I is for Innate Infant Iniquity

The problem with many Christians is that they believe so much that just isn’t true.

How many times have we been told that our babies are born innocent or pure or sinless?

How many times have we parroted the philosophies of godless psychologists who tell us that every newborn baby is like a “blank slate” and that his goodness or badness will be a result of what society adds to the slate?

The truth is your children are sinners. It is true that they were not guilty of volitional sin at the moment of birth, but they were born with sin natures. You may not be comfortable with that news but, if you are honest with yourself, you will admit that your own experiences bear witness to that fact. Children don’t have to learn to be defiant and disobedient; they have a natural bent toward it. You don’t have to wait until a child reached some arbitrary age of accountability to know if he is a sinner. Within a very short time, that starts to become glaringly evident.

In 1926, The Minnesota Crime Commission declared, “Every baby starts life as a little savage. He is completely selfish and self-centered. He wants what he wants when he wants it: his bottle, his mother’s attention, his playmate’s toys, his uncle’s watch, or whatever. Deny him these and he seethes with rage and aggressiveness which would be murderous were he not so helpless. He’s dirty; he has no morals, no knowledge, no developed skills. This means that all children, not just certain children but all children are born delinquent. If permitted to continue in their self-centered world of infancy, given free reign to their impulsive actions to satisfy each want, every child would grow up a criminal, a thief, a killer, a rapist.”   [Printed in the Journal of the American institute of Criminal Law and Criminality 18, no. 1 (May 1927) as written in the Minnesota Crime Commission report of 1926, which was commissioned by then Governor Theodore Christianson.]

In other words, it is probably a good thing that people enter this world as helpless little babies and not full-grown adults or they would destroy their entire race in one generation.

Now, just in case, your misguided instincts run contrary to the statement of the Minnesota Crime Commission, here is what God’s Word has to say in Romans 5:12.  "Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned."

Sin entered the world when Adam sinned. God had told him ".... of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die." Genesis 2:17

And that is exactly what happened. Adam died and his death passed upon all men. And the reason all men die is because we all have sinned. Romans 5:19 concludes, "For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous."

When Adam sinned, every one of his descendants became sinners. In other words, everyone became a sinner, not necessarily by action, but by nature. When the scripture says, "For all have sinned," it means we sinned in Adam or were in Adam when he sinned and are therefore sinners.  His sin nature is our nature; it is passed down from generation to generation.

Psalm 58:3 states, “The wicked are estranged from the womb: they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies.” Children are born with a sin nature it doesn't take long for that nature to become obvious.

 


526