The doctrine of sin—its origin, nature, consequences, and the different ways Scripture describes human rebellion against God.
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 6076. Paul’s thorn in the flesh is one of the great unanswered questions of the New Testament, and I have come to think the silence is deliberate. We are told what it did, why it was given and what God said about it. We are never told what it was. That combination is unusual…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 6075. Total depravity is one of the most misunderstood terms in Christian theology, and a good deal of the misunderstanding is caused by the word total. The doctrine does not teach that human beings are as wicked as they could possibly be. It teaches that sin has reached every part of us, so that…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 6074. Original sin is the doctrine that describes what happened to the human race through Adam’s fall and what every one of us has inherited as a result. It is one of the few Christian doctrines that can be confirmed by reading a newspaper. The disagreements are not about whether something is wrong with…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 6073. Unintentional sin is a genuine biblical category, and the answer to whether we are responsible for it is yes, with a very large mercy attached. Scripture is clear that ignorance does not simply cancel guilt. It is equally clear that God made specific provision for the person who sinned without realising it, and…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 6072. Lust and attraction are not the same thing, and a great many sincere Christians have been tormented by the assumption that they are. Noticing that someone is beautiful is not adultery. Jesus never said it was. The difference between lust and attraction is one of those distinctions that sounds academic until you meet…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 6071. Scripture defines sexual sin with considerable care, and masturbation is never named among the things it defines. That silence is the first fact any honest answer has to reckon with. This is a question people are ashamed to ask and desperate to have answered, so I want to be careful and direct. What…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 6069. Are there degrees of sin? Yes and no, and both halves of that answer need holding at once or you will end up in one of two ditches. All sin makes a person guilty before a holy God, so in the matter of guilt there are no degrees of sin worth counting on….
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 6067. Confession of sin to God is always sufficient for forgiveness. There is no human intermediary, no priest, no queue and no waiting period. That needs saying first and plainly, because a great deal of religious machinery has been built on denying it. And yet Scripture also tells believers to confess to one another….
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 6065. Temptation and sin are not the same thing, and confusing them has done enormous damage to sensitive Christians. Many believers spend years apologising to God for being tempted, which is rather like apologising for having been shot at. So where does the line fall? And if Jesus was tempted in every respect as…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 6063. Wilful sin is sin committed with open eyes. Not the sin that overtakes you, not the sin you regret before you have finished it, but the sin you knew was wrong and chose anyway. The phrase makes believers nervous because of one verse. If we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge…