What Is Original Sin? | Imputation of Adam's Guilt (Deep Dive)

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Hi guys, welcome to the church split. My name is Will and you know what we do here: We have Escape Church's Echo chamber, learn to think biblically, and of course challenge the status quo, which always needs challenging.

But first, don't forget to like and subscribe to the church split. You can support us for as low as $1 a month on Patreon, and if you'd like, you can order my new book, "Crushing the Great Serpent: Did God Punish Jesus?" which is a direct biblical and philosophical challenge to penal substitutionary atonement. You can get that down on Amazon in the link below.

So anyway, guys, with that said, we are going to definitely try to live up to that mission statement today, try to get you to think biblically, challenge the status quo that needs challenging, and help you escape that Echo chamber.

Now, when you think of the doctrine of original sin, because that's what we're talking about today, we are exposing that doctrine today. When we're talking about original sin, a lot of people kind of get confused on this particular topic because it’s kind of become even a colloquialism that people use about like the first wrong in any relationship or in a business situation, like, "Oh, the original sin of this was somebody screwed up this account."

Now, also when people think of original sin, they think of the first sin—the original sin, if you will—of Adam and Eve just sinning in the garden. However, the doctrine of original sin does entail actually very specific things, and a lot of people don't know that, or if they do know that, they just kind of buy it wholesale and not really have taken the time to examine the origin of it or why.

So, we're going to do that today. I did make a video on this in the past. However, I do think that it is good now to kind of unpack this again because I've gotten better at discussing it. I know more nuances and I know more things to clarify than I did before; all around, I just think I'm better at this than I used to be.

So, we’re going to just go ahead and do that right here, right now. This is going to be a longer video because I did a poll on this channel and people said for these doctrinal breakdowns they prefer longer videos instead of multi-part series. That's what we're going to do, and hopefully, this works. So, if you do like the longer form, please engage with it: like, subscribe, comment, all the things; let me know that this actually is something worth your time and mine.

So, all right, what is the doctrine of original sin then?

Okay, well, the doctrine of original sin is this: as a result of Adam's sin with Eve in Eden, God cursed all mankind to be born stained by this sin, possessing a corrupted nature and sharing in Adam's guilt.

Now some people disagree and say, "Well, God didn't curse mankind; it's just that they are born that way," and this is what we call the doctrine of imputation. The doctrine of imputation teaches—and William Lane Craig will affirm this in his book on the atonement—that imputation is basically counting somebody to have done a thing that they did not do.

So, even though mankind did not sin in the Garden of Eden (like I wasn't there when Adam and Eve sinned), that guilt is imputed to me even though I have not yet done that sin, or I've not sinned in the same way as Adam. This is also how they explain penal substitutionary atonement, because they say that Christ lived a holy and perfect life so that his righteousness can be imputed unto us, even though we did not do it. So, it is counted unto us as such even though we have not accomplished it.

That's kind of where that comes from. But the idea here isn’t just that you inherit a sinful nature to a degree, like an inclination towards sin or conflicting desires or something like that. This is actually the idea that not only do you inherit that—but you are actually guilty from the moment you’re conceived. You are held guilty as a sinner even if you might not know what you've done; you are held guilty.

This is the idea that you sin because you're a sinner. You're not a sinner because you sin. Which, if you take that logic in any other situation besides theology, we would say it's bogus already because I can't, you know, be a basketball player until I have a basketball, right?

So, bottom line is it doesn’t necessarily hold up like, I can’t be a runner without first running, right? But they’re saying right here, “No, no, this is your nature; this is what you have." So, I think that automatically causes some problems.

So much so that in the Westminster Confession, Chapter 6, by the way, I do have my notes in front of me; I'm just going to go through these, so you see me looking down at my computer a few times, but just so everyone knows that that's what's going on.

But Westminster Confession, Chapter 6 says this: "Our first parents, being seduced by the subtlety and temptation of Satan, sinned in eating their forbidden fruit. This, their fruit, God was pleased, according to his own wise and holy counsel, to permit, having purposed to order it to his own Glory."

So right here, God was pleased to not just permit it, but he purposed the fall. He purposed their sin for his own Glory. Of course, this is because I think in Westminster Chapter 3 it says that God predestined all things that come to pass. Essentially, he ordained everything that comes to pass, which means all sin, all righteousness, all those things are pre-ordained before the foundations of the world.

So, it's why it pleased him to do this, to permit it. Almost like he allowed it. But that's not really what the doctrine is getting at here; it's not that he allowed it; it's that he ordained it before it even came to pass. Remember that?

Just because in a confession—this is funny—when you do talk to Calvinists or anyone who'll be like, "No, that's not the case," and here it says in our own confession. It says that, but neither does this make God the author of evil.

But just making a statement after you made a fully loaded statement doesn't suddenly make that statement true. Those statements do conflict with each other. If you make two logically contradictory statements, I don't get to refer to my logical contradiction—my statement of logical contradiction—as my way out. No, the point is that there’s an exposing here of the problem.

If God was pleased—he was pleased by his holy counsel to permit it—but by permitting it, he means that he purposed it for his own glory, and that he predestined everything that comes to pass, including sin, then it means that he’s the author of evil. You don't get to just say he’s not because you know that puts you in a bad corner.

This is why when we're talking about escaping echo chambers, we need to talk about our presuppositions we bring to the table. If you bring certain presuppositions to the table, you have to understand that there is a logical end to where those go. So, you can't just say something is a thing while also holding contradictory positions here and somehow get away with it—not without people calling you out as inconsistent, as they rightfully should.

But anyway, keep going here. Chapter 6 says, "By this sin they fell from their original righteousness and communion with God, and so became dead in sin." Okay, that's fine, and wholly defiled in all parts and faculties of soul and body. So they didn't just become dead in sin and alienated from God; we are talking about a full-on corruption of death and destruction of their very natures because it says that it wholly defiled in all parts the faculties of soul and body.

This is what original sin teaches. This is what total depravity teaches. It's why there’s this weird discussion sometimes you might have with a Calvinist. They’ll say, "Well, we believe in total depravity, not utter depravity," because hyper-Calvinists will say that.

Well, we believe in utter depravity, which is that mankind is fully 100% evil, has no good desires unless God, you know, irresistibly saves them. That is honestly kind of a distinction without difference because even right here it says that they’re defiled in all ways, right? So keep that in mind.

Then it says, "They, being the root of all mankind, the guilt of this sin was imputed, and the same death in sin, corrupted nature conveyed to all their posterity, descending from them by ordinary generation."

So from here on out through normal reproductive means, mankind is now imputed and considered guilty for the sins of Adam and Eve, which, by the way, how you can hold someone guilty for a crime they did not commit, I do not know. In any other system of justice, that would be considered wildly unjust, but apparently when it comes to the doctrine of original sin, many of us close our eyes and say, "But our God can do it because he's God," which doesn't really make sense.

You don't get—God should not be given special exceptions for logical contradiction. In fact, he should be the one we go to for logical consistency. Anyhow, then it goes on to say, "From this original corruption, whereby we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good."

So opposite to all good—that's a pretty strong statement. That means mankind has no good in them. They’re opposite to all good; they are fully and completely wicked. This is what I call "worm theology." Worm theology is that mankind is the world's worst thing on the planet, and that’s it; you’re just horrible.

Anyway, and wholly inclined to all evil do proceed all actual transgressions. And then there's a lot of reformed preachers and pastors who have said similar things, echoed this in similar smaller ways. Voddie Baucham very famously said that when a baby cries, he called him a "viper in a diaper" and posited that the only reason God made babies so small was so that they wouldn't kill you.

And the reason God made them so cute was so you won't kill them—that's what Voddie said. And of course, this is such a cynical view of babies because he was saying that when a baby cries, it’s trying to manipulate you to pick it up, which is such a cynical view of an innocent baby's crying.

Children cannot—little babies, newborns—they cannot communicate; they don’t understand language. They have lots of desires and they have zero strength or coordination or linguistic capabilities to communicate those things. They only have pretty much two things: a want and a cry—that's what they have available.

And they might cry in a very aggressive manner, but that doesn't mean by nature that that is evil. For example, my daughter—she was born two months early. My daughter Elana, I should say, because I have another daughter on the way.

But when she was born, she had gas and she would scream at the top of her lungs. It took us forever to realize that is because she had gas and it was hurting her. Well, what else is a newborn supposed to do when they’re in incredible pain?

Well, according to Voddie Baucham, she's just manipulating me, right? These are the sorts of things that—that is actually the result. In fact, you can find horrific stories of moms who have drowned their children for whatever reason, calling them wicked and evil and that they were just these mean, evil things.

In fact, when I was a teaching elder at my former church, the interim pastor was a Calvinist—very clearly—and when we were discussing this very issue, he got very upset with me when I started quoting these people who teach the same doctrine he believed in and the logical results, which is that people killed their children calling them wicked. And he did not appreciate that.

But I'm like, but we have to realize our doctrines, what we teach from the pulpit to our people, do have consequences, right? So if you're teaching that people are fully evil, completely opposite of all good, corrupted from body and soul, then they are evil, wicked, and deserve no mercy—that is the logical outcome.

So anyway, this is why more and more problems come up with original sin, but we're going to discuss that as we go. John MacArthur said, “At no point is a man's depravity more manifest than in the procreative act. By what he creates, whatever comes from the loins of man is wicked.”

Now, if that seems to go against Jesus's teachings about the innocence of little babes and the commandment to Noah and Adam and Eve to go and subdue the earth, to fill it reproductively, then I don't know what does. This is outrageously unbiblical. It is not what the Bible teaches about mankind nor the procreative act.

In fact, the procreative act—the act of sex in marriage—is actually called undefiled, so it's actually a good thing. This is actually Paul—he says, “Hey, by the way, if you have sexual desires, you should marry, lest Satan tempt you,” right?

Augustine of Hippo said this: “The only innocent feature in babies is the weakness of their frames; the minds of infants are far from innocent.” Now think about holding a newborn baby and thinking that wickedly about them. You tell me what’s actually wicked. Is it the fact that the baby’s wicked or is it that you actually are the wicked one who is selfish and looks terribly on these image bearers of God that we are called to protect and raise and train them in the way that they should go?

Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. Nope, according to Augustine and everyone else, the only thing innocent about them is the weakness of their frames. They are evil, fully opposite of all good, guilty of Adam's crime, and deserving of punishment and damnation.

Now, if that makes you uncomfortable, I'm glad it does because it should. It is not a good teaching, nor is it something that the Bible teaches.

So, let's talk about this. When did this doctrine start? Well, I left a little link in the description below; you can go check that out on JSTOR. You can go down the rabbit hole, but scholarship is universal on this: Augustine of Hippo is the one who started the doctrine of imputation of guilt of mankind being born fully wicked, and the guilt of Adam being imputed unto us and everyone considered guilty.

Now, he's not the first teacher to teach that flesh is wickedness; the Manichaeans and the Gnostics did that before. But oddly enough, Augustine was a Manichaean Gnostic before he was a Christian, and actually if you read early Augustine versus later Augustine, you will find that later Augustine is very different from early Augustine.

I love early Augustine. You read early Augustine, he's fantastic. If you read later Augustine, you're going to find a lot more influence from Manichaeanism. The reason why he actually became so obsessed with this sort of thing—predestination, and determinism, and grace, blessing the hearts, and all that stuff, like gracing you unto belief—those sorts of things were actually because those are Manichaean kind of beliefs.

He brought them in because it was actually the problem of evil he really kept wrestling with. Essentially, what he did is he fell back on his Manichaean teachings, which is that that which is basically fleshly is evil and wicked, it is in rebellion against God, it needs a secret knowledge—the Gnosis—or what we would call how he rebranded it, grace, to enable you unto belief, and that's it, right?

And then you're predestined unto belief. That's where—so Augustine is the one who started that, which is, by the way, in the 400s AD. So, you are talking 400 years after Jesus Christ, and there's a few others who actually pushed against the Gnostic teachings that Augustine later on brought in but rebranded with new terms.

This kind of goes into the whole, like, we sometimes say, you know, same words, different dictionaries. This was like same dictionary, different words. Okay? It was the reverse.

So, the truth is about the doctrine of original sin: this idea of imputed guilt—it was actually not an orthodox original teaching in the church, but actually came into the church through Augustine.

So, Athanasius, though, said this regarding such teachings: “It is not for our actions only that we must give account before the judge, but also for every idle word this evil man is responsible for.” He said, “Is not innate in them, actually, as some false teachers say?”

So, if you're saying that the sinfulness is innate to mankind, part of their nature, he actually calls you a false teacher. But they are themselves the authors of their own sin. Irenaeus then goes on to say, “But this man is Adam, if the truth be told, the first formed man. We, however, are all from him and we are from him; we have inherited his title which is of sin.”

So, in other words, we inherit his mortality and corruption to one degree or other. So in other words, we—he consequences as opposed to guilt. Indeed, through the first Adam, we offended God by not observing his command. Through the second Adam, however, we are reconciled and are made obedient unto death.

Now, you might go, "See, right there he’s teaching it." But listen to this: “But we were debtors to none other except to him whose commandment we transgressed at the beginning.”

Ignatius then goes on to say, “I do not mean to say that there are two different human natures... but all humanity is made the same; sometimes belonging to God, and sometimes to the devil. If anyone is truly spiritual, they are a person of God, but if they are irreligious and not spiritual, then they are a person of the devil made such by nature, not made such—not by nature—but by their own choice.”

So, he's going directly against this idea of saying that no one belongs to Satan by their own nature. I should probably clarify—when he’s talking about sin and all that, he's actually just talking about when he talks about sin, he's a lot of times referring to death—like the death nature. This is actually part of the problem when you read the early church. You need to understand what they’re meaning by these terms. A lot of times they clarify.

Oddly enough, Augustine—in early Augustine—used similar terminology. Like, when he said punishment or penalty, he really meant death, not like wrath of God. But a lot of people kind of get this mixed up.

So, anyway, Justin Martyr says this: “In the beginning, he made the human race with the power of thought and of choosing the truth and doing right.”

So notice that mankind—that's what he created mankind in the beginning, so that all men are without excuse before God, for they have been born rational and contemplative. For if it be fated that this man good and this other evil, so in other words, predestination, neither is the former meritorious nor the latter to be blamed.

So again, he's saying that free will has to exist. And again, unless the human race has the power of avoiding evil and choosing good by free choice, they are not accountable for their actions, nor if they were evil would they be worthy of punishment, not being evil of themselves, but being able to be nothing else than what they were made.

So, Augustine defined original sin also as what we call concupiscence. Concupiscence is the base and sexual desire, and sin was really a sexually transmitted condition. He actually talks about how sin is spread through the semen of the man.

It's really weird.

So basically, this has led many people to this day to believe that sin is passed on through the male genes, and this is—I don’t know how he gets there. It’s weird. But anyway, as such, all men are born with their will, mind, and body corrupt, and thus deserving of God's wrath.

Augustine said this about concupiscence: “Concupiscence, therefore, as the law of sin which remains in the members of this body of death, is born with infants.” And he goes on to say, “In baptized infants, it is deprived of guilt, is left for the struggle of life, but pursues with no condemnation such as die before the struggle.”

So, in other words, if they're baptized, they're good; unbaptized infants are implicated as guilty and as children of wrath, even if they die in infancy, drawing into condemnation.

So, according to Augustine, unbaptized babies go to hell, and they are guilty as charged. Now this, of course, goes into infant damnation, which we'll talk a little bit more about here in a little bit.

But this is why a few months ago, if anyone was paying attention to the theology world at all online, "Bal-Gate" exploded, which is when Warren McGrew and a guy named—I think Jordan—were on Soteriology 101 with Dr. Leighton Flowers discussing this very issue of infant damnation.

Warren made the comparison that those who believe in infant damnation—which is total depravity and Augustinian original sin—should believe that if you're being consistent because it says they're evil and they're wicked and all these things, or—and deserving of death—basically, if you keep worshiping God, even though he might predestine your baby to be damned, you're basically kind of like a Baal worshiper, which is that you're willing to sacrifice your babies for the blessings of God.

And that blew up all over the internet. People had a lot of fits and a lot of spicy opinions and all those things. However, I do agree with Warren to one degree or another that, yeah, this actually does cause some serious problems.

And you know, if God's willing to damn your baby, but you know, not save them, and yet you are okay with still worshiping him and reaping His blessings, it’s not much different than sacrificing your own baby to get blessings, right?

So anyway, there’s not a huge difference there, all right?

Now, Augustinian original sin—this idea that guilt moves on and everything is wholly wicked—greatly influenced the Reformation. So if you are in a Protestant Church, especially a Calvinist one, you are going to be more familiar with this probably, but it influenced what we call total depravity.

Oddly enough, a lot of people believe in what's called total depravity. A lot of Christians say, "I believe in total depravity," but then they don't believe about any of the things that it entails, which is why I say regularly, Protestants need to stop saying that they believe in total depravity unless they're Calvinists because it becomes a loaded term. What do you mean by total depravity?

In my old church, I actually told them that they need to change this because they don't believe all the things that total depravity actually entails.

But anyway, let's talk about total depravity. So the evolution of Augustine's teachings was made popular through the reformers like Luther and Calvin. This is pretty undisputed.

So, it states that all mankind is born spiritually dead, possessing both Adam's guilt and his sin nature, and that man's intellect, will, body, and spirit are so corrupted that they cannot seek God or cry out for his help unless they are first given grace to be saved and regenerated, given the gift of faith with a new heart and a new mind.

So total depravity believes that because of the guilt and sinfulness that’s imputed unto mankind, the corruption soul is whole and so opposite of good that mankind cannot even cry out to God or choose God because remember, to call upon God and to put your faith and trust in God is a good thing.

So to have your will in alignment with God's will means that you yourself are doing something good. Well, you can't do that with Augustinian original sin nor on the doctrine of total depravity from Calvinism and the Reformation. Both these things mean that you cannot choose God; he has to choose you.

That’s where the idea of individual predestination comes in. We're not talking about corporate predestination; we're not talking about the general idea of predestination, how that works. We're talking about individual predestination, which means God selects one to be saved and not the other.

Okay, so Martin Luther said this: "But original sin enters into us; we do not commit it." So you don't commit the sin; it just enters into you, and you're considered to be guilty by association, guilty by being born. Your crime was being born.

He goes on to say: "But we suffer it. We are sinners because we are the sons of a sinner. A sinner cannot beget only a sinner who is like him."

John Calvin says, "Our nature is not utterly devoid of goodness," so that’s a little bit better than what we saw earlier, but again, if you read Calvin, he's very confused because he goes back and forth depending on the situation. But "so prolific in all kinds of evil that it can never be idle; that everything which is in man, from the intellect to the will, from the soul even to the flesh is defiled and pervaded by this concupiscence, that the whole man is in himself nothing else than this."

So again, that—okay, if he's nothing else than this, he’s nothing else with this evilness, and concupiscence, as he described, is being defiled and pervaded, then it goes against this point that they're saying that they're not entirely devoid of goodness because if you're saying that “the whole man is in himself nothing else than this,” while at the same time he says, “but it’s not overly devoid of goodness,” but you just said, but then you went on to say that “it's not—we are nothing more than evil, wicked, and defiled.”

So Calvin's confused.

The Canons of Dort, the Belgic Confession, the Augsburg Confession, all state this very doctrine. Even in the 1644 London Baptist Confession said this: "All since the fall are conceived in sin and brought forth in iniquity, and so by nature, children of wrath and servants of sin, subjects of death and all other calamities due to sin in this world and forever being considered in the state of nature without relation to Christ. All mankind being thus fallen and become altogether dead in sins and trespasses, and subject to the eternal wrath of the great God by transgression."

And then the 1689 Baptist Confession says this: "Our first parents, by the sin, fell from the original righteousness and communion with God, and we are in them whereby death came upon all and all becoming dead in sin and wholly defiled in all the faculties and parts of the soul and body."

Oddly enough, I was okay with them all becoming dead in sin. I was okay with that, meaning like that we're going to die, but then he goes on anyway.

So let me ask you this: What does that all sound like? Does that sound biblical to you? I mean, you might be able to be a little selective on a few texts taken in a hyper-literal way that we're going to get to here shortly, but it doesn't seem to encompass actually the whole narrative.

In fact, when I was teaching this very topic at my previous church, I just read with far fewer caveats. I was like, "All right, here’s what this doctrine entails," and I read all those different things.

A woman at the church, when I asked the question, "What does this make you think? What do you think of this? How does that make you feel?" She raised her hand and she looked crushed and she said, "It makes me feel like I have no hope. It makes me feel so horrible that I have zero hope whatsoever. I feel dismay."

Well, if that's the case, then that’s not very encouraging, is it? Now people can be like, "What’s the point? You’re a sinner; it’s not supposed to be encouraging." Okay, yeah, but you’re missing the forest for the trees there, my friend.

If you are showing someone that there’s no hope, then the point isn't that you're supposed to be this so holy wicked. The whole point is that you need a savior, right? And to the teaching of original sin and total depravity, you can't have a savior unless he has chosen you. If he has not chosen you, then you cannot have a savior. That's the truth of it.

Anyway, this one—the problems of original sin—and the first problem of original sin is Jesus. The Sunday School answer. But Jesus is the offspring of Adam and Eve as well, right?

You can include Genesis 3:15—that's the original prophecy of the Messianic promise, right? The serpent will bruise his heel, but he will crush the head. Jesus is the offspring of Adam and Eve.

Matthew 1:1-17 and Luke 3:23-38 go out of their way to show that Jesus is from the genealogy all the way back to Adam. So that is something that they are actually trying to do—descendants of David, Abraham, Mary, Adam—they all mention these things.

But not only does Jesus derive from Adam, but then the Messiah is described as sinless, like in Isaiah 53:9, "And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth."

1 Peter 1:18-19—one of the apostles, right?—"Knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Jesus like that of a lamb without blemish or spot."

So he's perfect again. 1 Peter 2:22: "He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth." We can go on; 2 Corinthians 5:21, Hebrews 4:15, 1 John 3:5, John 19:4—we could keep going. Many people know this: he’s described as being sinless.

So if we read all these verses, we can come out with two points: that Jesus never sinned and that Jesus had no sin in him. So he wasn't born with it, so it wasn’t in him, and he never committed it either. If the doctrine of original sin is true, and he became mankind, that every child of Adam is supposed to have sin imputed unto them, full stop.

Oh, so how do we get around this?

Well, the Catholics came up with this thing called the Immaculate Conception, and now a lot of people are like, "Oh, Immaculate Conception! Immaculate Conception!" That means that Jesus was born without sin, right? No, it means that Mary was born without sin, and that's why he had to be born of a virgin.

Because remember what I said about what Augustine taught—that sin passed through the semen of a male? That’s why. Because you needed a man to actually impregnate the woman, and so if that happens, sin and guilt is passed on because that's where sin goes through—is the semen.

Well, therefore, she had to be giving birth to Jesus as a virgin, where no man gave a corrupted seminal discharge, so to speak.

So now she’s—he is born of a virgin; she is the Immaculate Conception, where she is born without sin. By the way, she’s born without sin. God then miraculously makes her pregnant with Jesus and gives birth—she gives birth to Jesus, and that’s how Jesus was able to dodge the bullet.

Of course, this raises the question of, "If God can make Mary just born without sin and guilt, can’t he just do that to Jesus?" I feel like we had just jumped four extra steps to get there, but whatever.

This was Mary was born sinless, is this idea. This is where you get the idea of the sinless Mary—that she didn't corrupt Jesus.

This became an official doctrine of the Catholic church in 1854, which is way later, by the way. So those are things to consider.

Now, as we go on, we could—fun fact for you—the idea of the sinlessness of Mary, many people don’t accept that now, but this is where it came from, is that Immaculate Conception.

So what do we do? What do we know?

All right, so here’s the issue: the issue with this is not only does the Bible not say that she was born sinless, nor does Scripture mention it. The idea that sin passes on through the man's semen, all these different weird metaphysical ideas don't exist in Scripture.

Okay, they first thought—that’s just, it’s an argument from silence; it’s purely philosophical musings is all this is.

In Hebrews 2:14-18, though, there is a really important passage that we have to unpack. It says, “Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death—that is, the devil—and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation—to make mercy see—or to make atonement or cleansing for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.”

Hello, this is going to go against all sorts of people's theology for a minute, but we can't get around what the text actually says. It says he was like us in every respect, which means he felt temptations too, which means he had to have our very natures. Whatever nature we had, he partook of the same things, and he was like us in every respect.

So remember, Augustine claimed that original sin corrupts flesh, soul, will, and intellect. Well, if that's the case, and he is like us in every—Jesus is like us in every respect—then it means that Jesus should have a corruption of flesh, soul, will, and intellect.

Well, that goes against what we talked about before about the sinlessness of Adam—that there’s none found in him, and nor did he ever commit it. So that, holy—goes against the doctrine of the Incarnation.

In addition, we could just say something like he is like us in every way and he was just able to withstand those temptations because he was God in the flesh. Despite the sin's temptations upon his flesh, he died though—he died though, and there was no death penalty for him, for he had not sinned, and that made him the perfect sacrifice because he was perfect and therefore undeserving of death.

But he partook of our natures—everything like us—which he experienced temptations because it said right there, “For because he himself has suffered when tempted.” Jesus was tempted. In order to be tempted, you have to be able to sin.

Now that doesn’t mean that his divine nature didn’t hold him accountable, but it means that he had the same flesh that we have, the same temptations. Guys, Jesus was a baby; he went through puberty; he grew up as a grown man; he went through all the things that we've gone through.

And that’s why, because he was tempted, we can lean on him when we're tempted because he overcame it, we can overcome it. That’s kind of the point here.

So, if he is like us in every respect, then original sin can’t be true because it means that he wouldn’t be like us at all, right? If he somehow wasn’t corrupted in all the ways that original sin teaches, then it means he was really not like us at all; he didn’t partake in the same things at all.

So those are parts of the things to unpack here.

Also, let’s look at Genesis. Genesis 2:15-17 says that the Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and to keep it.

By the way, I do want to do a Genesis series on here one of these days—like just go through the entire book—because there’s so much cool stuff in these very various passages, but I don’t have time to unpack it all.

Anyway, he says that he gave it to them to keep it, to work it. The Lord God commanded the man saying: "You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die."

Now, a lot of people think that, “Oh, does this mean that they just, like, die on the spot? Does this mean they die spiritually like what total depravity teaches—that they are fully and wholly corrupted and evil and wicked? Or does this death mean like you’ll surely die as then you’ll eventually die, or that you’ll die as in alienation or separation, right? In the same sense of “You’re dead to me,” right? That doesn't mean you’re actually dead; it just means that you’re alienated.

So, well we’re going to get into that. Genesis 3 goes on to say this—now remember, this is the original sin; this is the event of the original sin, not the doctrine—this is the event.

So in this event, we should get very key bits of information that need to be fed to us on what happened exactly here. So right here we see that God says to them, “Do not eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.” Genesis 3.

Now they do it; here we go.

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say that you shall not eat of the tree in the garden?”

And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’”

But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die, for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

Right there, key—knowing good and evil.

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was there with her and he ate.

Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.

And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?”

And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, and I hid myself.”

Of course, God goes on to say, "Who told you that you were naked?" And then he blames Eve for the sin.

But then God, if you read verse 14, it says, "The Lord God said to the serpent, ‘Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you will go and dust you shall eat all the days of your life.’”

Now, this is actually quite fascinating because this is going to go into my point later in Romans 5. But dust here—it says that mankind was made from the dust of the earth. Well, it says, "Dust you shall eat all the days of your life."

Many people think this is a zoology lesson; it’s not. It’s telling us a spiritual reality. Satan—the serpent—will get to devour mankind forever because of death. Death has now entered creation.

But he also says, "A curse is all livestock because of you." Now we have violence and livestock; we have violence amongst wildlife.

But in addition to that, the snake in particular is a symbol typically of death and destruction and decay. So this is where the idea of the enmity between the woman and wildlife comes in because she's protecting the child while the husband's gone out working in the fields; now she's vulnerable.

Okay? And that is why the snake is cursed, because he can sneak into people's homes, kill babies—there's all sorts of crazy things there.

But he goes, “I will put—” and right there, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”

Again, all the idea of what the snake does. Now, this is also the Protoevangelium; this is the first prophecy of Jesus Christ. However, it's also telling us the nature of reality, which is what snakes do with women and people and how horrifying—a lot horrified—Indiana Jones, right? Indiana Jones is scared of snakes.

So, it all makes sense.

Anyway, to the woman he said, "I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire will be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you."

And to Adam he said, "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, you shall not eat of it; cursed is the ground because of you. In pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the plants of the field."

What’s actually kind of fascinating here is how the curses actually reflect the natures of the situation. Like, mankind was born from the ground; well, now the ground he works is going to be very painful for him and difficult for him.

The other thing is that she was taken out of the man; now everything that comes out of her children will be more painful.

We see that their vocations now, the duties that they originally had, have now been multiplied and are to become more painful because sin brings pain into our daily lives.

"By the sweat of your face you shall eat of it until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust and to dust you shall return."

Boom—there you have it.

So, he then drives them out; it says he separates them from the Tree of Life, lest they live forever, which is really fascinating.

And when you get into that, Ironically, I believe the reason why we were separated from the tree of life is so that we wouldn’t live forever because it was a great mercy on God, lest we live in a painful and corrupted state forever, which is actually quite fascinating because a lot of people look at this as a great judgment upon mankind because of how evil, wicked, and fully corrupt they were.

But that's not what we see here. He says we're sending them out, lest they live forever.

So, what do we see here? What do you think of original sin so far? Do you like it?

Feel like we're—now let's really unpack what Genesis is saying. What do we see here?

There’s a tree of knowledge of good and evil. The tree itself is not evil; it’s the knowledge of good and evil. The evil was not listening to God, and a lot of people wondered why it's there.

Well, the simple reason I’ll give now is because no real relationship is worth anything if there’s not a free choice in it, which is why total depravity has to be wrong—because there’s no point in a relationship that is forced upon you against your will.

Even as you were able to reprogram somebody to have a new will, it doesn’t necessarily—that would still be wrong, right? If I gave my wife a love potion to fall in love with me, well, that makes me immoral because I gave her something that made her change her will from the outside as an external force.

But the tree—so there has to be this ability to choose, right?

But it’s also—what does it give them? Does it give them just the knowledge of evil? No, it gives them the knowledge of good and evil.

Their eyes are opened. They went from a state of pure innocence to a state of realization and consciousness and understanding good and evil.

But here’s the thing: once you have knowledge of something, you can desire something, right? If you have no knowledge of something, you'll never desire that thing.

You would never desire French fries if you never knew they existed, right? You would never desire cheesecake if you didn't know it existed.

But now that you know it and now that I’ve said it, you’re probably wanting some right now.

So anyway, we see there is knowledge of good and evil. What is cursed? It actually says Satan or the serpent and the ground is cursed. Mankind is not cursed here; it just says that they will surely have these things multiplied to them, that they will suffer the consequences of this sin because the tyrant of sin and corruption have now entered creation.

Satan, the heavenly being, is now running amok. And we can get into that at a later time to discuss. Like Heiser's view, I think the Divine Council worldview helps us a lot here.

And also understanding that sin is just a disobedience of like particular laws, so to speak as much as it is a corruption of everything it touches, including a violation of laws.

But more so than just that then—so what do we see? We curse Satan and the ground; desire is contrary between men and women.

It says, "She’ll desire those things; her desire will be for her husband," or you'll see two different translations: "It’ll be for her husband" or contrary to her husband." What many people are—the Hebrew is weird there—but essentially say meaning that she will want his position; she will want to usurp his position all the time, and he will rule over her.

So in other words, we see that men will rule over and oppress women. So this is not a good thing there, but because of the nature of now the corruption of sin, but she's also going to always be vying for that.

And if that doesn’t describe what you see in reality between feminism and crazy parts of Islam and all and things that have happened in the past, I don’t know what does.

So anyway, and then the other thing is they don’t immediately die here, right? We see them actually cast out of the garden, which would go into alienation. They will surely die; they were sent away from the Tree of Life, lest they live forever.

So now what we see—what is death here? It is not a spiritual death; it is an alienation from God and mortality; that they are now mortal.

So let me give you a proposal of what I think Scripture teaches. I don’t mean that when I say dual natures; I don’t want to say things that disagree with the early church because they actually disagreed with people who talked about evil that is natural to them or nature in evil, but by their—they are authors of their own sin.

So when I say "evil nature" or "sinful nature," I’m referring to this thing that people cannot say no to. That's exactly what the early church was responding to because they're responding to Gnostics.

When I say "evil nature," I’m referring or "sinful nature," I’m referring to an inclination towards sin due to the weakness of the flesh.

So, same word, different dictionary, okay?

So here’s my proposal: It isn’t sin that we are born with, but a corrupted moral fortitude due to the weakness of the flesh based on competing desires from the knowledge of good and evil.

Now it's a little more pedantic that way, but it is a little bit more accurate too.

We now desire to do both good and evil, right? That’s why you see unbelievers do that which is good and really want to do that which is good and also why we do that which is evil and bad, even though we might be—you know, good people or believers, I should say.

We all sin not because we are already sinners at birth, but we are born with two natures that eventually will sin. We are born with knowledge of good and evil, and that knowledge leads to desire, and we will talk about that because that’s exactly what the Bible says, actually.

Remember, total depravity says also that we are incapable of desiring any good, wanting to know God.

So again, is that something we see especially with children? Because this causes problems where when Jesus says, "To be like the little children," have faith like a child—well, why? Why is that?

It's because children will more easily believe. But if total depravity is true, no, they really won't because it’s whether or not God has given them the grace in order to enable them to believe, okay?

So these are things where, again, original sin and total depravity go hand in hand, but also they cause all sorts of problems with the text of like—why does the Bible speak so positively of children and constantly refers to their innocence as something that we should emulate?

Anyway, so the word for desire in Hebrew is what we call "yeter," which is the idea—the Hebrew idea for God-given drives, ambitions, and appetite. A form of framing and purpose, and we now know and we can now do the same and give over to our appetites into sin and gluttony or into goodness and righteousness because we have this "yeter."

We have this desire. God gave Adam and Eve a sexual drive and the command to be fruitful and multiply, and that is the other thing. Augustine was obsessed with sex because he was actually quite the man-ho in his Manichaean and Gnostic days.

He looked at a lot of things through that lens. I heard one friend of mine say that he was obsessed with his own junk, so to speak, and that’s very true.

But he—and he looked at the sexual desires—he actually said that lust is of course wicked, but sexual desire in general cannot rid itself of lust. Even lust in marriage is corrupted.

So even if you desire sexually your own spouse, according to Augustine, that is evidence of sin because it’s lustful.

Of course, what the apostle says in 1 Corinthians 7 gets thrown out the window. Of course, the idea of the marriage bed being undefiled gets thrown out the window because once you have, as I mentioned, a pre-loaded presupposition that you bring to the table, you're going to miss a lot of things that are said.

God gave Adam and Eve a sexual drive and the command to be fruitful and multiply. We also see this command corrupted in an evil way for sexual immorality, right?

We see sexual immorality happen, but there are also good things for that to bring that about, which is of course the conception of children and the family and those things.

But this means the way of life is perpetuated and how families grow. So if Augustine is correct, then that means all the evil that takes place right now in marriage through sex is corrupted.

That means there’s no way to have children without sin, which is really messed up because that’s exactly—not—that’s exactly the opposite of what God is telling us.

God is saying it’s a good thing.

Anyway, so here’s the thing. In Hebrew, you have the "yeter tov," which is to kind of like define it literally, “Desire for good.” And then "yeter hara," which is to put it literally, “Desire for evil.”

But this is basically a good drive and a bad drive—good and evil. These are things actually Judaism has taught and actually a lot of the early church taught, which is the fact that mankind has conflicting desires, okay?

As men and women, we must constantly attempt to rule over ourselves and keep our ambitions good and pure, or we fall into sin.

So we have to keep our “yeter hara” in check, our evil desire in check, and lean into the “yeter tov,” which is the good desire.

Now some people say, “That’s not biblical; you can't rule over your sin.” Actually, Genesis 4:6-7—the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.”

It says it right there.

Isaiah 26:3: “You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you because he trusts in you.”

If you read Psalms like I just read, Psalms like 105 to 109 today, and there's so many parts where it's like keeping your commandments and talking about how like this is a thing we do and we can do.

We have a potential for both good and evil is the point.

Genesis 8:21—and then the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, and the Lord said in his heart, “I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done.”

Now here’s what’s funny: people point to this passage right there. “Right there you know mankind’s heart is evil from his youth.” That means that they’re born that way.

Well, no, you have to look at the Hebrew, for one. Secondly, "youth" doesn’t mean born, because "youth" is "na'ar" in the Hebrew, which means—the same word is used in 1 Samuel 17:33 to describe the age of David.

This is the same word used to describe people who are of marital age in Proverbs 5:18, Isaiah 54:6, and Malachi 2:14.

Also, it's the age of parents in Psalm 127:4 and is also the age of prostitutes in Ezekiel 23:3. These are not newborns; these are young people.

By the time they are of proper age, their hearts are turned toward evil, is the idea, which goes into why like Jews will—you know, they have their Bar Mitzvah—because that is when a boy turns 13. Now he’s a son of the commandments, because that is when he is able to fully understand them.

And that is when they say is roughly around the age of accountability when you're old enough when you're a man to understand that which is good and evil. Otherwise, you’re just going on innocent conflicting desires.

But a lot of times, children have desires and they do bad things without realizing it’s a bad thing. They’re innocent, right?

And by the way, I say this all the time: innocence is not the same as righteousness.

So like, “Oh, so you’re saying the babies are righteous?” Then how do they become unrighteous? You know? No, no, innocence is different than righteousness and wickedness.

In order to be righteous, you have to understand what wickedness is and do that which is right in spite of it or in the face of it, right? You have to be righteous against evil.

However, being innocent means that you don't really understand either one yet; you're learning, okay?

So in the New Testament, the idea—so, okay, what we have here, is, by the way, intention is "yeter" or desire is "yeter." That’s the intention.

But in the New Testament, the Greek word is "epithumia," which is a longing, a desire, and an appetite. Now this is the word that Augustine calls concupiscence. This is the word translated in the Latin Vulgate, which Augustine read as ‘concupiscence.’ Concupiscence is desire.

Now here’s the unfortunate part: in Latin, concupiscence always had a negative and even sexual connotation to it. It’s kind of like how certain words in our vernacular will always have a negative connotation.

Think of the word "manipulate." Now, I can manipulate situations for the better or for the worst, but generally speaking, when we hear manipulate, we think negative, right? Same thing with concupiscent.

Concupiscence, generally speaking, means negativity. So when he’s reading the Latin Vulgate and he’s seeing concupiscence in Scripture being translated from yeter or epithumia, he’s thinking negative.

But here’s the problem: Luke 22:15—Jesus says, “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.”

And that word “desired” there actually is the word "epithumia."

So if Jesus—and which would have been translated as concupiscence if that’s the case—is not Augustine completely wrong in his presupposition that concupiscence has to be bad? Of course, he is.

And it's because, by the way, Augustine didn’t read Hebrew or Greek. He read Latin.

Now it doesn’t mean he’s the world’s dumbest person on the planet; he made honest mistakes. I still say that there are things that Augustine wrote that I like. In fact, recently on this very channel, I quoted—I read a lot of a letter from Augustine and cheered him on.

But it doesn’t mean that he’s also correct in all his assumptions, and it doesn’t mean that he doesn’t make some dumb mistakes later on. Bottom line is he made a mistake.

So anyhow, so if I desire in the Bible—so if desire in the Bible can be both good and bad because we see that Jesus desired good desires.

That helps us understand where Augustine really did go wrong. He couldn’t read Greek and Hebrew; he relied on the Latin. Latin translated yeter and epithumia as concupiscence.

Concupiscence has only a negative connotation, which is a sinful, lesser desire in Latin.

So all the God-given desires and appetites and longings took on a sinister meaning through the perspective of Augustine.

His conclusion, as stated earlier, was that original sin as concupiscence—a base on sexual desire—and sin was really a sexually transmitted condition.

As such, all men are born with their whole mind and body fully and totally corrupt, thus deserving God’s wrath.

Okay, so now let's talk about the infant damnation and abortion problem with this. Here’s the logic.

So infant damnation, which is what Augustine taught, right, for unbaptized babies, is the belief that God sends infants and young children to Hell. Here’s the logic: man is created with Adam's sin and guilt; without faith in Christ’s regeneration and baptism, all go to hell.

Man’s life begins at conception; man possesses the sinful nature and guilt the moment he exists. Therefore, aborted babies and miscarried babies go to hell.

Now, there are theologians even to this day who believe in this doctrine of infant damnation. I think it is important; I think it is anti-God, and I actually think it’s Antichrist.

And I know many Calvinist friends would agree with me on that.

I think it is wholly and totally against the character of God. However, this is part of that which entailed original sin and total depravity. It does so.

Just do yourselves a favor—just reject it and just come up with a new system because you don’t need total depravity or original sin to conclude that mankind are sinners.

So just do yourselves a favor; trade in your theology for a better one.

I always believed in Augustinian original sin growing up; as an early pastor, I did as well until over time I studied it and realized that it's biblically indefensible, really it is.

So anyway, everyone deserves hell from this point of view. Everyone deserves hell, including unborn children. We are all born in Adam's guilt, deserving of hell.

So the early church, what they tried to do is they tried to reconcile the understanding that babies were innocent, yet keep original sin, which is difficult to do. Their conclusion though was that there was a limbo, a place in between for infants, and that was concluded by the Catholic church in the 1300s.

And then, in October 2003, the pope commissioned a study into the idea of limbo for infants, and they concluded that original sin is still a thing because they can’t go against the doctrines of the church; otherwise, they think that that brings the whole system crashing down.

And that damnation is deserved by babies, though they did teach that, but it is possible that children are saved by a special work of God.

Anyway, how many have held a newborn infant? Does that look like a being deserving of damnation? Is that something that would require the saving work of Jesus Christ to spare them the fires of hell?

Do you think that that baby—that God would be just if he threw the baby into hell? What do you think?

I don’t think so.

But here's what's funny: John Calvin should believe that infants who die could be part of the elect and saved by God in some other way but not done maybe for all.

So, he believed in a limited atonement for babies. Martin Luther believed that all infants—he said all infants who die are saved through the merit of faith possessed by their parents.

So you wonder where that idea came from—there you have it.

What if an unbeliever loses a child and comes to faith later in life though? So that doesn’t really help them out, right Luther?

So anyhow, it’s a special pleading. The Bible says nothing of these sorts of—that sort of thing, actually, quite hints the opposite.

And this is why you get infant baptism, by the way, being such an important thing to so many, because the Catholic belief is that baptism washes away original sin and gives you grace.

And that grace is what awakens, basically, your soul, allows you to live in fellowship with God—all those things, because they believe in Augustinian original sin.

But then Thomas Aquinas basically came along and a few other theologians kind of reworked some stuff to make it to where they aren’t Calvinists; they basically spared mankind’s free will in their doctrines.

But anyway, the Catholic belief is that they had to wash away original sin through baptism to allow the possibility for regeneration.

Essentially, if we think that guilty deserve God's wrath though and that we are born guilty and more sinful creatures damned to hell are created every single time a new baby is conceived, then the real question comes down to this: how could a Christian really truly be against abortion or for bringing new life into the world at all?

Because if you're a Christian and you believe that children in—these babies are fully and totally wicked and they are guilty of even—and deserving of damnation—eternal damnation in hell—then does that not mean that like an abortion is really not that bad?

Because I mean, God’s going to throw them in hell, so again, the standard that God holds himself to versus them is two totally different things.

It means that the baby is fully wicked, and if you’re so fully wicked, then you deserve death. That’s the belief.

Like that death is the punishment for sins.

Now, I don’t believe all those things, but that's what they believe. So therefore, the baby deserves the punishment, right? What about those who bring new life into this world and who fulfill the mandate to be fruitful and multiply?

According to that, this would be sinful—or at least you'd be bringing in the most wicked thing ever, as John MacArthur said. “This is the greatest manifestation of mankind’s wickedness is that which comes from his loins.”

So what about babies?

Of course, with the Catholic church, you know what happens if a baby dies before it gets baptized? You know, then they have all sorts of stuff that they unpack there.

The problem is it's all from a bad presupposition. Mankind cannot inherit Adam's guilt. That’s ridiculous.

So let’s unpack this. Genesis 6:5 said that the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart were only evil continually.

Who is this speaking of?

Well, many people will say this is all babies and everything, but it’s actually adults who are marred because if you read Genesis 6:1-2, you get the idea of the sons of God and the Nephilim and all that.

We’ll get into Genesis 6 probably in a whole other video; I covered a lot of it with Derek recently on the channel defending Dr. Michael Heiser.

But bottom line is, it's referring to adults in context; it's referring to adults.

Matthew 24:37-39 says, “For as in the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For in those days before the flood, there was eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage until the day when Noah entered the Ark, and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away. So will be the coming of the Son of Man.”

This is addressing the overall condition of adults, not a universal description of all people.

So we have to keep this within its context.

And then it goes on to say that even actually in Genesis 6, it goes out to say that Noah was actually a righteous man; that he was blameless.

Well, according to Augustine, original sin, there’s no way he could be blameless, and there’s no way he could be righteous.

He is totally, fully, and wholly wicked, opposite of all good.

Right?

Second Peter 2:6: “If by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes, he condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly.”

So why would God make an example of ungodliness if all were ungodly? Doesn’t really make sense.

It doesn’t really say that they were created wicked here either. The point is that the Bible speaks like unrighteousness and righteousness are very able things within mankind's ability and that righteousness is found through faith, which is, by the way, found in God.

And that faith works itself out in doing righteousness, but you're able to do it.

It says it's not far from God—it's not far from each of us. Acts 17 says that those who do not know him will seek their way and find their way toward him, and in the end, God is not that far from each of us.

That’s the summary.

Anyway, nowhere does it say that God curses men to be spiritually dead or corrupted either.

Again, God says to Cain that sin is crouching at the door, but you must rule over it. And in Moses, it says in Genesis 30:1, “For this is the commandment that I command you to this day that it is not too hard for you; neither is it afar off.”

Moses says it’s achievable.

So, but if total depravity and original sin is true, then it's not achievable, and Moses is lying, and apparently so are many other people in the Bible.

And again, we have 10 generations between Adam and Noah, and not a single reference in the Bible says that people are born in an evil, wicked way, guilty from the ground up.

And what we see is in Genesis 6:11-12, when it talks about Noah, it says in verse 13, for example, “And God said to Noah, ‘I’ve determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth.’”

What did it say? That their flesh had corrupted their way—not that they were born that way. It sounds like it's a way that they have achieved over time, right?

They have corrupted things so badly.

Well, that doesn’t really make sense if you were born wholly opposite of good since the very beginning.

Cain and Abel were both born that wicked—but then why is it speaking like there’s a progression here as opposed to being born that way?

They were not created corrupt, but they became corrupt. The earth was filled with violence through them—that they caused the violence, not that they were born that way. They created this and could have done otherwise, which is why God brought judgment.

Then a distinction between Noah and them, right? Noah was being—Noah as a being of flesh was also righteous.

So again, this kind of flies in the face of that Psalm 58:3 says, "The wicked are estranged from the womb; they go astray from birth, speaking lies."

However, I want us to notice that also Psalm 58 says the wicked are estranged from the womb—they go astray from birth, speaking lies. So people go, "Right there!" from the womb.

However, you can’t take that literally for your systematic theology because what does it say right at the very beginning? “Do you indeed decree what is right, you gods? Do you judge the children of man uprightly? No, in your hearts, you devise wrongs; you hand your hand deals out violence on the earth.”

The wicked are estranged from the womb. That's where it goes on here, but they have venom like the venom of a serpent, like the death adder that stops its ear so that it does not hear the voice of charmers or the cunning enchanter.

So does that mean we—they also literally have venom under their teeth?

Oh God, break the teeth in their mouths; tear the fangs of the young lions, O Lord. Let them vanish.

Like, what do they have teeth like? Do they have teeth and fangs like lions?

No, you could read all this; it’s all picturesque.

The idea of from the womb means like for a very long time; it's a hyperbole thing that’s actually used in Hebrew regularly.

This, again, is pretty uncontested in academia. Anyone who knows Hebrew apparently knows that when you say from the womb, it doesn’t always mean that—that it means that you're born that way; it’s a hyperbole statement.

Anyway, plus we could go on to say right here where it says in verse 10 through 11, “The righteous will rejoice when he sees vengeance; he will bathe his feet in the blood of the wicked. Mankind says, ‘Truly there is a reward for the righteous, and there is a God who judges on earth.’”

The righteous and the wicked are different; we aren’t all wicked. He makes a distinction in this very passage.

Later on, there’s the wicked, and then there’s the righteous. So again, it’s a hyperbolic statement comparing two different ways, and one of them is serving the false gods.

Okay?

Psalm 22:9-10 says, “Yet here—yet you are he who took me from the womb; you made me trust you at my mother’s breast. On you as I cast out from my birth, and from my mother’s womb you have been my God.”

So in one section we’re saying that this is from the womb type statement, and baby statements are meaning literally they are born wicked, but then when it comes to this, we must take it hyperbolically.

Well, right here—no, they’re both being hyperbolic.

Like it's not like you made God made him to trust him on his mother’s breasts when he didn't really understand such things, right?

That's not literal; he's saying for a long time, since I was young, and you know, you’ve been there for me forever.

That’s what he’s saying, just like people sometimes have their hearts against God at very young ages get with hyperbole. Get with the poetry of Psalms.

Stop trying to take things literally.

Especially in Psalms, there’s nothing that drives me more crazy than people who take poetic books and like force a really wooden, literal lens over them because that's not their point.

You're missing the forest for the trees when you do that in these poetic books.

Psalm 71:5-6 similarly also—the Prodigal Son—it says that he leaves his father, sins, and then returns.

It doesn’t say that he started off in exile, okay?

So mankind probably then is born in a state of innocence. When we repent, we return to God—not come to God for the very first time ever.

It’s a returning to what we’re supposed to be as image bearers of him, as his children, as his offspring.

Ezekiel 18:20 is a silver bullet for Augustinian original sin because Augustinian original sin says that mankind is held guilty for the deeds of our father Adam.

However, Ezekiel 18:20 gives an exact breakdown of God's view of justice, which is, "The soul who sins shall die; the son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked will be upon himself."

Original sin cannot survive that verse; it just can't.

The only time I’ve ever seen anyone try to do this is when they try to take Ezekiel 18 and make it about the justice in the new creation, which is absolutely ridiculous because it means God's justice changes depending on what’s going on in creation at the time.

Like, “Well, the perfect creation will have a more perfect form of justice, but now it’s okay.”

That’s not how this works!

A soul who sins shall die—so the soul who sins—not the soul who’s born sinful; the soul who chooses sin shall die, okay?

The son shall not receive punishment for the sins of the father and vice versa. So we can't inherit, and nor be held guilty for Adam's sin because that goes against God’s formulation of justice, which makes sense because we all believe that I shouldn’t be punished for your crimes, and your crimes, I shouldn’t be punished for, okay?

Everyone should be punished for their own crimes.

So there, again, a distinction between the righteous and the wicked. The righteous man can sin and repent, but the perfect forgiveness is from Jesus’ sacrifice.

This directly contradicts the idea that our first father sins we suffer for.

Okay, we do not suffer under that. Now, we might suffer the consequences, but that’s not God punishing us outright.

Then what a lot of times people bring up is Romans 3:23—it says for all have sinned. Are babies part of all? Then they have sinned.

But here’s the problem: read Romans 3 in context; he's talking about Jew and Gentile relationships, and he's talking to Jews and Gentiles and saying, “Hey, by the way, Jews, you’re not special. All have sinned—Jew and Gentile alike."

He’s talking about people groups here; he's not talking about birth states. Again, that—you have to qualify what’s being talked about in that passage, okay?

Because if you look at the outline of Romans, Romans 1: God gives the unrighteous up to their wickedness. Romans 2: Jews rely on the law to save them.

Romans 3: Even though you are Jews, you have still sinned, and the only way to become fully righteous in God's eyes is through the faith in Jesus Christ.

And Romans 4: Abraham’s faith was counted unto him as righteousness.

See, this isn’t a new concept, guys; that’s what Paul’s doing.

Conceived him. It's talking about his mother's sin. Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity; his mother committed iniquity in order to bring him forth. So behold, I was brought forth in iniquity in this less than ideal situation, and in sin my mother conceived me. In other words, it's his mother's sin.

This is he writes a Psalm right after sin with Bathsheba. Of course, he's drawing a parallelism to his own conception. Now, a lot of people wonder, does that mean Jesse sinned? How does that work? Well, I don't have time to get into that right now; that deserves its own video. But actually, in Jewish tradition, there’s a whole thing about this. Because David's family also didn't like him, they treated him like he was a bastard child. There’s a whole backstory where his mother, Jesse, got paranoid about his pure bloodline and started trying to get with the handmaidens because he thought it was corrupted with his wife.

Then the wife tricked him because the handmaiden loved his wife and didn't want to have his child. So they did a little switcheroo situation, and she got pregnant by Jesse. David's mother gets impregnated by Jesse. But so she gets pregnant out of nowhere, and Jesse doesn't know that he was tricked. He just sees this pregnant woman, and therefore they thought maybe she cheated on him. There are all sorts of stories about it you could read on, but either way, he's comparing this to his own mother, or what was perceived by his mother. Whether any details of that legend are true or not, I don't know. But he’s clearly talking about the sin of his mother and, grammatically speaking, that’s what it means.

I've been told this by many Hebrew readers, by the way. Also, you can look it up in lexicons and all sorts of stuff; it is very clear. It says here that David started out condemned, but that the act of conception was sinful.

So again, what his mother did: Matthew 18 says, "And truly, truly I say to you, unless you turn and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of God." But if being a child—if total depravity is true and original sin is like the corrupt sinful child—that's what you're telling me to do? The child is corrupt just as I am. Why am I supposed to be like a child?

Or is this proof? Maybe this is actually a better proof text of the innocence of children. Okay, so when Jesus saw it—it's also in Matthew 10:14—when Jesus saw it, he was indignant and said to them, "Let the children come to me; do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God." Children belong in the kingdom of God, and they are valuable to him. We are to be like them because they’re innocent and easy to believe, easy to trust.

Anyway, why is this bad? If we were already sinners, why is it bad to withhold them? It’s better to be drowned in the sea—also says—in the worst possible way than to cause a child to sin. Why? Because you have brought awareness to the child on what sin is, and you cause them to do it. Better for you to be drowned, Jesus says, because they have not yet committed sin.

We’ll talk about how sin is actually counted here in a minute. So how can we reconcile this with original sin? Well, we can, right? None of this we can. But let’s see what the Bible says about this, and I’ll wrap this up. We can do individual videos breaking down different passages or concepts more, depending on what your comments are underneath.

Deuteronomy 1:39 says, "And as for your little ones who you said would become prey, and your children who today have no knowledge of good or evil, they shall go in there." It talks about the promised land, "and to them I will give it, and they shall possess it."

What does he say? "Your children who do not know good from evil." In other words, they are innocent; they don't understand this. They can enter the promised land because they did not disobey me, because they don't know good from evil.

So the Bible makes clear children are innocent. That’s why we're supposed to be like them. We are supposed to be avoiding that which is evil; we're supposed to become like them. God says they belong in the kingdom of God. To cause one to sin because they have not sinned yet, because they don't know good from evil, is better that a millstone be wrapped around your neck and you be cast into the sea.

Now, moving forward, James actually explains the precise view of what this is like. He actually explains exactly how this all manifests itself. He says, "So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him, it is sin." So if you know knowledge of good and evil—if you know what is good and evil and you know what is right and you do not do it, then it's sin.

So the knowledge part has to be dealt with here. Read Romans: "Those who have no knowledge of the law die without the law." If you are unfamiliar with the law, then why would you be held to the law? Hebrews 2:14 talks about those who do not know the law but are a law unto themselves. The law that’s written on their hearts is how they obey and respond to that.

God's secrets of men will be judged by Jesus Christ. In other words, he is going to judge them based on how they respond to the revelation that they have of God. So if God—they only have creation and they do their best with the conscience that is written on their heart to obey this God, who they might not even know the name of,—it says that the secrets of men will be judged by Jesus Christ because their consciences either accuse them or excuse them.

So whoever knows knowledge of good and evil—the right thing to do—and does not do it, to him it is sin. James 1:13-15 says, "Let no one say that he is tempted; I am being tempted by God, for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire."

Then desire—there’s your yeter, by the way—then desire, when it is conceived, gives birth to sin. Sin, when it is fully grown, brings forth death. So what does James say right here? Not that you're born with it; not that it is a nature to you, but that instead, it happens when you are tempted with evil and that this happens when you are lured and enticed by your desires.

When your desire is conceived and you do the thing, it brings forth sin—corruption, right? And when sin is fully realized, it brings forth death. That’s what the Bible says. That’s how you become a sinner. That’s why we are able to be held accountable, because how can I be held damned if I didn't have a choice to begin with?

That’s what Justin Martyr said. Right at the beginning of this video, you cannot be held accountable if you cannot do otherwise; that makes you unjust. I can't hold my child, who is in a wheelchair, accountable for not running to me when I called her name. She cannot run.

So anyway, that all this is to say that the doctrine of original sin is woefully false teaching. It is false teaching, and it actually damages people's view of mankind and teaches a false perspective on how sinfulness comes about and how accountability even works. I could go on and on, but bottom line is that it is actually the seedbed from which many, many errors have taken place—many errors that many people don't even know or understand fully.

By the way, fun fact for you: the Eastern Orthodox Church, who broke away from the Catholic Church, they don't hold to original sin. They believe in what they call ancestral sin. If you understand what ancestral sin means, it means that we inherit the consequences of our forefathers.

Now that’s obvious, right? If your parents moved to a third-world country and then gave birth to you later, well, you inherited the consequences of them going to a third-world country. If my dad was thousands in debt, lived in a hut in the backwoods somewhere, and was an alcoholic, I would be born and inherit some consequences from that.

We inherit the consequences of our forefathers; that is without a doubt a thing, and we can see that in our country, we can see that in our personal lives. But we are not held guilty for the sins of our forefathers because that violates God's justice, which is laid out perfectly in Ezekiel 18:20. So original sin is a false teaching; that’s all there is to it, and the Bible doesn’t teach it.

There’s no getting around it, and the Bible actually explains perfectly when that happens. So when does one become a sinner? There are people who are like, "Well, what about the age of accountability?" The age of accountability is simply this: when you know to do right but do not do it, then it is sin.

If you do not know better, God will judge you based on the revelation that you do know. And then Jesus Christ will still be your judge, and his death, burial, and resurrection will still be what saves you because he is now the judge. If you read Hebrews and know how he’s ascended onto the right hand of the Father and all that good stuff, that’s in his control and his power.

However, the doctrine of original sin, I have seen, is very damaging. The reason why I'm so passionate about total depravity and original sin, by the way, is because I lived in like reformed Central in Western Michigan. I saw many young people leave the faith because of this doctrine.

They looked at God as unjust; they looked at God as a vindictive bully. They looked at all these things because they’re like, "This is also contradictory to the word of God." They thought the Bible was contradictory, which is just not the case, but you have to understand the context in which it was written, the audience, and all those things in order to come away understanding some of this.

So with all that said, the doctrine of original sin doesn't hold up biblically. Now, I might do more videos going forward where I break down different things more thoroughly, but I felt like this was a good place to at least bring the bulk of the argument to. That way, you guys have a starting point; you can send this to friends who are struggling with it, friends who are researching it. You can look into it, and then you at least have maybe a place as a starting ground.

Or if nothing else, hopefully, I kept you company while you were driving or doing a project in your house or something. But anyway, guys, again my name is Will. If you want a greater breakdown on how this all can come out in the wash, get my book "Crushing the Great Serpent: Did God Punish Jesus?" You can get it on Amazon; link in the description below.

Please support me on Patreon, guys; it really does help my family. My wife and I are expecting our second child, and I want her to be able to stay home from work. In order to do that, I need to be able to actually make enough money to do so. So Patreon does help, and so does just sharing these videos, liking them, and commenting. Let me know if you like this longer form video, or would you like this in 30-40 minute breakdowns and multi-part series?

Keep letting me know that; I'm here to serve you all. If nothing else, I hope you learned something today: that the doctrine of original sin is unbiblical and should be rejected by Christians. Bottom line is that there are more orthodox and consistent ways to view this. Alright, so anyway guys, hope this has been helpful. Take care and God bless.