p. 2 | 3286.-Is Sin Natural?

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Nov 15, 1910

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 37, No. 45.

3286.—Is Sin Natural?

Is sin natural? If so, where does the Bible say so? If it is natural, how did it become so?

Sin is not natural as God made nature. All that God made He pronounced "very good." Gen. 1:31. If all things that God made had continued according to the divine law of their being, they would have worked to His glory and man's greatest good. But man, tempted by Satan, attempted to turn them to his own glory. In yielding to Satan's suggestions he perverted or transgressed God's law, and came under the dominion of sin. He yielded all to Satan, and his entire being became the servant of sin. His nature, therefore, became changed, or perverted. He rejected the nature of God, and chose the nature of sin. Therefore sin is inherent in the carnal, or fleshly man; it is natural to him, or according to his perverted nature. Rom. 7:14; 8:6-8; Eph. 2:2, 3. All men by nature, that is, the perverted nature of their own, are the children of wrath.

God in Christ was manifest to restore man to the nature of God. Therefore when man by faith in Christ renounces his ways and chooses God's ways by accepting Christ, he becomes a "partaker of the divine nature," a son of God, a new creature in Christ Jesus. 2 Peter 1:4; John 1:13; 2 Cor. 5:17.

It is so in the so-called "natural world." Man had dominion over the earth (Gen. 1:28), but when he sold himself under sin (Rom. 7:14), he sold all that was under him, thus subjecting the lower creatures to sin, decay, and death (Rom. 8:20); but in that glad day when man is made immortal, all perverted nature shall be restored, and "there shall be no more death."