Jamin Bradley

You’ve probably been told that you were born a sinner, which is a popular theology you can thank Augustine for. As evidence of his thinking, he spoke of a jealous baby he once saw that turned pale as he looked bitterly at his foster brother breastfeeding. Augustine clearly didn’t allow babies the same courtesies most of us do, since many of us wouldn’t identify such a scenario as “sin.” At the very least, most of us wouldn’t conclude that Jesus needed to take on the cross to redeem jealous babies around the world. We’d be more apt to hold someone accountable for their jealousy when they’re old enough to understand it and live it out in a way that creates dysfunction in themselves and the world around them. We imagine babies would have generally acted the same in a world where Adam and Eve didn’t sin, because babies are babies.

After flooding the earth, God recognized that the intention of our hearts is evil from our youth—not our birth. In other words, evil is not in our DNA, as though we come out of the womb committing sin. We were designed to be good, not bad. But because our ancestors committed sin, they’ve changed the dynamic of the world in which we live. It’s as though our decisions gave rise to a being named Sin—a being which all humans will eventually make a deal with in some way when given the chance.

Well, all humans except one. Jesus was the only human (and he was fully human) who chose to be good every time Sin offered him his hand. He showed us what humans were designed to be like and how to navigate our humanity in a way that always chooses to follow God. This is the same track he’s trying to put all Christians on and part of why he gave us the Holy Spirit. Clearly, we’ve been struggling to partner with God instead of Sin, but the Holy Spirit will help us choose God whenever we let him. This, of course, takes practice—but it is the ultimate, achievable goal of Spirit-infused Christian discipleship.

The problem with Augustine’s theology is that if we’re born sinners, then Jesus was a sinner, too. And if Jesus was a sinner, then he couldn’t redeem our sins, nor could he beat death since death is the consequence of sin. It’s cheating to say that Jesus was the only human to be born without sin, because then he’s not fully human. Unlike the rest of us, the intention of Jesus’ heart stayed focused on good into his youth and beyond. He was the sinless human we had been waiting for ever since Sin came to reign.