Without sin there would be no Christianity as we know it. There could be worship and religion without sin, but there would be no record of redemption, no incarnation, no second Adam, no song of the redeemed as we experience them. I do not say these things to put sin itself in a good light, but only to say that a failure to rightly understand sin inevitably leads to a breakdown in the understanding of our Christian faith itself. Christianity, as distinct from whatever religion looked like in the garden of Eden prior to the fall, is a religion of reconciliation and of deliverance from the devil’s tyranny and sin’s power. It is a religion in which treasonous and rebellious men have been made willing subjects—even sons and daughters—happily conscripted into the army of the Lamb and adopted into the family of God.
Essential to any understanding of our great salvation and holy faith is an understanding of our sinful condition—that from which we have been delivered. Light and superficial views of sin inevitably lead to light and superficial views of the Savior’s work and of the Spirit’s work in regeneration. I want to frame our consideration of the doctrine of sin with the notions of cosmic treason and supreme folly, so often emphasized by Dr. R.C. Sproul when he wrote or spoke about sin. Between the bookends of treason and folly, we will briefly consider the transmission, guilt, and corruption of sin. This is the doctrine of sin from sixty thousand feet up.
Sin is cosmic treason against God.
Should we conceive of sin primarily in terms of anthropology or theology? Many want to reduce the whole question of sin to one of human psychology, such that sin is whatever activity produces feelings of guilt in the individual, or sin is a failure to live up to one’s personal ideals, those of a human society, and so forth.
Scripture is emphatic that we measure sin in light of God and His law. Indeed, as stated in 1 John 3:4, “Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness.” In his memorable prayer of confession and penitence, David, in the aftermath of his adultery with Bathsheba and arrangement of her husband Uriah’s death, does not bemoan his failure to live up to his own ideals. He doesn’t say, “I expected better of myself.” Perhaps he did expect better of himself. But that is not ultimately what constituted or defined his sin. Surprisingly, he also doesn’t say, “I have sinned against Bathsheba and her late husband, Uriah,” though that was certainly true. He tells God in Psalm 51:4,
Against you, you only, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight.
Theologian Matthew Poole says that David speaks comparatively here. All sin against our fellow man strikes even more fundamentally at God by abusing His image-bearer. Without God’s holiness and His standard of righteousness, it is not clear how sin against our fellow man could ever be more than the violation of that person’s personal preference or society’s collective taste.
Sin has always been, first and foremost, against God. From the beginning, sin has always been defined by God and committed against God. In Genesis 3:1–5, Satan, in the form of a serpent, undermines God’s goodness and sovereignty by enticing the woman to enter into judgment regarding the provision and prohibition that God had revealed: “Indeed, has God said . . . ?” Meredith Kline observes:
Implicit in such a question was the assumption that the creature has the right to make an autonomous judgment about God. It therefore amounted to a denial of God’s absolute right of command and his absolute lordship and so struck at the very foundation of the covenant order.1
Kline adds, “By thus challenging God’s law-order for the world with a different order of his own, Satan presented himself as a rival lord.” This is why Dr. Sproul on so many occasions branded sin as “cosmic treason.” Listen to his words:
No traitor to any king or nation has ever approached the wickedness of our treason before God. Sin is cosmic treason. Sin is treason against a perfectly pure Sovereign. It is an act of supreme ingratitude toward One to whom we owe everything, the One who has given us life itself.2
He goes on: “The slightest sin is an act of defiance against cosmic authority. It is a revolutionary act, a rebellious act where we are setting ourselves in opposition to the One to whom we owe everything.” And once more: “It is the ultimate conspiracy. We reach for the crown and plot for the throne, saying in effect to God, ‘We will not have You rule over us.’” As Edward Leigh states, “Sin sets up another God against God.”3
But small sins seem profoundly disproportionate to cosmic treason. It might strike us as a gross exaggeration to see every sin as cosmic treason. How can eating a single piece of fruit, for instance, be such a great offense to God? A small infraction, perhaps, but not treason of the highest order, surely! Some, no doubt, perceive God to be excessively “touchy,” too easily triggered.
There are two observations we can make to shed some light on this apparent inconsistency of seemingly small sin being equated with cosmic sedition. First, no sin stands alone as a small, isolated offense. Second, the measure of sin’s magnitude is best gauged by the one against whom it is ultimately committed.
James 2:10 says, “For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it.” Older commentators often distinguish between breaking the “whole law” and breaking the “whole of the law.” James is saying that to offend in one point is to offend against the whole since all are rooted in the same great commandment of love to God. The slightest sin makes you guilty of all because the guilt of each trespass individually is the same as the guilt of the aggregate—lack of love and reverence to God. Matthew Poole adds another consideration from the viewpoint of God’s authority: “He sins against the authority of the whole law, which is the same in every command.”
Adam’s “one trespass” is really many violations wrapped into one. Eating the fruit really signifies a collapse of covenant fidelity in toto, being: (1) an abdication of the kingly charge to rule over everything that creeps on the ground (Gen. 1:28), (2) a neglect of the prophetic duty to adhere to God’s positive law and oracles and to defend them against all gainsayers (Gen. 2:16–17), and (3) failure of the priestly charge to “keep” the garden from profanation (Gen. 2:15). That one “little” sin signifies a complete defection of man from God at every level of his duty and responsibility. Francis Turretin expounds upon this idea that Adam’s first sin was an aggregate of many sins:
It is certain that we must not regard the fall as any particular sin, such as theft or adultery, but as a general apostasy and defection from God. It was a violation not only of the special positive law about not eating the forbidden fruit, but of the whole moral law included in it, and thus also of the obedience which man owed to God, his Creator (especially by reason of the covenant entered into with him). Thus here is, as it were, a complicated disease and a total aggregate of various acts, both internal and external, impinging against both tables of the law. For as by unbelief and contempt of the divine word, ingratitude, pride and profanation of the divine name, he transgressed the first table, so he transgressed the second by want of affection (astorgia) towards his children, by homicide (precipitating himself and his children into death), by intemperance and gluttony, theft and appropriation of another’s property (without his consent), unlawful love and depraved concupiscence.4
More deeply still, sin is cosmic treason because it strikes against God Himself. The measure of any sin is the mark it misses and the person it offends. The Puritan William Bridge writes, “The more a man sees God, the glory of God, the goodness of God, the wisdom of God, the holiness of God, the sovereignty of God: the more sin appears in its sinfulness to him.” Consider two passages that make clear sin is opposition to God. The first is Psalm 2:2–3:
The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers take counsel together,
against the Lord and against his Anointed, saying,
“Let us burst their bonds apart
and cast away their cords from us.”
The second is Romans 8:7: “For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law.” The Puritan Ralph Venning notes several ways sin is against God:
Sin is the dare of God’s justice, the rape of his mercy, the jeer of his patience, the slight of his power, the contempt of his love. . . . It is the upbraiding of his providence (Psalm 50), the scoff of his promise (2 Peter 3:3–4), the reproach of his wisdom (Isaiah 29:16).
There is an objective infiniteness in sin, even if not a subjective infiniteness. It is committed against an infinite God, though it is the sin of only a finite creature. Francis Turretin speaks of the “infinite culpability” of every sin:
Every sin is opposed to the glory of God and is injurious to his infinite majesty. Thus it has in its measure infinite culpability, if not intensive and intrinsic, at least objectively (inasmuch as it is committed against infinite good) and extensively (by reason of duration) because its stain or pollution continues forever (as far as the sinner is concerned; for he of himself or by his own powers can never wipe it out).
While one sin may be relatively smaller than another with respect to the action (stealing pears, say, in contrast to adultery or murder), even the slightest infraction contains an infinite offense with respect to its divine object.
We must also say that sin is cosmic in scope because it offends against all God’s attributes. God cannot be sinned against in part because He is not composed of parts. Thus, to offend God is to offend Him wholly and completely. Even if we were to consider the various attributes in their several distinctions, it could be said that sin opposes all of them. The seventeenth-century English theologian Edward Leigh provides six broad categories to demonstrate this claim: (1) against God’s sovereignty, sin is rebellion (see 2 Sam. 12:9); (2) against His justice, sin is iniquity; (3) against His goodness, sin is unkindness and ingratitude; (4) against His holiness, sin is defilement (see Amos 5:1; Hab. 1:13; Ps. 5:4–5); (5) against His holiness considered as a rule, sin is transgression; and (6) against His excellency, sin is deformity.8
The Transmission of Sin
So how widespread is this cosmic rebellion? Neither experience nor Scripture leaves us uncertain about its scope. Except for Jesus, every human is a sinner, commits sin, and is born to the ranks of the rebel army allied with the Prince of Darkness. We hear statements—benign-sounding, no doubt—like “nobody’s perfect” or “to err is human.” The unregenerate and the Christian can both see the truth of this all around in human society and in their own lives personally. To this empirical evidence, Scripture adds explicit testimony. Consider the following passages:
For there is no one who does not sin. (2 Chron. 6:36)
Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins. (Eccl. 7:20)
All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned—every one—to his own way. (Isa. 53:6)
For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, as it is written:
“None is righteous, no, not one;
no one understands;
no one seeks for God.
All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;
no one does good,
not even one.” (Rom. 3:9–12; see also Ps. 14:1–3)
For we all stumble in many ways. (James 3:2)
If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. . . . If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. (1 John 1:8, 10)
What accounts for this universal scope of sinfulness? How is it that “the whole world lies in the power of the evil one” (1 John 5:19)? Is there a law of nature that demands sin be ubiquitous? Is it just the inevitable result of our finitude? That cannot be right, otherwise every angel would be fallen and so would Christ, given the finitude of His assumed humanity. In the famous debate in the early fifth century between Pelagius and Augustine, the monk Pelagius argued that all men are born originally upright with the power and freedom to do good or evil. All were said to be posse peccare (able to sin) and posse non peccare (able not to sin). Every man was seen as a new Adam, so to speak, but all subsequently fall by a personal choice to imitate the bad examples of other fallen humans. Bad environments and bad examples thus lead every man into sin, according to Pelagius. But we can reasonably ask why this happens in every society and leads to the actual sin of every man? Where are the exceptions, if only to prove the general rule? Dr. Sproul poses this objection:
If people are born good or innocent, we would expect at least a percentage of them to remain good and sinless. We should be able to find societies that are not corrupt, where the environment has been conditioned by sinlessness rather than sinfulness. Yet the most dedicated-to-righteousness communes we can find still have provisions for dealing with the guilt of sin.9
Over against the Pelagian doctrine of original righteousness, the Augustinian answer, which we recognize as the biblical answer to the question of sin’s universality among mankind, is that all men (Jesus excepted) are sinful and depraved in the very first instant of their existence. This occurs at the very moment of the soul’s union to the body in our mothers’ wombs. Theologians call this original sin.
Our sinful status and condition commence at conception. We were born sinners, even before committing any actual sins. As Dr. Sproul has written and said on many occasions, “We are sinners not because we sin. Rather, we sin because we are sinners.”10
It is original sin “from which do proceed all actual transgressions” (Westminster Larger Catechism 25). Bad influences undoubtedly exacerbate and aid in the proliferation of actual sins committed by humans, but these in themselves are not sufficient to account for the universality of human sin. Holy Scripture, on the other hand, speaks clearly to the reality of man’s state of sin and condemnation in his very origin:
Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,
and in sin my mother conceived me. (Ps. 51:5)
The wicked are estranged from the womb;
they go astray from birth, speaking lies. (Ps. 58:3)
[We] were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. (Eph. 2:3)
But at just this point we must ask the question: “How did every human after Adam contract this original sin?” How did we all become complicit in his treason? It cannot be an absolutely necessary and essential feature of human nature generally, since Adam, Eve, and Jesus were truly human and yet were not created or conceived in that condition. The short answer is that original sin is itself a punishment for Adam’s first sin visited upon on his progeny. Adam’s sin and its consequences are imputed to all mankind. We naturally want to know by what sort of arrangement or mechanism this imputation is warranted.
The biblical explanation is that we are bound to Adam as our federal head, our legal representative, even though Scripture does not use that technical terminology. And due to this bond, we participate with him in his actions on our behalf and all the consequences thereof. Paul says in Romans 5:12, “Sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned.” Herman Bavinck explains the significance of this: “Adam’s sin must . . . be viewed as an act committed by him and all his followers. Adam was not a private person, not one individual alongside other such individuals, but all humans were included in him.”Footnote:
11
This is not entirely dissimilar to the notion of federal representation that we experience in various political systems—one acts on behalf of the many. It is easy to imagine someone objecting to this arrangement based on the fact that he did not personally have a say in electing Adam and so cannot fairly suffer punishment due to his federal headship. I will allow Dr. Sproul to answer that objection: “We usually do not trust someone else to appoint our representatives. However [with respect to Adam], we can be confident that God selected him as the one who would represent us perfectly. We cannot say that Adam misrepresented us. As God’s perfectly selected representative, Adam represented us flawlessly.”Footnote:
12
Touching federal headship and the imputation of guilt, we need to consider further the nature of our bond to Adam. We do not simply receive a general brokenness from him, as sin is nowadays often described. We participate in the very guilt and punishment of his sin. Romans 5:18 makes this clear: “One trespass led to condemnation for all men.” Romans 5:15 grounds our death in Adam’s sin: “Many died through one man’s trespass.” The universality of death—even of infants and of those who received no positive law from God—proves the imputation of Adam’s guilt. It is not merely by our own acts of sin—what the Larger Catechism calls “actual transgressions”—that we suffer death, but antecedent to that, by the sin of the one. Romans 5:16 says the same: “For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation.” That “one trespass” that condemns us is not an actual trespass of our doing; it is Adam’s one trespass in our stead. Paul says, “Death reigned [over the many] through that one” (Rom. 5:17). Death does not reign over the human race through each member of it—at least not primarily—but through the one. There must be a profound solidarity between us and Adam. In 1 Corinthians 15:22, Paul says that “in Adam all die.” Lest any might imagine that what Paul means is we receive only a verdict and punishment from Adam, and not sinfulness itself, consider Romans 5:19: “By the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners.” We now need to consider the subjective moral effects of this within us.
The Corruption of Sin
With guilt for sin comes also corruption. They go together and are inseparable, even if formally distinct from each other. From Adam we receive not only his guilt, but also all the defilement and depravity that comes with it. We get Adam—his sin, guilt, and all its consequences—as a total package. Herman Bavinck explains:
Being born in this state of guilt, impurity, and depravity is the execution of the sentence passed by God on Adam’s trespass. Just as, as a result of his trespass, he himself was immediately burdened with guilt, defiled by pollution, and subjected to death, so this also takes place, in virtue of God’s judgment, in the life of all his descendants. Guilt, pollution, and death, in the case of Adam’s descendants are interconnected in the same way as in Adam himself and have thus, in that mutual connectedness, passed to all.13
In other words, we get the whole Adam.
As for corruption, we should first note that original sin includes “the privation of original righteousness.”14 The lack of original righteous in itself renders man contrary to God’s law. The Puritan Thomas Vincent says this lack itself is a sin “because it is a want of conformity to the law of God, which requireth original and habitual righteousness, as well as actual.”15 Though God created the first man and woman with original righteousness and morally upright (Eccl. 7:29), He was not thereby obligated to create every human in this condition. It is due to His justice that He withholds this benefit from Adam’s progeny. Original righteousness is withheld as part of the punishment for Adam’s sin. As it was removed from Adam personally, so also from those who were in him.
But we are not merely lacking in original righteousness. We are also inclined toward all manner of wickedness. Jeremiah 17:9 declares,
The heart is deceitful above all things,
and desperately sick;
who can understand it?
In Matthew 15:19, Jesus says that “out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.” We are positively depraved, and this not merely in part, but totally. When considering the extent of sin’s perverting power in us, Reformed theologians speak of man’s total depravity. We must be careful to distinguish this from what Dr. Sproul has called “utter depravity.” Utter depravity means that man is as bad as he can possibly be. It is a claim about maximal intensity. This is not the claim of the doctrine of total depravity and has in fact never been true of any man.16 Dr. Sproul gives this explanation: “Total depravity means that I and everyone else are depraved or corrupt in the totality of our being. There is no part of us that is left untouched by sin. Our minds, our wills, and our bodies are affected by evil.”17 Sproul proposes speaking of radical depravity, a deprivation of righteousness that that goes down to the root or core of our being in all its essential parts and faculties. Total depravity is in view in passages such as Colossians 2:13, which says that you “were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh,” and Ephesians 2:1, “You were dead in the trespasses and sins.”
Included in total depravity is total inability. Man, left to himself, is unable to do anything pleasing to God. This does not mean he cannot perform acts of civic righteousness or virtue, but that he cannot do it as he ought—namely, to the glory of God (1 Cor. 10:31). Without grace, he cannot order his choices and actions toward God as his highest end and ultimate good. The issue is not merely that he will not; rather, he cannot. He is unable to reverse his rebellious course and set his heart to seek the kingdom of God and His righteousness. Consider a few relevant verses of Scripture:
Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?
There is not one. (Job 14:4)
You were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. (Eph. 2:1–3)
For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. (Rom. 8:7–8)
No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” (John 6:44)
The older theologians described Adam before the fall as “able to sin” (posse peccare) and “able not to sin” (posse non peccare); but after the fall and due to original sin, all men are now “not able not to sin” (non posse non peccare).
Our Supreme Folly
Dr. Sproul writes in The Holiness of God, “The supreme folly is that we think we will get away with our revolt.”18 Sin deludes us with lies about God—“He does not see” (Ps. 94:7); “He does not know”; “He does not care about justice” (Ps. 50:21; Mal. 2:17)—leading us to believe that our coup will actually succeed. Herman Ridderbos, commenting on Romans 1:21–22,19
nicely distills this delusion that sets upon the mind of sinful man:
The specific nature of this corruption is that it quenches all better knowledge and volition in man, and so makes him commit sin with delight. For because these men, in spite of what they have received in their nous [mind] of the revelation of God and thus know of God, nevertheless do not glorify God and give thanks, they are abandoned to worthlessness in their reasonings and their foolish heart becomes darkened.”20
Indeed, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 3:19, “the wisdom of this world is folly with [before] God.”
Sin and rebellion set us on a course of final destruction. God scoffs at the haughty resolve of His rebellious creatures:
He who sits in the heavens laughs;
the Lord holds them in derision. (Ps. 2:4)
His anointed Son will “break them with a rod of iron” and “dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel” (Ps. 2:9). All the wicked man’s thoughts are, “There is no God” (Ps. 10:4). David calls that man a fool in Psalm 14:1: “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’”
Sin trades God for another good. To see this same folly from another angle, consider that sin cuts man off from his highest good and it is utterly impotent to give the good it promises. Sin backs the wrong horse every time. Self-love that seeks its good apart from God (see Ps. 16:2) is an unwitting form of self-hatred and self-destruction. Darkened in his understanding, man is alienated from himself and from his own true good. He doesn’t know what he is for or what he’s about. We might say, “He doesn’t know what is good for him.” In his ignorance of God, he is in bondage to those things that by nature are not gods (Gal. 4:8–9).
To conclude this survey of sin as treason and folly, I want us to consider the words of David in Psalm 16:4:
The sorrows of those who run after [or, barter for] another god shall multiply;
their drink offerings of blood I will not pour out
or take their names on my lips.
Men sin because they are seeking some perceived good for themselves—this may be either a false good or a real good valued inordinately or disorderly. To attain that good, they trade away God Himself. David says he has no good besides God (Ps. 16:2). Sin simply does not believe that truth. The sinner invests his heart in something other than God—originally, the devil’s falsehood about life abundant—because he believes he will get an increased return on his new investment. David says that those who trade away God or run after other goods will receive an increased return, but it will not be the increase for which they hoped. Rather, it will be a multiplication of sorrow. The fool plays a traitor to the most beneficent of sovereigns; he barters away his only true good, his only real stability and refuge. Supreme folly indeed!
As a final word, it should be earnestly and happily said that this treason and folly are not irremediable. God, in His inscrutable wisdom, has devised a plan to change our hearts and bring us home to Himself. He sent a new federal head to reverse the disastrous work of the first Adam. Through the death and resurrection of His own Son—His anointed—He makes known to all who trust Him the path of life (Ps. 16:11), the way back to the Father’s presence where there is fullness of joy and pleasures evermore.
Sin is cosmic treason, but the gospel of Jesus Christ provides cosmic redemption, sufficient to forgive every sin. Sin is our supreme folly, but the death and resurrection of God’s own Son is the supreme revelation of divine wisdom and the perfect antidote for human foolishness.
Editor’s Note: The article was first given as an address at the 2021 Winter Conference, Reformation Bible College, Sanford, Fla.
- Meredith Kline, Kingdom Prologue (Two Age Press, 2000), 122, 124. He deploys this same strategy against Jesus in the wilderness temptation.
- R.C. Sproul, The Holiness of God(Tyndale House, 1985), 151–152. See Psalm 2:1–3.
- Edward Leigh, A Systeme or Body of Divinity (William Lee, 1662), 399.
- Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, ed. James T. Dennison, trans. George Musgrave Giger, vol. 1 (P&R, 1992), 9.6.3 [1:604].
- William Bridge, “Sinfulness of Sin,” in The Works of the Reverend William Bridge, vol. 5 (PA: Soli Deo Gloria, 1989), 5:14.
- Ralph Venning, The Sinfulness of Sin (The Banner of Truth, 1993), 32.
- Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, 9.4.11 [1:598–9]. Turretin adds to that some remarks on sin’s infinite punishment: “Hence, apart from the mercy of God condemning, it would exclude the sinner forever from the heavenly kingdom (because nothing unholy can be admitted there) and subject him to infernal punishments. If, therefore, the culpability is infinite, the punishment also due to it must be infinite; if not intensively (which is repugnant to a finite creature), yet objectively (because it separates from the infinite good [to wit, God]) and extensively (by reason of duration).”
- Leigh, A Systeme or Body of Divinity, 400.
- R.C. Sproul, Essential Truths of the Christian Faith (Tyndale, 1992), 145.
- Ibid., 146.
- Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 3: Sin and Salvation in Christ, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend (Baker Academic, 2006), 3:94.
- R.C. Sproul, Truths We Confess: A Layman’s Guide to the Westminster Confession of Faith, vol. 1 (P&R, 2006), 1:186.
- Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 3:110.
- Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, 9.11.7 (1:637).
- Thomas Vincent, The Shorter Catechism Explained from Scripture (Banner of Truth, 1980), 61.
- See Rev. 22:11 on the eternal state: “Let the evildoer still do evil, and the filthy still be filthy.” Man’s iniquity continues to advance even in the state of perdition, so that he becomes worse and worse.
- Sproul, Essential Truths of the Christian Faith, 148.
- Sproul, The Holiness of God, 153.
- Rom. 1:21–22, “For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools.”
- Herman Ridderbos, Paul: An Outline of His Theology, trans. John Richard DeWitt (Eerdmans, 1975), 121.