Man #3

The Doctrine of Sin

T. P. Simmons

I. THE NATURE OF SIN

Jesus taught this in principle when He said: "Either make the tree good, and his fruit good; or make the tree corrupt, and his fruit corrupt: for the tree is known by his fruit" (Matt. 12:33). This means that there must be a corrupt tree before there can be corrupt fruit. Jesus taught this truth explicitly when He said: "For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, thefts, false witness, blasphemies . . ." (Matt. 15:19). He taught it again when He said: "And this is the condemnation: that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light" (John 3:19). Still again He taught it in the Sermon on the Mount by emphasizing the fact that men can break the commandments of God by harboring evil thoughts. See Matt. 5:21, 22, 27, 28. In simple words this means that a man is not what he is because of what he does; rather he does what he does because of what he is, fundamentally speaking.

Sin may be described as a tree of self-will, having two tap roots. One is a "no" to God and His demands. The other is a "yes" to self and self’s interests. This tree is capable of bearing every manner of sin in the catalogue of sins. Selfishness is always manifest in the sinner in the elevation of "some lower affection or desire above regard for God and His law" (Strong). No matter what form sin may take, it is always found to have selfishness as its root. Sin may take the forms of avarice, pride, vanity, ambition, sensuality, jealousy, or even love of others—in which case others are loved because they are conceived of as being in some way connected with or contributing to self. The sinner may seek truth, but always for selfish, egotistical purposes. He may give his goods to feed the poor, or even his body to be burned, but only through selfish desire for fleshly gratification or for honor or reward. Sin as selfishness has four component parts: "(1) Self will, instead of submission; (2) self-seeking, instead of benevolence; (3) self-righteousness, instead of humility and reverence; (4) self-sufficiency, instead of faith" (Harris).

We see, then, that sin is not merely a result of man’s imperfect development. It is a perversity of the will and disposition. Man will never outgrow it so long as he is in the flesh. Regeneration puts a check upon it; but it does not destroy it. Nor is sin the mere result of the union of the spirit with the body. The spirit itself is sinful and would be just as sinful out of the body as in the body if left in its natural state. Satan has no body; yet he is supremely sinful. Neither is sin mere finiteness. The elect angels in Heaven are finite; yet they are without sin. Glorified saints will still be finite; yet they will have no sin.

II. THE UNIVERSALITY OF SIN IN THE HUMAN FAMILY

III. THE EXTENT OF SIN IN MAN’S BEING

The basis of depravity and spiritual inability lies in the heart. It is deceitful and incurably wicked (Jer. 17:9). Out of the heart are the issues of life (Prov. 4:23). No one can bring a clean thing out of an unclean one (Job 14:4). Hence neither holiness nor faith can proceed from the natural heart. Good things proceed from a good heart and evil things proceed from an evil heart (Matt. 7:17,18; Luke 6:45).

Pelagius taught that every human soul is directly created of God. This is Creationism, which was held also by Aristotle and Jerome, as opposed to Traducianism, propounded by Tertullian and tacitly assumed by Augustine. Logically, then, Pelagius felt obliged to consider the soul of a baby free from evil tendencies. But he was wholly illogical in considering the soul of an infant as merely innocent instead of positively holy. The holiness of God forbids the supposition that He can create a being that is merely innocent, just as surely as it forbids the supposition that He can create an evil being. But Pelagius thought holiness could not be created. See Eph. 4:24; Col. 3:10; 2 Pet. 1:4. Adam was created in the image of God, and that, as we have seen, means more than mere innocence. Only arbitrary reasoning can lead any Creationist to believe that the human soul at its origination is merely innocent.

According to Pelagianism the only effect the sin of Adam had upon the race lies in the effect of the evil example set by him. Adam’s sin was in no way our sin, and we do not inherit corrupt natures from him; the only corruption of human nature being from persistent personal disobedience to known law.

As would be expected, Pelagius taught that man is able to obey the law of God, and that salvation can come by the law as well as by the gospel. He believed that such men as Abel, Enoch, Joseph, Job, and even Socrates and Aristides were saved by obeying God’s law. God was wholly excluded from man’s inner life, and could reach man only through external means.

This theory requires no detailed or extended refutation. The student will see at once that it is the very antithesis of Bible teaching in all of its phases. Let us dismiss it with this penetrating characterization from Dorner: "It is Deism, applied to man’s nature. God cannot enter man’s being if he would, and he would not if he could. Free will is everything" (System of Doctrine, 2:38).

Arminius taught that men are born without original righteousness and with inherent evil tendencies; and are, therefore, wholly unable of themselves to obey God or attain eternal life. The natural state of the infant may be called sinful, but it does not involve guilt because it is physical and intellectual rather than voluntary. Moreover it does not spring from our racial unity with Adam. Adam’s sin was not our sin. We inherit our infirmities from Adam by divine appointment.

As a matter of justice, according to Arminius, God has bestowed upon all men the special influence of the Holy Spirit (often called "gracious ability") from the beginning of consciousness, with which man has the power to cooperate and thus obey the will of God. It is only when a human being consciously refuses to cooperate with the special influence of the Holy Spirit that he becomes guilty before God. Original Arminianism was greatly modified by John Wesley. But Wesleyanism, on the whole, is just as flagrantly false as original Arminianism.

The same that was said of Pelagianism can be said of Arminianism. It needs no further refutation than that which is given in the truth of the Bible as set forth in the former portion of this chapter. In some respects it is simply extra-scriptural; in others it is anti-scriptural; while in others it is logically unsound.

Upon these statements we remark:

(A) They involve a denial of our participation in the apostasy of Adam, which is plainly taught in Rom. 5:12, as shown by later pertinent verses in the chapter. "Have sinned" translates a verb in the aorist tense in the Greek. Now the aorist tense can express action roughly equivalent to that which is expressed by the imperfect tense; but in view of the context of the passage the Revised Version dropped the word "have" and translated the Greek verb simply "sinned." To take this verb as referring to the personal sinning of each individual is to ruthlessly wrest the last clause of the passage from its connection with the first clause. Why is mention made of the fact that death came by Adam if our death is not the result of Adam’s sin? This interpretation, moreover, "is inconsistent with ver. 13,14, which are intended to prove what is here asserted: but they do not prove that all have actually sinned, but rather the reverse" (Arnold, in An American Commentary on the New Testament). The meaning of Rom. 5:12 as contended for here is further borne out by 1 Cor. 15:22—"As in Adam all die . . ."

(B) They deny that sin exists as a state before there is a conscious choice of evil. Thus they deny that it is a sinful state that gives rise to sinful acts. This contradicts the principle enunciated by Jesus in Matt. 12:33, and implies that an apple tree is an apple tree because it bears apples and not vice versa. Jesus said that evil acts proceed out of the heart (Matt. 15:19), and the word "heart," when used in a moral or spiritual sense as it is here, refers to the affections, not the will. Thus Jesus affirmed that the will acts because of the affections. Jesus further taught this in John 3:19 in saying that men do not come to the light because they love darkness. Then Jer. 17:9 says that the natural heart is "desperately wicked." Furthermore Paul taught that his sins both of commission and omission were the result of sin dwelling in him, that is, in his carnal nature. Ro. 7:8, 11, 13, 14, 17, 20. Paul’s indwelling sin after he was saved was not there because his will was committed to it as his immanent preference or ultimate end;¹it was there in spite of his will and hindered the executive volitions of his will. Naturally Mr. Finney was forced by the exigencies of his false system to deny that any part of Rom. 7 describes Paul’s experience as a saved man. The fact that he must ignore and deny the plain meaning of the Bible to support his contentions is enough to show their utter falsity.

(C) They are false in their implied denial that the will of the natural man always acquiesces in the state of his nature. In the sense of immanent preference or as an ultimate end, a natural man always wills to be what he is. Otherwise he would not be free in being what he is, but would be under constraint from without; and would not be responsible. The sinner is blind (2 Cor. 4:3,4), not because at some point in his personal existence he made a deliberate choice to be blind. God says it is the Devil that has blinded him. How? By forcing blindness upon him from without? No; for that would destroy the free agency of the sinner. The Devil has blinded the sinner by blinding the race through the fall, from which the sinner has received his blindness by inheritance. Yet the sinner is responsible for his blindness. This could be true only upon the ground that his will acquiesces in the blindness. The same is true with regard to every evil tendency and disability of the sinner by nature.

(D) They are wrong in implying that a man’s affections are under the control of his will. Jesus said men reject Him because of their affections. John 3:19. "Love is the fulfilling of the law" (Rom. 13:10). Why? The first part of the verse tells—"Love worketh no ill . . ." that is, love moves a man to do what is right. In other words, love controls action and that means that love controls the will. Thus the will is subject to the affections. A man does not choose to love in the final analysis. He loves because of what he is and because of what the object of his affections is. In the final analysis affections are spontaneous. This is not to say that a man’s intellect, his faculty of knowing, has no part in determining his actions. His intellect is always involved in his affections.

(E) They are wrong in that they deny the existence of real character. If the will does not act according to character, then there is no such thing as character; nor is there any such thing as responsibility. To talk about the character of the will as a thing separate from the nature of the man to which the will belongs is to talk childish nonsense.

(F) They are wrong in that they affirm that lapsed and fallen nature is "physical and not moral depravity." In another place Mr. Finney defines "physical depravity" as being "depravity of substance as opposed to depravity of the actions of free will." This means that Mr. Finney denied that there can be such a thing as moral and spiritual disorder in the soul without a perversion of the very substance or essence of the soul. It means also that if there should be such a thing as moral or spiritual disorder, a setting of the soul in sin, involving a blinding of the mind and a perverting of the heart—in other words, a spiritual deadening of all the faculties of the soul, this would be physical depravity and not moral depravity, for which a man cannot be held responsible.

¹ See treatment of the will in chapter on The Moral Nature of Man for meaning of these terms and also the meaning of “executive volitions.”

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