What has happened to Christianity during the last 1900 plus years makes ever more relevant the old proclamation: "speak where the Bible speaks; be silent where the Bible is silent." The most glorious concept that has entered my mind is, not to reform, but to restore in practice what Jesus and his apostles taught. I am thankful that that glorious concept has been accepted by many men and women, young and old, educated and uneducated, and that today they are living epistles of Christ, "written in" my heart, "known and read" in many nations around the world (2 Corinthians 3:2-3). So far as I can tell, they are the same kind of Christians as were Paul, Peter, Aquila, Priscilla, Phoebe, and Lydia.

Back in the first century inspired predictions were made that "some shall depart from the faith" (Acts 20:29-30; 1 Timothy 4:1; Hebrews 13:8). One of the early departures was the doctrine of inherited sin, that all babies are sinners at birth.

A passage used to sustain inborn sin is Romans 5:12:

The verse cannot mean that babies have actually sinned, for actually they have done nothing at birth, good or bad. In parallel, Levi did not actually pay a tithe to Melchizedek, for in the days of Melchizedek he was yet unborn. Yet, "so to speak," says the writer of the book of Hebrews, Levi "paid tithes, for he was still in the loins of his father when Melchizedek met" Abraham (7:9-10). Similarly, "so to speak," babies have sinned, but not actually. Automatically they receive the consequence of Adam’s sin (physical death), but no its guilt.

Guilt is never transferable. My mother, my sister, my brother, and I all received the consequence of my father’s alcoholism, including embarrassment, but not his guilt. The Bible is clear that

As Romans 5:12 ("all sinned") and Hebrews 7:10 ("he paid tithes") cannot be literal and actual, so other Bible verses were never intended to be literal and actual, as "from my mother’s womb I guided her" (apparently helping a widow, Job 31:18). Likewise, David never thought he would be taken literally when he wrote that he trusted in God when he lay on his "mother’s breast" (Psalm 22:9).

"Israel’s singer of songs" (2 Samuel 23:1) never intended to leave the impression that innocent newborn children are tainted with sin when he wrote, "Indeed, in iniquity I was born and in sin my mother conceived me" (Psalm 51:5). The NRSV translates the verse, "Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me." Literally, being "a sinner" nine months before birth, and being "born guilty," are impossible.

We have seen above that the inherited sin doctrine contradicts Ezekiel 18:20. No handed down sin is possible; sin has to be personal. The king of Tyre was told,

Children are "the heritage" of the Lord, his possession, given to parents (Psalm 127:3). Tainted gifts are not welcome. Children, to whom "the kingdom of heaven belongs" (Matthew 19:14), are not sinners "from birth, sinful from the time" their mothers "conceived" them, none months before (Psalm 51:5, NIV). No child is responsible for what his grandfather Adam did, but "each one of us" will give an "account of himself of God" (Romans 14:12). It was not inherited sin that caused God to hide his face from Israel, but "your sins," said Isaiah (59:1-2).

If then it is impossible that David meant in Psalm 51:5 that he was "a sinner from birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me" (NIV), full of sin nine months before birth, what did David mean? A meaning that agrees with all other Bible verses is that David was saying, "Indeed, into [a world of] iniquity I was born, and my mother was a sinner when I was conceived." He was not saying that becoming a mother made her a sinner (cf. Genesis 1:28; 1 Timothy 2:15), but that she, like the rest of us (cf. Romans 3:23, "all have sinned"), was a sinner. "All of us like sheep have gone astray; each of us has turned to his own way" (Isaiah 53:6).

David was simply saying that he too had become like the people around him, as Isaiah said about himself: "I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips" (6:5). Such a meaning harmonizes with the fact that we speak "in our own language" in "which we were born" (Acts 2:8), but we were not born with that speaking ability. Literally, "from the womb" wicked people do not "speak lies" (Psalm 58:3, NIV). Both their speaking ability and their wickedness were past-natal and learned, and so it was with David.

"House and wealth are an inheritance from fathers" (Proverbs 19:14), but not sin. "Each one is tempted when he is lured by his own desires, and enticed. When desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin" (James 1:14, FHV), and so it was with David. A parallel to Psalm 51:5 might be: I was born in a field of spuds, and on a potato farm my mother conceived me, but I was not born full of potatoes."

The idea that babies have inborn sin spread and was accepted as gospel truth by theologians. However, when it was pointed out to them that such a doctrine makes Jesus a born sinner, theologians were stunned! Something had to be done, for unquestionably Jesus was born "holy, guileless, undefiled, separated from sinners" (Hebrews 7:26). So, theologians to the rescue!

For Jesus to be born sinless would mean that his mother had to be born sinless so that she would not pass sin down to her offspring. Therefor, theologians granted a special dispensation to Mary, asserting that she had been conceived in her mother’s womb without sin. Pope Pius IX in 1854 issued a papal bull (Ineffabilis Deus) announcing the doctrine of the "Immaculate Conception", that Mary, alone of all babies, was conceived without sin, and so had no sin to hand down to Jesus.

However, the doctrine that all other children were and are born in sin was left intact. To this day it is still maintained by the Catholic Church, and it has spread into Protestant denominations as well. The Discipline of the Methodist Church (founded by John Wesley in 1739) instructed pastors when they sprinkled (Protestants had taken over sprinkling also from the Catholic Church) babies to say, "Forasmuch as all men are conceived and born in sin, I baptize you into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."

I rejoice, however, that in 1910 Methodists repudiated the doctrine of inborn sin. Since that date Methodist pastors are instructed, when sprinkling a baby, to say: "forasmuch as all men are conceived and born in Christ, I baptize you into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." If babies are "born in Christ," then they are born sinless, and so what the Methodists and others call "baptism" is now only a dedication ceremony.

I am sorry I have seen a swing-back by a few New Testament Christians, not to the doctrine of inborn sin, and not to sprinkling babies, but to the dedication part of sprinkling babies. A gospel preacher has encouraged new parents to bring their newborn down front during the invitation song for a public prayer to be offered in thanksgiving for the arrival of another gift from heaven, and to pray that the child will grow up to be a good Christian.

Certainly a prayer of thanksgiving all parents should offer when the Lord blesses them with a child, and certainly those parents should without fail pray every day for the physical and spiritual welfare of that child as long as they live. But to respond during worship service, though without the sprinkling, for a baby dedication ceremony, is as foreign to the New Testament as the hand-washing ceremony of the Jews was to the Old Testament (cf. Matthew 15:1-9).