Scripture Reading: “Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.” (Psalm 51:5)
As we pointed out in a previous devotion, David is not saying here that he was born illegitimately, but that he was born a sinner. David recognized that sin is a birthmark that all men are born with. The only exception was the sinless Son of God who was born of a virgin without any of the sin-tainted blood of Adam coursing through His veins. This explains the Scripture’s clear teaching that the blood shed by Christ on the cross of Calvary for the sin of the world was the incorruptible blood of God (1 Peter 1:18-19; Acts 20:28).
All men in the world today are sinners by birth, by nature, and by choice. We are born with a natural proclivity to sin, which is clearly manifested in our lives at the age of accountability; that is, when we come to the point in our lives when we know to do good, but deliberately choose to sin instead (James 4:17). It is then and there, that we become accountable to God for our sin, imperil our immortal soul, and find ourself in desperate need of a Savior.
The doctrine of Original Sin has been called the first principle of our faith. If you get this wrong, you’ll get everything wrong. All spiritual deception can be traced back to the denial of this first fundamental. If man is innately good apart from God, then, he doesn’t need God. On the other hand, if man is innately sinful, then, good is impossible apart from God—who alone is good (Mark 10:18)—and man desperately needs God to come to any good end.
“The doctrine of original sin is the only philosophy empirically validated by thirty-five centuries of recorded human history” (Anonymous)