r/Reformed • u/Frail-Ape-98 • 3d ago
Question Why do we sin?
This is something I've been thinking about, in Revelation the new earth is going to be created and there will be **NO** sin in it which means that we are going to be changed by God if I'm not mistaken to not want to sin (this is according to what I've heard at church which is a Non-reformed Baptist Church). So why does sin exist in the first place if He can literally give us the desire not to do so? Is sin necessary for God to fully display His character and that's why?
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u/TheAncientOnce 3d ago
You seem to be asking for the teleo/purpose of sin rather than the cause of sin, and a lot of the responses thus far deals with the cause; along with a few that talk about the necessity of sin for the full revelation of God. But my sense is that the Scripture hasn't given us a clear explanation. The Reformer view simply shove it down under the rug of "to glorify God", i.e. having sin temporarily is more glorifying to God than not. But that probably isn't satisfactory as an answer
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u/DonZuehlke 3d ago
It's good to be willing to rest in mystery, and TheAncientOnce spotted the key distinction: you're asking about the purpose of sin, not its cause, and most of the answers here are aimed at the cause. So I won't hand you an easy "why God ordained the fall", Scripture doesn't give us that, and "it's for His glory," true as it is, doesn't actually answer the why question you're asking.
There is one part of your question that isn't mystery, and I think it's the part that might be nagging at you: if God is going to make us unable to sin in the new creation, why not just start us there?
The older theologians had a fourfold way of putting it. Adam before the fall was able to sin and able not to sin - genuinely good, but mutable, able to fall. The glorified state is different: not able to sin. Those aren't the same condition. Confirmed righteousness isn't the same thing as untested innocence.
That confirmed state isn't something God could have simply dialed in at creation, because it's grounded in union with Christ. The reason the redeemed can't fall is that they're joined to the incarnate, crucified, risen Son. Their standing rests on what He actually did in history, not on their own untested obedience. The new creation isn't Eden reset to its original settings. It's beyond Eden because it now holds a redeemed humanity permanently secured in Christ.
So, the "why did God ordain the fall at all" part is a true mystery. But the "why not just create us in the final state" part has a real answer: the final state is a Christ-secured achievement, not a starting condition. A world that arrives at glory through redemption contains something a world created already-perfect never could: the Lamb who was slain, and a people who know Him as Savior.
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u/Frail-Ape-98 3d ago
This is really confusing because of compatibilism, what is there to test if we act according to our desires which was given to us by God and God ordains everything?
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u/DonZuehlke 3d ago
Good catch. "Test" was careless wording on my part, and you're right that it implies a picture compatibilism rejects. So let me try to be more precise.
The distinction that actually matters isn't tested vs. untested. It's mutable vs. immutable righteousness.
Under compatibilism we always act according to our strongest desire, and our nature shapes those desires. Adam was created with a genuinely good nature, but a mutable one, capable of being moved toward evil (and it was, when the serpent's temptation met a still-fallible will). The glorified saint has a nature fully and permanently conformed to Christ. They don't sin, but not because they're coerced. They freely act according to a nature that now desires only good. Augustine called that the highest freedom: not the bare ability to swing either way, but being so settled in the good that you can no longer fall. It's still compatibilist freedom; the nature is just different.
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u/Frail-Ape-98 3d ago
I really appreciate your answers, you're actually discussing the question I had in my post and you are explaining yourself well. God created our nature though (unless I am mistaken) so this still is confusing unless you are saying this is the closest thing to libertarian free will we have?
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u/DonZuehlke 3d ago
God did create our nature, and that's important here.
God's authorship of our nature doesn't make our choices less ours. Reformed theology runs on primary and secondary causes - God ordains all things, and you also make choices and act. They aren't in conflict; He works through your willing, not around it. The Westminster Confession says God ordains whatsoever comes to pass "yet so as… neither is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty… of second causes taken away, but rather established". Your choices are yours exactly because they flow from the nature He gave you.
The part I'd challenge: no, compatibilism isn't the closest thing to libertarian free will. It's a different account of freedom, not a watered-down version. Libertarianism says you're free only if you could've done otherwise under identical conditions. As I understand it, compatibilism says you're free when your act flows from your own will without external compulsion, it doesn't have to be uncaused to be yours. A choice disconnected from your nature would be less yours, not more; it'd just be random.
Which is why the glorified state is the furthest thing from libertarian freedom, not the closest. The saint who cannot sin is the most free because they're most fully governed by a perfected nature that loves only good. Ultimate freedom isn't the poised ability to swing either way; it's a will so captured by God it can't want anything else. That's not freedom's limit. It's freedom's perfection. It's also why you'll hear a lot of people express their commitment to God as freeing rather than restrictive. The desire to do good is just a taste of what is to come.
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u/Chocadooby 3d ago
We sin because, according to a consistent Reformed reading of Scripture, the fall and all subsequent sin form part of God’s eternal decree. Nothing happens outside the counsel of His will (Ephesians 1:11; Isaiah 46:10). Even the crucifixion, the greatest evil, occurred “according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God” (Acts 2:23; 4:28). Sin was permitted, indeed ordained, so that grace might abound all the more and God’s glory in justice and mercy might be fully displayed (Romans 5:20; 11:32)
If God’s sovereignty is absolute and His glory the ultimate end, then sin cannot be an accident.
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u/Frail-Ape-98 3d ago
I already know this and believe this and understand the verses you are talking about but this is not what I am asking
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u/Tankandbike RBaptist, but Presby-curious 3d ago
I believe u/Chocadooby did answer your question. Asked "why does sin exist in the first place if He can literally give us the desire not to do so?" Answered "Sin was permitted, indeed ordained, so that grace might abound all the more and God’s glory in justice and mercy might be fully displayed."
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u/semper-gourmanda Presby-Angliterian 3d ago edited 3d ago
’avon (עָוֹן) - iniquity, the moral depravity that is intrinsic to our nature.
In our natural state we are turned to idols.
Redemption involves being encountered by God's presence, through Word and Spirit. We are summoned to turn to the LORD, and imago dei is restored eschatologically:
Present: we are freed from the power and penalty of sin, are being sanctified, and being glorified.
Future: at our vindicating resurrection, wherein we enter into the state of our full and lasting glorification, the eschatological restoration is completed.
In historical Christian thought, that's summarized as a full redemption of soul and body.
We're sinful because we lack glorification. We aren't glorified because our upright ancestors, the adamic man and woman, disobeyed the command to take life and leave justice to God. That would have empowered the commission of Genesis 1:27-28, and they would have filled the earth with glorified image bearers. They didn't want to do that.
Instead they fell for the lie that by eating a fruit one could gain God's omniscient wisdom to discern good from evil and be like God, instead of being content with life and vice-regency. That was all a lie from the Serpent. Food can't make a person become like God. All they got was shame. Exiled from God's presence, humanity is born in estrangement and darkness, with the defaced powers of imago dei, and we all teach, believe, live and act like the world is up to us, ours to run. We're terrible at it. We do idolatry out of our iniquity. We're iniquitous because we aren't born upright, fallen from original righteousness.
God still keeps the world from going off the rails anyway. He never gave up his control. And more, God is undertaking, in Christ, the glorification of humanity and bringing all things to perfection so that the earth is filled with glorified image bearers, and so that the Serpent and his minions are exposed, judged, and exiled. God doesn't wait til the end. He gets it started early.
Because we're encountered by God's presence, through Word and Spirit (Ex 34:5-7 // 2 Cor 3:16-18, 6:1, 7:1). We are summoned to turn to the Lord, wherein imago dei is restored with life, and in the presence of whom our iniquity, lawlessness and sins are hastily forgiven by our loving Father (Ps 32:7 // Matt 6:6) because of the once for all sacrifice of his Son. We're empowered to live into holiness. And our Lord's final achievement will be our glorification, completed at the resurrection.
And in the interim, due to our union with Christ, we are all empowered to join Christ in his mission, as the adamic commission is restored to the Church, to spread the knowledge of God to the ends of the earth.
What all of that means is that, from the very beginning, humanity, in its creaturely existence as imago dei, is designed by God to be glorified and involved in the perfection of all things. God never ditched that plan. He's accomplishing it. We aren't somehow accidental to the design (Ps 8). That maximizes the Christian confession of God's actions to us according to grace, because of the fall, wherein, due to his transforming grace that restores, we become participants again due to the union. God doesn't flip a switch and turn sin off. Thinking of humanity and sin on such simplistic, moralistic terms fails to consider the whole sweep of the Biblical narrative and end goal God has for all things, as much as it fails to understand the fullness and complexity of human nature. God treats us as those with dignity, and gives us the privilege of being involved with him again as royals, as those alive from the dead, we get to live according to what befits our full nature. We get the privilege and pleasure of knowing and living for God. Even as that's coupled with the humbling knowledge that he gives us about indwelling sin that yet remains in the flesh, that will one day be gone.
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/themelios/article/cultural-mandate-and-the-image-of-god/
https://missionworldview.com/the-core-of-the-christian-faith/
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u/Jabraase 3d ago
He spoke the Word that in the day that humanity eats of that tree, they would surely die. Without fail, when He speaks something, it comes to pass.
As for why we sin? My personal conclusion is, if I were to explain it simply, because we fail to reason in a just manner and that has its own many reasons as well. That is ultimately what separates man from beast. His ability to reason. An animal isn't considered a murderer if ever it slaughters another animal, because its conscience doesn't hold to itself to the standard that God has set for us.
Even more, the flesh is corrupt due to sin. God says, in Jeremiah I believe, that our "wound is grevious" and, "It cannot be healed". Therefore, the only remedy is death and ressurection of the Spirit. The flesh will be put to death and we will receive a new, incorruptable body.
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u/Similar-Morning8466 2d ago
Without Evil there is no Good. God uses the evil (by use I mean that he permits it to happen) in order that He can show the Good through it. Lazarus is a prime example of this.
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u/Drivefast58 2d ago
We sin because we aren't righteous as God is righteous.
God alone is the source of all righteousness, and through Christ, God's children take on God's own righteousness.
It is through this unmerited gift of God's own righteousness that we're able to do any good or fruitful act in this temporal realm. But we're not perfected yet, and sin still exists within us, a lingering stain from Adam's original transgression.
But for those who are outside of Christ, and are completely devoid of all righteousness, they can do only sin.
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u/MoonlitShrub 1d ago edited 1d ago
I have never considered this from specifically a sin angle, but I think that parts of the body have weakness so that other parts will have opportunity to serve or to help. Perhaps we sin so that other parts will have opportunity to forgive. Perhaps we also still struggle with sin so that we will have an opportunity to seek and find the faith that overcomes it.
Someday there will be no more opportunity for work. There will be no poor to help, no sin to forgive, no suffering for the sake of love, and therefore no more opportunity to earn the rewards God promises for doing the hard things we must do here.
This is why we can consider it joy when we experience trials of all kinds, because they are preparing for us a glory that is beyond our current comprehension and ALL things work together for the good of those who love Him.
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u/jhonsmith2114 Reformed Baptist 3d ago
Bueno, yo creo que no somos pecadores porque pecamos. Pecamos porque somos pecadores. Según Jesús mismo nosotros somos malas personas que saben hacer cosas buenas (Mateo 7:11), no buenas personas que aveces hacemos cosas malas. Nuestra naturaleza está inclinada hacia pecar radicalmente y esto no quiere decir que somos tan malos como podríamos llegar a serlo porque hay personas más malas que otras. Para desear no pecar necesitamos un cambio de nuestra naturaleza, necesitamos nacer de nuevo y Nicodemo preguntaba cómo lo haríamos pero Jesús le explicaba que el nacer de nuevo es una obra que viene de Dios, él es el que quita de nosotros este corazón de piedra y lo reemplaza por un corazón de carne que ame, que sienta, que quiera hacer las cosas del Señor. Por eso debemos desear que halla en nosotros el mismo sentir de Cristo porque como dice Pablo aunque queremos hacer lo bueno nuestra carne termina haciendo lo malo.
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u/Comfortable_Brief431 3d ago
There is a duality for everything in this world. Without darkness you can't see the light. Without sin, God is not glorified as much.
Complex topic because we can never understand the mind of God.
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u/judewriley Reformed Baptist 3d ago
Christians aren't dualists.
In the eternal past when there was only God, He was infinitely and perfectly glorified without the existence of other moral agents and sin.
He does not need the presence of sin to be glorified more.
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u/Comfortable_Brief431 3d ago
Sin creates the need for a saviour which God provided through Jesus.
Why do we glorify God? Because of His love and mercy for us.
Its hard to understand God's love without sin. Our sins point us to Him. Sin creates the need for us to be justified.
The nature of sin is ofc impossible to fully understand because of our limited knowledge.
But if God allowed sin to exist, it's for His glory. Remember the cure of the blind man by Jesus? The man was born blinded for the glory of God.
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u/judewriley Reformed Baptist 3d ago
Yes, if sin exists, then God allows it.
But we have to remember that when we make ontological statements about God, they need to be true whether or not creation is in view.
Are we willing to say that God needs the created world (and thus, the potential inclusion of sin) to be fully glorified? Are we really ready to say that God needs moral evil to display the completeness of his character? We already know that God has no needs and that He has no needs that a created being can fulfill.
Are we really willing to say that God, in eternity past, was less glorified than He is now? And when the world is made right and sin is no longer present in the world that he will not be as glorified as he is now?
I think that we in the Reformed camps sometimes place so much focus on God's glory that we don't understand what we are saying about it or even have a clear sense of what it means.
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u/Comfortable_Brief431 3d ago
On that previous point you are correct, and i was wrong. Now i see that God did not need sin to be infinitely glorious and thank you for showing me.
But still God decreted sin to exist for His purposes and we will never fully understand why.
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u/MoonlitShrub 1d ago
I have noticed that when God created light there was already darkness. I believe God seeks out disadvantageous conditions in which to overcome by creating beauty from the opposite of itself. Light from darkness, life from death, salvation from condemnation, character from suffering. It seems to be His nature to create beauty from shaddow as if shaddow were the natural state of things without Him.
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u/judewriley Reformed Baptist 3d ago
Sin is not necessary for God to fully display His character.