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Is Our Nature Condemned?
Larry Kirkpatrick
In this article we will explore whether or not the Bible teaches that we are condemned on the basis of our fallen human nature.
Of Men and Carrots
At the foundation of our consideration is the issue of volition—free will. What differentiates a man from a carrot? The carrot has no nervous system, no brain, no capacity to act, no capacity to choose, no appreciation for morality, no self-awareness or even awareness of any kind. Plucked from the ground, washed, thrust into a juicing machine, it has no thought about its imminent liquification. It is little different from a rock in these respects (please don’t try to juice any rocks).
Then there is the insect world. These little creatures function mostly on the basis of instinct—a hard-wired programming the governs the creature’s actions. Their lives are devoted, in an involuntary, robotic way, to the concerns of eating, mating, reproducing, and surviving. Do you know any great poems by cockroaches?
Then we come much closer to humanity. The animal kingdom includes pigs and chimpanzees, horses and birds, cats and dogs, whales and wombats. These animals have considerable intelligence, are biologically equipped to experience emotion, make decisions, and so forth. But they know not right from wrong, good from evil—not, at least, in the same way as man. They may become devoted to a master or mistress, but we have no evidence that they experience morality as we do, or make choices on the basis of ethical measures. They are not made in God’s image, but as animals. They are part of God’s creation and they fill their supporting roles. But the creation was not made just for them.
Only humankind was made in God’s image. Man was a new and distinct order of being. He was able to choose, to consider, able to ponder, to converse with God, to choose between moral and ethical options. He operates at the moral domain, the same domain as God does. He chooses between good and evil.
To be responsible is to have the ability to respond. To be accountable means to have the ability to give an account. Because we are capable of moral operation, of responsive action, we are fundamentally differentiated from rocks and carrots, from iguanas and ferrets. If I put up a bug light in my backyard to zap insects at night, my neighbors are unlikely to complain. They may ask where I purchased it so that they may obtain one too. But if I set up a turret on the top of my house and begin shooting door to door salesmen, I will be hauled away to jail. This is because society recognizes a fundamental difference between bugs and people. People are made in God’s image. There is a moral boundary to our behavior. People, even if they act like bugs, are still people and there are constraints on how we treat them.
(How we treat animals, by the way, should not be predicated on what we can do to them, but on how the Creator has indicated we should treat them. Our high heritage as creatures made in God’s image keeps us responsible to behave according to our high calling, not according only to our high privileges.)
When it comes down to a person himself, his body is operated from a centralized location: his brain. If I lose a leg in a terrible accident, I will still be me; my personal identity did not reside in my leg. My leg was not accountable or responsible apart from my mind. I cannot tell the judge that the reason I was driving so fast when I was caught speeding was because my foot was out of control. The judge will insist that I am responsible for how fast I was going. The lead foot was wired to the lead brain, and the brain was in a hurry, and that is why I was speeding.
The human body, of itself, can do nothing. It is not responsible or accountable. It is little different than a carrot. But if it is connected to a human mind, then we have a different situation altogether.
The essence of the problem we are addressing lands at the nexus of capability and morality. Where choice and morality meet, man and God meet. Remember, our question is, Is human nature itself condemned?
Is There a Meaningful Difference Between Guilt and Condemnation?
Another preliminary point we should understand is how guilt and condemnation relate to each other. Are these separable concepts?
Dictionary definitions:
Condemnation. n. 1. the act of condemning. 2. the state of being condemned. 3. strong censure; disapprobation, reproof.
Guilt. n. 1. the fact or state of having committed an offense, crime, violation, or wrong, esp. against moral or penal law; culpability: He admitted his guilt. 2. A feeling of responsibility or remorse for some offense, crime, wrong, etc. whether real or imagined. 3. conduct involving the commission of such crimes, wrongs, etc.
Dictionary definitions of biblical things are always hazardous, for they snapshot the translated word in a context removed by hundreds or thousands of years in time and place from the biblical writer. Yet dictionary definitions can still help us at our point in history’s timeline by showing us what meanings are attached to the words we have translated the biblical words into. We can double-check our notions.
Generally, we may consider guilt as a judgment against viewed from self-perspective, and condemnation as a judgment against viewed from an external perspective. Even these delineations are more distinct than is the idea. One may be guilty in fact, or only feel guilty. Condemnation is a pronouncement of guilt. Before the guilt or condemnation (and inevitably connected to it), is the act of violation. Condemnation and guilt thus very closely overlap in meaning.
We took the time to think about this because it has become fashionable in some corners of Adventism to differentiate between guilt and condemnation. Some are saying that they do not believe in original sin because that teaching makes man guilty for Adam’s sin, but that they do believe that we are born condemned. As we have seen above, there is actually no very significant difference. The essence of this false teaching is a doctrine of involuntary guilt/condemnation, not on the basis of chosen character, but on the basis of unchosen fallen nature.God makes a baby. He grows. As he grows he is able to respond, so he becomes responsible. He learns to process ideas and form conclusions and act upon them, so he becomes accountable. He has free will. As an infant this will is exercised without a developed moral reference point, but as the child grows this changes. So we turn to our study.
The Biblical Texts
The texts commonly presented as evidence for a biblical teaching of nature condemnation are mostly found in the Greek Scriptures in the writings of Paul. The word translated to the English “nature” is the Greek phusis. Phusis has as its meaning, to speak of origin, natural endowments, original characteristics, the natural order. The Bible contains 14 occurrences in 11 verses. Let’s consider each in turn. That is good, old fashioned Adventist study; leave no stone unturned, and then look at the weight of evidence. It is also in harmony with the biblical admonition that we not prematurely judge a matter, but hear it out in full.
Against Nature
First, we turn to Romans 1:26: “For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature.” Scripture here discusses the tendency to worship the creature more than the Creator. Paul says that this led eventually to the introduction of homosexuality. He describes homosexuality as being unnatural, a change from the created order.
“Phusis” here, “nature,” is used to speak of the way God’s creation works. It is a system, it works a certain way. Humans also have a nature; we also were designed to work in a certain way. Here, phusis has the meaning of natural, created order. The homosexual women mentioned are living outside of the designed intentions for the created order, unnaturally; they are choosing to act against the natural phusis. Therefore, when the “women did change the natural use” they were choosing to operate in rebellion to the created moral order.
Even in a world disordered by the effects of the Fall, the impacted creation has not been removed from the moral domain. There is still a natural order with enough testimony in it concerning right and wrong where we have the question of human sexuality, that when we choose to oppose that order, we incur condemnation.
The world, before the distortion introduced to the created order by sin, testified unamibiguously of the character of its Designer. When the Fall occurred, graffitti was introduced; the material world now wore two faces, included testimony to the goodness of God but also bore testimony to the fruit of selfishness, Satan’s character. Although a duel testimony now confronts the inhabitants of the created world, there are still information points for which we are held accountable. Paul makes it clear that one of these is the difference between self worship and acceptance of God’s created order.
Doing by Nature
The next text is Romans 2:13-16:
(For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified.) For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature [phusis] the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: Which show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another; In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel.
When the Gentiles, who have not had the benefit of having the Scriptures (since they were given through the Hebrews) behave in a way that harmonizes with God’s will, they show that God is working in them in spite of their having not the law (that is, in spite of their lack of the special guiding presence of revelation in the oracles of God). This morally good behavior is evidence that in their hearts God’s law has been acknowledged and adhered to, even if they have not understood it in any detail. They are responding to the work of the Holy Spirit speaking to their conscience, and God accepts that.
But “doing by nature what is right”? Isn’t the idea that we commonly have that we all, by nature, do what is wrong? Apart from God each of our lives would continue to exhibit immorality. But the Holy Spirit is at work in the phenomenon that Paul is describing. There are certain common ways in which many Gentiles live that can be called natural to them—that are not wrong but right.
All this is part of Paul’s pivotal argument to the Jews that when we know to do right, but choose to do wrong, then whether we are Jewish or Gentile, we become guilty. Thus Paul arraigns all before the bar of God and says that all have sinned. The Jews, who felt themselves to be spiritually superior to the Gentiles were, in fact, more guilty, for they themselves had the oracles of God, the Scriptures, a significantly more detailed, superior revelation in comparison with the more general phenomenon Paul is describing in the conscience of the Gentile. The Jews, then, had no beginning of an excuse for choosing immoral behavior.
Notice here, and this is crucial, that human nature has not only its unnatural inclination to evil, a mutation if you will, resulting from the Fall, but humanity also retains something from the original creation of its natural inclination to good. The text says that they do what they do, not by the Holy Spirit, but “by nature.” It is a given, of course, that they only do what they do through the help given by the Holy Spirit. It is nevertheless true that the expression in the passage is that they do what they do by phusis, by nature.
Thus, however depraved man is, it cannot be a total depravity, for there is in him still, in some measure (perhaps only a small measure indeed after thousands of years of humankind’s degradation through sin!), an inclination to good. There is still some fraction of that original positive inclination in us that God can work with.
Gentile Versus Jewish Nature
The next text is Romans 2:26-29:
If the uncircumcision keep the righteousness of the law, shall not his uncircumcision be counted for circumcision? And shall not uncircumcision which is by nature [phusis], if it fulfil the law, judge thee, who by the letter and circumcision dost transgress the law? For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh: But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God.
Notice the continuation of Paul’s argument. If the non-Jew lives in harmony with the life advocated in God’s law, he is considered as he actually is, as having a circumcised heart. Although the person is not hereditarily Jewish, he lives in the way that is expected among the Jews. His behavior condemns a Jew whose behavior is only superficially religious. What truly matters is not the non-Jewish bloodline, or nature, but the attitude of the heart.
This passage is not often brought to prove condemnation by nature! And we can see why. What we expect on the basis of nature is not always what we get. Some Jews thought that the Gentile could not live in an ethical manner. But this was wrong. Just as the Jews, the Gentiles were affected by the Fall, and just as the Jews, the Holy Spirit is able to bring them to overcoming in spite of their nature.
Paul here restates the argument in Romans 2:13-16. Here we have a non-Jew living in an ethically superior manner. Nature here deals with Jewish versus Gentile racial background. Gentile nature does not automatically mean evil, just as Jewish nature does not automatically mean good.
Grafting In
Next, let us review Romans 11:21-24:
For if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest He also spare not thee. Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God: on them which fell, severity; but toward thee, goodness, if thou continue in His goodness: otherwise thou also shalt be cut off. And they also, if they abide not still in unbelief, shall be grafted in: for God is able to graft them in again. For if thou wert cut out of the olive tree which is wild by nature, and wert grafted contrary to nature into a good olive tree: how much more shall these, which be the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree?
Paul is discussing the relationship of Jews and Gentiles to salvation. The “natural” branches were not spared. Gentiles are from the olive tree which is wild by nature. We (who accept and cooperate with God’s working in us) were grafted contrary to our nature into a good olive tree. Jews can also be grafted into this good olive tree again. What is the good olive tree? The good olive tree is the people who choose to cooperate with God’s intention to change them. Thus it has always been, thus it will always be. Jewish DNA is not superior.
There have always been some who were willing to go against their own disordered inclination inherited from the Fall and instead be led of the Spirit. Nature, phusis, inclines but it does not determine. It provokes but it does not choose. Our nature of itself cannot act contrary to the will of God. We choose to follow the flow of our nature or to follow the flow of the Holy Spirit’s leading.
The deciding issue for the Gentile was not nature, but “if thou continue in His goodness.” For the Jew, it was “if they abide not still in unbelief.” We see here that the condemnation is not on the basis of nature, but on the basis of chosen alignments. Those in “good” Jewish nature can choose to stew in unbelief, just as those in “bad” Gentile nature can choose to persist in rejection of His goodness.
Short and Long Hair
Our next text is 1 Corinthians 11:14: “Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him?” Paul argues that we might know that the most appropriate appearance for a man is to have short hair, a woman, to have long (as the passage continues).
Simply looking at the text, Paul tells us not only (as in so many other places) that our nature is bent and disordered and inclined to evil, but here he suggests that our nature is not wholly corrupted, that, in fact, it retains some capacity to lead us aright. For when he asks, “Doth not even nature itself teach you,” he is saying that we are accountable for knowing the truth about the matter on the basis that our nature still has some capability to lead us aright.
Not only is our nature only corrupted in part, but the defects, the graffitti that wrinkles the testimony of nature in the creation around us, is not completely ascendant. There remains a testimony in the world to the goodness of God. Roses have thorns, but they are still crowned with glorious flowers.
Jews or Sinners by Nature?
Galatians 2:14-16 shows Paul using phusis again:
When I saw that they walked not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel, I said unto Peter before them all, If thou, being a Jew, livest after the manner of Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, why compellest thou the Gentiles to live as do the Jews? We who are Jews by nature [phusis], and not sinners of the Gentiles, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.
This is an interesting passage because Paul contrasts being a Jew “by nature” with being a Gentile. (In fact, Paul calls them “sinners of the gentiles.”) Paul is not speaking here of human nature with a universal sense, but using phusis more restrictively. He is talking Jewish race versus Gentile race. We have to let Paul use the words in the contexts he places them in. “No flesh” here is indeed universal. No flesh is justified by any doings of that flesh apart from God’s goodness.
Again we see that there are aspects of the human condition that are universal, that transcend race. But here the word for nature is not translated with a universal sense.
By Nature Not Gods
Another passage is found at Galatians 4:8:
Howbeit then, when ye knew not God, ye did service unto them which by nature are no gods.
Only God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is God by nature. Paul complains of the foolishness of serving as gods that which was not divine. The Godhead was no part of the true nature of those “elements of bondage” (Galatians 4:3) that they had served. The Galatians, in an effort to make themselves acceptable apart from faith in God, sought to obey, but on their own terms rather than God’s terms. The instruction that God gave man was never meant in itself to redeem man. While it showed God’s way, it was meant to point to Christ only who has help for man.
All are concluded under sin (Galatians 3:22), not on the basis of their nature, but by trying to earn salvation apart from faith in Christ. The instruction that God gave was brilliant, was glorious, but it had death for fallen man, not life. The only way to life is through Christ (Galatians 3:26).
By Nature Children of Wrath?
Ephesians 2:1-7 is often called upon to teach the theory of condemned nature:
You hath He quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins: Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience: Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature [phuseos] the children of wrath, even as others. But God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: That in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.
“To quicken” is one way to say “to make alive.” Paul tells the Ephesian church that they are now made alive by Jesus. Yet he reminds them that they had been dead in trespasses and sins. Notice the plurals. Paul does not insist they had been condemned because of their nature, but that their trespasses and sins had condemned them; it was not their nature, but the way that they had lived. “Wherein in time past ye walked.” Their lives had been lived according to the everyday expectation of the culture that surrounded them. Satan was just as operative in that culture as he is today in our own.
Who was Satan working in? “The spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.” This disobedience is unpacked in the continuing discussion. It is not disobedience by nature, but by behavior. Paul points out that it was among the children of disobedience that he and the Ephesian Christians had their conversation before their conversion. Conversation here is not just talking, but in its older English usage had its meaning as a label for behavior in general.
What was this behavior like? It was a behavior that was lived in surrender to the lusts of our flesh. Paul calls it “fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind.” This occurs when, without the power God in our lives, we live without checking the inclinations of our fallen nature. The result is inevitable; we follow in the pathway of our disordered inclinations. Principled choices are forsaken in favor of a less difficult going with the flowing of our nature. The discussion in which Paul has so far engaged has all been about a chosen way of living, which (in irony) he calls death in trespasses and sins.
While living in this manner, he says that he and the Ephesians “were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.” Notice again. They were trespassing. They were sinning. They were walking. They were conversing (all their behavior in view). They were fulfilling (filling-full) their disordered desires.
Recall that the only other times before where Paul had used this word (phusis), he had in both cases pointed out precisely the fact that there was no differentiating human nature; that whether Jew or Gentile, it was not your birth or ethnicity but your chosen orientation toward God’s truth that defined you. Here, he points out that on the basis of this orientation we define ourselves as children of wrath or children of Christ Jesus; as dead in trespasses and sins or made alive with Jesus Christ in His resurrection; as living in accordance with the operative spirit in us, that of Satan or that of God. Paul here only makes the same argument as before: you may be Jewish, but if you are not living in harmony with God’s kingdom, you are a child of wrath “even as others” (read “sinners of the Gentiles”).
Far from ending the argument in favor of a doctrine that we are condemned by our nature, Paul argues that through the new life granted the Christian in His connection with Jesus, he lives above the downward pull of his nature. Not nature, but behavior is condemned. If in our behavior we allow our characters to become aligned with our disordered natures so that we fulfill the desires of the flesh and mind, then we are coming into solidarity with a self-destructive nature. Then we have chosen selfishness, chosen to align ourselves with that fallen nature. Then we are condemned—not because of nature, but because of choosing rebellion, choosing a character at war with Jesus’ character. How can He be our Savior if we volunteer to pursue the very course of life He came to show was wrong?
But if we, through the strength of the Holy Spirit, live in opposition to the dominant downward inclinations of our dramatically disordered nature, then we are no children of wrath but rather of the Lord Jesus Christ. Ephesians two teaches us that the bottom line is not nature but chosen behavior.
The Nature that Triumphs
The last use of phusis we have in the Bible is by Peter in 2 Peter 1:2-4:
Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord, according as His divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him that hath called us to glory and virtue: Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.
Here we have another use of the word nature not so readily quoted by those who say that our nature is condemned. We are called to glory and virtue—goodness. But we are not only called; we are empowered. His divine power is given to us, His promises open the way so that we might have everything needed to live a life representative of Jesus. By these means we become, we are told, “partakers of the divine nature [phusis].” Such have “escaped” the corruption that is in the world through lust. With this in mind, we hearken back to the Ephesians passage where those who lived in harmony with the inclinations of their fallen human nature were fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind.
We may be partakers of the divine “phusis,” nature. Our phusis is not closed to the divine phusis; our nature is not inaccessible by the divine nature, or non-interfaceable with the divine nature. Rather, our nature is able to partake of the divine nature. This calls us back to the use of phusis in Romans two where we found that the Gentiles do “by nature” the things enjoined in the law, and in so doing show the work of God operative in their experience.
We are, in all these Scriptures it seems, being told that whatever may be our nature, God can bring life; whatever our environmental challenges, God can work in us although damaged; whatever our situation, God can change it. Formerly was one thing, presently is another. Our nature is not entirely ruined, but severely damaged. These are very important texts to have explored. But we are not quite finished. Let us explore other passages, that although not containing the word “phusis” sometimes have been understood to teach that man is condemned by nature. But do they?
Some Other Texts
Condemned Already?
Although we have considered the significant biblical uses of the word “nature,” there are more words and texts to consider if we would seek more comprehensively the biblical answer to the question of whether we are born guilty or condemned. The gospel of John 3:18 says that those who refuse to believe in Jesus are condemned already. Some make this condemnation out to begin in our birth nature. Here is the passage 3:14-21:
As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: That whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through Him might be saved. He that believeth on Him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.
The Father’s giving of the Son for us should lead us to make a decision in favor of God’s kingdom. This passage is about active belief and active unbelief. The condemnation results from the availability of knowledge and the rejection of that knowledge to pursue evil actions. Those who “do evil” reject the light because they are unwilling to forsake their evil deeds.
Failure to believe in Jesus results in condemnation. But the passage speaks of self-aware individuals making an active choice to cleave to evil even as it speaks of self-aware individuals making an active choice to believe in Jesus. So the passage says nothing about a condemnation resulting from our birth nature, but addresses condemnation rising from a chosen moral alignment. Yes, when a person is confronted with knowledge and already they have developed a preference for evil, this makes choosing good more difficult for them. But that is not the question. Condemnation here is the result of choice because the text has nothing to do with birth nature and everything to do with chosen moral allignment.
Sinners
In several places the Scriptures speak of people as “sinners.” But do any of these passages imply that one is born a sinner?
The first chapter of Isaiah has been presented as teaching this. Its opening verses speak of the completeness of the unsoundness of the people, and in the 28th verse destruction of the sinners is spoken of. But let us survey the chapter.
The book of Isaiah opens with God’s lament, not over people in general but specifically over the nation of Israel. According to Bible chronology, Israel began to exist as a distinct people nearly 3000 years after the creation of humankind. God calls the universe to witness that His children have rebelled against Him. He calls them a “sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters.” God says that they have forsaken Him, provoked Him to anger, and have gone away backward.
None of these phrases requires the idea of being born condemned or born guilty. God says He “brought up” children. He says that they are a seed, an offspring, of “evildoers.” For that matter, everyone human but Jesus has become an evildoer by—at some point—choosing to sin—to do evil. Yes, from Adam’s children on down, every one who has been born is the seed of an evildoer. Even Jesus. For His mother Mary, if we are to believe the Scriptures, just as have we, has sinned and come short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). Jesus’ being the seed of an evildoer did not keep Him from being able to be our Savior.
Choice is emphasized here too as we see in verse four that the Israelites had forsaken God, “gone away backward.” If they were “born” this way then they hadn’t “gone” anywhere, but simply landed just where they had been born.
In verses six and seven, precisely who is so sick? The nation of Israel. The nation is portrayed as a diseased body, whole head sick, whole heart faint, with no soundness at all, a people existing in a supremely damaged condition and who by their own choices for apostasy have brought themselves to the brink of collapse.
What happened? Verses seven and eight show that along the way God intervened with judgments. The country was made desolate, its cities were assaulted and burned, invaders were running free as the protection of God had been forfeit.
There is a remnant, but only on the basis of a divine intervention. Verse nine reminds that apart from the divine intervention to preserve, Isreal would have been destroyed under God’s judgment as were Sodom and Gomorrah. God goes on, through the lips of His prophet, to address His people as if they were Sodom and Gomorrah. He rebukes them for making their empty offerings to Him. He doesn’t want their offerings. He wants their hearts! Their religious meetings, tainted by their empty piety and continued sinning, are abominations to Him. Even their Sabbath worship meetings repel Him. Why? In verse 15 He reminds it is because their hands are full of blood. The people are not clean before the Lord.
He pleads in verses 16-18: “Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before Mine eyes; cease to do evil; Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. Come now, and let us reason together.” Here then God rains upon them a string of verbs, things He would have them do:
cleanse yourself
put away the evil of your doings
cease to do evil
learn to do well
seek judgment
relieve the oppressed
judge (deliver) the fatherless
plead for the widow
come, let us reason together
Is all this proposed “doing” by man impossible? On his own apart from God, yes. But God never proposes that man do things that way, does He? He will help, He will empower, He will assist:
Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land: But if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.
Sins would be made white. Willingness and obedience results in blessing. Refusal and rebellion results in judgment. These are choices. Again, notice that the passage cannot be speaking of birth nature, for in verse 21 we find that the faithful city has “become” a harlot. It was full of judgment and righteousness. But there was a change, a transition. Now, it is filled with murderers. Verses 21-23 tell a story of change, ethical decline, absence of positive righteousness. Verses 24 and 25 speak of God’s imminent intervention in judgment. Verses 26-31 of restoration, redemption, and the ultimate destruction of those who choose evil.
There is evidence that the Jews considered themselves a separate, higher category than the Gentiles, who they preferred to call “sinners” (Psalm 51:12, 13; Galatians 2:15). But in Isaiah 1:28, whatever distinction the people make, God weighs all according to moral realities, and so “the destruction of the transgressors and of the sinners shall be together.”
In summary, Isaiah chapter one is unsparing in its declaration of Israel’s indulgence of sin and her self-damaged condition. But the very text of the chapter must prevent us from giving any interpretation that would pronounce people guilty or condemned on the basis of their birth nature. It is remarkable that with such rich visuals available to them, neither Jesus, nor the Greek Testament writers reuse the Isaiah one passage to make the point of universal human condemnation. But it is not. Because to do so would be to misuse the passage. You can’t get there from here.
Galilaeans and Tower Victims
In Luke 13:1-5 Jesus discusses apparent events of judgment and being a sinner. Here is the passage:
There were present at that season some that told Him of the Galilaeans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And Jesus answering said unto them, Suppose ye that these Galilaeans were sinners above all the Galilaeans, because they suffered such things? I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish. Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.
The common Hebrew theological understanding would make varied calamities into high-profile judgments from God for those who were more deserving of God’s wrath than others. Having your blood mingled with your sacrifices would, to the Jew, be a particularly onerous way of being killed. Jesus’ warning is, don’t view yourself as exempt from judgment. To them as well as to you is the need for repentance. You must change moral direction from they way you would tend completely, or you too will perish.
First Timothy 5:24, 25 helps here:
Some men’s sins are open beforehand, going before to judgment; and some men they follow after. Likewise also the good works of some are manifest beforehand; and they that are otherwise cannot be hid.
Some judgment comes during the present probationary period, some comes afterward in the resurrection. Because of this there is no way for us to accurately correlate what happens to a person in the daily life we see with reference to their actual moral standing.
Potiphar could see that everything that Joseph did prospered, but later Joseph also spent a considerable time in prison for that for which he was not even guilty. A superficial look at Joseph’s life might make it look very mixed. The bottom line is that we cannot look at a life and with definiteness feel we completely understand the individual’s moral condition on the basis of our limited seeing. Jesus was pointing out that the Jews were wrong to be attempting to draw such moral correlations.
Nor was this tendency limited to the Jews. When Paul was bitten by the serpent (Acts 28:3-5), moral evaluations were made about him as well. But they were mistaken.
Because all have sinned and fallen short of the law of God, all must repent. It is not a matter of what they were born, but of what they become. Weaknesses and tendencies to evil afflict us all; the condition is universal to the race. Brokenness is our heritage, need for healing, our inheritance. But, although neither the Galilaeans nor the tower victims were able to choose whether those things happened to them, they were able during this life to choose to turn to God or not. So for them as for us, everything boils down to choice, not arbitarity.
Conclusion
Having reviewed more carefully the Bible’s teaching, it would appear that sometimes Christians have concentrated too much on the Bible’s discussion of the negative aspects of human nature and too little on its teaching concerning the positive elements upheld even in our fallen human nature. Has our limited focus created difficulties for us in our attempts to win those to our views who have held a more positive viewpoint? Have Christians, in focusing so much upon our fallen nature (even to the point sometimes of teaching that our nature itself is condemned) not only distorted the picture, but, more than this, created a breeding ground for theological error, such as exemplified in the teaching of involuntary sin? Yes.
Without for a moment forgetting the depth of human depravity after 6000 years of the destructive effects of sin, still we must conclude that our nature is not guilty, not condemned. But if we choose personally to endorse the negative inclinations of our nature, if we join ourselves to that nature, if we choose to build up a character on those broken foundations, then we will be condemned—and justly so. Condemnation and guilt are connected with choices, not nature.
As far as the doctrine of sin goes, we see that various texts and ideas have been misunderstood, and that the sin for which we are condemned, is not our birth nature, which we had no say in and which we recieved involuntarily, but is the result rather of our willful choices.
Because of a radical misunderstanding of the affect of the Fall upon humankind, and because of a misunderstanding of the doctrine of sin, illegitimate models of the plan of redemption have clogged the pathway. But now the way is opening for us to go forward again. LGT