I thought I would share a journal entry I made on January 29, 2019. I had just read Hebrews 4-5 and noted that I had written a margin note about free will, which said that it is the freedom to do what is in your nature to do. Recalling that I have argued that sin is a result of free will, and elsewhere acknowledged that man has a sin nature, led me to question what “sin nature” means. If we say that we were created with a sin nature, doesn’t that make God the author of sin? I can then say, “I sin because that is the way God made me.” But we know that God is righteous, hates sin, and would not make us to sin. Sin somehow has to be our choice because we have the freedom (free will) to choose.
So, I believe, God revealed this explanation to me: When we are born and start life, we are amoral – we can’t and don’t make moral choices. Our intellect as babies has not been developed to the point of realizing the concept of “ought.” That is, rather than doing what is instinct or what we want, there is another notion, or choice, of doing what we ought. I submit that, when we reach the age where we understand that we ought to do some things and not others, we have reached the age of accountability. Until this point, we couldn’t distinguish between want and ought, so there was no moral choice to make.
Once we reach this point, a choice is to be made, and free will now comes into play. We find ourselves very much wanting to do one thing, when we realize now that we ought to do something else. We also call this a conscience. I submit that the desire and inclination to do what we want, even if it conflicts with what we ought, is what we Christians have labeled our “sin nature.”
Note, as we face the choice of doing what we want verses doing what we ought, we have not sinned – that is, God has not made us sin – He has given us a choice to make. But we, all of us, so want to do what we want rather than what we ought, we immediately or eventually choose what we want over what we ought – we have sinned.
What is our answer to one who would argue that God is not off the hook yet – He created us with the wants and desires. I would argue that, when He did this, for all of us, it was OK, not wrong, not a sin. You and I had no concept of ”ought” when we were born – we were all innocent or amoral if you will; and Adam and Eve, as adults, were created innocent because they did not have the knowledge of good and evil. So, we all were created sinless, innocent. Only when God revealed to us the concept of ought did we have the possibility of sinning. For Adam and Eve, it was when God commanded them to do something which was contrary to their instinct or want – not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. As stated above, for the rest of us it was when we reached the age of accountability. For Adam and Eve and us, the first time and thereafter we faced something we ought to do, at these same instances, God gave us a choice. He did not make us sin, it was our choice if we chose want over ought.
To conclude, I repeat my belief that our desire and inclination to choose what we want, even if it conflicts with what we ought, is what we Christians have labeled our “sin nature.” God created each of us innocent – we have chosen to sin of our own free will.