This is a lightly edited transcript of what I actually said when I taught this session at Spring Creek Bible Church on December 6, 2015, as Part 8 of The Doctrines of Man and Sin class. It differs from what I planned to say; for the prepared text, see the manuscript.
We’re at part eight of our series on the doctrines of man and sin. We’ve spent two weeks on the doctrine of sin—the fall and original sin—and today we turn to the nature of sin. We’ll pick up a section we didn’t reach last time, then look at the biblical terms for sin, arrive at a definition, and unpack what sin is at its core.
Original Sin and Infants
Last time we concluded that from the moment of conception all of us are corrupt—we have sinful natures, and we are therefore guilty—before we’ve had any chance to express it. So the question arises: what about infants who die before they can sin, or young children who don’t live a full life? It doesn’t seem right for them to suffer eternally. Most Christians across church history have held that infants who die young are not sent to hell. Pelagians escape the problem by denying original sin altogether: children aren’t punished because they aren’t sinners—sin, they say, only begins when you willfully choose it. But most of the church affirms original sin, so the real question is how to reconcile our guilt in Adam with God saving infants—since salvation normally comes through faith, and an infant can’t exercise faith.
Three views try to reconcile this. The first is infant baptism: the Roman Catholic Church holds that baptism removes the original sin and guilt inherited from Adam, so a baby who dies can be welcomed into heaven. This has roots in the early centuries—Origen said the church received from the apostles the tradition of baptizing infants, and the Council of Trent taught that infants “who could not yet commit any sin of themselves” are truly baptized “for the remission of sins.” We don’t believe Scripture teaches infant baptism or that it removes original sin. The second is prevenient grace: Arminian theologians postulate a universal grace with the same effect as infant baptism but without the water—it undoes the corruption and guilt so God can welcome all who die young. As the Arminian Roger Olson puts it, all Arminians agree that condemnatory guilt attaches only to “presumptuous sinning” once the conscience awakens, so all deny that any children who die go to hell (though historically some earlier Arminians, stressing free-will faith, did not). The third view rejects both infant baptism and prevenient grace and appeals instead to God’s gracious character: God is free and sovereign to save whomever he wills, even apart from the normal means of personal faith.
Many Reformed theologians take this third view and hold that God saves all who die in infancy (some limit it to the children of believers on covenantal grounds, but most are broader). Calvin, on Jesus’ words that the kingdom belongs to “such as these,” took it to include real little children. Charles Hodge wrote, “all who die in infancy are…saved, but they are saved by grace.” Loraine Boettner argued that infant salvation fits the Calvinistic system, “for the redemption of the soul is…infallibly determined, irrespective of any faith, repentance, or good works.” And B. B. Warfield held that all who die in infancy are “unconditionally predestinated to salvation from the foundation of the world,” their salvation wrought by the Spirit apart from any act of their own will—God, in his electing purpose, building his church to include one hundred percent of those who die in infancy or with the capacity of infants. The Westminster Confession is a bit less explicit, speaking of “elect infants dying in infancy” regenerated and saved by Christ “who worketh when and where and how he pleaseth,” without stating who the elect infants are. Among writers today, John MacArthur’s Safe in the Arms of God and several of John Piper’s messages are helpful.
What does Scripture point to? We’ve established that we’re born guilty and deserving of punishment; the question is whether God judges those who haven’t yet had the chance to willfully reject him with a fully developed mind. The key passage is 2 Samuel 12:21–23. God took the life of David and Bathsheba’s infant son, and David—who fasted and wept while the child was alive—was at peace once he died: “Now that he is dead, why should I fast? Can I bring him back? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me.” David seems genuinely to expect a reunion with his son after death—a striking contrast to his inconsolable grief over his wicked son Absalom. Job, who had a developed view of the afterlife (“I know that my Redeemer lives”), wishes in his grief that he had died at birth: he would “have been at rest” (Job 3:11–19), suggesting young ones who die are welcomed to rest and peace; Ecclesiastes 6:3–6 says something similar of a stillborn child. And Jesus, blessing the little children, said, “Let the little children come to me…for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18; 19:13–15; Luke 18:15–17). Yes, children picture the humble faith all of us need, but that’s not the only point—Jesus says the kingdom belongs to real children, not merely metaphorical ones.
Several other threads point the same way. God calls the little ones sacrificed to idols “my children” and “innocents” (Ezekiel 16:20–21; Jeremiah 19:4–6). Scripture links young children with lacking “the knowledge of good and evil”—the very phrase describing Adam and Eve in their innocence (Deuteronomy 1:39; Isaiah 7:16; and perhaps Jonah 4:11’s 120,000 “who do not know their right hand from their left”). And Scripture ties knowledge to accountability: “If you were blind, you would have no guilt” (John 9:41); “if I had not come…they would not be guilty of sin” (John 15:22, 24); those to whom God has plainly revealed himself are “without excuse” (Romans 1:19–20)—implying that those lacking such knowledge may have an excuse; “sin is not counted where there is no law” (Romans 5:13); the high priest “deals gently with the ignorant” (Hebrews 5:2); and “whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin” (James 4:17). Scripture also teaches degrees of sin and punishment—beating “in proportion to his offense” (Deuteronomy 25:2); “more bearable” on judgment day for Sodom, Tyre, and Sidon than for towns that rejected the gospel (Matthew 10:14–15; 11:21–24); “the one who delivered me over to you has the greater sin” (John 19:11)—so judgment falls more heavily where there is more light. And future judgment is consistently rendered “according to works” (Romans 2:6–8), on the basis of a life of rebellion, not merely on the fact of having a nature. (Some even argue from Revelation 5:9 and 7:9—the redeemed from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation, including groups that vanished or never heard the gospel—that this could only be fulfilled if God saves infants who die.)
As for an “age of accountability,” some point to Jewish custom (a boy became a bar mitzvah, “son of the commandment,” at thirteen, a girl a bat mitzvah at twelve), and others to the recurring age of twenty in the census laws—those counted “from twenty years old and upward” owed the Lord’s offering (Exodus 30:14) and bore the judgment in the wilderness, while those under twenty, “your little ones,” were spared and brought into the land (Numbers 14:26–35). Whether or not we fix an exact age, Scripture clearly teaches different levels of accountability by age and maturity. Above all stands the gracious character of God, the great recurring theme of Scripture: “a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love” (Exodus 34:6–7; Psalm 86:15; 103:8; 145:8–9)—and Romans 9:22–24 suggests God endures the vessels of wrath “in order that” he might display the riches of his mercy on the vessels of mercy, giving mercy a certain priority.
So the Bible points toward God being gracious to infants and young children, whether or not their parents are believers—but how? God doesn’t sweep sin under the rug (“he will by no means clear the guilty”), yet the all-sufficient death of Jesus can wipe away the sins of every child who has ever lived. If salvation comes through faith, and they can’t exercise it, how do they receive its benefits? Scripture gives a couple of examples where salvation seems to begin before a person can exercise personal faith: David says, “you made me trust you at my mother’s breasts…from my mother’s womb you have been my God” (Psalm 22:9–10), and John the Baptist was “filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb” (Luke 1:15; compare the callings of Jeremiah 1:5 and Isaiah 49:1–7). So the Spirit can indwell someone who can’t yet express personal faith—and if it’s possible in one case, it’s possible in others. No one is saved apart from the atoning work of Jesus, and everyone saved is saved by grace; but personal faith, though God’s normal means for those capable of it, is not the only means. Scripture gives no single unambiguous statement on the salvation of children who die, but through many passages it points us there and gives a solid foundation to hope for reunion with the little ones who pass away.
Defining Sin
The primary word we use for the evil we do is “sin.” We call this the doctrine of sin—rather than of lawlessness, rebellion, or transgression—because “sin” is the dominant term: the Hebrew word occurs some 8,300 times in the Old Testament and the Greek root nearly 10,000 times in the New. The word itself basically means “to miss the mark.” In the Old Testament it isn’t originally a theological term at all—it describes accuracy, hitting or missing a target, like an arrow—and that’s its root idea: to miss the mark. A few definitions are worth weighing. One Bible dictionary defines sin as “human activity that is contrary to God’s will.” Is that a good definition? The main weakness is the word “activity,” which pulls our thoughts toward external actions—yet sin is much more a matter of the heart than of outward deeds. Grudem’s is better: sin is “any failure to conform to the moral law of God in act, attitude, or nature.” The Westminster Confession says sin is “any want of conformity unto, or transgression of, any law of God.” So a good definition anchors sin in relation to God—his law, his requirements for us as his creatures: sin is failing to conform to God’s expectations for us, whether in what we do, say, think, or feel, or in our very nature. Scripture defines it explicitly in one place: “sin is lawlessness” (1 John 3:4).
The Nature of Sin
What is sin at its core? Fundamentally, sin is against God. God is our Creator with authority over us, whose character defines right and wrong and who sets the boundaries—so sin is a violation of his authority. God is also our Father, who made us for fellowship with himself, so sin is a break in that relationship. And God made us in his image to be like him and reflect his glory, so sin is a failure to image God as we were designed. That’s the sense of Romans 3:23—“all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” As Douglas Moo explains, “glory” refers to the magnificent presence of God his people were meant to share, and “just as this sharing in God’s glory involves conformity to the image of Christ, so the absence of glory involves a declension from the image of God in which human beings were made”—all people fail to exhibit the God-likeness for which they were created. So sin is primarily against God: Joseph asks, “How then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?” (Genesis 39:9); the prodigal says, “I have sinned against heaven” (Luke 15); and David, after Bathsheba and Uriah, cries, “Against you, you only, have I sinned” (Psalm 51:4)—not that he didn’t wrong Bathsheba and Uriah, but, by way of emphasis, that ultimately all sin is against God.
Sin is also deeper and wider than actions. It’s deeper because it includes how we speak, feel, think, our desires, and our very nature; it’s wider because it includes not only what we commit but what we omit—the good we fail to do. Sin is fundamentally a matter of the heart. “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life” (Proverbs 4:23); “the heart is deceitful above all things” (Jeremiah 17:9); “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matthew 12:34); “out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery” (Matthew 15:18–19). This is central to the Sermon on the Mount: against the Pharisees who externalized both righteousness and sin, Jesus drives everything into the heart. “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees” (Matthew 5:20)—which I take to mean a true, internal heart righteousness, not merely the imputed righteousness of Christ, dear as that doctrine is—and then he shows that anger is the sin behind murder, and lust the sin behind adultery. So we must look deeper than the mere expression of sin. Scripture names hundreds of kinds of sin (I’ve compiled a list of about 150), but they’re interconnected, with a deeper sin often sitting behind the outward one. Since the whole law is fulfilled in loving God and neighbor, and “sin is lawlessness,” sin is fundamentally the flip side of that love—the absence of love for God and neighbor. At its essence, we replace being rightly related to God and others in love and service with a bent toward ourselves, placing ourselves at the center of the universe. Theologians debate the single central sin—idolatry, rebellion, pride, selfishness—and it’s really all of them, so interconnected they resist tidy categories; but at the heart is pride and self-exaltation. Sin is fundamentally living independently from God.
From Sin to the Savior
I don’t want to end merely on the note of sin without turning to what God has done to save us from it. The Bible has much to say about how God deals with our sin. He deals with its corruption and depravity through regeneration and sanctification, and finally through glorification; and he deals with its guilt through justification, whereby we are declared perfectly righteous before God. It’s fitting that, as we wrap up our study of sin, we come to the season of Advent—the first Advent, when Jesus came as a man to deal with our sin—where these truths come together beautifully in the incarnation. One of my favorite Christmas verses: “She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). God sent his Son “in the likeness of sinful flesh…in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us” (Romans 8:3–4). “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Our “great God and Savior” gave himself “to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession” (Titus 2:11–14). And Hebrews 2:5–18 unpacks it most fully: he came to “taste death for everyone,” to “bring many sons to glory,” to “destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil,” and to be “a merciful and faithful high priest…to make propitiation for the sins of the people”—and because he was tempted and suffered, he is able to help those who are tempted.
Let’s close in prayer. Father, thank you for what your Word teaches about our sinful condition—horrible and desperate as it is, we need to know it so that we’ll flee to Christ, find forgiveness and help, be clothed in his righteousness, be justified on the basis of his work, and be united with him. Thank you that you sent your only Son, that he willingly became a man, left the glories of heaven, and suffered tremendously—not for his own sin but for ours—to bring us to God and reconcile us. Thank you that you have dealt with our sin decisively, that you are continuing to deal with it, and that you will be faithful to complete the work when you glorify us and make us perfect. Bless us now as we gather and worship you and hear your Word. In Jesus’ name, amen.