Is Sin Nature Unfair?
I have personally wrestled with the doctrine of sin nature in the past. In my time interning for the church at which I currently serve as Associate Pastor, I had to deconstruct what I believed on this topic, look to scripture, and discuss it with my Senior Pastor, Anthony Ferriell. After some serious thought, I walked away with my faith stronger than ever instead of terminally deconstructing.
As always, I will define our terms before explaining why this doctrine should not contribute to a departure from the faith. The doctrine of sin nature declares that all of humanity is born with a proclivity to rebel against the perfect order of God because Adam, the first man, brought sin into the world through his disobedience. That initial act of disobedience from Adam is known as the fall. You can read about it below.
Genesis 3:1-8
Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”
2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”
4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden.
That was an account of the first sin, also known as Original Sin. The fall of man. A cataclysmic event in human history that set off not only the physical decay of creation but also a domino-effect of human wickedness. This is evidenced by passages such as Romans 5:12.
Romans 5:12
[S]in entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned.
Here, Paul is clearly describing to us the origin point of our sinful nature. When Adam, the representative of humanity, sinned against God, he passed on that same God-defying and rebellious inclination to his descendants. Now we are all born into sin, in dire need of a savior so we may have reconciliation with God. Other scriptures support this. Psalm 51:5 says “surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me,” and Ecclesiastes 9:3 augments this message: “the hearts of people, moreover, are full of evil and there is madness in their hearts while they live.”
When considering this doctrine, it is not difficult to see the train of thought terminal deconstructors undergo in order to arrive at an unsettled resentment–if Adam sinned, and that gave us a sinful nature, and it is sin that separates us from God, then are we not being unfairly punished for something Adam did? I think this question is pressing for Gen Z in particular because in the contemporary West, we have grown up in a culture that elevates equity–equal outcomes for all–above almost everything else. We are obsessed with the concept of fairness, and if a public policy has even the potential of yielding disparate outcomes, it is decried as unjust.
So is sin nature unfair? The answer is a resounding no. Understand this: nobody is “guilty” over the sin Adam committed except for Adam. We will not stand before God and have to answer for what He did, nor will God in any way judge us for it. Now, there are consequences from his actions with which we must contend, but that is rather different than inheriting his guilt itself.
I previously mentioned my Senior Pastor, mentor, and friend Anthony Ferriell. He has written extensively on this distinction in his blog Story of Grace. The perspective he provides is helpful in trying to understand this.
“The world we live in is one where future generations either benefit or suffer from the actions or conditions of those who have gone before them. We don’t normally find fault with that system (though certain very flawed political systems are built on reversing this and making everything equal in result through force of law). It is, still, impossible to imagine the world any other way. Genetic science has shown that of all the billions of people in the world today, we all have a common ancestry from one man (Acts 17:26), and the differences among us add up to about 1/10th of 1%. It is lower than miniscule. This means that what makes us human consists of a 99.9% commonality–one human race. We are all in this together, both the good and the bad.
A person can contract a disease which has been passed down from their ancestors. Another can inherit genes which make him very athletic. This is just the way it is. In both cases, this is neither “fair” nor “unfair” that they received something from their ancestors because everyone does–good and bad. If Adam and Eve (and others after them) had not sinned, we would not say, “it’s not fair I am born into such a good condition because I did nothing to earn it!” If you believe in the concept of inheritance, be it financial, genetic, or spiritual, then you have to accept that human beings are capable of leaving either good or bad inheritances for their children.”
To examine sin nature and proclaim “it’s not fair” just isn’t the practical or sensical way to look at it. Imagine losing a close game of high school basketball after your team’s point guard takes and misses the deciding shot of the game. Does it make sense to go to the referee and complain, saying “I shouldn’t have to lose too; my teammate’s the one who missed!” Not at all. So then, viewing this doctrine through the lens of “but I didn’t take a bite of that fruit” is similarly unproductive. It happened. Now we must deal with it. The question is, what do we do next? That’s up to us. That is something we can control.
If one then says “well, at least in the basketball analogy, everyone chose to be on the team and therefore assumed the risk of losing, whereas nobody ever chose to be born and inherit the effects of sin nature,” I do not find this to be a compelling counterpoint. To get absurdly specific, there are all manner of reasons someone might be on this high school basketball team, and perhaps chief among them is parental edict—that is, their parents made them pick up the sport even though it was against their wishes. The child, who is below his parents in authority, cannot question their sovereignty in this matter; the people to whom he must submit have saw fit to place him there, so who is he to talk back? Moreover, even though this hypothetical student’s participation in this sport is compulsory, he nonetheless must abide by the rules of the game, and he is still affected by the actions of his teammates. He cannot say “I never asked to be a part of this team! I don’t care that our point guard missed the game-deciding shot; I’m not accepting this loss!”
In the same way, the human being who has been placed here by an infinitely sovereign, all-knowing Creator cannot say “I never asked to be here! I don’t care what Adam did. I shouldn’t have to deal with the effects of sin nature.”
Additionally, it is not logical to assume the lineage of Adam could have produced anything other than sinful humans after he himself fell. When he sinned, he was no longer without flaw. Have you ever known something imperfect to create something perfect? That is an impossibility.
Maybe, as we bring this section in for a landing, reading about the consequences of Original Sin and sin nature may leave you feeling down. This is understandable, as we have just covered a lot of grim news. But it isn’t all bad. In fact, similar to the doctrine of hell’s demonstration of God’s love, original sin showcases God’s devotion to redeeming us. After Adam and Eve sinned, God could have washed His hands clean of them. He could have disowned them and never given them a second thought. He could have wiped them off the face of the earth and started humanity anew.
Fortunately for everyone, He did not do that. He still loved them. He still stuck with them and their equally sinful descendants, including you and I. As humanity continued to sin, God continued to love us unconditionally. This love culminated in Him leaving the glory of heaven to come down to us in the flesh. He made Himself the servant of the very people who have been serving Him, only to receive contempt and derision in return. Then, He suffered and died for us, acting as the spotless sacrifice for mankind’s sin so we could be made flawless in God’s eyes.
The almighty judge brought our evil to justice through the death of His son. He didn’t want to destroy us. That is indescribable, glorious love.
