Featured Predestination:

Again, verse please. Until then I will stick to the idea we sin when temptation takes root in our desires. I'm more comfortable with that view because I can back it up with Scripture.

 

Jesus became man to redeem man.

 

So David was wrong when he said that he was in sin from the moment of his conception?

We love God because He saved us. Prior to that we hated Him and considered Him to be our enemy.

Now, back to the question. You seem to beat around the bush and try to redefine what it means to be a sinner.

A sinner is a person prone to sin. He is bent toward sin. If every person is not prone to sin, IE a sinner, then why does the bible tell us so often that is the case?

I can't help but notice you avoided my illustration regarding my dog. Here, allow me to answer it for you. My dog barks because he is a dog. That is what dogs do. Even a puppy who has not yet learned to bark is still a dog.

 

Insofar as the consequence of sin, I believe so. But this is death. I think the issue is when we over-spiritualize things in such a way that Jesus could not have truly been human and infants are guilty of transgressing God's commands.

 

Yes. Babies are sinners. David makes that clear. He said he was in sin from the moment of his conception.

I don't get my theology from secular dictionaries.

The bible works much better. Psalm 51:5 has already been quoted.

Add to that Rom 7:25 I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.

Do babies have flesh? Of course. Is the flesh bent away from God? Yes.

Rom 8:3 For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh:

Note that Christ came not only "for sin" but for "sinful flesh."

Every person with flesh is bent away from God and toward sin.

 

I think it is obvious that death has spread to all man (otherwise the fate of infants would not be in question). So there is one sense whereby we have all sinned (we are all “sinners”) as we are children of Adam and under the curse of sin which entered the world at his transgression. It is a huge leap (biblically….probably not as much theologically) to go from there to the idea that we have a different nature than did Adam and that Jesus became man to redeem man….just not man like we are man.

I disagree that Romans 5:12 affirms the passing (directly) of both spiritual and physical death as an inheritance. The reason is that Paul, in this passage, is emphasizing the spread of death through sin apart from the Law (that before the Law sin existed in the world). Adam transgressed God’s command. Those under the Law transgressed God’s command. But death has reigned even to those who not sinned in the likeness of Adam. Adam is, in fact, a type of Him who was to come.

My argument is not that mankind is absent the desires of the flesh that, if surrendered to temptation, results in disobedience (sin). I believe this is true of all of us. My argument is that this was also true of Adam (as evidenced by the fact that he desired the fruit which was forbidden prior to eating of the Tree) and of Christ (as evidenced by the fact that although tempted He remained in perfect obedience).

The idea that we are born with a sin nature (depending on how it is defined)….that we sin just as a dog barks – because God made us this way – is a false teaching that minimizes human responsibility in sin. Instead we are born with a human nature, and we have human desires. We know of good and evil (this is evident through nature, through the work of the Spirit, through our own consciences) and we choose evil.

 

No. We are born in sin and into sin.

No, I have not been beating around the bush at all trying to redefine what it means to be a sinner. I thought I was very clear, but I’ll restate here:

We sin when we are carried away by our own desires, the lusts of the flesh. It is a matter of the will. Adam did not submit to the will of God (he desired what was forbidden and was carried away by this desire when tempted…and disobeyed God). Jesus was tempted as we are (Satan tempted Jesus to satisfy the desires of the flesh….e.g., to break His period of fasting and satisfy His hunger) yet Jesus did not sin.

What I am questioning is not that we are born into iniquity, or that we have desires that are not in accordance with God’s will. Jesus struggled with these desires also (in the Garden He prayed that the cup pass, yet the will of the Father be done). I am questioning the idea that Adam and Jesus had natures that were foreign to mankind. If you have a passage that affirms this idea then I will consider it.

Yes, the dog cannot help but to bark because this is what God has created the dog to do. I disagree because while I do think that our sin falls within God’s providence I do not believe that we are created to sin. Unlike the dog, which has no moral guilt over barking regardless as to the desires of his master, man is morally guilty and responsible for his sin because man – not God – authored sin.