If we are born in sin, how is it fair for God to judge us for our sin?

The power of sin within us is far too strong for us to conquer, even after we are saved by the grace of God. Unbelievers give way continually to this cruel enemy of souls. They are slaves of sin, and generally prefer it that way. They are not responsible for having a sinful nature, for this has been inherited from Adam. But they are responsible for allowing that nature to express itself by sinning. Everyone is personally responsible for their own sins, and God allows no excuse for this. Yet it is the most common deceit of people's hearts to blame anything or anyone else for the wrong they do themselves. This is one of the repulsive characteristics of that sinful nature. Such a dishonest cover up is the very reason that human beings find no deliverance from sin.

The object of judgment is to obliterate evil; and when it is a question of sin, according to God’s estimate of it, death is the just and the only penalty in so far as life in this world is concerned. “The soul that sinneth it shall die.” But as that rigorous sentence would carry every soul into eternal punishment, God, who desires not the death of the sinner, introduces the principle of substitution, executes judgment to the uttermost upon His own Son, making Him, who never knew sin, to be sin for us, and then preaches peace and life by Jesus Christ. This at once divides the world into two classes, — those who accept God’s proclamation of peace and life, upon His condition of obedience to His Son, and those who do not. It also leaves God free to act in minor judgment (so to speak) in His moral government of this world. That is, to deal with evil in a way that a divinely instructed man must acknowledge to be holy, just, and good. And this minor judgment (such as loss of friends and property or bodily suffering), suiting itself to the needs of the two classes above mentioned—needs observed and estimated by a God of perfect wisdom and perfect love and grace—takes the form respectively of chastisement (properly child-training), or else, as in the case of the prodigal son, of special appeal or solemn warning. So that what might appear, at first sight, to be judgment, is really nothing but the divine movement of the heart that yearns over His ignorant, self-willed, and erring people, of the God that speaks in righteousness, mighty to save. “Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth.”

With a conscience, I cannot enjoy God's love without seeing Him dealing about my sins. Even a sparrow God can be good to, it is true; but can God accept me in my sin? Can He accept an imperfect offering? As Micah says, Can I give "the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?" Cain brought the fruit of his own work, without any sense of sin: the hardness of his heart was proved by it, and an utter forgetfulness about his sin. I see in the cross what my sin is. I cannot look at that as God sees it without learning God. Man has forgotten God enough to rise up against Him who was God's remedy for his misery. Then judgment must be exercised: God's authority must be vindicated. "It became him … to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings." Are angels to see man flying in God's face, and He take no notice of it? No! Therefore, "it became him, for whom are all things and by whom are all things," etc. God is a righteous judge, and judgment must be executed. There is judgment as well as love seen in the cross; not only Christ, the Holy One, being made sin, but undergoing the judgment due to sin. There is the unsparing wrath of God against the sin, but God's perfect love to the sinner. There His majesty, which we insulted, is vindicated: even the Son bows to that. if He is to keep up the brightness of the Father's glory, He must vindicate His character in this way. God's truth was proved at the cross. "The wages of sin is death." Man had forgotten this; but Christ stands up, the witness of God in such a world, that what God has said is true. "The wages of sin is death." The love with which God wins man to Him proves this very thing at the same time.

The important point is, then, not the order of events, but the great fact that Christ is coming, and that when He does come, He "will render to every man according to his deeds." (Rom. 2:6.) This is the invariable principle of God's righteous dealings, and is in no respect weakened by grace. Grace, it is true, lays our sins on another as our substitute, and credits us with the good deeds wrought in us by God's own power; but this confirms the principle instead of contradicting it. If an upright man winds up his affairs, he collects what is due to him, and pays what he owes. Nor is the justice of this course affected by the fact that certain debts have been remitted, or certain obligations incurred, out of kindness. So God's righteous judgment according to works is in no way impaired by the fact that the believer's sins have been put away, and the believer's righteousnesses have been wrought, by his own grace.

"Wherefore as by one man sin entered into the world, and by sin death and thus death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned." By one man, the first Adam, sin entered into the world (not sins, but sin). And death followed, which is physical death. "Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return," and this death has passed upon the race because of sin. The margin of the authorized version contains a statement which is responsible for a very unscriptural teaching. The margin states "in whom all have sinned"; upon this it has been taught that the guilt of Adam has been imputed to all. This is not correct. We are not responsible for the sin of Adam nor are we held responsible by God for a sinful nature; we are responsible for the outworking of that nature, that is for our own sins. The wicked dead, those whose sins were not taken away, because they believed not, will not be judged for having had a sinful nature, but solely according to their works (Revelation 20:12). Death comes upon us on account of our sins, as it is stated in this verse "death passed upon all men for that all have sinned.

Thus the change most solemnly affecting the world came in long before the Jew existed or consequently before their boasted law was given. The Jew must look somewhere more largely, and accurately too, into the scriptures. He must not flatter his national vanity or religious pride with the delusion that all hinges either on Israel or on their law. Adam was before them both and affects all mankind (the Jews not excepted). True, the momentous history that shows us how sin and death entered is humbling indeed; but anything will the heart turn into a vaunt. At any rate, that incalculably grave event was outside the Jew in itself, and in consequences went far beyond them. It was not outside man, but contrariwise "by one man;" yet its effect, death, permeated the world.

But the apostle takes care to add to this one man's sin those of all others — "and so death passed unto all men, for that all sinned." Thus the last clause is expressly to guard against the exclusion of the sins of men generally. We must therefore beware of enfeebling either side of the case. In the very scripture which opens the discussion of the universal bearing of Adam's sin on the human race (for it is no question here of Israel in particular) the connection of men's own sins with their death is carefully added. No one doubts that infants and idiots die, and this through Adam's sin; but the Spirit does not exclude the consequence where personal guilt can apply. The position of ruin to which the fall consigned the race is not severed from the evil workings of the nature now fallen in all men. Adam's sin is the cause but not the sole account and whole case of the bitter lot of man.

Ezekiel 18 contains the important principle that the soul that sins, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son; the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him" (Ezek. 18:20). The individual would be dealt with by God according to his own conduct. It is not a question of what their fathers had been. Their own iniquities demanded and would entail God's judgment. Long before, God had threatened to visit "the iniquities of the fathers upon the children" (see Ex. 34:7). This principle is departed from. Individually they were guilty, and as such would be judged; nevertheless, where repentance was manifest, God would pardon, for He had no pleasure in the death of the wicked (Ezek. 18:23). It must be borne in mind that what is spoken of here is temporal judgment, physical death, because of sin now. It gives us no teaching as to the eternal judgment of sin, which is taught elsewhere.

In the day of judgment, therefore, the award will be given, not according to the nature, (in which they are alike,) but to their works, in which they are not alike. God "will render to every man according to his deeds" (Rom. 2:6). And this, and this alone, will be the exact measure of guilt and responsibility.

The meaning of these verses is not that people are condemned solely by the imputation of Adam's sin. It is true that his sin is imputed to his race, but there is also the personal state of the individuals, who are condemned for their own sins. We are under the consequences of Adam's sin in two respects, as to position and as to nature. We are born far from God, and we have borne a nature at enmity with Him. The son of a man given up to dissipation is found in this double misfortune, that he is born fortuneless, and that he has a nature disposed to dissipation. As another comparison, suppose the Czar, for example, sends a man to Siberia because of rebellion, and he has a son born there, and of course fallen from the rights of a Russian subject. There, however, is the limit of the penalty he endures for the conduct of his father. But if he happens to show the enmity to the Czar which brought his father to exile, the Czar leaves him also in exile: this son of the proscribed abides in disgrace because of his personal enmity. Just so, we are born under guilt, but we cannot be guilty without sinning. The apostle avoids separating our fall in Adam — our state under the fall — from the state of the heart estranged from God. He does not sever guilt from the presence of sin in the individual. In the mystical sense employed about Levi in Heb. 7:9-10, there need be no difficulty in saying that we sinned in Adam. However, this is evidently not the sense of the passage. Exclusively understood, it is contradicted by such scriptures as Ezekiel 18:20, and Jeremiah 31:29-30. Further, remark that there remains nothing to guard the conscience, the moment we make the sin of Adam the sole cause of our condemnation; for if we die for that sin, our conduct matters little!

Ans.—The question indicates that the writer had in mind the distinction that is sometimes made, that Christ suffered for the sin of Adam, and men are only under the guilt of their own sins. Scripture never says that men are responsible for Adam's sin, and therefore they never could be counted guilty for it. On the other hand, Christ is never said to have borne part and not all of the penalty upon man. “By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Rom.5:12). While death is universal so also is sin. There is no thought of a man being punished for something he never did. In the case of children who die before reaching the years of responsibility, there is no question of their salvation; but death in their case is not punishment for sin on their part—rather is it the result of a fallen nature inherited, just as a disease. Christ's redemption undoubtedly avails for them, as He says, “Of such is the kingdom of God.” But there is no such thought in Scripture as the unsaved having been set free from Adam's penalty, and only responsible for their own. The unsaved must drink the unmingled cup of God's wrath (Rev.14:10), “And the dead were judged... according to their works” (Rev.20:12).