What Is “Sinful Nature”?

In many areas of human behavior, a question emerges as to whether the behavior is nature (driven by our DNA) or nurture (learned from others). It is tempting to think that everything that is sin is caused by nurture. Some people define sin as strictly an act of the will and therefore a conscious choice. In such a model, sin isn’t an inherent part of you. The Bible doesn’t completely back that model, however. Paul speaks of his struggle with sinful behavior in Romans 7:15-20:

¹⁵ For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. ¹⁶ Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. ¹⁷ So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. ¹⁸ For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. ¹⁹ For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. ²⁰ Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.

Romans 7:15-20 (ESV)

Paul speaks of sin dwelling in his “flesh”. Other translations use the term “sinful nature” here. The urge to do what is evil dwells in our bodies somewhere and it is in itself sinful, not just potentially sinful.

Another clue comes from the Psalms:

Surely I was sinful at birth,
    sinful from the time my mother conceived me.

Psalm 51:5 (NIV)

I think NIV is clearer here. Paul is not just exaggerating to make a point. Nor is he declaring conception or birth to be sinful. He is making a statement about the human condition. We are sinful before we can learn anything. How is that possible?

Think of the complex code that creates each of us. How did it first come into being? The assertion that such complex information could be created by chance in the right environment is preposterous. It is nothing more than a desperate attempt to write God out of history. DNA was created by God. In its original form it is God’s Word. Sin is ultimately a distortion of God’s Word. The DNA (nature) and the flesh that is formed by that DNA is still an amazing creation, but it distorted from what it originally was designed to be.

There are multiple ways that this is true. The most fundamental is that now death is coded into us. The way that we are built will end in death. Our brains are also very prone to pursue pleasure at any cost. Hence, addiction is easy to come by. We can be prone to anger, prone to lust, prone to lusting for the same sex, and the list goes on. It is in the code and what the code has created. Another foundational flaw is that we cannot grasp the things of God by our own power:

¹⁴ The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

1 Corinthians 2:14 (ESV)

Humans were not created to be this way. Since these problems are inherited, can God blame us? Our usual Western way of thinking says you can only be held accountable for choices. God doesn’t think like us. Your flesh is a part of you. You may wish the distortions of your flesh were not you, as Paul does above; but we cannot divorce ourselves from being culpable for them.

Where did this come from? Apparently, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Many people want to dismiss the creation story and especially the Tree as myth or as a parable. I suspect that the Tree is a Satan created biological agent with the ability to edit DNA. That is not so far-fetched. Could this change by reverse engineered? At this point my sinful nature is slightly different than your sinful nature. We have common flaws, but also differences that result in different proclivities to sin. We couldn’t change it. God has a different plan.

We will die and leave the damaged portion of our being to decay. He will provide a brand new, sinful nature free version of our body at the resurrection of the dead.

How do we manage this damaged body the mean time? You can’t suppress sinful nature completely, nor are required to. Jesus died for our sins. We do not need to justify ourselves by achieving a state of sinlessness. We are asked to fight. We acknowledge that our nature is corrupted, we fight against the expressions of that corruption, we embrace the grace that saves us, and we love ourselves only because God loves us first. We will not always be like this. We will be returned to the beauty we were meant to be. Until then, it is not damaging to not rationalize away our sinful nature and its expressions. They are wrong.