Babies die, right? Then babies are sinners.
"In him you were also circumcised... having been buried with him in baptism and raised with him through your faith in the power of God" (Colossians 2:11,12).
Baby boys in Old Testament Israel were circumcised at a young age too--eight days old. The Bible compares baptism with circumcision.
We are born sinful.
God Bless
Where?
I agree with you that babies die, and that the wages of sin is death, but I disagree that because babies die they are sinners. Animals die; do they sin? Jesus died, did He sin?
I am a sinner because my parents were sinners? Does that mean that if Mary was a sinner— that Jesus, being her son, was also a sinner?
On second thought, that sounds like a pretty good argument in favor of the Immaculate Conception!
But I digress. I believe that one must make a conscious choice to sin; one must have knowledge that one is doing wrong and consent to do that wrong- babies are not capable of that, so therefore are incapable of sinning.
Meaning that Paul's “all have sinned” is not to be taken literally. Had he qualified it with “all who have attained the age of reason excepting Jesus Christ have sinned”, then I would have no disagreement with your interpretation of Paul. But he did not do so.
I interpret Paul's words as being similar in nature to
Matthew 3:5: “People went out to him from Jerusalem and all Judea.” Does that mean that every single person in Judea went to see Jesus?
Or back to Paul, in 1 Corinthians 15:22: “For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.” Everybody dies? Were not Enoch and Elijah taken up into heaven- without dying?
I agree that baptism is the “new circumcision”, but I would describe original sin as a predisposition towards sin; not something we ourselves are guilty of— it is a condition we are born with, not a sin we commit ourselves. Paul's "all have sinned" suggests to me that he is talking about sins committed by the all, not the predisposition they are born with.
That predisposition makes it easy for us to sin. The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is saying that Mary did not have that predisposition to sin; that God, being all knowing and all powerful, applied the merits of Jesus Christ to Mary ahead of time.
God bless you too!