I. What is being confessed in this article?⤒🔗

In this article the church confesses how sin takes hold of all people and how strong that hold is.

1. Adam refused to listen to God. As a consequence, his whole nature is corrupted. This corruption or depravity has spread through all mankind. That is why we speak of original sin. It is therefore a "hereditary evil," with which even unborn children are already infected. For it is the root from which all other sins arise. That is why God considers it so extremely bad that this original sin is sufficient to condemn all people.
2. Even in baptized people it does not seem to be completely eradicated, because all their sins spring from it, like water bubbling up from a lethal spring.
3. But it is not imputed to the children of God, but is forgiven them, so that they will not be condemned. This happens through God’s grace and mercy. But now they should not carelessly continue to do wrong. God’s pardoning mercy seeks to make them realize all the more how depraved they are, so that they strongly desire to be delivered from this earthly existence that is in the hold of death.
4. We therefore reject the erroneous view of the Pelagians who say that sin only happens because we follow the bad examples of others.

II. The fact that original sin exists←⤒🔗

1. Most people will readily admit that they make mistakes and therefore are not perfect. A Christian will even admit that he commits sins and therefore is evil in God’s sight.
   It becomes more difficult to acknowledge that we came into the world as already corrupted. But it is even more difficult for us to accept that God counts this wrongful inclination as our guilt, so much so that “it is sufficient reason to condemn the human race.” This original sin does not appear sometime during the course of our existence. We have not consciously practiced it in person. We were born with it. We are infected with it. We inherited it. That is why we are tempted to protest and ask if it is our fault that we were born this way. In other words, does original sin really exist?
2. The Pelagians (named after Pelagius, refuted in Article 14) deny that original sin exists. According to them, all infants are born sinless. They consider it utterly unfair that a man should be born with a corrupt nature and therefore be condemned by God. Therefore they claim that every human being has a free will by which he can choose good as well as evil. When things do go wrong, it is because he follows the bad examples, but not because he was born as a bad person.
3. The question of whether original sin exists is not decided by our (tainted) sense of justice, but only by God in his Word. Anyone who does not want to bend his proud neck under the authority of the Holy Scriptures will never come to knowledge and understanding here, according to Augustine.
   Already Psalm 51 teaches us that original sin is a harsh reality. David indicts himself. He has committed a heinous crime. But this is not an isolated case and cannot be explained as simply following a wrong example. David goes back in his mind to his earlier years, his youth, to his birth and beyond, to where his life began. And he finds sin already there. Thinking of this, he exclaims, “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me” (Psalm 51:5). David knows himself to be corrupted down to the deepest roots of his existence.
   His conclusion, meanwhile, is not that he is therefore not to blame for being like this, but — rather the other way around — that it is even worse, because his iniquity predates his birth. Nowhere in his life does he find a perfect spot. David accepts his innate sin as guilt before God. For when he cries, "Blot out all transgressions” (Psalm 51:2), then the iniquity in which he was born is also included.

III. The essence of original sin←⤒🔗

1. We heard Pelagius claim that newborn infants are unspoiled. So humans are by nature sinless and healthy. Others, such as the humanists and Remonstrants, take a more sombre view. According to them, human nature is weakened, yet not entirely corrupted. So man is sick by nature. According to the Roman Catholics, too, human nature has lost a few things, but that does not mean it has been ruined. When a spirited horse has lost its bit or bridle, it is still a good horse. It trots frankly and freely. With all its impetuousness, it lives as a creature of just "pure nature," but because it is ungovernable it can become dangerous. Thus, according to the Roman Catholics, human nature has lost its reins because of original sin, namely the bond with God. That is a loss, a defect, a shortcoming. Man has been reduced, as it were, to "pure nature" and it is not harmless when human nature is left to go its way uninhibited and unrestrained. But man’s nature itself is not corrupted because of that. It only lacks the guidance of a higher nature, which is referred to as the image of God.
   So we should not judge too gloomily about the status of man.
2. In contradiction to all these "full-bodied and half-hearted" Pelagians, this article understands original sin as “a corruption of the entire nature of man.” And this corruption did not arise later in life because of our wrongful actions. It is a “hereditary evil, which infects even infants in their mother’s womb.” There is not a single bright spot left in the darkness of our existence. It is pitch dark, right from our conception (Psalm 51:6).
3. This original sin does not leave us alone. It is not like a tumour that has come to a standstill. It pressures us to sin even much more. Our article uses two images to clarify this. For original sin is called the root from which all kinds of sins spring up, and it is likened to water welling up from a woeful (deadly) source. All the sins we commit come from this original sin. Now we understand David even better when in Psalm 51 he arrives from his concrete crime at the iniquity in which he was born, because that was the source from which his last great crime also welled up.
4. For this reason, that original sin constantly incites man to rebel against God, it is “so vile and abominable in God’s sight that it is sufficient to condemn the human race.”
5. Article 15 thus strongly underscores what was said in Article 14. While there it was confessed that we are corrupt with all our capacities, here it is acknowledged with shame that we have been infected with this corruption from our very beginning. In other words: there is no chance that — possibly buried under a thick layer of wickedness — there is any good core or source in man. He cannot be saved on his own. He does not even want that salvation, either. That is how much original sin has man in his grip.

IV. How original sin infects all of mankind←⤒🔗

1. We believe that God has a perfectly lawful cause for holding all men accountable for Adam’s known transgression. Another thing is whether we acknowledge this reason. We cannot fully perceive why we should all bear the guilt of Adam’s first sin. Article 15, like the Scriptures, does not try to make this transparent and plausible for us.
   As for the Scriptures, we already mentioned Psalm 51. Job 14:4 is also clear about it: “Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? There is not one.”
2. Romans 5:12-21 is very important in this regard. There we read
    - that sin entered into the world through one man (Romans 5:12);
    - because of this, all sinned (Romans 5:12), though not in a similar way to Adam (Romans5:14);
    - that many died by the transgression of one (Romans 5:15);
    - that one trespass led to condemnation for all men (Romans 5:18);
    - that through the disobedience of one man many were made sinners (Romans 5:19).
3. People often try to illustrate this bond between Adam and us with images and examples. For example, one can think of a monarch who makes a declaration of war that has far-reaching consequences for all his subjects, even though they have not personally spoken about it. Similarly, Adam acted as our covenant head, and therefore his sin is imputed to us. Others want to put greater emphasis on the fact that we ourselves—in paradise—have sinned. They arrive at this so-called realistic explanation partly because Ezekiel 18:20 says,, “The soul who sins shall die.” According to this explanation, we ourselves sinned before birth. To clarify this, reference is made to Hebrews 7:9-10, where the not-yet-born Levi, in the loins of Abraham, recognizes the priest Melchizedek as his superior. No explanation is entirely satisfactory. We simply have to believe what the Bible says about the strong relationship between Adam and us, and that the LORD is absolutely just in this.
   This article does not explain how, but it does confess that Adam’s transgression affects us. It plainly says, “We believe that by the disobedience of Adam original sin has spread throughout the human race.”       

V. Original sin is not abolished nor eradicated even by baptism←⤒🔗

1. Why is baptism suddenly mentioned here? Could it then not equally well be said of faith or of the Lord’s Supper that original sin is "not entirely" destroyed by it? Yet it is precisely baptism that is mentioned. Original sin is the depravity we are born with, and baptism is always God’s earliest public dealing with us. It is therefore no wonder that Christians ask what influence baptism has on the power of original sin.
   In addition, the Roman Catholic church claims that baptism does in fact abolish the corruption of original sin. Incidentally it considers the word "depravity" too harsh and prefers to speak of "deficiency." According to this teaching human nature has only become unbridled and has been reduced to "pure nature" (see section III, point 1, above). By the grace of baptism, man regains his reins and his reduction to "pure nature" is lifted.
   Against this view of baptism, it is confessed here that even baptism does not abolish or eradicate original sin.
2. The words "not even" may give rise to some difficulty. Does baptism then deal with original sin to some extent? If so, to what extent? Our article does not answer the last question. It apparently does not count on such a question. The intention is different. For example, if someone says that the fire was so fierce and destructive that even the fire brigade could not "completely" extinguish the fire. The purpose of this statement is not to explain that the fire brigade was still able to contain the fire a little, but to make clear how bad it actually was.
   In the same way, it is said in this article that our corruption is so great that even baptism does not wholly eradicate it. This is further evident from the fact that the article maintains the word “depravity” even for baptized people, and also speaks of a “woeful (poisonous) source” from which all sin wells up.
3. Although the article does not anticipate the question, we want to say something about it because of the many discussions about it. So why does it say that baptism “does not entirely” [in Dutch, "niet ganselijk"] destroy original sin? It will simply have to be taken into account that God promises us in baptism that he will renew us through his Spirit. God also makes this promise true in the lives of his children (Belgic Confession, Article 34, paragraph 3). It would, therefore, be too ungenerous to, and ungrateful for, God’s promise in baptism to say that baptism would in no way diminish our corruption.
   On the other hand, however, it would be too much to say that baptism completely removes original sin, as the Roman Catholic church teaches. Our original sin or depravity is dealt with by God and he guarantees that in baptism, but that does not mean that it is completely removed. Even someone such as Paul, long since converted, exclaimed, “Wretched man that I am!” (Romans 7:24).

VI. Why original sin is not imputed to the children of God←⤒🔗

1. So original sin, like a poisonous source, continues to generate new sins. Even baptism and the promised renewing power of the Spirit do not drastically change this. It seems to be a hopeless situation! But this guilty corruption is “not imputed unto the children of God to their condemnation.” It is “forgiven by his grace and mercy.” Even in baptized people a "poisonous source" continues to work, but it is not held against them as guilt.
   But why does God do this?
2. The argument against the scriptural doctrine of the generous divine forgiveness of sins is that people would then “continue carelessly in sin." That is why it is emphatically confessed that God does not impute the corruption due to our original sin to us. Rather, God intends precisely the opposite. A psalmist says, “But with you there is forgiveness that you may be feared” (Psalm 130:4). He does not say that sin is not so bad after all, because God forgives it anyway. After all, this pardon costs God the blood and tears of his Son. As often as God forgives us our sins, we need to realize that this forgiveness has been paid for with the suffering and death of Jesus Christ. By this we can measure how "vile and abominable" God judges our sin to be. Every forgiveness of sins will remind us of just that and therefore make us realize more and more deeply how terrible our sins are. See also Romans 6:1-4.
3. The “awareness of this corruption" causes believers to "groan as they eagerly wait to be delivered from the body (in the power) of death.” What is meant by this?
   Paul uses this expression in Romans 7:24: “Who will deliver me from the body of death?” "Body" means more than our physical body, namely our whole earthly existence. And death does not mean our dying in and of itself. As if we should long only to be released from this mortal body. No, our entire daily existence is constantly in the power of death. That is because of sin, which pulls us away from God and thereby cuts us off from real life, even though we may look very much alive and healthy. Given the original sin that still acts as a "poisonous source" even in baptized people, we are thus "in the midst of death," according to our form for the Lord’s Supper. We desire to be radically delivered from this power of sin, which holds us in the grip of spiritual death.
   This is what Paul means when he says, “Who will deliver me from this body of death?”

Points to discuss←↰⤒🔗

1. What is the consequence of denying any bond between us and Adam? Can there then be a bond with Christ for our salvation? After all, is he not our second Adam? (See 1 Corinthians 15:22.) So can we therefore have a bond with Christ when we deny the existence of original sin?
2. Evaluate the following explanation of the words that original sin is “not fully abolished or eradicated” by baptism. This explanation is based on the distinction between original guilt and original stain. It argues thus: “By baptism, at any rate, the guilt of original sin is completely taken away. Original sin is then not yet ‘entirely destroyed,’ for it continues to work in us as a ‘depravity’ or ‘poisonous source.’ But because the guilt of this is no longer imputed to us, it has been destroyed in principle. In short: The guilt of original sin has disappeared and only the original stain has remained.”
   It seems to us that this statement is incorrect because the article on original sin speaks of a "corruption," in other words, the so-called original stain. The expression “not fully abolished” must therefore refer to this corruption (or original stain). Apart from this, it seems strange to us to label the original sin, from which only the guilt has been removed, as “not fully destroyed or eradicated.”