Category: Sin

Q. I’ve heard that believers in Jesus still have a “sinful nature” or a desire within them towards sin. The book we’re using in our Bible study says that “because of this sinful nature, we commit actual sins, even as believers.”
But I think we can’t blame all our sinning on the sinful nature. Sometimes we can sin by our will, when it’s in opposition to the divine will. I think free will is free, but when it exceeds the will of God, which it can because it’s free, it approaches autonomy instead. If we head in this direction, in direct opposition with God’s will, it’s sin. 
Some might use this to justify their position that Jesus could not have sinned, since he did not have a sinful nature. But he did have free will. I think it was in this sense that Jesus was truly tempted but praise God, he was sinless and our perfect sacrifice.
Adam and Eve didn’t have a sinful nature, but they sinned nevertheless. Satan tempted Eve with the same desire for autonomy and it worked. He told her that “your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God.” Perhaps Lucifer’s sin in the first place was that he went too far with free will in his desire for autonomy. What do you think?

I understand the question you are asking to be this: how can believers in Jesus, who are regenerated through faith and so are a new creation, still sin? Is it only because, in addition to having a redeemed nature, they still have a sinful nature that leads them into sin? Or do they also sin because they have free will and sometimes misuse it by seeking autonomy and going beyond the will of God? To show that the sinful nature is not the only cause of sin, you offer the examples of Adam and Eve, who did not have a sinful nature but who nevertheless sinned, and of Jesus, who also did not have a sinful nature but who, you suggest, could have sinned if he had chosen by his free will not to obey God.

Let me take up your points one at a time.

First, personally I do not think that believers in Jesus have two natures, a redeemed nature and a sinful nature. This idea was responsible for the translation in the 1984 New International Version (NIV) of the Greek term sarx as “the sinful nature” in many contexts. That translation itself further popularized the idea. But you may be aware that in the 2011 update to the NIV, in virtually all of those contexts the translation was changed to “the flesh.” That reflects a change in understanding on the part of the committee of some 15 established biblical scholars who are responsible for the NIV. They now consider the term sarx in these contexts to refer to an ingrained pattern of life that may carry forward from the time before a person became a believer and that is reinforced by the “world,” meaning the system of interests on this earth that are arrayed against God.

The repeated admonitions in Paul’s epistles are to live “not according to the flesh” but “according to the Spirit,” and to “put off” the “old man” (representing that former way of life). Paul says in Romans, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” I don’t think he would speak that way if believers had a sinful nature that inevitably led them to sin. The way Paul speaks indicates instead to me that believers, as regenerate persons empowered and guided by the Holy Spirit, have the capacity to learn a new way of life and to live it out victoriously. Nothing in them requires them to sin. They just need to unlearn their old ways and learn new ways, standing against the surrounding way of life. Inner healing may be necessary in order for them to become free of some entrenched patterns.

Regarding Jesus, you are in agreement with the consensus of traditional Christian interpretation when you say that he could have sinned. The historic debate was whether Jesus was “not able to sin” (non posse peccare) or “able not to sin” (posse non peccare), and it was resolved in favor of the latter position. Jesus was able not to sin because in his incarnation he was completely yielded to his Father’s will and completely dependent on the empowering of the Holy Spirit. In that way Jesus sets an example of every one of his followers. If we too are completely yielded to God’s will and completely dependent on the Holy Spirit, we will not sin.

You recognize that what I have said to this point supports your suggestion that sin may come from the misuse of free will rather than from a sinful nature within us that compels us to sin. Before we are regenerate, we are in bondage to sin. Sin has power over us that we are not strong enough to break, despite our best intentions. But once we are regenerate, there is a greater power within us, the Holy Spirit, who makes us “able not to sin.” As Paul also wrote in Romans, “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death.” But we must use our will to choose to do God’s will. In this Jesus also sets an example for believers. As the book of Hebrews says, when Jesus came to earth, he said, in effect, “Here I am, I have come to do your will.”

I think there is a process of discovery that we go through as believers. Previously we were fending for ourselves, perhaps thinking of God as someone who was distant and uncaring or who was angry and hostile. Once we are restored to fellowship with God through faith in Jesus, we really do need to be “transformed by the renewing of our minds” and recognize that God loves us more than we could ever imagine. What God wants for us will make us happy and flourishing and a blessing to all those around us. So we should gladly and eagerly say to God, “Please show me your will so I can do it!” Ultimately we will be motivated in this by our love for God, which will be prompted by our growing recognition of how much God loves us.

Augustine, who participated prominently in the discussion of “not able to sin” versus “able not to sin,” also once said, “Love God, and do what you will.” In other words, nothing sinful can come from pure love for God. So rather than trying to sort out which of two natures an action might reflect (since there probably aren’t two natures anyway), or even whether free will is shading over into autonomy, I think we should just try to open our eyes to see how much God loves us. The evidence is everywhere. We will love God in return, and consequently we will want—we will will—to do his will.

Q. I have a friend who is having an affair. I am worried about her and what this will do to her and her relationship with God. She is a Christian and is a regular churchgoer. If she continues in this affair or if it someday results in a divorce, what will God do? She told me she is praying each day for forgiveness for being involved with this other man. I too am praying for her but I am scared she’ll go to hell for this. What does God do to people who are cheating?

Thank you for your question and for your concern for your friend.

The first thing I would say is that affairs don’t just happen. When married people go outside of their marriages for love, affection, and (frankly) excitement, that is a sign that those things are not present within the marriage in the way that they should be. This does not excuse the affair. But it does put it in a broader context that shows that the person is probably not deliberately doing something evil. The person is wanting good things (love, affection, excitement) but getting them in the wrong place. I would say that God understands this and takes it into account.

Nevertheless, I would also say that God will certainly do something in this case. The Bible says, “The Lord disciplines everyone he loves. He corrects everyone he accepts as his child.” Since your friend is a Christian, she is God’s child, and so God will correct her. God loves her too much to allow her to continue on this destructive course.

I expect that this will most likely happen through the affair being discovered. This may occur in a most unexpected way, hinting that God was responsible for the discovery. Then your friend will be held accountable for her actions and her choices. God will intend this for her good, so that she can repent, receive forgiveness, and be reconciled to her husband, and so that the two of them can find help and healing for their marriage.

However, knowing that this is likely to happen, I would certainly encourage your friend to end the affair now, before it is discovered and exposed. It will be much better for her and her marriage if she ends the affair on her own, confesses to her husband, seeks his forgiveness, and goes with him for counseling.

There’s one more thing I’d like to note as well. Sometimes people say, “I know this will be a sin, but I will ask God to forgive me for it, and he will forgive me.” That is true. But when we sin on that basis, even though we do receive forgiveness, we nevertheless irretrievably miss the opportunity to do the right thing on that occasion and bring glory to God and the hope of salvation to others through our obedience.

How much better it would be if your friend could say, “Yes, we’re going through a rough time in our marriage, but I made a vow before God and my family and friends to be faithful to this man, and I intend to keep that vow. We’re going to get the help we need, and we’re going to make this marriage work. In fact, we’re going to get the spark back. Just you wait and see. In the years to come, we’ll be more in love than ever!”

That is the kind of example we need Christian people to set. That is the kind of commitment they need to show, the kind of faith in what God is able to do. A testimony like that is incredibly powerful.

I recently heard a woman share how she and her husband had such a rough time in their marriage that even though they were both Christians, they got divorced. But they both continued to seek what God had for them, individually and together. Ultimately, after receiving much healing and experiencing genuine reconciliation, they got remarried to one another!

That is the kind of testimony we are able to give when we resolve that we are going to honor and obey God and seek to do what brings him glory. I believe that this is what God wants for your friend more than anything else, more than meting out any punishment for the affair. But as I said, the Lord also disciplines those he loves, so your friend should expect that God will act to end this affair if she does not.

Q. When Adam and Eve started a family, how did the children multiply the earth without having relations with each other? After the flood, how did Noah’s family multiply the earth without having relations with each other? How could this be allowed and later a sin? I cannot wrap my head around this. Isn’t sin sin?

This is an excellent question. The Bible does indeed teach that the human race is descended from a single couple and that it is sinful to have sexual relations with a close relative such as a sibling.

But I think the reason why we have a problem trying to wrap our minds around this is that we tend to feel that if there are any circumstances at all under which an activity would not be sinful, then it must actually be not sinful in all circumstances. But that is not a necessary conclusion. There are, in fact, some extraordinary circumstances in which activities are justifiable that would not be justified in general, and this does not reduce morality to “situation ethics” in which the right thing to do is simply the right thing to do in a given situation.

For example, in her book The Hiding Place, Corrie ten Boom tells about the moral dilemma that she and her family felt about lying in order to protect the Jews they were sheltering. She describes how some Christians who were sheltering Jews felt they could not, under any circumstances, say that something was true if it was not true. And so when Nazi soldiers came to their homes and demanded to know if there were any Jews there, they would admit that there were and turn the Jews over to the Nazis, who put them in concentration camps and killed many of them. Corrie and her family, for their part, would lie and say that they had no Jews in their home. By doing that, they saved many lives. I think that many Christians who believe and follow the Bible’s teachings about sin would feel that they did the right thing. (For a fuller discussion, see the series that begins with this post: Does God let us use deception for a good cause?)

To take up an even more exceptional example, consider the much-discussed case of the charter flight that crashed in the Andes in 1972. The survivors of the crash recognized once search-and-rescue efforts had been abandoned. After eating all of the available food and even trying to eat cotton and leather from the plane’s seats, they ultimately realized, after agonizing reflection and conversations among themselves, that they could only continue to survive by eating the bodies of the passengers who had died in the crash. They did so, and the world was amazed when, two months after the crash, two of the survivors succeeded in hiking over a glacier and down into a sparsely inhabited valley to get help.

The survivors were all Catholic, and a priest heard their confessions. The priest told them that they would not be damned for cannibalism, given the extreme situation that they had been in. Several of the families of passengers who had died in the crash said they were certain that their loved ones would have wanted to give their bodies in order to save the lives of the others. This episode is still widely discussed. But even those who say that the survivors did the right thing do not argue from it that cannibalism should be permitted under anything other than such very extreme circumstances.

So, to return to your question, let me respond to it with another question, which Christians of good will, with equal commitments to the authority of the Bible, might answer differently. Suppose a disaster struck the earth and the only two people who survived were a brother and sister of child-bearing age, who knew for certain that they were the only humans left. Would they be morally justified in marrying one another and having children in order to continue the human race?

Q. When Adam added to God’s command in the Garden of Eden and told Eve that God had said not to touch the tree, rather than just not to eat of its fruit, was that a lie? How did that happen before sin entered in the world?

I will address your specific question shortly, but I should note first that Adam did not necessarily add to God’s command.

As we read through the Genesis creation account, we see that God gave Adam the command about the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil before he created Eve. God’s command was simply not to eat of the fruit of the tree, but Eve told the serpent, “God said, ‘You must not eat from it, and you must not touch it, lest you die.'” One possible inference is that Adam told Eve that God had said this. However, there are some other possible explanations.

For one thing, Eve could have been using the word “touch” in a poetic sense to mean “have to do with.” In that case she would be repeating God’s statement for emphasis, and while she would not be quoting it literally, she would be conveying its meaning accurately: “You must not eat from it, indeed, you must have nothing to do with it, lest you die.”

Another possibility is that Adam and Eve agreed together that the best way to keep from eating the fruit of the tree was not even to touch it. Eve would then be mentioning not touching the tree as a natural outgrowth of the command not to eat from its fruit. Once again,she would not be quoting God literally, but she would be conveying the sense of the command as she and Adam had decided to obey it.

But it is admittedly possible that Adam himself added the stipulation not to touch the tree when he communicated God’s command to Eve, knowing that God had not said this, but leading Eve to believe that God had indeed said it. This would not have been, strictly speaking, a lie, since a lie is an intentional misrepresentation of the truth whose motive is to gain personal advantage or to harm another person. If Adam added to the commandment, it was with the best of motives.

Still, the end does not justify the means. Even with a good motive, it would have been wrong for Adam to tell Eve that God had said something when God had not actually said it. It would have been better for Adam to trust Eve and to trust God’s work in her heart and not think that Eve had to be deceived into obeying God. So if Adam actually deceived her knowingly, I think we would have to consider that a sin.

So how could Adam have committed such a sin before he and Eve ate the fruit of the tree and “sin entered the world through one man,” as Paul says in Romans?

We might just as easily ask how Adam and Eve could have disobeyed God and eaten from the fruit of the tree before sin entered the world, since that disobedience was itself sin. The answer is that Adam and Eve were not under the power of sin before they disobeyed God, but nevertheless they had complete moral freedom, which meant that they were able to obey and also able to disobey.

If we believe that Adam added to God’s command and therefore made it harder to obey, we should see that as part of an entire sequence of actions that ultimately constituted disobedience. When someone does something wrong, is rarely possible to look at the whole sequence of their actions and say, “There—that specific point is where the sin occurred.”

So if Adam did add intentionally to God’s command, then that was part of an exercise of moral freedom that unfortunately ended in him and Eve disobeying God and bringing all of their descendants under the power of sin.

This post will be different from most of the others on this blog. I have received a long inquiry that contains many thoughtful questions. They are by and large questions that various other posts deal with in one way or another. So I will reproduce the inquiry, without editing it, and then provide links below it to those other posts. I commend this inquirer for thinking about the Bible so carefully and for looking widely for answers to questions about the Bible.

Q. I have many questions which are interlinked to one another. I have read many articles, books, listen to sermons, videos and approached many experts like you for getting answers. However everyone has different explanations for the same word from bible and I end up in confusion. However after this so long journey what I understood is the common elements in all my questions are related to sufferings and the way god deal with it or the way I should look at. We have people believe in god creats the sufferings, god allow sufferings, god tests our faith, it is not god but satan, time, sin, fallen world, glory of god. And if I start writing in it it will be a big story but I will definitely share it with you soon. So I am keeping my question to Adam story or first sin. Here are my observations.
In this present world I have access to so much and I am prone to do any stupid stuff. But adam was in perfect (in fact good ) world what factors lead him to fail. Why did god wanted to have a knowledge tree in his world and asking adam to not to eat. It sounded like I am asking my kid not to eat something (like chocolate or ice cream) even though it is in the house. I am sure kid will try his best to go near to it multiple times and he might/will attempt to eat it and when you ask, in fear kid will/might bluff or do anything which either you expect or not expect. In that way I can not punish him and send away from home. I will try teach him a lesson. But god is different. If he can forgive a sinner woman in new testament, why can not he forgive adam or why did not he gave another chance either to repent or not to repeat. People say satan is the serpent but bible did not mention any such. If serpent is serpent why did it got a thought to ask something to Eve. The words I will put enimity between you and mankind, is it simply that snake will bite man on his feet and man will hit it on belly (which generally happens), is it this way. If satan is serpent, then why to blame adam or eve. If I got cheated by anyone, will you say I deseve punishment for being cheated. Adam and Eve are like new born kids or new in the College of eden, I am not sure (as per the bible) no such details are given about how a man is living and and how he is developing any thoughts. Was he feeling the freedom as bore or punishment. Was he thinking he is more than god. Was he developing thoughts of going on his own. No such details are mentioned. Satan will try in many times for the fall to be happening. So why punishment for adam and eve. I think god did not mention any such that you should nor hear from anyone. Even if he does, I feel that for kids or freshers, the temptation or thought will be there in mind to go near by the tree/person. When nothing is explained why are we coming to a conclusion that man is wrong and first sin and fallen world. And we are blaming everything on as fallen world, sin entered through man. But sin or evil is already there in the form of Lucifer. If a kid is failed who is the responsibility. Lucifer has the thoughts which are not matching with god’s and so became rebel by definition. In that way can we say god’s creation itself has evil existing somewhere. When satan is trying its best for the fall, why to send away adam n eve. Instead he can do something with satan, right?? People relate that Serpent with the Ezekiel Tyrus, revelation dragon and etc. Bible did not mention anything that the snake is serpent. Throughout the bible, why satan is given that much importance. How can he be more Powerful that he can challenge god or work on people. God was accepting some animal sacrifices for the sins. In that he can forgive adam and eve with a sacrifice. Infact he gave animal skin clothes. So sacrifice was done. Then in that way adam n eve are forgiven. If god is accepting offerings, where is the sin existing then. God has sent floods for eradication of man. So in that way also we can see sin is removed. Why do we say sin is from adam and we are all part of that. What is the need for him to send jesus. Once this adam part is finished I will share my questions on this story from jesus point as well. Lot of things are either missing or not clear in bible. Please note that I am asking these questions for my understanding and growth only.

A. As I said at the beginning of this post, I commend you for looking for the answers to your questions. I’ve said many times on this blog, “There’s no such thing as a bad question.” Other readers have had questions similar to yours, and I invite you to read the following posts, in the hopes that they will present some thoughts that will be helpful to you. These posts themselves contain links to other posts that may be of interest. Thank you for your inquiry.

Why did God make people and angels who would fail and fall away?

Did God forgive Adam and Eve for eating the forbidden fruit?

Why did God create Satan?

Why didn’t God protect the children he created from an evil being like Satan?

Q. In the account of the Fall in Genesis, God tells the serpent that he is going to put put “hostility” between the serpent and the woman. What is that “hostility”? Is it Jesus?

It seems that previously the woman and the serpent had gotten along, or at least that the woman had felt she had no reason to distrust the serpent, since she was having a conversation with him in the midst of the Garden of Eden. The woman actually went along with what the serpent suggested, even though it was contrary to what God had commanded.

So after the disobedience of the woman and the man, God took the measure of putting “hostility” between the serpent and the woman. Some Bibles translate this word as “enmity” or “animosity.” A few state it in a simple way that I think is accurate and helpful: “I will make you and the woman enemies to each other.” So this “hostility” is not a person, it is a hostile state of relationship.

God specified that this situation would continue down through the generations. So on the simplest level, this meant that snakes would be dangerous to people, and people would try to protect themselves from snakes even if that required attacking and killing them.So this was, on one level, a further punishment of the serpent, beyond having to go around on the ground.

But there are much more profound meanings as well. For one thing, the state of hostility would keep the woman from trusting the serpent again. That would protect her from the temptations that the serpent would otherwise have continued to offer. The hostility also prevented the woman and the serpent from agreeing together on a course of action that was contrary to what God wanted. In that sense, the hostility was like the division of human languages at the Tower of Babel that kept people from joining together in opposition to God.

And ultimately Jesus does come into the picture, at the point where God says to the serpent about the “seed” or “descendant” of the woman, “He will crush your head.” In light of how God’s plan of redemption unfolds over the rest of the Bible, we can understand this statement to be a reference to and prediction of the victory of Jesus on the cross over sin and death.

So Jesus is not the “hostility” that kept the woman and the serpent apart so that the serpent could no longer deceive the woman. Instead, he is the “seed” of the woman who ultimately defeated the serpent, that is, the devil, definitively at the cross.

Q. As a nation, did Israel sin against God by remaining in Egypt for 400 years and not returning to the promised land? I mean, 400 years is a long time! Maybe they got way too comfortable. I realize He spoke to Abraham about this and we all know about God’s deliverance etc., but perhaps God punished Israel with Egyptian slavery for her failure to return? Also, we know that Abraham sojourned in Egypt but he didn’t stay. What do you think?

As I read the biblical accounts of ancient Israel’s time in Egypt (found in the books of Genesis and Exodus), I see first that Joseph, who brought his father Jacob and his whole extended family down to Egypt, told his brothers when he was dying, “God will surely come to you and bring you up out of this land to the land that he swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.” In other words, the Israelites were supposed to wait for God to come and give them just as clear an indication that they were meant to leave as they had gotten to come in the first place. So it wasn’t a sin for them to stay.

I see next that at the start of the following generation, “A new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.” This king was so concerned that the Israelites, who were already becoming a large community, might side with their enemies that he persuaded his people and officials to enslave them. So the Israelites didn’t have an opportunity to return to the land of Canaan but  were too complacent to take advantage of it. Instead, they never got such an opportunity, because Joseph said when he was dying that they should wait, and the next thing that happened was that they were enslaved and trapped.

We should also note that in Exodus, God never says that He has punished the Israelites with slavery because they have complacently ignored their responsibility to return to the promised land. Instead, God says that He will punish the Egyptians for enslaving them and exploiting their labor. You mentioned that God had spoken to Abraham about the future enslavement of his descendants; God specifically told him, “For four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own and they will be enslaved and mistreated there. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions” (that is, as compensation for their unpaid labor).

It’s still an important biblical warning for us not to be complacent but instead to remain aware of what God expects of us and to seek eagerly to fulfill God’s purposes for our lives. Paul wrote to the Ephesians, for example, “Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is.” However, the time that the ancient Israelites spent in Egypt doesn’t seem to be a case study of the kind of complacency we need to be careful to avoid.

Q. John writes in his first letter, “If you see any brother or sister commit a sin that does not lead to death, you should pray and God will give them life. I refer to those whose sin does not lead to death. There is a sin that leads to death. I am not saying that you should pray about that.”

Would you please explain what John means by “a sin that does not lead to death” and “a sin that leads to death,” and why we’re not supposed to pray about the second kind?

This statement by John is indeed puzzling, because it’s hard to imagine why an apostle of Jesus, writing inspired Scripture, would tell us not to pray for a brother or sister who’s being overcome by sin. Many different explanations have been offered, but let me suggest one that’s based on the circumstances John is writing about and the characteristic language he uses in this first letter.

His letter is addressed to the same community that he earlier wrote the Gospel of John for. That community is now in crisis because some of its members are spreading a false teaching. Influenced by the Greek idea that spiritual things are good but that physical things are bad, they’re arguing that Jesus could not have been the Son of God if he came to earth in a human body. In fact, they’re claiming that they have received a spiritual revelation that Jesus was not the Messiah. They’re leaving the community of his followers, and they’re encouraging others to leave with them. On top of this, they’re creating a scandal by living openly sinful lives, in the belief that what they do in their bodies doesn’t matter—they think that only what happens in a person’s spirit is important. They’ve also stopped caring for the poor and needy, because after all, those people are only suffering in their bodies.

In response to all this, John first offers eyewitness testimony that Jesus was a real human being and the source of salvation for all who trust in him. He begins his letter by saying, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us.”

John also discredits the supposed spiritual revelation. “Dear friends,” he tells those in the community who have remained faithful to the original teaching about Jesus, “do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God.”

In other parts of his letter, John also addresses the way the false teachers are living, and it’s in those parts that some characteristic language emerges. In response to the way they’re living as if what they did in their bodies doesn’t matter, he writes, “No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God. This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not God’s child, nor is anyone who does not love their brother and sister.” John critiques the false teachers’ lack of concern for those in need by explaining, “We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death. . . . This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person?”

In light of this overview of the letter, we can see that by “life,” John means membership in and fellowship with the community of Jesus’ followers, and by “death” he means being outside that community. By “sin” he can mean continuing to live in a way that dishonors God in one’s body, in the belief that bodily things simply don’t matter.

So I would conclude that the puzzling statement means something like this: Part of our ongoing concern for our brothers and sisters in Christ, in addition to caring for their physical needs, is to pray for them, and particularly to pray that they will have victory in their struggles against sin. However, if a person is sinning willfully and continually because they think God doesn’t care what they do in their body, there’s no point praying that they’ll be set free from that sin. There’s a deeper problem behind the behavior: a wrong belief about Jesus that is leading the person out of the community of his followers. That would be the “sin that leads to death.” While John doesn’t say this specifically in his letter, I think we could and should pray that such a person would have their eyes opened to the truth about Jesus, so that eventually their problem with sin could be addressed as well. On the other hand, the struggle of a sincere believer would be a “sin that does not lead to death.” We can and should help our brothers and sisters in that kind of struggle right away through our prayers.

Q. Do you understand the Scriptures to teach that sin is innate to us? Is sin or the sinful nature more than an old “pattern” that we slip back into under the influence of spiritual forces external to us? Thank you.

I think that according to Scriptural teaching, the concept of sin needs to be understood in two senses. We might refer to “sin” and to “sins.” Sins are specific actions that are contrary to what we know to be God’s wishes and intentions for our lives. In that sense they incur guilt and we need to forsake them (stop doing them) and ask and receive God’s forgiveness for them.

“Sin,” on the other hand, is a power that influences us to commit “sins.” Much of its hold over us comes from the fact that it works to blind us, i.e. we aren’t aware of its presence because it leads us to rationalize wrong actions, telling ourselves we’re doing them for some good reason that justifies them.

A person who has not yet been made a new creation through saving faith in Jesus is under the power of sin in this sense. But I would not say strictly that sin is a power within them. It’s something that they’ve admitted into their life and allowed to operate from the inside. It’s “innate” in the sense that they are born under the power of sin (and so they likely begin to allow it to operate from within before they’re even aware of doing this). But it’s not innate in the sense that it doesn’t reflect the image of God in them, which they still bear because they’ve been created in God’s image.

A person who has been made a new creation, on the other hand, is no longer under the power of sin. This is the triumphant proclamation that Paul works his way forward to in the first part of Romans: After declaring that “Jews and Gentiles alike are all under the power of sin,” he ultimately explains that “sin will not have dominion over” those who have become “dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”

So I would say that for followers of Jesus, sin is an external force, working in connection with the patterning of this present age, to try to make us continue conforming to its ways. This is the sense in which I understand the “sinful nature”; for more on that, please see this post. From the discussion there, you’ll see that I don’t believe sin remains an innate force in the believer.