Romans 5:12 is one of the most under-appreciated verses in all of Scripture, explaining to us precisely why we are sinners. We are not sinners because we sin. We are sinners because we are mortal. Mortality is the petrie dish on which sin feeds. Mortality, not sin, is what we inherited from Adam. Take away mortality, and sin cannot exist.

My dad was turned off to God at an early age when they told him in a summer Bible class about "the dirty birth." The dirty birth is another Christian lie stating that humanity is totally depraved, and that human nature is thus evil. Why is this wrong? It leads to the unavoidable conclusion that God made something that is complete shit: humanity. And yet when God created Adam in the Garden, did He not say that the creation was good?

Human nature, therefore, is not the problem. The problem is that human nature is devitalized by death. Mortality is the virus infecting human nature, disabling it, making it unable to do what it wants to do.

If human nature is not the problem, then neither are YOU the problem. Yet religion has taught us all our lives that we ARE the problem, that we were born doomed because, well, we are totally depraved, deserving nothing more than to be tormented in hell forever.

If we are the problem, then we also must be the solution to the problem. This is why Christianity insists that YOU must be the one to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps and choose Christ's generous decision to be punished instead of you—but only if you accept that substitutionary punishment.

What a bog of fiction. What a mess. What a pack of lies. You are not the problem. It is Sin operating in you that is the problem. Even Paul admitted that in Romans 7:16-17 when he said, "Now if what I am not willing, this I am doing...it is no longer I who am effecting it, but Sin making its home in me."

The solution for success does not lie with you, therefore (you're helplessly bogged down in sin) but with Jesus Christ taking away the Sin of the world FOR you. He did this for you, not instead of you—how would it be possible for you to take away your own sin, let alone the sin of the entire race?

How did Sin come to make its home in me? Because I'm a sinner? No. It makes its home in me because I inherited mortality from Adam. Sin cannot be and is not transmitted generically. It is mortality that is transmitted genetically. Thus, we do not die because we are sinners, we are sinners because we are dying.

Knowing this, can you see why it is so important for Paul to announce in 1 Corinthians 15:53 that "This mortal must put on immortality"? Gee, wouldn't it have been better to announce that we sinners must eventually stop sinning? Not necessary. For those in the know (this now includes you), immortality takes care of everything.