‘For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive’ (1 Cor. 15:22).
Imagine for a moment two giants standing astride the world. Each giant has a thick belt around his waist. From both belts hang billions of hooks. And on each hook is a human being – billions of men and women, girls and boys, from the unborn to the elderly. But the giants are very different. One giant is falling to destruction, and the people hanging from his belt are going with him. The other giant is standing strong for eternal life, and with him all those who hang from his belt.
That illustration comes from the Puritan pastor, Thomas Goodwin. He notes that in 1 Corinthians 15:47, Paul speaks as if there were only two men who had ever lived. There is Adam, ‘the first man’, and Jesus Christ, ‘the second man’. Both are what Goodwin calls ‘a common public person’, meaning that neither of them stands alone. They have been appointed by God as representative heads of a whole people. Adam is the representative head of all people born by natural descent from Adam and Eve. Christ is the representative head of God’s elect, those born again by water and the Spirit, ‘the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven’ (Heb.12:23). Because they are public persons, what Adam and Christ do affects all those they represent. All who are ‘in Adam’ die; but all who are ‘in Christ’ shall be made alive (1 Cor. 15:22).
In my previous article for en, I thought about what it means for humans to be creatures. This time, we’re going to consider what it means for humans to be sinners. In particular, I’m going to focus on the Bible’s teaching on original sin.
Conceived in Sin
Confusingly, ‘original sin’ does not refer to Adam’s first sin in the Garden. Instead, it’s called ‘original’ because it derives from our relationship to Adam, our human origin (1 Cor. 15:21-22; Rom. 5:12-21).
It is a mistake to read Adam and Eve’s temptation in the Garden as if it were merely a description of what all temptation is like. Genesis 3 is not a description of what happens every time anyone is tempted. It is not a story about how Adam was tempted just like we are. What is most significant about this chapter is quite how unlike us Adam and Eve were. Unlike us, at the start of Genesis 3, Adam and Eve were good (Gen. 1:31). Unlike us, they were not sinful or guilty. Unlike us, they were in the Garden of Eden. Unlike us, they lived in unhindered fellowship with God. And unlike everyone else, including Eve, Adam was there as the first human being, and so the representative head of all people, including Eve who was created from his side (Gen. 2:5-7, 21-25).
Genesis 3 was not just one sin among many. It was unique – the catastrophic moment when humanity broke God’s law, and sin and death entered our lives. When Adam sinned, he sinned as our covenant head and representative, ‘and so death spread to all people because all sinned’ (Rom. 5:12).
This has profound effects for us and our sin. We do not sin because we imitate Adam and Eve. That is an ancient heresy known as Pelagianism. We sin because we sinned in Adam. Adam sinned because he freely turned from God in a unique first moment of sin. We sin because we are born sinners.
Guilty and corrupt
Adam’s sin results in two devastating consequences. As his children, we are conceived and born guilty and corrupt. We can see the guilt, and God’s punishment of death, quite clearly in the following chapters of Genesis. God had warned Adam that on the day he ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he would die (Gen. 2:17). But when Adam ate, he was not the only one punished. All his descendants were also punished.
Think about where Cain and Abel were born. Before they had done anything good or bad, they were born ‘east of Eden’, separated from the tree of life (Gen. 3:24-4:2). And then the son whose sacrifice was acceptable to God died (Gen. 4:8). From then on, the sombre drumbeat of death sounds through the early chapters of Genesis (5:5, 8, 11, 14, 17, 20, 27, 31; 7:21-23). And even after Noah is rescued from death in the Ark, he too dies (9:28-29). Adam’s guilt is reckoned to his descendants, and guilt brings punishment. In Adam, all die.
Along with guilt, we also experience the comprehensive corruption of our nature. We see this when we are told that just as God had created humans in His image, so Adam now ‘fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth’ (Gen. 5:3). But what happens when a corrupt and sinful man fathers children in his likeness? What kind of image do we bear when we bear the ‘image of the man of dust’ (1 Cor. 15:49)? Think what would happen if you polluted a river at its source, by dumping thousands of tons of toxic waste. That waste would not only affect the source of the river. The toxins would flood and poison everything downstream. So it was with Adam and with us.
Once again, this disturbing truth is clear in the early chapters of Genesis. Before the Flood, God evaluated our hearts like this: ‘The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually’ (Gen. 6:5). This is not a minor problem! The Holy Spirit is emphatic here about our hearts: every intention, only evil, continually. The Flood wipes away an entire generation of sinners (Gen. 6-7). But it does not solve the problem of our hearts. After the Flood, the LORD evaluates us again: ‘… the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth’ (Gen. 8:21).
In Adam, our minds were darkened, foolish and ignorant (Eph. 4:18-19). Our wills were enslaved, so that we loved evil and hated what is good (John 8:34). Our emotions were a chaotic tangle of muddled fears and hatreds, joys and sorrows, desires and delights (Rom. 7:5; Gal. 5:17, 19-21; Col. 3:5-8; Titus 3:3). We were a corrupt and evil mess in every aspect of our being, right down to the core. And even after Christians have been born again by water and the Spirit, so that we begin to trust and love the Lord, the same indwelling sin remains and wreaks havoc within us (Rom. 7:17-18). Sin no longer rules us as it did, but it remains deep within and powerfully at work.
This is the consistent teaching of the Bible. ‘Surely there is not a righteous person on the earth who does good and never sins’ (Ecc. 7:20) ‘The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?’ (Jer. 17:9) As our Lord Jesus teaches: ‘What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts … All these evil things come from within and they defile a person’ (Mark 7:20-23). As John Stott observed, the Lord Jesus knew our hearts so well that at the very moment he acknowledged that human fathers are generous to their children, he also described us as ‘evil’ (Matt. 7:11).
This is very hard to bear. And we might be tempted to try to excuse ourselves, or to cry out against God that he has treated us unfairly. But we should not imagine ourselves as innocent bystanders who for no good reason are punished for Adam’s sin. We have never been innocent. Outside of Christ, we have always and only been sinners bound up with Adam our covenant head, sinners hanging from his belt. Although I might like to imagine an innocent Matthew Mason being unfairly judged, such a person is no more than a figment I invent to whitewash my guilt. From the moment of my conception (Ps.51:5) – indeed even prior to my conception when I existed only in the mind of God – I existed in solidarity with Adam. Therefore, at the moment of my conception I came into the world guilty, corrupt, and worthy only of damnation.
The devices and desires of our hearts
The clear teaching of the Bible, then, is that sin corrupts our whole being, right down to the core. Not just our thoughts and words and deeds, but even the first stirrings of our desires and our most instinctive impulses are poisoned by sin. This sobering truth is captured by Augustine and the Protestant Reformers in the word ‘concupiscence’. ‘Concupiscence’ comes from the Latin word for desire and can refer to good desires or bad desires. But most often, in theology and in the Bible, it refers to evil desires, or what the theologian Herman Bavinck called ‘the disordered state of all appetites’.
Augustine’s view changed and matured over the course of his life. His mature view teaches that concupiscence is the result of original sin, leads us to commit sins, and is itself sin (Against Julian, 5.3). But during the Middle Ages, theologians began to deny that concupiscence is sinful, because our desires and attractions are out of our control. They agreed that disordered desires are a result of the Fall and lead to sin. But they denied that they are themselves sin. Against this view, and following Augustine, the Protestant Reformers all agreed that concupiscence is itself sin, and so of itself deserves God’s wrath.
What this means is that every instinct or propensity or disposition, every desire or impulse or attraction within me is sin, if it is contrary to God’s law. The attractions might be in me against my will. I might be filled with shame and loathing. But they are still sin. And my shame and self-loathing are a sign that my conscience knows that they are sinful and that I am worthy of condemnation.
Sometimes tender-hearted people worry that this teaching will be overwhelming and crushing for others. And without Christ, the Biblical doctrine of concupiscence would be overwhelming and crushing. But as Christians we are not without Christ! He is our sinless Saviour. His blood cleanses from all unrighteousness. His perfect righteousness clothes us, so that even as sinners we are counted righteous in God’s sight. In Christ, we are righteous, not for our own sakes, but for His sake.
To worry about the pastoral fallout of the doctrine of concupiscence is really to betray that I haven’t grasped the riches and wonder of who Jesus is for me, and for all who trust in Him. As dark and deep as my sin is – penetrating down into the hidden crevices and recesses of my heart – the righteousness of Christ is brighter, and His cleansing blood and the renewing grace of His Spirit goes deeper.
If I have truly grasped the gospel, I will not wallow in my guilt and shame. Nor will I try to soothe myself by pretending that my inclinations and attractions are not sin, which is just to believe a lie. Instead, following the advice of Martin Luther, I will pile it all in a heap, call it all sin, and bring it in repentance and faith to the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). Understood rightly, the Protestant doctrine of concupiscence is an incredibly loving and pastoral doctrine, because it presses us ever deeper and nearer to Jesus.
The evangelical view of sin
Those who lead Anglican churches are honour bound to believe and teach this view of sin. Presbyterians and Reformed Baptists are also confessionally bound to this teaching. And I’m sure that those who lead other Free Churches won’t want to be less Biblical or less evangelical than the Anglicans!
We see the Protestant understanding of concupiscence in the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, which state that ‘concupiscence and lust hath of itself the nature of sin’ (Article IX). Lust here includes but is not limited to sexual lust. This means, for example, that evangelical Anglicans are honour bound to teach that whether or not someone acts on it, same-sex attraction is sinful and, in the words of the Article, ‘deserveth God’s wrath and damnation’. This is also true of all illicit sexual attractions. And of every instinct in us that is out of step with God’s holy law: unlawful anger (including the first stirrings of irritation), gluttony, envy, pride, apathy, despair, and much, much more.
Similarly, Cranmer’s ‘General Confession’ at Morning and Evening Prayer gets all faithful Anglicans to confess that ‘we have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts, we have offended against thy holy laws, and there is no health in us’. In fact, historic Protestant confessions of sin regularly include confession not just of actual sins of thought, word and deed that we have committed, but also that we have sinful natures. John Knox includes this in one of the confessions of sin he wrote: ‘We are miserable sinners, conceived and born in sin and iniquity, so that in us there is no goodness. For the flesh evermore rebels against the spirit…’.
If you know your Bible, you will know that this is just Biblical. Think of David’s confession of sin in Psalm 51. As he bewails his sin, he traces it right back to its root in his evil nature: ‘Surely I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me’ (v.5). We learn from Psalm 51 that acknowledging the evil of my very nature is part of what it means to ask God to ‘Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin’ (v.2). It is also part of what it means to pray ‘Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me’ (v.10).
Repenting not just of sins, but of having a sinful nature and the evil of concupiscence, is part of what Biblical repentance is. If we do not confess concupiscence as sin, we are not truly confessing our sinfulness. We are pretending to be much better than we are, and we are saying that there are vast areas of sin in our lives where we don’t need Christ’s cleansing blood and perfect righteousness.
The sobering truth is that my sin goes all the way back to the very moment of my conception, and all the way down to the very core of my life. But the wonder of God’s grace is that the cleansing blood of Christ, and the sanctifying grace of the Holy Spirit, goes just as far back, and just as deep.
You sometimes hear this understanding of sin caricatured as the ‘Puritan’ view, as if the Puritans were particularly pessimistic and pastorally insensitive. But against the errors of the late medieval church, which took sin in believers and the righteousness of Christ far too lightly, this is the uniform teaching of all Lutheran and Reformed confessions of faith. It was the consistent teaching of Protestant theologians and pastors, from the time of the Reformation and for hundreds of years. It’s fair to call it the true evangelical doctrine of sin.
However, it is a sad reality that some evangelicals today are teaching that concupiscence is not sin. Some also teach that we can only confess and turn from actual sins, so we do not need to repent of having a sinful nature. But in teaching this they are badly out of step with the theology and pastoral practice of the Reformation. They are also quite some way from the clear teaching of the Bible. By denying that I need to repent not just of my sins, but of my ongoing sinfulness, such teaching also inadvertently closes the door to God’s grace reaching all the dark and hidden recesses of my heart. It’s not just a small mistake. It strikes near the heart of a Biblical understanding of the gospel and of true repentance.
Lured and enticed
At this point, we need to be on our guard against a mistaken understanding of James 1:12-15. In these verses, James tells us that God cannot be tempted to evil, and also tempts no one else to evil. God’s holiness and purity of character means He can have nothing at all to do with sin and temptation. So where do our temptations to sin come from?
Later, James will tell us that the devil is involved (James 4:7). But the problem begins with our own passions and desires (James 1:14-15; 4:1-3). As James explains: ‘each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.’
The word ‘sin’ in James always refers to particular sinful deeds (James 1:15; 2:9; 4:17; 5:15, 16, 20). So, James is not saying that there is nothing sinful going on before sinful actions come to birth. He employs a fishing metaphor to explain our temptations: like a fish seeing a baited hook, we are dragged away by our own desires. What tempts me to evil? My own inclinations and desires. But if my desires lure and entice me towards evil, how can they be anything other than evil? If they give birth to sin, how can they be anything other than sin?
As the Italian Reformer Peter Martyr Vermigli says about this verse, only snakes give birth to snakes. As the Lord Jesus says, only evil trees produce evil fruit (Luke 6:43-45). So, if the fruit of my desires is evil, what does that tell me about my desires? As Paul tells us in Galatians, ‘The desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh’ (Gal. 5:17). If my desires are opposed to the Holy Spirit of God, they are very far from holy; in fact, they are opposed to all that is holy.
This does not exclude Satan from our temptations. But it means that when Satan tempts sinners, he simply fans into flame the evil that is already at work within us. As Calvin explains, commenting on John 13:2, ‘though men’s concupiscence [evil desire] is inflamed by Satan’s bellows, it does not cease to be a furnace in itself. It has the fire burning within itself and it greedily receives the draught of the bellows.’ A moment of sober reflection will recognise your own heart in that description. Such is the instinctive evil of our disordered inclinations that we greedily receive the draught of Satan’s bellows.
A second Adam to the fight
We have seen that without Christ, these would be dark and despairing truths. But we are not without Christ! Although my opening illustration asked you to consider two giants, it would mislead us if we imagined that the giants were of equal height and weight and significance. Adam is certainly a giant in comparison with you and me. But compared to the Lord Jesus Christ, he is a pigmy: ‘how much more…’ (Rom. 5:15, 17). Adam was our father and our covenant head in the beginning, and his one act of disobedience, with its horrific consequences, has spread to us all. But the history of Adam’s race – its origin in creation, its course throughout all ages, and its future glorious consummation – belongs to Jesus Christ the Righteous One. And He is the One whose sacrifice has satisfied God’s wrath against our sins (Rom. 8:28-39; 1 Jn 2:1-2).
Further Reading
If you’d like to think more about sin, here are three recommendations for further reading.
Something Old: John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book Two, chapters 1-3. Don’t be put off by his reputation. Calvin is very readable and often extremely warm and pastoral. His treatment of original sin and the corruption of our nature is a classic: bracing and vivid. There are various good translations, including free ones online.
Something New: Matthew Roberts, Pride: Identity and the Worship of Self (Christian Focus, 2023). In a review, I described this as ‘clear, fresh and readable, and also rigorous, deep and compelling’. And, allowing for the fact that the only must-read book is the Bible, I gave it my highest accolade: ‘very nearly a must-read’.
Something Stretching: Peter Martyr Vermigli, Common Places: On Original Sin, translated by Kirk M. Summers (Davenant Press, 2019). Vermigli was a contemporary of Calvin. This short book on original sin, originally gathered from his commentaries on the Bible, is stretching but still quite readable, and its teaching is profound. Like Calvin, he shows how the doctrine is rooted in the Bible’s teaching, and how it explains us to ourselves.
