1. It may cause us to disregard the Scripture and think that we can trust our own hearts as if we have not been affected by the old man.

Jer 17:9 “The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can understand it?

2. It may cause us to reject Biblical teaching like the virgin birth. If there is no such thing as a nature that is inherited through Adam, then a virgin birth without a human father would no longer be necessary.

3. We may find ourselves thinking that if we do not have an inherited sin nature, then it is possible for us to live a sinless life and we may find ourselves deceiving our own selves.

1 John 1:8 If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.

The “have” no sin is in the present tense. Denying that we have sin is a deception that we can do to ourselves. Many have gone down this path before and lived in deception.

4. If we deny that we have inherited an “old man” nature from Adam, then the very sign of the foreskin as a sign of sin is meaningless. The pictures of sin related to the flesh of the male then become unnecessary, useless and meaningless. We need to challenge this view and test it thoroughly by the whole counsel of God.

5. The denial that we have an “old man” nature that comes from our father Adam would challenge the need for a kinsman Redeemer. If we are not connected to Adam in the consequences of his sin through an inherited nature, then there is no need of a kinsman Redeemer who had to come through the line of the woman.

6. How do we put off the “old man” if we do not have an “old man” nature? (Col. 3:9 and Eph. 4:22)

There are definitely things that are affected by the rejection of our common “old man” nature that comes through the line of Adam. The contradictions that the opposing side has, the failure to answer the Biblical questions and the consequences of having to reject portions of Scripture are all red flags

Blessings!
Cheryl

http://www.city-data.com/forum/christianity/602358-do-we-really-have-sin-nature.html

I was just speaking my mind. Um, I’m still confused ;P It’ll take me time to get this issue down. Thank you for helping!

Does this answer the question or were you looking for truthseeker to answer?

So I think there is a difference in nature between the way Adam was created and how we are born.

Yes, there is a huge difference between what Adam was first created as and how we are born. The really special thing is that although we are connected to Adam in our fleshly nature, we are now connected to Jesus in the spiritual. We are His seed and one day we will be fully like Him for we will see Him as He is. What a glorious day to know that we will be completely sinless one day and perfect!

Now for all those who say that they do not have a sin nature perhaps they need to rethink their position. If you say that you do not have a sin nature, then there is nothing to change to be like Christ. All you need to do is to stop sinning. But why can’t they? The reason is that we have not yet had this flesh changed. We are to live in the Spirit but we often do not consider ourselves dead to sin and to that “old man”. We feed him and nourish him when we should consider him a dead, stinking, old former nature.

Looking ahead to Jesus, we desire to live for Him so that it is no longer we that live, but Christ who lives through us. We really do need His life because our old nature will never see life. It is our “new man” created in His image that will live on.

I also cannot see any human as ever having lived to have had a perfect nature like Adam in the begnninhg and then fall as Adam did either.

So are we perfect in nature like Adam when we are born and thenb we fall like him? I could never think or believe that. So I think there is a difference in nature between the way Adam was created and how we are born.

Can I make a point? Adam’s nature had to of changed at some point because WE,all humans born after Adam certainly DO NOT have the same nature as he did that is, a perfect, innocent, nature. So we either have a nature that was like his “before the fall” or after.

I was going to suggest this change.

I’m gonna read on now…

You said:

Where in the bible does it say we ‘naturally inherited his rebellious nature? After all, if an inherited nature is required to sin, then where did Adam get his, since he sinned?

Adam did not have an “old man” nature. Adam had free will and he chose to exercise his free will to rebel against God. But the fact that Adam did not have an “old man” nature and still chose to sin in this one area does not exclude our “old man” nature that we received at the fall of Adam.

And if a sinful nature is requisite for sinning, then logically and in a parallel vein of thinking, a righteous nature would be required for choosing righteousness.

I have never heard anyone say that a sinful nature is required for one to sin. After all the devil was created as Lucifer without sin. He chose to sin by his own act of free will without a sin nature. However after he chose to sin his nature has completely changed into a nature where he cannot tell the truth as his nature is fully that of distortions and lies.

Yet, no mention is made of us inheriting a righteous nature so we can choose salvation. You rightly say that “Christ’s obedience brought us to righteousness by his actions…,” it says nothing of our coming to righteousness by having some kind of inherited righteous nature.

I am not claiming that our coming to righteousness means that we have a righteous nature that has been put on us. Doesn’t this seem like what many Calvinists are saying? I am not a Calvinist.

However it is true that once we have come to faith in Christ, He creates in us a new nature. If we need that “new man” with its new nature, then surely there was something deficient about the “old man” as his inherent lusts.

Yet, the very same logic is being used to say that we choose sin because we have a sinful nature.

I am not making this argument. What I am saying is that it is easy for us to chose sin because we have the “old man” nature. We are not forced by this nature to sin so there is no excuse.

Adam seemed well able to choose to sin without having any mention of a sinful nature. I think then, that we are totally capable of sinning, in like manner, without having a ’sin nature’.

This does not follow that because Adam was created without the “old man” nature, that we too have no “old man” nature. The fact is that although Adam was created without sin and lived without sin for a time, after he sinned, he had an “old man” nature that made God kick him out of the garden so that he would not continue in sin and eat from the tree of life.

I hope this helps.

A. If the fault is their nature, and not their choice, they cannot be blamed.

This is faulty reasoning. The fact is that the Bible teaches that sin is our choice and we are not blameless because we have a nature that craves sin. Even the unregenerate showed that they had a choice to sin or not to sin and the “fleshly lusts” of our old man is no excuse for sin.

B. If the fault is their will, and not their nature, they are to be blamed.

Here is a false dichotomy. Just because the ultimate fault is their free will and not their nature, does not disprove that they do not have a “fleshly man” that lusts after sin.

(1.) You are not responsible or accountable for the condition of your nature at birth.

While we are not responsible for the “fleshly man’s nature” that we have inherited, there is nothing in the Bible that indicates that this nature forces us to sin. We are ultimately still accountable for our free-will choice even if our nature tempts us to sin. Morrell’s listing of excuses for not being accountable for sin in no way refutes the biblical teaching of the “old man” nature.

(2.) Men do not deserve hell for the flesh, blood, bones, skin they involuntarily and unavoidably inherit.

This is a straw man argument because men do not receive hell for flesh, blood, bones, skin that they inherit. Men receive hell for their free will choice to reject God and their practice of sin.

(4.) Since God punishes sinners, including homosexuals, this proves that it is their own fault that they
are sinners. And if it is their own fault, it must be their own free choice.

This is true, but it doesn’t disprove the “natural fleshly man” that we all have at birth. The fact is that we all have “natural lusts” but we have the will to chose to turn away from the lusts.

2. They logically know that if they were created that way, it is God’s fault.

This is no more logical than Adam’s blaming God and Eve for his sin. Neither God nor Eve made Adam sin and neither can be blamed for his sin.

Charles Finney said, “To represent the constitution as sinful, is to present God, who is the author of the constitution, as the author of sin.”

I know that many say that Charles Finney was a heretic. I know almost nothing about Charles Finney but I do know that the statement above is not true. God is not the author of the nature of Adam after the fall that became the nature of the “old man”. This nature is connected to the nature of the devil, not to the nature of the original creation.

3 A. If a person is born a sinner, instead of being a sinner by choice, they cannot be responsible to stop being a
sinner or be accountable for their failure to do so. Moral obligation and moral accountability is limited
by natural justice to moral ability.

This is a false representation of the doctrine of the “old man”. People are not “born a sinner”. People are born with the nature of the “old man” and from there they make choices of their own to sin. Moral accountability is not from the “natural man” who is the “old man” nature because if so then babies would be condemned to hell. Rather moral accountability is at the point where a person comes to a knowledge of their sin and makes a conscious choice to walk away from their conscience.

5. They intuitively know that punishment is limited to voluntary disobedience

This is true. Punishment is indeed limited to voluntary disobedience, however this does not disprove the Biblical doctrine of the nature of “old man”.

Under III. Homosexuality is not in accordance with human nature. - What Morrell does here is say that homosexuality is against “nature” and therefore is not “natural”. Again this is a false dichotomy since the “nature” that is spoken of in Romans 1:26 is the natural creation of our bodies. Homosexuality is certainly against “nature” but it is not in opposition to the nature of the “old man” who craves and lusts after sin. Morrell has again failed to disprove the nature of the “old man” which is our fleshly lusts that must be renewed by God to the “new man” with the new nature that seeks after God

1. A. Our metaphysical nature is fallen (physical depravity) but not sinful (moral depravity)..

Again this presents a misunderstanding of the doctrine of our common creation as the “old man”. We are not born as sinners but born with the cravings of the “old man”. God did not create this “old man” in us as this is our inheritance back to Adam, but if we turn to God in faith and in repentance He will create in us the “new man” which is absolutely from God.

More to come….

You are again inserting ’sin nature’ where the bible never does. It is like when the comps insert terms and concepts such as ‘roles’, ‘masculinity’, and ‘femininity’, into the bible and biblical discussions when those terms are never mentioned in the bible.

Then let’s change the term to what the Bible actually uses. While the common modern term is “sin nature” the true Biblical terms “fleshly”, the “old man”, the “old self”.

While our “new self” is created in the image of Christ, our “old self” is created in the image of the first Adam.

Col 3:9 Do not lie to one another, since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices,
Col 3:10 and have put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him

Eph 4:22 that, in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit,
Eph 4:23 and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind,
Eph 4:24 and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.

Eph 2:3 Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.
Eph 2:4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us,

Gal 5:24 Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

Jer 16:19 O LORD, my strength and my stronghold, And my refuge in the day of distress, To You the nations will come From the ends of the earth and say, “Our fathers have inherited nothing but falsehood, Futility and things of no profit.”

Romans 6:6 knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin;

1 Cor. 3:3 for you are still fleshly. For since there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not fleshly, and are you not walking like mere men?

2Co 1:12 For our proud confidence is this: the testimony of our conscience, that in holiness and godly sincerity, not in fleshly wisdom but in the grace of God, we have conducted ourselves in the world, and especially toward you.

Col 2:18 Let no one keep defrauding you of your prize by delighting in self-abasement and the worship of the angels, taking his stand on visions he has seen, inflated without cause by his fleshly mind,

2 Peter 2:18 For speaking out arrogant words of vanity they entice by fleshly desires, by sensuality, those who barely escape from the ones who live in error,

It is clear from the scriptures that there is something within us that from young on is a “fleshly desire” that all of us have that is bent on sin. This “fleshly desire” can be fought only effectively through the Spirit and through obedience to God.

Rom 8:4 so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
Rom 8:5 For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit.
Rom 8:6 For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace,

In the article that you linked to, Jesse Morrell tells the truth when we says that we choose to sin, but he gives no indication where the “fleshly desires” comes from and he says that sin is not “natural” to the unregenerated man. This is not true. What was “natural” (goodness) to God’s original creation is no longer the “natural” way. In fact just as the devil originally was part of God’s good creation his act of sin created a new nature within him and that nature is what he now follows.

Joh 8:44 “You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

Adam too because of his act of rebellion against God had a new nature filled with sinful desires. God did not create this in him. It was the result of his first act of rebellion. And that nature, just like the new nature of satan, was a part of Adam that was there within him before any one of his children were born. The new nature of Adam’s that drove him to be be continually tempted to sin is what we have within us.

I will continue to comment shortly.

“Homosexuals often cover and excuse their evil acts of perversion by saying that they were born homosexual. And if the teaching is true that men are born with a sinful nature, homosexuals are right to say they were born homosexuals. For they were born homosexuals if they were born sinners. Also they are right to excuse their evil actions of perversion. For is they were born sinners, they were born homosexuals

The Biblical doctrine of a fleshly nature does not mean that we are born with sin. But it means that we are born addicted to sin. Homosexuals have no more right to excuse their sinful actions than an adulterer does or one who is a liar. One may have an addiction in a certain area more so than another but all of the applications of our acting out the fleshly nature is sinful. Homosexuals also do not agree that their actions are sinful. They do say that they are born this way but their reasoning is more along the line that homosexuality is like blue eyes. It is not a sin to have blue eyes and in their mind homosexuality is a trait that is just as natural (and not sinful) as blue eyes. Morrell’s point here is flawed.

More later.