Question Box - Why are we all sinners?
Brother N from Iran asks:
As we know God creates peace and he creates evil or disaster & there is a difference between evil and sin, which is mans fault ! Sin first entered the world as a result of man not God. I have been chatting and preaching to a person who thinks God is a sinner too, because He created us and He created our mind so He created our sin too! I told him that sin is our desire and comes from within us and all humans in the world sin and nobody is perfect , but his thoughts are not true about God. As we know God hates sin and He wants to save us. I told him the same sentences but he told me: ‘Saved from what? From the things that God already made for us to do?’ Would you tell me your opinion about it ? How I can help that person? The question is why are we all sinners? I’m looking forward for your answer. Lots of love and regard to all, God bless.
These are deep issues you're touching on here. As you rightly realize, there is a difference between "evil" in the Biblical sense, i.e. disaster, the punishment or result of sin - which God can bring. Isaiah 45:5-7 etc. make this very clear. But sin comes from within, out of the heart of man (Mark 7:15,21-23). James 1:13-15 describes the all too familiar process - we are tempted by our own lusts, then lust develops into sin, which results in death. We die because of sin. By one man, Adam, sin entered the world (Romans 5:12). However, as you again rightly realize, this only throws the question one stage further back. Why is there even such a concept as sin? Where did the concept even come from? We're dealing here with things which are perhaps beyond our full understanding, but the following are some suggestions. God didn't want us to be robots, automatically obeying His will. So, He gave us genuine freedom of choice, between obedience and disobedience. Since sin is the breaking of God's law, we could say that the concept of sin began with the fact that God chose to test us by obedience. As soon as He set up the concept of obedience, there was the possibility of disobedience and therefore sin. Paul wrote an inspired commentary on this dilemma:
"What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Howbeit, I had not known sin, except through the law: for I had not known coveting, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet: but sin, finding occasion, wrought in me through the commandment all manner of coveting: for apart from the law sin is dead. And I was alive apart from the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died; and the commandment, which was unto life, this I found to be unto death: for sin, finding occasion, through the commandment beguiled me, and through it slew me. So that the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and righteous, and good. Did then that which is good become death unto me? God forbid. But sin, that it might be shown to be sin, by working death to me through that which is good; that through the commandment sin might become exceeding sinful. For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin. For that which I do I know not: for not what I would, that do I practise; but what I hate, that I do. But if what I would not, that I do, I consent unto the law that it is good...Wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out of the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Rom. 7:7-25). Although Paul's words here are hard to be understood, the basic point appears to be that our experience of the concept of sin was intended by God to teach us something; we appreciate the reason for death, we come to see our own desperate and urgent need, and the hopelessness of our position without the saving work of the Lord Jesus. The whole concept of sin and the need for a way of escape from it leads us to an appreciation of the Lord Jesus and the grace of God which was shown in Him and especially in His death.
