How is original sin removed

In the Bible freedom is freedom to serve God. Indeed, in His service we find perfect freedom. In theory one could conclude that, if man were without sin immediately after regeneration, he would immediately go to heaven.

But God forms character over time; he gives gifts to men and women and children over time. Together these are developed although not perfectly in this fallen world. God's handiwork in redemption is very rich and good and full.

The saved are not old-fashioned mechanical robot or embarrassing simpletons. The changed character—the gifts and the fruits of the Holy Spirit —call the world to behold the defeat of Satan and the demise of the kingdom of darkness in these former subjects of his realm. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.

New International Version. So also James As Job had trial of his discipleship, so do we. As Peter faced a trial of his discipleship, so will even the preachers as well as the members of the church.

We must call upon the Triune God as our God who made the wondrous promise in the Covenant of Grace and as our only worthy Father. In summary, the grace of regeneration, as the Reformed use the word in the "Ordo Salutis," begins with the new birth and God's effectually enabling the "totally depraved" sinner to answer God's call and to begin to do other things that new saints do, such as worshiping and adoring God.

But that is only the beginning of forming new character and maturing the fruits of the Spirit. So, the new birth as the first aspect of regeneration does not remove all "original sin," i. When regeneration has reached all that God has planned it to be, we have every reason to believe that "original sin" will be fully removed. The Reformed often cover that under the topics of "sanctification" and glorification".

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This was not the way it was meant to be. Once sin entered into life and into our world, all harmony with God, with self, with each other, and with the world around us was shattered. Each one of us is heir to Adam and Eve. We experience the effects of Original Sin in our daily life. This explains why it is so difficult to do good or to do what we should. Scripture uses figurative language in describing the account of the Fall in Genesis 3 but affirms an event that took place at the beginning of human history.

The language is figurative, but the reality is not a fantasy. The gift of freedom, given to the first man and woman, was meant to draw them closer to God, to each other, and to their destiny. God asked them—as he asks us—to recognize their human limits and to trust in him.

In the temptation, they were lured into trying to surpass their being human. They abused their freedom, failed to trust God, and disobeyed his command. By Baptism all sins are forgiven, Original Sin and all personal sins, and temporal punishment due to sin is removed. However, though all sins are removed, there remains, as an effect of Original Sin, the inclination to sin that is called concupiscence. The effects of Original Sin need not harm us so long as we seek strength to resist them through the Sacrament of Penance, the Sacrament of the Eucharist, prayer, a deepening spirituality, growth in virtue, and a wholehearted dependence on God.

We become sharers of divine life and temples of the Holy Spirit. We are now made righteous by God and live in a state of grace, that is, we live in union with God because of his gracious and loving initiative. God continues to assist us by many helps that are called actual graces. Thus, we have the ability to live and act under the guidance and light of the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

This helps us mature in goodness through the practice of virtues, such as the Cardinal Virtues: prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude. We share in the priesthood of Christ as well as his prophetic and royal mission.

Modern Catholic teaching is less clear about the mechanism of transmission and refers to it as a mystery. St Augustine, who largely devised the theory of original sin, thought that original sin was transmitted from generation to generation through sexual intercourse.

Augustine did not say exactly how this happened. He said that it was transmitted by "concupiscence", when people had sex and conceived a child. Concupiscence is a technical theological word that Augustine used to refer to sexual desire as something bad in the soul that was inseparable from normal human sexual impulses.

Sexual desire was bad, he taught, because it could totally overwhelm those caught up in it, depriving them of self-control and rational thought. This disapproving view of passion was quite common among Christians of Augustine's time. Augustine thought that concupiscence was present in all sexual intercourse. He thought that it was just as bad and uncontrolled in a marriage as it was in non-marital sex, but that an excuse could be made for it within marriage because its purpose was to produce legitimate children.

This bad element in sex provides the means by which original sin is transmitted from father to child. It transmits both humanity's guilt for Adam's crime and the sickness or defect that gives human beings a sinful nature. Now from this concupiscence whatever comes into being by natural birth is bound by original sin The Council or Trent , or Trentine councils were a series of Roman Catholic theological meetings in response to the Reformation. The Council of Trent gave the official stamp to the idea that original sin was transferred from generation to generation by propagation - which means during the sexual act that led to conception.

This formalised the notion of Original Sin as part of Roman Catholic doctrine. The Council explicitly ruled out the idea that original sin was transferred by "imitation"; in order to block the idea that human beings just copied the bad example set by their parents and others.

These closely related ideas teach that original sin is passed on by copying the sinful tendencies of other people.

The Council of Trent decreed that this idea was false. Many churches accept that infants can be cleansed of original sin by being baptised soon after birth. The other elements required are carried out by adults on the baby's behalf during the ceremony.

In St Paul's letter to the Galatians, he wrote: "Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery". This conception of Redemption as freedom from bondage is crucial for Judeo-Christian thought.

On the face of it, original sin doesn't answer the question as to how evil got into the world; instead it leaves other questions to be answered. As one writer puts it:. Why is there original sin?

Because Adam sinned? Then why did Adam sin? If it was because of the serpent, why did the serpent sin? If the serpent is supposed to have been a fallen angel, why did the angel sin? And so on. And there is a second, but related, question. If evil did not exist before Adam sinned, how could Adam know that what he was about to do was evil - how was he to know that it was wrong to disobey God?

For modern people the idea of being punished for a crime committed by someone else is unethical and unacceptable. The doctrine of original sin blames Eve for tempting Adam into sin and has been responsible for centuries of Christian bias against women.

Augustine's theory of original sin was so intrinsically tied up with his disapproval of human sexual love that for centuries it contaminated all sexual passion with the idea of sin.

Some Christian thinkers are unhappy with the idea that human beings start out so bad that they can't become good without God's help. Science shows that the Biblical creation story is not literally true, and demonstrates that Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden are myths and not historical figures. This destroys the idea of original sin as being caused by the misbehaviour of the first man and woman, and the idea of inheriting guilt or punishment for that misbehaviour.

Most modern theologians don't think this a good reason to abandon the doctrine of the fall. They believe that although the story is not historically true, it does contain important truths about the state of humanity.

The doctrine of original sin is based on the idea that God created a perfect world, and that humanity damaged it and themselves by disobeying him. Evolution, on the other hand, suggests that life in the world is steadily changing and becoming more diverse. Scientists do not tend to think of this as a moral good or evil, but in a sense evolution sees life on earth as moving closer to 'perfection' - becoming better adapted to its environment.

The biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre-Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense. A more modern idea is to give an ethical spin to the evolutionary idea and suggest that humanity should not be concerned about a past fall from grace, but concentrate on becoming more ethical beings and thus bringing about a better world.

Bishop Richard Holloway has described the idea that unbaptised babies go to hell as "one of the most unsympathetic of the Christian doctrines," and not greatly improved by the teaching that there is a special "limbo" for unbaptised babies on the outskirts of the inferno.