The idea that man possesses a sinful nature does not come from the Bible, but from Augustine’s and then Calvin’s misinterpretation of the Scriptures. Of course, the obvious question to ask is, “If man has a sinful nature, how did he get it?” God created the universe, the natural world, and mankind. When He completed His work, He determined that “indeed it was very good” (Gen. 1:31). It would appear, then, that, if we have a sinful nature, God must have created us with it.
“Oh, no,” cries the Calvinist. “We obtained our sinful nature in the fall. Once we sinned, our natures became perverted and forever altered so that we can not do one good thing or think one good thought unless God has arbitrarily chosen us to be one of the elect and the Holy Spirit cleanses us.” The Calvinist has not helped his case with this explanation; he has only attempted to obfuscate the truth. This theology fails at every point.
Did God know that the first pair would sin? Yes. He had planned redemption from the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:3-5), which demonstrates that He knew mankind would sin. But what would be the point of creating people with a free will that would last only so long as it took Adam and Eve to sin? From that point on, every individual would come into the world tainted. Imagine! No child has ever been born on this earth who was not born depraved (according to this doctrine). Babies may look cute, but inside is a depraved individual. Who can believe it?
Adam and Eve had a choice with respect to sin–whether to obey or disobey. But because of their disobedience all children enter the world as depraved creatures, which means they are lost. Surely, no one would argue that depraved souls can enter into heaven. So, when a child dies, it must be eternally lost. What an evil, comfortless doctrine to suffering parents! Gratefully, it is not true. We know that it is not true because no verse of Scripture teaches that children are born depraved. [There is a mistranslated verse that Calvinists have put into the Scriptures; we will examine that travesty later.] Furthermore, there is no means of salvation prescribed for children in the Old or New Testaments. If they were lost, they would need salvation, but salvation is a decision freely made, and babies do not have the capacity to make such decisions.
God is the one to blame for the eternal destruction of babies because He knew they would be born depraved and He is the only one who can save them. In fact, He is the only one who can save adults, too. No one can be saved; no one has the power to respond to God positively–unless God enables him to do so through the Holy Spirit. Who, then, is responsible for man’s damnation? God. A person comes into the world depraved, incapable of coming to God, which is not his fault. He could not help inheriting that sinful nature from Adam. Since he has no power to respond favorably to God, he must remain lost. According to Calvinism, then, a person enters the world as depraved and damned, and he will remain that way unless God has already chosen him as one of the elect. How then can the grace of God be said to have ever shown on this individual?
The Scriptures say that God’s grace, which brings salvation, has appeared to all men (Titus 2:12). Calvinism says that it has not. Babies are born blind–and remain that way. They never see the light of His grace–unless He wills it. On the day of judgment this individual will appear before God to give account of himself (2 Cor. 5:10), but how can he? He was spiritually blind at birth and was never granted an opportunity to leave the darkness. God never allowed it. It is not difficult to understand why this doctrine creates atheists. Anyone with even a moderate sense of justice knows that such a system is unfair.
Instead of this sorry doctrine, the Scriptures teach that God gives all people the right to choose salvation or damnation. No one can blame God for being lost; it is an individual decision. God’s grace was extended to that soul; he preferred the darkness (John 3:19-20).
Calvinist theology is not based on the book of Genesis. Not one word is said about a sinful nature. There were consequences of the the decision to sin that affect all mankind, but inheriting a sinful nature is not one of them. God pronounces penalties on all of the parties involved in the first sin, which are listed below.
1. The serpent henceforth was made to go on his belly (Gen. 3:14).
2. Satan received the promise of ultimate defeat at some time in the future by the seed of woman (Gen. 3:15).
3. The woman would bring forth children with pain (Gen. 3:16).
4. The woman’s desire would be to her husband, and he would rule over her (Gen. 3:16).
5. The ground became cursed for man’s sake (Gen. 3:17).
6. Man’s labor would now involve sweat, as the result of hard work (Gen. 3:18).
7. The physical body would return to dust, signifying the introduction of physical death (Gen. 3:19).
God also forced them out of their home in the garden of Eden (Gen. 3:24). All of these punishments remain in effect. But what was said about a sinful nature? Not one word! In Genesis 4, children are born. Where is God’s pronouncement that, because of the first couple’s sin, their children would be born depraved? There is none! Would not this be the logical time to explain it (if it were the case)? Hereditary total depravity is not taught here because it is a false doctrine.
With hereditary total depravity man has no choices. If the Holy Spirit has not brought him to life, he is incapable of choosing righteousness. The fact is, however, that, while certain earthly conditions changed as a result of sin, man retained his ability to choose. Abel chose to obey God and bring Him the type of offering He commanded (one that involved the shedding of innocent blood). Cain brought a bloodless sacrifice (one that suited him). God rejected it. Cain became angry, and God spoke to him. According to Calvinist theology, God should have spoken thus:
“Why are you angry? Being angry will not change a thing. You and your brother were both born depraved. I have sent the Holy Spirit to enable him to react properly to my commands. You, on the other hand, I have left in your depraved state. You cannot do any better; you cannot think any better than you currently do. You cannot offer any better worship than you have, and you will never serve me acceptably. You’re a loser, and no matter what you do, you will be lost. Why don’t you just accept these things and live with the fate I have decreed for you?
Instead, God told Cain: “Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it” (Gen. 4:7-8).
First of all, Cain had the ability to do well, which proves he did not enter the world totally depraved and incapable of doing even one good thing. God told him that he could do well.
Second, he had the choice either to do well or not to do well. This demonstrates that, when sin entered the world, it did not so affect mankind as to take away his free will. This plea that God makes with Cain would be in vain, if Calvinism were true, and God would simply be toying with him, mocking him. It would be like asking a five-year-old to leap ten feet in the air or to run a mile in one minute and then upbraiding him for failure to comply. Nothing in the context indicates that this conversation is anything other than what appears to be–a straightforward plea for Cain to choose to do good.
It is axiomatic to nearly anyone (but a Calvinist) that one can only be held accountable for doing or not doing what he has the ability to do. For that reason we retain our free will. For that reason God invites us to obey. “Come” (Matt. 11:28) can be responded to in either a positive or negative way. Why invite those who have no ability to respond? “And let him who thirsts come” (Rev. 22:17). The choice is ours. We do not have a sinful nature that is keeping us from obeying the gospel. If we are lost, we can only blame ourselves. God has given us all the opportunity for salvation.
Most reliable versions translate the Greek word sarx as “flesh.” The King James, for example, renders sarx as “flesh” 148 out of 151 times; the other three times they use “carnal” or “carnally” (Rom. 8:6-7; Heb. 9:10). The New International Version, by way of contrast, uses “flesh” only 33 times. They use “body” 25 times and “sinful nature” 25 times, along with a host of other choices (see “A Review of the NIV” on our web site as well as in A Handbook on Translation).
Sinful nature appears because the bulk of the NIV translators are Calvinists. The obvious question to ask (as mentioned earlier) is: “If we have a sinful nature, from whom did we get it?” The NIV translators have put the doctrine of Calvinism into the Bible by mistranslating the word sarx.
Notice that they did not want to characterize Jesus Christ as having a “sinful nature.” In Ephesians 2:3 all of us are portrayed as having gratified “the cravings of our sinful nature,” but in Ephesians 2:15 Jesus “abolished in his flesh the law.” In the former verse they contented themselves by translating sarx as “sinful nature,” but just a few verses later, it suddenly became “flesh.” Well, of course context can allow for a difference in meaning, but Jesus Christ came in the sarx. If we have a sinful nature, He had a sinful nature! If it be argued that the Holy Spirit was His Father, it is also true that Mary, a human being, was His mother. He is both the Son of God and the son of man–fully Divine and fully human. And if He was fully human, and possessed all the characteristics that we do, then, if the rest of us have one, He too was born with a sinful nature. Either the Bible or Calvinism is wrong.
The NIV translators made a disastrous revision of Psalm 51:5. Compare each of the following lines.
Beginning:
KJV: Behold, I was shapen in iniquity,
NKJ: Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,
ASV: Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,
NAS: Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,
NIV: Surely, I have been a sinner from birth,
NLT: For I was born a sinner–
End:
KJV: and in sin did my mother conceive me.
NKJ: and in sin my mother conceived me.
ASV: and in sin did my mother conceive me.
NAS: and in sin my mother conceived me.
NIV: sinful from the time my mother conceived me.
NLT: yes, from the moment my mother conceived me.
Is it not interesting that the NIV agrees more with a paraphrase than a standard translation (NLT stands for the New Living Translation)? Whatever I was brought forth in iniquity means (an ellipsis for “brought forth into a world of iniquity,” for example), it is not the equivalent of I was born a sinner. Such is an interpretation, which just “happens” to fit Calvinistic theology. Notice that the phrase, in iniquity, has been changed to a predicate nominative, sinner. It is not at all unusual for the NIV to change one part of speech into another.
The second part of the verse is even more deceitfully handled, shifting the focus of attention away from the mother to David himself. She is the one who conceived him in sin, but in sin has been replaced by an adjective sinful and applied to David rather than to the mother. No longer has she conceived in sin; he has been sinful from the moment of conception. We can only speculate on what sins the unborn child is contemplating. [At least this theology confirms that an unborn child is a living being since he is already capable of sin, but if he is then aborted, would not his soul be lost?]
All that Calvinists need is to take a mistranslated verse out of its context to say, “See the Bible says that we are sinners at birth.” Thanks to the NIV, the NLT, and a few other paraphrases, they have put their theology right into the Scriptures. What is disturbing is that some brethren still insist on using the NIV, which means that it is entirely possible that a Calvinist would attend services and think that the Lord’s church endorses the NIV and its Calvinistic doctrine. No one who uses the NIV points out its errors every time he speaks. Such a visitor will feel justified in using his corrupt “translation.”
If we do not sin because we are “born that way,” why do we? The answer is a simple one: we make bad choices, just as Adam and Eve did. Calvinists cannot blame their sins on a sinful nature. They were made in the image of God, yet they sinned. If a sinful nature was not a prerequisite for them to sin, why is it required to explain our sins? The fact is that both they and we sin because God gave us a free will. Many times we choose to be obedient; sometimes we rebel. We need redemption because of the times we have chosen to disobey.
Even those who choose sin as a way of life can repent and change; no one is a helpless puppet with the strings being manipulated by Satan. Cain could have done better; he chose evil instead. Thinking that we possess a sinful nature removes the burden of decision-making from us and makes God responsible. Any improvement will have to be His doing, also, since we are so “helpless.” Man is not helpless–just a little lame in his thinking. God wants us to succeed, but He will not make the decision for us. Just as he left it up to Cain, so he leaves it up to each of us. We sin because it is alluring. The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life are powerful motivations, but we can overcome them. We can choose to do well.