#STRask - If Sin Is a Disease We’re Born with, How Can We Be Guilty When We Sin?

Episode Date: June 19, 2025

Questions about how we can be guilty when we sin if sin is a disease we’re born with, how it can be that we’ll have free will in Heaven but not have the ability to choose to sin, and whether morality and logic are correct because God says so or he says so because they’re correct.   If sin is a disease we’re all born with, how can we be guilty when we sin? Can you explain how we will retain free will in Heaven but will not have the ability to choose to sin? Is morality correct because God says so, or does he say so because it is correct? Is logic correct because God says so, or does he say so because it is correct?

This is Amy Hall. I'm here with Greg Kockel here to take your questions on the hashtag STRask podcast from Stand to Reason. Good morning, Amy. Good morning, Greg. All right. All right. In the last episode, there was a cliffhanger. Yes. And I...

I kept thinking of my boyhood days in Flash Gordon in the 50s, that that serial for a half an hour right after church, I had to get back to finalize the cliffhanger from the prior episode and then get stuck with another one 30 minutes later. Anyway, so here we go. Okay, so I said this next question would be about original sin. So here's his question. I understand sin to be a disease that we are all born affected by. How can we be guilty when we sin? Thank you. Well the first mistake here is the metaphor being invoked. And I understand the reason invoking this particular

metaphor and there is, in some sense, there is a legitimacy to it, but we have to be very careful. And the metaphor is disease. Disease does not have any moral ramifications. If a person gets sick, they're sick. Then we fix it. Now, in this case, the word disease applies in the sense that it is a malady we are all afflicted with in virtue of being human and the fallenness of our ancestors, our first parents, who stood in for us as the legal head for the human race.

Just like, you know, the nation of Israel was taken as a whole under God and treated either good or ill by God according to the covenant based on the general behavior of the country, of the people. Sometimes, characteristically, a few times in their history, they were doing really well, and God blessed them even though there were rascals in their midst. And when that all reversed and they were mostly rascals, they got judged even though there was a believing remnant. And we read about that in 1 Kings 19 where Elijah goes and complains before God and he says, there are 7,000 who have not met their need of mail even though the rest of the country

was really, really apostate. So there is, using the disease metaphor, is meant to identify something in us that is bad for us that is also helpful in thinking there are antidotes to diseases. And so when we think of Jesus, Jesus is the only antidote to this disease. The liability here is it makes it sound if we're not careful with this metaphor, we're not too careful to qualify it, as if we are the innocent victims of a disease that found us when in fact this is a condition, so I'm going to abandon the word disease now, a condition that affects our behavior to the degree that or in the way that, we are actually responsible for the things we do

because it influences our very nature and our will. And now we willfully do what's wrong in virtue of our fallenness, but it's still our choices that we make to disobey God and therefore we are culpable. And that's the big difference with a disease, all right? So we have to be very, very careful. Now I think the question is, how can we be responsible? Is that the way you put it? Yeah, how can we be guilty when we sin? Well, because this isn't a disease. This is a character flaw.

It turns out this is a character flaw we were born with. Nevertheless, it's our flaw. It turns out this is a character flaw we were born with. Nevertheless, it's our flaw. And when we act according to our fallen nature, we are culpable or blameworthy, guilty for the fallen behavior. Now, I'll tell you quite candidly, this to me is the most difficult theological problem in Christianity. I would feel more comfortable if we could all be like Adam. We all had his same choice or circumstance, whatever. But I don't think that's the case because that's not what the text teaches.

The text teaches we are fallen in Adam, we are result, you know, each, God created all creatures to reproduce after their own kind. In the case of human beings, when Adam and Eve fell, they were spiritually broken, spiritually dead, disconnected from God, and then they gave offspring that were in like circumstance. They gave birth to a fallen race who was inclined in their will against God and their behaviors reflected that. David said in Psalm 51, I was conceived in iniquity. And interesting he puts the word conceived there and that it was him at the conception, but from the very conception, he was morally broken.

And subsequently, this whole prayer of confession in Psalm 51 was reflecting his willful brokenness and actions pertaining to that, that made him guilty and required of him repentance and seeking forgiveness before God, which Psalm 51 is famously all about. So, and we in kind, all of us since then. And the illustration that I've used before, and I just saw a scene from this a couple weeks ago, from the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the two towers, and here is Saruman creating a whole race of Furekai, which is a mixture between goblins and orcs, which are powerful

and strong and not afraid of the dark. Okay, so they're great warriors, great evil warriors. This is the point. And as they're being birded out of this mud placenta, so to speak, very cleverly the way Jackson developed this in the film, this adult Jirekai bursts out as born and then reaches up and throttles the midwife, orc, that helped him be born.

He's dead because this creature is bad from birth. Now I don't think, I never was tempted to think, oh, that poor Yurokai, he didn't choose to be born evil. All I thought was he's bad, man. You got to do away with these guys because they're bad. That's the best analogy I can offer. Maybe you've got a better one to how this biblically works, but it does seem to me that's the case biblically,

which is the whole human race has fallen. By the way, any attempts to tamper with that always lead to really bizarre places theologically. And those who have tried to go there have suffered ruin. This is a solid piece of classical Christian theology? I think the key thing that you were illustrating with that is that it's not – the sinful nature is not something outside of us as if we had a limb that had gone bad and we couldn't use it anymore. That's not related to who we are. Sin is not something that's outside of us. Sin is something that's wrong with us.

Our nature. It's our nature. It's who we are, as you illustrated with the Lord of the Rings analogy. It's who we are, and we are guilty for that. I mean, you might as well, here's a way, you can look at it from the opposite direction and maybe it'll make a little more sense. Now the idea that we can't be guilty because we're born sinful, that's who we are, so therefore we can't be guilty because we didn't choose to be that way. Well then you have a problem. Because guess what?

God didn't choose to be the way he is. God is who he is. And so I could ask, how can God be praiseworthy? God is just, that's who he is. He didn't become that. He didn't choose it. So how can he be praiseworthy? Now I think that sounds odd to everyone, because we understand that who God is, is praiseworthy.

That in himself, his character is something, it's him, and we praise him for that. And the opposite is true. It is more, when you think about it, it's a great illustration. It's not an illustration, it's a parallel. It's a great parallel because we consider it more praiseworthy to be good as an essence rather than just simply doing something good. Because it's not just that he does good, but that he is good that really is the source of our praise for him.

So I'm not sure why we can all see that, but we have so much more trouble seeing our guilt. Because we're on this side of the track. Because we don't want to be punished, I think. But hopefully that will help you just looking at it from the other direction. That's excellent, Amy. That's great. Okay, so here is a question from Jennifer. Can you please explain how we will retain free will in heaven, but will not have the ability to choose to sin? All right, I'm going to go back. This is my view, and I think it's your view too. And by the way, just as a point of information, we don't go around taking theological polls

that stand to reason to find out where every person sits on every different issue. We have some basics that we all agree on, but I'm not even sure how others on our team think about this. this, but if free will, any kind of meaningful free will, entails the ability to choose to sin, then God doesn't have free will. It's the same problem as the last question. Yes, it's very, yes, it's parallel. God doesn't have free will. Now, I think everybody considers God to be free

in the most meaningful senses, but that doesn't mean he's free to do otherwise. He's capable of doing otherwise. No, he always chooses according to his nature. And his nature is good, which is why we praise him. Therefore everything he chooses is good. And, you know, God can do whatever he wants, and everything he wants will be good, because his choices are going to be

from his nature. And when we're in heaven, we can do whatever we want, but whatever it is that we will want will be good, because we'll not want anything sinful, all right? Now, I know that there are other people, Clay Jones, for example, disagrees. He says we won't sin in heaven, but not because we're not able to. And I think his concern is the issue of freedom. I don't count it to any meaningful sense of freedom that we have the ability to, that we have the ability to do something evil, even in heaven. To me, that is not a meaningful

sense of freedom, though it is to some people, they want to sustain that because their theodicy is that in order to have, I'm trying to think of how I want to put this, because there's a certain level which I sympathize with this argument, there's a certain level, which I sympathize with this argument. It's a free will, a theodicy about why God allowed evil, but I see the freedom being exercised a little different way, and that's why God allowed us to have the ability to do what was wrong here, moral freedom, but we will not have moral freedom if that's the definition of it in heaven. The same as God, we will be like him and share in his holiness. And so, I guess my simple answer is we are not going to have that kind of so-called freedom in heaven,

but it's not going to be a loss, it's going to be a gain. It's a benefit. It's something God gives us by His grace. When we see Him, we shall be like Him because we'll see Him as He is. There's a transformation that takes place. And I don't want, the flesh doesn't get carried on in the resurrection. I don't want it there. I don't want anything like that. I don't, and I think for me one of the appeals of heaven, I'm searching for my words here, is that I won't even have to struggle with this. Should I do that or not? No, it's wrong to do that.

I have a temptation to do that, where that comes from I'm not sure, in heaven, but I have an impulse to want to do a wrong thing. I don't know where that would come from either in heaven. Nevertheless, I'm going to choose not to do it. That's a struggle. That's a fight. We deal with that here. Frankly, I don't want to deal with that in heaven, and I don't think I'm going to have to deal with that in heaven. That's part of the appeal of heaven. That is gone. All our choices will still be ours. We will not be machines. Determinism results in machine-like behavior, okay? Strict determinism does.

Machine-like behavior, we're not going to be machines, but we are going to be making meaningful choices that are completely consistent with a brand, a totally new and restored nature, non possi, non picari, it is not possible that we will, non posse picari, it will not be possible to sin, is the point, that the ancients, the way the ancients put it. So we will not have the possibility of sinning in heaven, and that's a wonderful thing that is not a meaningful restriction on our freedoms. I think part of the problem here are the words that are being used. So in the previous question, it was the word disease,

and in this question, it's the word ability. We won't have the ability to choose to sin. Well, that's a really, that's a strange word because what it brings to mind is the idea that I'll want to do it, but I won't be able to do it, or someone will stop me from doing it, and I can't carry out my desire to sin. This goes back to what you were saying, Greg, that doesn't make sense. Nobody says God doesn't have the ability to choose to sin because ability is more of a power situation. It's not a failure in God to not be able to sin.

Right. Sining is a disability, not an ability. Yes. When you sin, it's because you've been broken. It's not because you have this capability that everyone needs to have. And this is why I don't look at free will as God had to – I don't look at it that way that God had to give us the ability to sin or else it wouldn't be real. Because you end up ruling God out from having any sort of meaningful

morality and virtue if you do that. So if your entire self is fixed so that we no longer have the disability, then we will never choose to sin because our choices come out of our nature. And this goes back, again, I think people are trying to preserve this moral responsibility, and so they don't think we're morally responsible. This is, I think, it comes down to people not thinking we're morally responsible for who we are. And because they look at who we are as something outside of us, it's constraining us, but that's, it's not something outside of us, it's us. So if you can understand that God is praiseworthy and free and makes choices, even though all his choices come out of his nature that he didn't choose, then the same is true for us.

I don't see why, again, I don't know why we accept that in God, but we don't accept that in us. So I'm not sure, but I think people are trying to preserve a sense of moral responsibility and they don't think we're responsible for who we are. Okay, Greg, we still have a few minutes left, so I'm going to ask you a question. This could go a long time, so hopefully you can summarize it. All right, I'll do my best. Good luck. This comes from Templeton. I don't have a good track record for that, Amy. Short ones. Is morality correct because God says so or does he say so because it's correct?

Okay, this is the Euthyphoros dilemma or Euthyphoros dilemma. this was actually raised famously by Socrates, and the difficulty, the reason it's a dilemma, if he says so because it's correct, that suggests there's a standard outside of God that God is making reference to that is also over God, so God is an ultimate morally. If he says it's correct because he says so, then that reduces God's morality to his will. In other words, God could say anything he wants, and by definition, whatever he says is going to be moral. That's called volunteerism, by the way. And it's also problematic because when we talk about God's goodness, we are not simply saying, well, this is what he decides. Now, I think there is a way of

characterizing that, and Bill Craig does this carefully, says if God says it or wills it to be so, it is good. So we have, epistemologically, we know the goodness of something because of God's declaration of it But it's not but it's not because God is making reference to some external thing or simply as an act of power of his own But rather because as we've been discussing his nature is good So goodness in this sense is a primitive people say well, how do you know his nature is good. So goodness in this sense is a primitive. People say, well, how do you know his nature is good? Well, I think we understand what goodness is. We don't need to see examples. Oh, that's it. What color is, you know, tangerine? And that one over there, we point at it. Oh, I

can see it. No, we have an innate understanding of what goodness is. It's on the foundation, that's why we call it kind of a primitive in knowledge. And our point is, is that God has that quality that we have a foundational understanding of, and that quality is in His nature. He is not obeying some external law, and He's not simply doing an act of will to declare whatever He wants wrong or right. His nature dictates what He declares as wrong or right and once he declares it, well then the declaration is enough to establish the morality of that particular thing, but it's not voluntaristic like whatever.

It is grounded. It's not arbitrary. It's not, thank you, it's not arbitrary. It's grounded in his nature. And so this is the way to escape the so-called euthyphro dilemma or euthyphro dilemma because there's a tertium quid, there's a third option. Okay, you split the horns. It's not arbitrary as an activist power.

It is not based on a standard outside of him. It's based on a given standard that is fixed, but that fixed standard is his own character. So God becomes the grounding and foundation of all morality and the appropriate source of all the commands that he gives. So when we make the moral argument, we say there are moral laws in the universe, in virtue, we know this in virtue, the problem of evil, the moral argument, we say there are moral laws in the universe in virtue. We know this in virtue of the problem of evil, the broken laws, and the laws require a lawmaker. And so that allows us to reason to the existence of God whose character is the foundation of those good laws. And I like what you said about

it's self-evident that he is good. This is something we can apprehend, the quality of goodness. What I'm saying is goodness is self-evident. We know the quality of goodness. And so when we say that God is good, we're not looking for some other definition to make sense of that. That's the primitive I was speaking of. Well, there's actually a second half to the question. The second half is, is logic correct because God says so, or does he say so because it's

correct? No, I think in this case, and this is a little bit trickier, but it seems to be a feature of God's character. Logic – you know, the basic laws of logic hold in any possible world. A thing is itself and not something else. That's the law of identity. A equal A. Law of non-contradiction, the law of excluded middle, all of these different things.

These all, I think the way, there's two ways to deal with it. One is it's abstracts. They're outside, pardon me, outside of God somehow. But we don't want to act like they're created things, because then they seem to have their own independent existence, if they're abstracts just out there, or God created them, either have independent existence or God. It seems like the safest way to go, although this is, you know, people smarter than I struggle with this, the safest way to go is to say that the principles of logic, if you will, are really features of God's character, personality, nature. And they're built in there, so to speak.

That's the best I can do with that one. But like I said, people have struggled with this trying to make sense of it. And sometimes they come up with options that I don't think are going to work, but as abstract objects that have their self-existence or whatever. Or maybe they're not even objects at all. I think nominalists might even suggest, hey, these things aren't even real. They're useful fictions, but they're not real in terms of having an ontology or substance

that requires we understand the source of them. So that's the best I could do in a minute and a half. Well, thank you so much for your questions, Serge and Jennifer and Templeton. We really appreciate hearing from you. You can send us your question on X with the hashtag STRask or go to our website at STR.org. This is Amy Hall and Greg Kockel for Stand to Reason.