The Doctrine Of Sin In Early Christianity

The doctrine of sin is among the most debated issues that tend to bring division among early Christians. Sin has a lot of definitions but for the sake of clarity, sin is defined as any form of lawlessness and/or unfaithfulness that makes us wander away from God. sin has brought enmity between man and God. Because of this Christianity has for decades been waging war over sin. This has caused many Christian scholars to continuously be in search for more knowledge on the mystery behind the issues of sin. Different scholars and church denominations have shown their opposing views concerning the issue of sin. Since sin and salvation has been a debated issue discussed among Christians the question to ask is which church denominational doctrine is

As Christians, we are encouraged to live a sinless life. 1 Peter 1:16 encourages us to “be holy for I am holy.” The reason why the church is struggling with the issue of sin is that we have paid less attention to the intriguing root factors causing the people to dwell in sin. The church has sometimes ignored the root cause of sin, but focus more on the gospel of grace forgetting that we cannot continue to live in grace while we dwell in sin. Christ desire is to present us to his father as a spotless bride ready to be adored, but sin has become a reproach between us and God. Since the fall of man caused by Adam, sin has limited our relationship with God. From generation to generation God has worked through diverse ways in trying to bring us back to the way he made us before man disobeyed

This is true because before the fall man has been created in the Image of God. One of the main vital understanding of the doctrine of sin is to first understand the nature of God or his image. This is because the image of God, or imago dei of God, gives us the blueprint on what the doctrine of sin represents. Though the image of God cannot be determined because it is too ambiguous for humans to fully comprehend, we can only understand the image of God based on the help of the Holy Spirit’s revelation to us. Bloesch explained that the image of God is his likeness and his characteristic nature. We can see this from the account of creation in Genesis 2 where God made Adam and Eve in his own likeness. Though Adam’s sin distorted the full nature of God in man, this didn’t stop God from demonstrating his nature through the relationship He had with his creation. Also Steven Lemke in his article “The Intelligent Design of Human” explained the image of God using these three views. They are the functionalist view, the rationalist view, and the substantive view. The functionalist view describes God as a non-static being, by this it means that God deposited his divine abilities into man; so that man can demonstrate dominion over what He has made. The relational view explains God’s eternal union with man by caring and loving him. The substantive view explained