Let's try and get back to some of the basics.
A number of years ago I struggled with the idea of Original Sin, or more specifically, with the idea of an "inherited" guilt. It sounded like what was being said was that God holds us culpable and accountable for Adam's sin. Adam sinned, and now God still holds that against me, rather than me being culpable only to my own sins. As, certainly, when I mess up I should be held accountable, but why should I be held accountable for something I never did? And when I spoke to non-Christians, they raised this objection as well and I accepted their objection. And so I wrestled with this for some time.
But then I learned about this word concupiscence. Which is really just a very fancy word that can mean "desire" or "lust". It's what is otherwise called the lusts or the passions of the flesh. Now, is desire in and of itself bad? I become hungry and in my hunger I desire food--is this bad? Is this sin? I went through puberty, hormones set in, I found women pleasant to look at and be around, I desired to eventually have a mate, a partner in life, to share life with. Is this a sin? Well, no, natural desire is not itself sin, but concupiscience isn't speaking about the mere fact that we are biological creatures that have drives--drives for sex and companionship, drives to feed ourselves when we are hungry because our bodies need calories to exist, or the desire to be warm in the cold, or the like. Rather the issue is, with concupiscence, it is that the natural desires or natural appetites have become perverted, twisted. To borrow the Latin, man has become incurvatus in se, inwardly curved or bent, toward himself. Natural desire has been twisted, perverted, become depraved and so the natural desires have become unnatural (in regard to God's original good purposes and intentions for the order of creation). God said "be fruitful and multiply" and thus the act of procreation is good, and so the animal instinct, the drive to mate and bear offspring is a good part of God's good order for creation. However, those instincts and drives have become twisted and perverted on account of sin.
Sin, therefore, is not merely the thing I do that I ought not do. Sin, instead, is a thing that has infected me. There is something within me that is dark and twisted, that is out of alignment with how God originally created me to be. I bear in myself, even in my own bodily members, as though in my own skin and bones, something that is disjointed, something deeply and fundamentally wrong, that is fundamentally at odds with God's will, with God's Law, with God's desire for creation.
It is that something in me, that Sin, that is the real and actual cause of why I do what I should not do, and I fail to do what I should do. It is like a law within myself that is contrary to what I know to be right and good. For the Law has taught me what is good, and I do not do it; and so the Law that was intended to bring me life now puts me to death.
This is what the Apostle St. Paul is talking about in Romans 7. It's the reason why we try to be good but end up not doing good. It's not that I merely mess up now and again, it's that I am from the outside to the inside completely and totally infected with something deeply wrong. There is a deep wound that cuts right into the middle of my humanity, everything about me, all that I am, is tainted by it. Like a gangrene, an infection buried deep, below my my skin, deeper than my bones and marrow, to my very heart, my mind, my reason, even my very soul, to the essence of who and what I am.
That is the problem. That is the problem because I came into this world Adam's progeny. I bear the same humanity of our fore-parents, Adam and Eve. I didn't learn to become a sinner as I grew older, as I began to learn more and then made conscious choices to do wrong.
As my mind developed there, right in the middle of myself, was sin--to hear and to disobey, to see and to plan evil designs. I have old memories, I can remember things from when I was incredibly young. I can remember things I said and did even as young as four or five years old. Ways that I hurt my parents, disobeyed my parents. I did these things quite naturally. Nobody needed to teach me to lie, I just lied. Nobody needed to teach me to be selfish, I just was selfish.
In iniquity I was conceived, in iniquity I was formed, in iniquity I came into this world. When I was still but a zygote, a mere split gamete, I was a sinner. Without ever having committed any sin of my own, sin took root in me. Sin taking root poisoned me, and infected me with the rottenness of death, despair, faithlessnes, and every manner of thing that keeps us from enjoying communion with God as His precious God-bearing creatures.
I came into this world bearing guilt, not a guilt by which God held me accountable for the actions of another; but rather the guilt of my own sinful conscience. A conscience that was held under the bondage of sin and death, captive to the powers and principalities of this fallen age, I entered this world a slave to death.
This is not an easy thing to accept, the vanity and pride of the flesh does not wish to accept it. Because the very distorted and twisted passions within me also want to vindicate themselves in me. The very things that bury me in death want me to rot in death but pretend that it is life. Death grips me, but I want to be alive and so my flesh wills to fake it, to pretend righteousness, to pretend holiness, to pretend piety. But the guilty conscience lay there, hurting and riddled with many wounds. We try to silence it, we try to occupy it with lies and many vices. But beneath all of it, it still groans in the pains of death, the pains of guilt, in the uncomfortable reality that something is wrong. Perhaps we will seek to alleviate it by many different means, blaming ourselves and becoming haters of ourselves, or blaming others and hating others. Scapegoating this person or that person, or claiming if we only did this or did that, or change this thing, or that thing, fix this bit of society, improve this part of our lives--then we will be in a better condition than we were yesterday.
But it is always empty. It is constantly death upon death. And at the end of our days, what will we have for it all? That we gained the whole world but forfeited our soul? That we might stand on the Day of Judgment and claim all the wonderful things we did, even the things we did in the name of Jesus Christ? That we worked wonders, miracles, prophecies? That we gained millions of dollars? That we lived good lives? That we lived wholesome lives? Fulfilling lives? But what of it? What does it matter? What were we when we looked at our neighbor and judged them? Or what were we when we gave ten dollars but there was a hundred in our wallet? What were we when we became heated in the midst of an argument and lashed out against our mother, our father, our spouse, or our children, or friend? When we raged, even silently, on the way to work. What were we? What are we?
If we are nothing more than animals that by a mere quirk of genetics became aware of ourselves, then on the one hand what does it matter; but on the other, such is so great a curse as to be merely matter that has become aware of the darkness of death and cosmic entropy. The universe a horror, existence a dreadful thing. To be alive for but a moment and in the next be nothing. To be born, to know love, and then watch as love crumbles to dust and life to ashes.
What hope, what answer, can there possibly be to all of this except Jesus Christ, and the Good News of His death and resurrection? Who justifies the unjust, who makes righteous the unrighteous, who gives life to the dead, who speaks and it comes to be. God, who being rich in mercy, who made all things, unwilling that what He made perish but be full of the glory of Himself and to dwell in eternal goodness with Him. That I, though dead and dying, am alive together in and with Christ. That I, unworthy sinner and full of unrighteousness, should be called righteous by God. That I, unholy beggar and wretch and walking corpse should be called the child of God, the beloved of God, the heir of God.
Let us truly grasp the depths of the darkness in which we our in, that we might behold the light that shines all the more brightly.
O Light of the World, you stepped down into darkness.
God be merciful to me, a sinner.
-CryptoLutheran
