. As sinners we are ‘enemies’ of God, whose animosity to the Creator and other creatures is so deeply seated that reconciliation is required through the very death of Christ (Rom 5:10).

Alienation from God leaves us in a condition of total helplessness. A ‘mind set on the things of flesh’ cannot know God, obey God, or please God. Rather its spiritual condition is death and hostility to God, and there is absolutely nothing we can do about it on our own (Rom 8:6-8). Our plight in guilt, suffering, and death is one from which we cannot escape. The situation is one of extreme danger, an absolute jeopardy from which we cannot deliver ourselves. In and of ourselves we ‘cannot do, say, or think that which totally meets with God’s approval … [or] change the basic direction of [our lives] from sinful self-love to love of God.’⁹² Although some of us are capable of leading outwardly respectable lives, on our own through effort and will, we are incapable of choosing God. Although we may think that we do, we do not instinctively desire God or genuinely seek him. We do not naturally tend to love God or to want what is best. Our inclinations drive in another direction, toward things – anything – other than God. Our orientations and impulses tend towards love of self rather than love of God and others. Sin prevents us from responding appropriately to God. ‘Unless a man is born again, he cannot see … [or] enter the kingdom of God’ (John 3:3, 5).

Enslaved and Powerless

Sin shackles, traps, and enslaves the will (John 8:44). Fallen humanity is in captivity and bondage to impurity and lawlessness (Rom 6:16-19). Sin’s power over us is such that that we are in ourselves impotent, powerless. Sin’s operation is portrayed in strikingly personal terms. It ‘reigns’ (Rom 5:20), may be ‘obeyed’ (Rom 6:16-17), pays wages (Rom 6:23), takes opportunity to destroy (Rom 7:8, 11), ‘deceives’ (Rom 7:11), and kills (Rom 7:13). Its influence dominates such that we cannot altogether avoid wrong thinking and wrongdoing. The human predicament is such that by ourselves we are spiritually disabled, unable to come to Christ in repentance and faith (John 6:44). We may want to do what is good and right, but we cannot accomplish it on our own. In fact, the opposite is the case, for because ‘nothing good dwells within’ us, despite our best intentions our enslavement to evil is such that we do the evil that we do not want to do (Rom 7:17-19).

‘Man, by his fall into a state of sin, has wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation: so as, a natural man, being altogether averse from that good, and dead in sin, is not able, by his own strength, to convert himself, or to prepare himself thereunto.’⁹³

We are then victims of sin in the sense that, being in bondage and enslaved to it, we sin necessarily and inevitably. Having said this, we are villains because sin remains our responsibility, something that we personally and voluntarily choose.

‘We are victims in the sense that the sinful situation of fallen humanity into which we are born and in which we become caught up is a situation for which we are not personally responsible. Yet we are responsible, willing victims, who have willingly thrown in our lot with a rebellious race, supporting and conspiring with other people’s “no” to God. There are two extremes to be avoided here: (1) emphasis on the sinful situation in which we find ourselves as a move to avoid our personal responsibility and guilt, and (2) placing weight on our personal responsibility to the point that we might begin to think that sin can be escaped by mere effort.’⁹⁴

Changing habits may improve our circumstances and experience, but they will not in and of themselves improve our attitude toward God or change the objectively broken condition of our relationship with God. It is possible for persons to modify their behaviour. All sorts of factors influence and prompt this: social pressure, fashion, a sense of duty. In the service of self-preservation, certain sins may be restrained and limited and subdued. But this is simply a holding operation. It is not to cleanse, or eradicate, or remove. The root problem remains and simply surfaces again later or more immediately, taking on another form. Behaviour modification is not renewal. Keeping things in check is different to genuine renovation. Regulation is not restoration. Suppression is not transformation.

In relation to God, sinful people are powerless. God himself must act (Isa 59:16; Rom 5:6). For a person to trust in ‘Jesus Christ and him crucified’ requires the revelation of God and the work of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 2:2, 10). Sin makes us not merely short-sighted but blinded to God’s truth through the influence of ‘the god of this world’ (2 Cor 4:4). Spiritual blindness results in such total inability to distinguish moral and spiritual realities that sinful human beings come to actually approve of evil as if it were good (Rom 1:24-32). Without being ‘taught by God’s Spirit’ we are entirely unable to accept or ‘understand the things freely given us by God’ (1 Cor 2:12-14). Only through the help of the Spirit of God may we see ‘the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ’ (2 Cor 4:4).

4.6 The Power of Satan

Sin is Essentially Satanic

We have considered how spiritual death is a state of unresponsiveness and alienation from God that is at heart actively hostile to God. This hostility does not occur on the human level alone, for hatred of God began and gained force in the mind and will of the devil and his angels. The source and scale of sin is satanic, and sin itself has an essentially demonic nature.

Satan’s Realm is Built Upon Sin

The realm of sin is within the power of Satan. Sin’s reality takes us into the realm of Satan, tending in the same direction as the devil’s own enmity to God. Each particular sin gains its energy from the devil, and outside of Christ each individual sinner lies under Satan’s power. In this sense, Satan is said to be ‘the ruler of this world’ (John 16:11) and ‘the god of this world’ (2 Cor 4:4). In sin, humanity is captive to the control of Satan, whose very kingdom is built upon sin.

Outside of Christ, Sinners Lie Within Satan’s Power

Servitude to sin entails the fallen human will being ‘subject to the devil’s power and … stirred up by it.’⁹⁵ The servitude of sinful humanity to the power of sin and Satan is necessary – we are unable to avoid or resist it – yet also willing and voluntary. ‘Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?’ (Rom 5:16). Abandonment by God to the action of Satan does not happen against our the grain of our decisions or outside of our will, but with our own consent.

The History of the World is an Awful Spiritual Struggle

Having said this, Satan’s power lies within God’s sovereign providence. ‘The history of the world is not a blindly operating evolutionary process, but an awful drama, a spiritual struggle, centuries-long in duration, a warfare between the Spirit from above and the spirit from below, between Christ and the anti-Christ, between God and Satan.’⁹⁶

Exposed and Overthrown by Jesus Christ

Trusting Christ, our lives ‘are not in Satan’s hand but in God’s … toward the end of history, [he will] be exposed and vanquished’ (Rev 19:20).⁹⁷ We recall the point with which we began, that sin itself lies within the allowance of God. His purpose in permitting the rebellion and ruin of his creatures is precisely to bring a greater good out of it, exposing and overcoming it in order to reconcile, rescue, restore, and renew his sinful creatures by the person and work of Jesus Christ.

5. TOTAL DEPRAVITY

The Spread of Sin and Death to All People

Whilst history began without sin, almost all of history has been with and under sin. For a short time, Adam and Eve knew life in the world without sin. The Lord Jesus Christ was without personal sin, yet he lived and died in creation’s state of sin. The rest of us, without exception, know life exclusively and only as sinners in a sinful world. The expansion of sin spread on universally, from the earliest parents of the human race to all their descendants. The first human sin did not remain in isolation, but its effect extended to the next generation where it escalated to seething anger and cold-blooded murder (Gen 4:5-6, 8). There was an ever-growing and progressive deterioration. Colossal sexual immorality, corruption, and violence increased to the point that they ‘filled’ the earth (Gen 6:11-12). Prior to the flood, the all-embracing moral diagnosis was this: ‘the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and … every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually’ (Gen 6:5). Following the flood, the description of human nature was unchanged, with ‘the intention of man’s heart’ confirmed as ‘evil from his youth’ (Gen 8:21). Paul the Apostle explained the sequence of events after Eden as a chain of cause and effect:

‘sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned … death reigned … even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam … many died through one man’s trespass … the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation … because of one man’s trespass death reigned through that one man … one trespass led to condemnation for all men. For … by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners … as sin reigned in death …’ (Rom 5:12, 14-19).

So, Adam’s sin was a catastrophe that was transmitted to all and affected everyone. The reason that we sin and the reason that we die is linked backward through the generations to the original sin of our first parents, for Adam’s descendants were born ‘in his own likeness, after his image’ (Gen 5:3). In Adam’s fall, people are born sinners and born sinful. Corruption, sinfulness, is congenital, passed on by parentage. Moreover, being in the line of Adam and so born in the state of sin, all people are bound inevitably to die. Adam, the head of the human race, of which we belong and are all members, sinned himself and died himself. And so began the chain of cause and effect running down throughout all generations. All of us share Adam’s character and status. Our identity as human beings is bound up with his. We too are sinners, we too sin, and we too will necessarily die.

Features of a Debased Mind

At the outset of his Letter to the Romans, Paul sketches the anatomy of a ‘debased mind’ (Rom 1:28), listing twenty-one features. Paul does not say that everything everywhere is as dysfunctional as could be. But according to the Apostle, humanity in general is:

‘filled with all wickedness, evil, greed, spite, envy, murder, strife, guile, suspicion, rumour-mongering, slander, haters of God, arrogant, proud, boastful, inventors of evil, rebellious to parents, mindless, faithless, heartless, ruthless’ (Rom 1:29-31).⁹⁸

This grim estimate of degeneracy – the full disruption of humanity – came to be referred to as ‘total human moral depravity.’⁹⁹ The matter is easily misunderstood.

‘Clearly, these twenty-one evils are important since Paul refers to them again three times (as ‘such things’ – v. 32; 2:2, 3). Paul is not saying that all people, at all times, in all places behave like this in every detail. Nor is Paul denying that men and women can and do act nobly. Rather, he is commenting “broad brush” that observable behavior in … society has departed from the Creator’s intention for ordered and decent human relationships.’¹⁰⁰

Differing Degrees, Kinds, and Levels

The Bible regularly recognizes different kinds and levels of sin, differing degrees of inherent seriousness and harm in consequences. There are ‘unintentional sins’ and ‘sins of ignorance’ (Lev 4:2, 13; 5:17; Num 15:27), and there are presumptuous sins (1 Sam 15:23; Neh 9:16, 29; Psa 19:13). Then there are ‘greater’ sins (John 19:11), and sin that is unforgiveable (Matt 12:31-32). We are told that there is sin which does lead to death, and sin that does not lead to death (1 John 5:16-17). The state of some people is said to be worse than others, and some evil spirits are reckoned ‘more evil’ than others (Luke 11:26). Some sins are more significant than others, and some sins deserve more serious punishment than others. Inordinate anger and cultivated lust, one the one hand, and murder and adultery, on the other, are all sinful. They are on the same continuum and the one may develop into the other, sometimes in combination (Gen 4:5, 8; 2 Sam 11:2-25; Matt 5:21-28). But obviously actual murder and adultery are far graver and higher-grade sins than mild irritability or lustful daydreams. Differences of degree led to some strands of Christian tradition distinguishing between ‘venial’ (relatively light) and ‘mortal’ sin (leading directly to death). Undoubtedly, some infractions are greater than others. ‘All sin is equally wrong, but not all sin is equally bad’.¹⁰¹ All sin deserves death because all sins are committed by sinful persons. But nonetheless the differing seriousness of various sins is taught in Scripture and was assumed by most ancient authorities. So, Augustine, ‘But it matters how much. Although every crime is a sin, not every sin is a crime.’¹⁰²

The Righteous and the Wicked

It is manifestly the case that some people are better or worse than others. Some are generally respectable whilst others are frequently reckless. Some are usually kind or gentle, others mean or violent. In countless places, Scripture clearly distinguishes between ‘the righteous’ and ‘the wicked’ (Psa 1; 37 etc.). Having described the universal sinfulness of humanity (Rom 1:18-32), the Apostle nonetheless indicates that there is a categorical difference between those who are on balance patient in ‘well-doing’ and ‘good,’ and those who are basically disobedient, ‘self-seeking,’ unrighteous, and ‘evil’ (Rom 2:6-10). The inbuilt bias of a sinful nature develops to differing degrees in different people. For instance, hardness of heart may be temporary (Mark 6:52) or partial (Rom 11:25).

Extreme Evil and Blasphemy of God’s Spirit

But some do become as bad as possible, growing ever more obstinate, increasingly stubborn, irretrievably hardened (Exo 7:13, 14, 22; 8:15, 19, 32; 9:7, 12, 34, 35; 1 Sam 6:6; 2 Chron 36:13; Psa 95:8; Prov 28:14; Dan 5:20; Matt 13:15; Acts 19:9; Rom 11:7). In various places, God himself is said to harden and to blind some people, inclining and confirming their hearts in obstinacy (Exo 4:21; 7:3; 9:12; 10:1; Isa 6:10), either withdrawing his presence or by inflicting even more direct punishment in judgment. ‘[S]ins happen not only by God’s permission and forbearance, but by his might, as a kind of punishment for sins previously committed. … When his Spirit is taken away, our hearts harden into stones. When his guidance ceases, they are wrenched into crookedness.’¹⁰³

‘Abomination’ is a major Biblical category for extreme evil. The term is particularly prominent in Proverbs and Ezekiel but appears throughout the canon (Lev 18:22, 26-29; 20-:13; Deut 7:25 etc.; Judg 20:6; 1 Ki 11:5, 7; 14:24; 2 Ki 21:11; 23:13, 24; 2 Chr 28:3; 33:2; 34:33; 36:8, 14; Ezr 9:1, 11, 14; Prov 3:22 etc; Isa 1:13 etc; Jer 2:7 etc; Ezek 5:9 etc.; Dan 9:27; 11:31; 12:11; Zech 9:7; Mal 2:11; Matt 24:15; 13:14; Lk 16:15; Rev 17:4-5). ‘Iniquity’ is another major term for grossly immoral and unjust behaviour, and is again especially prominent in Leviticus, as well as in Numbers, Job, and Psalms (see also Isa 59:3).

Tragically, the perception of some does deteriorate to the point of calling ‘evil good and good evil’ (Isa 5:20). To sin ‘with a high hand’ is to ‘despise’ and ‘revile the LORD’ to such an extent as to have engaged in the wholescale breach of God’s commandments, and there is no way back from this (Num 15:30-31). Such perversion of perception terminates at unforgiveable blasphemy of God’s Spirit (Matt 12:31). In this case, hatred of God has hardened so extremely that the person and work of Christ is attributed to the power and work of Satan, effectively putting ‘God in Satan’s place and Satan in God’s place.’¹⁰⁴

Human sin may worsen to the condition of being positively demonic, enthusing in evil, cultivating it, welcoming it, such that the influence and hold of evil over the person becomes first oppression, then manipulation, and finally full-blown possession.

God Restrains Sin’s Worst Excesses

The varying degrees of virtue or vice in different people is not due to themselves but entirely due to the enabling and restraining grace of God. Given factors such as temperament, education, environment and so on do come into play here. Moreover, God usually keeps evil within bounds and generally restrains its worst excesses. Human depravity is kept in check by bonds of natural affection, family love, sense for community, education, civil government, concern for reputation, conscience, sensitivity to what is commonly regarded as acceptable, decent, and respectable, as well as regard for justice, law and order, the value of work, innovation, and industry.

‘[J]ust as the fire in the earth is kept under control by the hard crust of the earth, and only now and then, and only in certain places, bursts out in awful volcanic explosions, so the evil thoughts and lusts of the human heart are suppressed and restrained from all sides by the life of society.’¹⁰⁵

The essential nature and state of human heart corruption remains, but anarchic uncontrolled evil is circumscribed and suppressed. Practical necessity preserves function and order.

Human Dignity Falls Short of ‘Saving Good’

Fallen humanity is unable to accomplish ‘saving good,’¹⁰⁶ that is, to restore relations with God, to avoid sin, death, wrath, and attain immortality. But by the grace of God, sinful human beings can and do achieve considerable good and accomplish impressive measures of healthcare, welfare, cultural advancement, security, and prosperity. Some people do beautiful things. The virtue of others is admirable. Pragmatism certainly plays it part. One has only to consider matters such as food production, medical hygiene, literacy, human rights, etc. Having said this, these goods are limited. They may subdue evil, but they cannot eradicate it. They neither renovate human nature nor put permanent curb on criminality, greed, aggression, prejudice, theft, exploitation, oppression, and the like. ‘There is continuous struggle between the sin of people which tries to break out and the grace of God which binds and renders human thought and action serviceable to His counsel and plan.’¹⁰⁷ Moreover, whatever goods are excellent or praiseworthy or commendable cannot attain to the highest good, i.e., to good before God, to goodness according to God’s law. Sin is present not only in our worst deeds but spoils even our best actions: ‘Although the works of man always seem attractive and good, they are nevertheless likely to be mortal sins.’¹⁰⁸ Egoism, narcissism, self-seeking, self-serving, and self-absorption remain overarching drivers and underlying motives. ‘Even the composition of the human conscience is one-fifth fear of other humans, one-fifth superstition, one-fifth prejudice, one-fifth vanity, and one fifth custom.’¹⁰⁹

By way of summary:

‘The doctrine [of total depravity] does not mean that all people maximize their evil inclinations; nor that they are incapable of accomplishing many “natural goods.” It only refers to the deepest inclination, the innermost disposition, the fundamental directedness of human nature and confesses that it is not turned toward God but away from him. To or away from God: those are the only two options. The human being is at the centre of his being either good or evil – there is no third option.’¹¹⁰

Total depravity then refers to two main features of humanity under sin: universality and depth.

Universality – All Have Sinned

(1) The universality of sin is perhaps the easier feature to articulate. If all dimensions of the whole human person are impacted by corruption, this is actually true of everyone. At various junctures, Scripture issues a general indictment of the whole human race: ‘there is no one who does not sin’ (1 Ki 8:46). In terms of extent, rebellion, refusal, saying ‘no’ to God, is all-pervasive. Scripture teaches ‘the universal sinfulness of mankind.’¹¹¹ Disobedience to God is the default tendency in each and every single person everywhere. ‘Who can say’, challenged the sage, ‘“I have made my heart pure; I am clean from sin”?’ (Prov 20:9). ‘Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins’ (Eccl 7:20; cf. Psa 130:3; 143:2). More emphatic is the apostolic pastiche: ‘None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands, no one seeks God. All have turned aside … no one does good, not even one’ (Rom 3:10-12; cf. Psa 14:1-3; 53:1-3). Without qualification, ‘all … are under sin’ (Rom 3:9). Everybody, everywhere, in all of history, fails to be and fails to do what God wants and, therefore, is significantly guilty of real moral evil, and thus culpable before ‘the Judge of all the earth’ (Gen 18:25). ‘All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’ (Rom 3:23). The apostolic preaching assumed that ‘God has consigned all to disobedience’ (Rom 11:32). ‘[E]verything’ is ‘imprisoned … under sin’ (Gal 3:22). In summary, corruption and guilt are global: ‘the whole world lies in the power of the evil one’ (1 John 5:19).

The universality of sin has a further dimension. Sin cannot be understood on exclusively individual terms. Sin is both individual and corporate. It is both personal and communal rebellion. We sin in solidarity with Adam and with one another. Our sins are not completely independent of one another but interconnected and interdependent. ‘There are particular, individual sins, but there are also general social sins. And thus too there is individual guilt, but also common social guilt.’¹¹² Awareness of collective sin and corporate responsibility appears are various junctures (Ezra 9:6-15; Isa 6:5; Dan 9:3-19). Many contemporary cultural concerns bear out this point. Matters of sexism, racism, inequality, poverty, and environmental damage are the result of sins that are more than those of the isolated individual. Collective sins such as abortion or genocide take on a structural, systemic, form that includes individual sin but whose cumulative evil goes far beyond the deeds or effects of any one person.

Depth – Human Beings Are Completely Fallen

(2) In terms of depth, total depravity indicates that there is no part of a sinful person that is immune from, unaffected, or untouched by sin. Human beings are not partially but completely fallen. It was the whole person, body and soul, that was ‘changed for the worse.’¹¹³ The image of God is not completely destroyed, but it has been ruined, damaged, distorted, and marred. Humanity’s created being continues, yet sin’s effects reach thoroughly and profoundly into every part of each person’s life, affecting all dimensions of individual existence, body, soul, sexuality, reason, will, emotions, desires, motives, passions, imagination and interests. ‘The image of God remains but has turned into its own caricature.’¹¹⁴ Sin goes deep. ‘Our nature is enfeebled and … so inclined to sin that, unless it is restored by the Spirit of God, man neither does nor wants to do anything good of himself.’¹¹⁵ All elements that comprise human being are adversely affected. Every component of every person is corrupted. The whole person is effectively overthrown. ‘Sin … extends to the whole of the person’s being and faculties … it is total extensively, not intensively: there is nothing intact, everything is more or less damaged.’¹¹⁶ Moreover, people are sinful from the point of generation, i.e. conception and birth (Psa 51:5). From infancy, our very nature as fallen creatures is subject to God’s wrath (Eph 2:3). ‘This corruption of human nature is so total that humans are by nature incapable of any spiritual good, inclined to all evil, and on account of it alone deserving eternal punishment.’¹¹⁷ The following paragraph offers a good summary of the overall Biblical teaching:

‘The human heart, from which flow the springs of life (Prov 4:23), is corrupt (Gen 6:5; 8:21; Psa 14:1; Jer 17:9; Ezek 36:26; Matt 5:19), the source of all iniquities (Mark 7:21). The mind of humans is darkened (Job 21:14; Isa 1:3; Jer 4:22; John 1:5; Rom 1:21-22; 1 Cor 1:18-23; 2:14; Eph 4:18; 5:8), proud, errant, polluted and needing to be broken, illumined, and cleansed (Psa 5:19; Prov 16:18, 32; Eccl 7:9; Isa 57:15; 66:2; 1 Cor 7:1; 1 Thess 5:23); the human soul is stained, guilty and impure and needs atonement and repentance (Lev 17:11; Psa 19:7; 41:4; Prov 19:13, 16; Matt 16:26; Titus 1:15; Heb 9:9, 14; 10:22; 1 Pet 1:22). All the members of our bodies – the eyes (Deut 29:4; Psa 18:2; Isa 35:5; 42:7; 2 Pet 2:14; 1 John 2:16), the ears (Deut 29:4; Psa 115:6; 135:17; Isa 6:10; Jer 5:21; Zech 7:11), the feet (Psa 38:16; Prov 1:16; 4:27; 6:18; Isa 59:7; Rom 3:15), the mouth and the tongue (Job 27:4; Psa 12:3f; 15:317:10; Jer 9:3, 5; Rom 3:14; James 3:5-8) – are in the service of unrighteousness.’¹¹⁸

Sin is certainly deprivation, imbalance, lack, and privation. But it is more than that, more than mere defect, inadequacy, or loss. As touched on in our earlier discussion of alienation, our energies, whether emotional, physical, or mental, are not neutral. They tend away from God rather than toward him. Our enthusiasms do not naturally incline to good and to God, but elsewhere. “‘Flesh” describes the sinful heart’s direction away from God … and to the sinful self and its desires.’¹¹⁹ Sin is not just weakness. It is ‘a specific evil.’¹²⁰ ‘Sin is not simply the absence of good, it is the existence of positive evil in the human heart. Man is a fallen sinner whose very nature is in resistance to God.’¹²¹ Sin is an active power of destruction. In sin, every good aspect and ability of human nature is taken up and turned against God. Sin disturbs the direction of created human capacities and powers, puts them at odds with their intended purpose, and sets them in opposition to the Creator himself.

Intensity – Sin is Very Sinful

There is moreover a remarkable intensity about sin. Sin enslaves, and fallen human beings are subservient to its power: ‘everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin’ (John 8:34), ‘I am … sold under sin’ (Rom 7:14). Sin dominates, masters, and rules us. Sin influences and controls us. It affects what we love and directs what we want. It commands what we care about, what we desire, and what we long for. It disorders our loves. We act incorrectly because we love falsely. Not only so, for we love acting falsely and we love loving falsely. People love darkness ‘rather than the light’ because their works are evil (John 3:19). We are drawn to wrong and attracted to evil. There is ‘not only the inevitability of error but also the love of error.’¹²² Its evil is very deep and very strong, exerting a powerful inclination toward destruction, disintegration, and perversion in every respect. In sin, our hearts are twisted. Our desires are defective, and our longings are misguided and misplaced. Sin is deceitful. We try to conceal it, but we cannot escape it. Sinful humanity has a remarkable ability for self-deception and the human heart has an astonishing capacity to harbour hypocrisy, conceit, falsehood, and despair. Temptation feeds on this. Natural desires, for instance, for food, sleep, and sex, have become excessive or wrongly directed. Our own disordered and dysfunctional desires entice and lure us: ‘desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death’ (Jas 1:14-15). Our instincts, our orientation, and our motivation are flawed and fractured. Counterintuitively, it is those closest to God and to godliness who are most sensitive to their own sinfulness and the sinfulness of their contemporaries (Psa 6; 25; 32; 28; 51; 130; 143; Jer 3:15; Isa 6:5; 53:4-5; 64:6; Dan 9:5).¹²³

All human beings, then, are deeply depraved, but (mercifully) most are not absolutely depraved. Though some people areutterly corrupted, thoroughly villainous, wanting nothing more than evil sport (psychopaths, sociopaths) – delighting to ‘watch the world burn’ – usually this is rare. All have sinned, but not all have sinned equally, to the same degree. People sin to different extents. Most people (mercifully) are not entirely evil, as bad as they possibly might be. But in our ‘flesh,’ each of us exhibits a disastrous measure of disobedience, impurity, lack of love, recklessness, and hatred, of ourselves, of each other, of God. Under sin, the general tendency of the human heart is toward ‘sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these’ (Gal 5:19-21). Calvin commented: ‘I grant that not all … wicked traits appear in every man; yet one cannot deny that this hydra lurks in the breast of each.’¹²⁴ Given occasion, circumstance, and opportunity, almost everybody is capable of almost any kind of sin.

Everyone is Implicated and Everything is Affected

Total depravity, in sum, means that everything is profoundly affected by corruption, nothing is untouched by perversion, and everyone (bar Christ) is thoroughly implicated, guilty, and without excuse. Rejection of our dependent nature as creatures, revolt against God’s gift of life, failing to thank, worship, and praise God (Rom 1:21), leaves each and every person warped, twisted on the inside and, therefore, disfigured on the outside. All people who have ever lived and breathed (with one single exception) are failed and corrupted, by nature ‘children of wrath’ (Eph 2:3), categorically resistant to the Creator’s claim, and worthy of irrevocable judgment. Wisdom and virtue, peace and justice, truth and beauty, do remain and thankfully are often impressively apparent. Yet even in authentic expression, how often is virtue without traces of pride or undertones of self-interest? At worst, there is self-serving disingenuousness and hostility. At best, fallen human virtue is never truly pristine, philanthropy and altruism not entirely pure. Even the best intentions and efforts at doing good are moved by mixed motives: pride, fear, power-plays, manipulation, controlling others, self-interest, anxiety, and guilt. The Westminster Confession of Faith has it thus:

‘Works done by unregenerate men, although for the matter of them they may be things which God commands, and of good use both to themselves and others; yet because they proceed not from a heart purified by faith, nor are done in a right manner, according to the Word, nor to a right end, the glory of God; they are therefore sinful, and cannot please God or make a man receive grace from God. And yet their neglect of them is more sinful and displeasing to God.’¹²⁵

6. ORIGINAL SIN

The ‘Great’ Christian Doctrine

Closely allied to teaching about total depravity is teaching about ‘original sin.’ The phrase is not contained in Scripture, but the idea is. Augustine first coined the expression in the early 5^th century. It eventually came to be considered so significant that Jonathan Edwards characterized it as ‘the great Christian doctrine.’¹²⁶ Here are some representative statements:

‘[A]fter Adam’s fall, all men begotten after the common course of nature are born with sin; that is, without the fear of God, without trust in him, and with fleshly appetite; and that this disease, or original fault, is truly sin, condemning and bringing eternal death now also upon all that are not born again by baptism and the Holy Spirit.’¹²⁷

‘[T]hrough the disobedience of Adam, original sin is extended to all mankind; which is a corruption of the whole nature, and an hereditary disease, wherewith infants themselves are infected even in their mother’s womb, and which produces in man all sorts of sin, being in him as a root thereof; and therefore is so vile and abominable in the sight of God, that it is sufficient to condemn all mankind.’¹²⁸

‘Our first parents … became dead in sin, and wholly defiled in all the faculties and parts of soul and body. They being the root of all mankind, the guilt of this sin was imputed,¹²⁹ and the same death in sin and corrupted nature conveyed to all their posterity descending from them by ordinary generation. From this original corruption, whereby we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to evil, do proceed all actual transgressions.’¹³⁰

How Sin Came Into the World

(1) Original sin deals with how sin came into the world (Rom 5:12-19). Through the initial trespass of the first couple at the outset of human history it offers an explanation of sin’s beginning at a particular point in time. It identifies the origin of human sin with the beginning of the human race and establishes the connection between the first sin performed in paradise by the first human couple and all subsequent sins.

The Condition of Fallen Human Nature

(2) Original sin describes the general situation and state of nature into which all people are born. It indicates the condition of fallen human nature, the thing that is wrong with people, and maintains that the state of depravity is inherited at the point of generation. Original sin is an ‘infection of nature,’¹³¹ an inherited corruption of the soul, a deformity of the heart, and a disordering of moral character. Following adultery and murder, King David sadly admits: ‘I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me’ (Psa 51:5). Far from referring to sexual reproduction itself as sinful, however, original sin refers to the overall moral-spiritual context in which every generation is formed, the condition it inherits and, in turn, hands on to those which follow (Ezek 16:45; Amos 2:4; Isa 1:4).

The Reason for All Actual Sins

(3) Original sin as inherited corruption is the reason for the emergence of all actual sins. Being a thorough-going perversion of human nature, people are born with an inherent bias to sin, inclined to harm and wrong. Fallen human beings have an inbuilt, essential hostility to God, and thus a tendency toward evil. Original sin as a state of nature is not a passive condition but an active force that drives toward actual sins. Actual sins are those ‘which the individual personally commits, be it more or less wittingly, and with more or less deliberate will.’¹³² On the human level, the source of actual sins is the same, the heart, ‘the secret centre of every man.’¹³³ Actual sins arise from internal corruption. In this vein, the Apostle Peter speaks of ‘futile ways inherited from … [our] forefathers’ (1 Pet 1:18). Because it is inherited, sin is inevitable. There is nothing we can do about it. ‘Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and through that sin came death, and this death permeated all humanity, on the basis of which all have sinned’ (Rom 5:12).¹³⁴

The Inheritance of Guilt

(4) Original sin includes inherited guilt, i.e. the inheritance of a real measure of guilt at the point of conception. The notions of representation by Adam and relationship to Adam are critical here. All people, the whole of humanity, are related to Adam, for he is the beginning and original head of our race (Acts 17:26). Because he acted as an individual in whose person was the root and source of the human race, when Adam sinned he acted in our place, on our behalf, in our name (Rom 5:12). This understanding of the transmission of sin is known as realism, for it claims that in a real sense, Adam’s sin was also our sin. As the first human being, Adam was endowed with the whole of created human nature in his own self, such that when he sinned all humanity participated in it.

In addition, the effect of Adam’s sin involved and implicated us all in the sense that we participate in his condemnation and share in his guilt, because the guilt of Adam’s sin is reckoned to his descendants (Rom 5:12-21). This is known as imputed guilt, and Adam’s sinful act is understood as an act that is representative of us all: ‘one trespass led to condemnation for all men’ (Rom 5:18). Furthermore, bearing a corrupt human nature is neither morally neutral nor free of guilt. Having a perverted nature – an ‘evil disposition’ or a ‘wicked inclination of [the] heart,’ Edwards put it¹³⁵ – in distinction from concrete sinful action, is blameworthy in itself. Independent of particular sins, bearing the condition and state of original sin is culpable. Inheriting from Adam a sinful nature necessarily entails guilt in the sight of God, for the sinful nature is inherently against God, and so in the possession and exercise of it we are guilty. Thus, Augustine’s expression that we both acquire guilt through our own actual sins and inherit guilt from its original source in Adam.¹³⁶

In summary:

‘Our sinful condition is God’s antecedent judgment on the entire human race thanks to the sin of the representative man, Adam. … Because of one man’s trespass, God pronounced a judgment of “guilty” accompanied by a death sentence on all human beings; because of this we are all personally sinners and die. God apprehends and regards, judges, and condemns all humans in one representative man; therefore, they all descend from him as sinners and are all subject to death.’¹³⁷

Here is Augustine’s explanation of the manner in which Adam’s sin and our sin are linked and identified:

‘For God, Who is the author of nature, and certainly not of vices, created man righteous. Man, however, depraved by his own free will, and justly condemned, produced depraved and condemned children. For we were all in that one man, since we all were that one man who fell into sin through the woman and who was made from him before they sinned. The particular form in which we were to live as individuals had not yet been created and distributed to us; but the seminal nature from which we were to be propagated already existed. And when this was vitiated [ruined] by sin and bound by the chain of death and justly condemned, man could not be born of man in any other condition. Thus, from the evil use of free will there arose the whole series of calamities by which the human race is led by a succession of miseries from its depraved origin, as from a corrupt root, even to the ruin of the second death, which has no end, and from which only those who are redeemed by the grace of God are exempt.’¹³⁸

7. SALVATION FROM SIN

Sin Runs Deep, But God’s Purpose is Deeper Still

Sin runs deep. But God’s eternal purposes flowing from goodness, power, mercy, and grace, run infinitely deeper. In the Bible, sin hasn’t the first word and isn’t the first thing. Neither does sin have the last word, and it is not and never can be the last word, for Scripture’s account of sin is bound up with its account of God’s provision of a solution to it. Biblical teaching never abstracts or separates its depiction of human evil from God’s eternal decision to provide a remedy to sin and deliver his creatures from it (Eph 1:4-10). Sin and salvation, distinct and different though they be, are woven together in Christian teaching. Indeed, we can only see sin, our darkness, for what it really is in the light of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The Psalmist said, ‘For with you is the fountain of life; in your light do we see light’ (Psa 36:9), and the Gospel announces, ‘In him was life, and the life was the light of men’ (John 1:4, and refer also 8:12).

Four Great Truths

Recognition that the scriptural presentation of sin comes together with God’s provision of the solution to it achieves several things.

(1) Because the penalty for sin was paid in full in the past at the Cross of Christ, and on that cross sin’s dreadful consequences overthrown, the power and presence of sin will be finally overthrown in the future.

(2) Because the overthrow of sin is certain we must avoid speaking about sin in such a way as to leave people in ultimate despair.

(3) This does not mean that warnings about God’s judgment and wrath ought to be tempered below the line of Biblical statements on severity. Without Christ, faith in God’s promises, and repentance from sin, people remain in absolute jeopardy, utter darkness, and irretrievable damnation.

(4) It does however mean that teaching about guilt, death, wrath, judgment, retribution, banishment, and punishment are not just background to evangelism or instruction in the Gospel, but inherent to its content, for from these terrible realities, out of sheer grace, Christ has died and risen again to set us free.

Christ’s Death Demonstrates the Holy Love of God

The Bible’s teaching about sin reveals the magnificence and beauty of God’s character in providing the solution to it. The Cross of Christ displays untold goodness, mercy, compassion, righteousness, justice, glory, and grace. The death of Christ is a substitution bringing propitiation (Gal 3:13, Rom 3:25; Heb 2:17; 1 John 2:2; 4:10). In the New Testament we may observe six recurring descriptions that indicate the scope and depth of the atoning work of Christ in his death and resurrection:

1. satisfaction of the divine justice (penal substitution, Gal 3:13)

2. solidarity of Christ in his incarnation with the race of Adam and our union with Christ by faith (Rom 5:12-21, 6:5-11)

3. enlightenment (John 1:1-13, 1 Cor 1:18-2:5)

4. cleansing for worship (Heb 9:14, 22-23; 1 John 1:9)

5. conflict and victory (Col 2:13-15)

6. the example and paradigm for Christian living (Mark 8:34-38).

It is a blood-bought atonement providing reconciliation (Rom 5:10; 2 Cor 5:18-19; Col 1:20-22). It is the basis and foundation for the whole range of salvation from sin by God (election, regeneration, conversion, justification, adoption, sanctification, perseverance, and glorification). God’s response to sin’s nature forever determines our knowledge of God’s nature: ‘where sin increased, grace abounded all the more’ (Rom 5:20).

—

1
Augustine, ‘On Forgiveness of Sins in the Church,’ Enchiridion, 17.65; ed. and trans. Albert C. Outler (The Westminster Press, 1955 / 2006), 377.
2
James Joyce, Ulysses, with an Introduction by Declan Kiberd (Penguin Classics, 2000), 42.
3
Stephen Williams, The Election of Grace: A Riddle without a Resolution? (Eerdmans, 2015), 209-210.
4
Henri Blocher, ‘Sin,’ in New Dictionary of Biblical Theology, eds. T. D. Alexander and B. S. Rosner (Inter-Varsity Press, 2000), 781.
5
Blocher, ‘Sin’ [NDBT], 781.
6
ESV Systematic Theology Study Bible (Crossway, 2017), 1686.
7
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 344.
8
John Calvin, Sermon on 1 Tim 2:5-6, ‘Jesus Christ, Mediator and Man,’ in Sermons on 1 Timothy, trans. Robert White (Banner of Truth, 2018), 203-216. See also John Calvin, Sermon on Gal 3:1-2, in Sermons on Galatians, trans. Kathy Childress (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1997), 219-234.
9
Calvin, Sermons on 1 Timothy; trans. White, 214. I am grateful to Robert C. Doyle for expansion of this point, and for a number of other very useful comments and suggestions about an earlier draft.
10
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 348.
11
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 340.
12
Thanks to Robert Doyle for commenting here.
13
Augustine, Enchiridion, 3.11; trans. Outler, 342. Cf. Great Truths, ‘God’s Motive in Creating the Universe.’
14
Augustine, A Treatise on Rebuke and Grace, 10.27; Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers 1:5, 482.
15
Augustine, A Treatise on Rebuke and Grace, 10.27; Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers 1:5, 482.
16
Hoekema, Created in God’s Image, 132.
17
Augustine, Enchiridion, 26.100; trans. Outler, 399.
18
Augustine, The City of God, 5.9; trans. Dyson, 202-203.
19
Augustine, The City of God, 5.9; trans. Dyson, 203.
20
Augustine, The City of God, 14:27; cf. alternative trans. Dyson, 629-30.
21
Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith, 229.
22
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 340.
23
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 352. Refer here to Calvin’s scattered discussion of God’s secret and incomprehensible will, e.g., Institutes, 1.17.2 note 4 (212-13); 1.18.1-4 (228-237); 3.20.43 (906); 3.24.17 (985-87); all page numbers are from F. L. Battles edition. See Paul Helm’s various discussions of this, e.g., in Calvin: A Guide for the Perplexed (T&T Clark, 2008), 89-92; John Calvin’s Ideas (Oxford University Press, 2004), 106, 301, 312-13.
24
Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith, 221.
25
Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith, 221. An influential discussion is Anselm’s, On the Fall of the Devil, in Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works, edited with an introduction by Brian Davies and G. R. Evans (Oxford University Press, 1998), 193-232. The fall of the devil is in some senses more difficult to comprehend than the defection of Adam and Eve. As God cannot be the author of sin, it is hard to imagine how or from where the devil (originally created good and living in the presence of God) could have got even the thought of disobedience. Anselm argues that for some reason Satan grew dissatisfied, wanting to be like God to a degree inappropriate and impossible for even so high a kind of creature. The fault lay in an inordinate level of desire, longing for what he had not been given, did not have, and ought not to have wished for. The devil, Anselm, says, ‘when he willed what God did not want him to will, he inordinately willed to be like God … Even if he did not will to be wholly equal to God, but something less than God against the will of God, by that very fact he inordinately willed to be like God, because he willed something by his own will, as subject to no one.’ (On the Fall of the Devil, 4; 202). This violated the difference between Creator and creature, bringing devastating results.
26
Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith, 221.
27
Robert Jenson, Systematic Theology (Oxford University Press, 1999), 2:131.
28
Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith, 222; cf. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatic. Abridged, 377-78.
29
Anthony Hoekema, Created in God’s Image (Eerdmans, 1986), 122. On the literal historicity of the speaking snake as a tool of Satan, see 123-130.
30
A good case for the real historicity of Adam and Eve is Wayne Grudem, ‘Theistic Evolution Undermines Twelve Creation Events and Several Crucial Christian Doctrines’, in J. P. Moreland et al (eds.), Theistic Evolution: A Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Critique (Crossway, 2017), chapter 27.
31
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 341.
32
Augustine, On the Nature of Good, 35.
33
Augustine, On Reprimand and Grace, 12.33; in On the Free Choice of the Will, On Grace and Free Choice, and Other Writings, trans. Peter King (Cambridge University Press, 2010), 214.
34
Canons of the Synod of Dort, 3/4.1; Schaff, Creeds, 3:587.
35
Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith, 223-24.
36
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 378.
37
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 362.
38
Hoekema, Created in God’s Image, 130-132.
39
Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith, 224-25.
40
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 351.
41
The Westminster Confession of Faith, 9.1-2; Schaff, Creeds, 3:623.
42
Mark Boda, A Severe Mercy: Sin and its Remedy in the Old Testament (Eisenbrauns, 2009).
43
William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 7.
44
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 371.
45
Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith, 248.
46
Thanks to Robert Doyle for pointing this out.
47
Thomas Schreiner, The King in His Beauty: A Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments (Baker Academic, 2013), 9.
48
Paul Helm, ‘Are They Few That Be Saved?,’ in Universalism and the Doctrine of Hell, ed. Nigel de Cameron (Baker, 1992), 258.
49
Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith, 237-38.
50
Westminster Shorter Catechism [1647], Q. 14.
51
Geerhardus Vos, Reformed Dogmatics. Single-Volume Edition(Lexham Press, 2016), 243.
52
Vos, Reformed Dogmatics. Single-Volume Edition, 243.
53
Henri Blocher, ‘Sin,’ in New Dictionary of Biblical Theology (IVP, 2000), 783.
54
Bray, God is Love, 345-412.
55
Michael Horton, The Christian Faith, 270-271.
56
Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Prophets (HarperPerennial, 2001 [orig. 1962]), 362-63.
57
Heschel, The Prophets, 363.
58
Gerald Bray, God is Love, 141-42.
59
Calvin, Institutes, 2.17.2; 530.
60
D. A. Carson, ‘The Wrath of God,’ in Engaging the Doctrine of God, ed. Bruce L. McCormack (Baker Academic, 2008), 37.
61
John Owen, ‘The Death of the Righteous,’ a Sermon preached on July 1, 1681, Works, 16:488.
62
Thanks to Robert Doyle for clarification here.
63
Heschel, The Prophets, 365.
64
Calvin, Commentary on Genesis, 1:176.
65
Timothy Bradshaw, ‘Judgment of God,’ in New Dictionary of Theology: Historical and Systematic, eds. Martin Davie et al (IVP, 2016), 478.
66
Leon Morris, The Biblical Doctrine of Judgment (IVP, 1960), 72.
67
Bradshaw, ‘Judgment of God,’ 478.
68
Oliver M. T. O’Donovan, ‘Punishment,’ in New Dictionary of Theology: Historical and Systematic, eds. Martin Davie et al (IVP, 2016), 717.
69
St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 7; translated and edited by a Religious of C.S.M.V. with an introduction by C. S. Lewis (St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, 1953), 32-33.
70
The Westminster Confession of Faith, 6:6; Schaff, Creeds, 3:616.
71
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 383.
72
Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith, 256.
73
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 358.
74
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 387.
75
Thanks to Robert Doyle for elaboration here.
76
Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith, 257.
77
Augustine speaks of fallen human nature as a state of living death in The City of God, 13.10-11; trans. Dyson, 550-54.
78
Turretin, Institutes, 5.8.7; 1:460.
79
Calvin, Commentary on Genesis, 1:179.
80
The Westminster Confession of Faith [1647], 32:1.
81
The Westminster Confession of Faith [1647], 32:1.
82
Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith, 259.
83
Hoekema, Created in God’s Image, 138-39.
84
Christopher Morgan, ‘Biblical Theology: Three Pictures of Hell,’ in Hell Under Fire, eds. Christopher W. Morgan and Robert A. Peterson (Zondervan, 2004), 135-152.
85
Augustine, Enchiridion, 13.46; trans. Outler, 367.
86
The Belgic Confession of Faith, 15; Schaff, Creeds, 3:400.
87
The Westminster Confession of Faith, 6.1-4; Schaff, Creeds, 3, 614.
88
Calvin, Institutes, 2.1.8; 251.
89
Clint Eastwood, Gran Torino.
90
Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith, 226.
91
Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith, 227.
92
Hoekema, Created in God’s Image, 152.
93
The Westminster Confession of Faith, 9.3; Schaff, Creeds, 3:623.
94
Jeremy Begbie, Theology B; unpublished lecture notes.
95
Calvin, Institutes, 2.4.1; 310.
96
Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith, 248.
97
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 390.
98
The translation is that of Paul Barnett, Romans: The Revelation of God’s Righteousness (Christian Focus, 2003), 49.
99
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 366.
100
Barnett, Romans, 49.
101
Cornelius Plantinga, Not the Way it’s Supposed to Be; cited by Henri Blocher, ‘Sin,’ in The Oxford Handbook of Evangelical Theology, ed. Gerald McDermott (Oxford University Press, 2010), 139.
102
Augustine, ‘On Forgiveness of Sins in the Church,’ Enchiridion, 17.64; trans. Outler, 377.
103
Calvin, Institutes, 2.4.3; 311-12.
104
Bavinck , Reformed Dogmatic., Abridged, 379.
105
Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith, 250.
106
Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith, 251.
107
Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith, 251.
108
Luther, Heidelberg Disputation, 3.
109
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 368.
110
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 366.
111
Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith, 240.
112
Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith, 245.
113
Council of Orange, 1.
114
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 374.
115
First Confession of Basel [1534], 2, cited by Kelly Kapic, ‘Anthropology,’ in Christian Dogmatics: Reformed Theology for the Church Catholic, eds. Michael Allen and Scott R. Swain (Baker Academic, 2016), 187.
116
Henri Blocher, ‘Sin,’ in The Oxford Handbook of Evangelical Theology, ed. Gerald McDermott (Oxford University Press. 2010), 139.
117
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 358.
118
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 353.
119
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 346.
120
Vos, Reformed Dogmatics. Single-Volume Edition, 242.
121
Iain Murray, Heroes (The Banner of Truth Trust, 2009), 275.
122
Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith, 231.
123
Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith, 232.
124
Calvin, Institutes, 2.3.2; 291.
125
The Westminster Confession of Faith [1647], 16.7; in Schaff ed., Creeds, 3:635-36.
126
Jonathan Edwards, Original Sin [1758], in Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume 3, ed. Clyde A. Holbrook (Yale, WJE Online).
127
The Augsburg Confession, 2; Schaff, Creeds, 3:8.
128
The Belgic Confession of Faith, 15; Schaff, Creeds, 3:400.
129
For discussion, see below ‘The Inheritance of Guilt.’
130
The Westminster Confession of Faith, 6.1-4; Schaff, Creeds, 3:614.
131
The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion of the Church of England, 9; Schaff, Creeds, 3:493.
132
Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith, 246.
133
Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith, 247.
134
The translation here is from Richard N. Longenecker, The Epistle to the Romans [NIGTC] (Eerdmans, 2016), 575.
135
Jonathan Edwards, Original Sin (WJE Online Vol. 3), 390.
136
Augustine, Enchiridion, 17.64 (377); cf. 9.28 (355); 13.47 (368); 31.119 (410-11); trans. Outler. Having this, however, it should be noted that it is at least arguable that the notion of ‘inherited guilt’ is not supported by Scripture. Rather, we are guilty because we, like Adam, sin. A respectable exposition of this matter against the mainline Reformed understanding of Romans 5 is that by Henri Blocher, Original Sin: Illuminating the Riddle (Apollos, 1997), 63-81. See also the fine presentation and exchange between Hans Madueme and Oliver D. Crisp in Original Sin and the Fall: Five Views, eds. J. B. Stump and Chad Meister (IVP Academic, 2020), chapters 1, 2, 6, and 7.
137
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 354.
138
Augustine, The City of God, 13.14; trans. Dyson, 555-56. For a useful discussion of objections to ‘original guilt’, see Hoekema, Created in God’s Image, 154-167. Hoekema’s treatment (162-167) concludes with a detailed study of Romans 5:12-21.

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Sin and Death

by Benjamin Dean

Contents Outline

—

Know the Scriptures

© Great Truths 2025. All rights reserved.

Great Truths is the operating name of Great Truths Trust (CIO). Established 2024.
Registered in England and Wales with charity no. 1207079.

Sin and Death

by Benjamin Dean

Contents Outline

—

Know the Scriptures

© Great Truths 2025. All rights reserved.

Great Truths is the operating name of Great Truths Trust (CIO). Established 2024. Registered in England and Wales with charity no. 1207079.

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Great Truths is the operating name of Great Truths Trust (CIO). Established 2024.
Registered in England and Wales with charity no. 1207079.