Content taken from Daily Doctrine by Kevin DeYoung, © 2024. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, crossway.org.
According to the Reformed tradition, we are held accountable not only for the sins we commit by an act of the will, but also for the original sin we inherited from Adam. ‘This corruption of nature, during this life,’ the Westminster Confession states, ‘doth remain in those that are regenerated; and although it be, through Christ, pardoned, and mortified, yet both itself, and all the motions thereof, are truly and properly called sin.’
Later the Confession declares that ‘every sin, both original and actual’ is a ‘transgression of the righteous law of God’, and does, ‘in its own nature, bring guilt upon the sinner’. The fall does not simply make us broken and disordered; it condemns us before God.
