Are Men Born Sinners? - Library of Theology

would lose all its force and meaning if Christ had not been tempted in the same human
nature as we yet without sin?
Every which way it turns, the doctrine of original sin flies in the face of the teachings of
the Word of God. It makes Jesus a sinner, or it must deny his true humanity.
11. It begets other false doctrines.
Many false views on sin and salvation, with their concurrent misinterpretations of the
Scriptures, come out of this one fundamental error. Consider the following:
a. The doctrine of the "Immaculate Conception."
This is the doctrine that Mary, the mother of our Lord Jesus Christ was "conceived free
from any of the corruption of original sin," in order that she might be pure enough to be
the mother of Christ. Of course, this doctrine is not taught in the Bible. It is an invention
of men, made necessary by a belief in the doctrine of original sin.
b. The doctrine of infant baptism for the remission of original sin.
This doctrine is another invention of men, made necessary to relieve innocent little
infants from the guilt of original sin and the wrath of God, which supposedly rest upon
them because of being born with a sinful nature.
c. The doctrine of Limbo.
This doctrine is another invention made necessary for infants who die without baptism.
Limbo is supposed to be a place where unbaptized infants go instead of hell, "where
neither the joys of heaven nor the miseries of hell prevail."
d. The doctrine that men have lost the image of God since the fall of Adam.
This is another unbiblical doctrine made necessary by a belief in the doctrine of original
sin. Of course, if men come into this world "dead in sin, and wholly defiled in all the
faculties and parts of soul and body," as the Westminster Confession says, they have
certainly not been created in the image of God. But the fact that man is created in the
image of God is evident from the Scriptures. God told Noah, long after the sin of Adam,
that man was "made in the image of God." Gen. 9:16. And, of course, the New Testament
Scriptures teach just as clearly that man is created in the image of God. (See I Cor. 11:7,
James 3:9, Acts 17:29.) It is amazing how men will ignore the clear teachings of the Holy
Scriptures in order to accommodate the doctrine of original sin.
e. The doctrine of a physical, passive regeneration.
Believing, as the advocates of original sin do, that moral depravity is constitutional in
nature, they must believe in a physical and passive regeneration, in order to be consistent.