There exists in the Bible an intriguing concept that centers around sin and the person of Jesus Christ. On the one hand, we read that “all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). Other passages support this truth, such as Romans 3:10 (“There is none righteous, no not one”) and Psalm 14:3 (“There is none that doeth good, no, not one”). In fact, the Bible tells us that we were born sinners and were conceived in sin (see Psalm 51:5).
On the other hand, we read that Jesus was without sin. Second Corinthians 5:21 says that Jesus “knew no sin.” Similarly, we are told that Jesus “did no sin” (1 Peter 2:22) and that “in him is no sin” (1 John 3:5). Hebrews 7:26 tells us that Jesus is “holy” and “separate from sinners,” and Hebrews 4:15 tells us that although Jesus was “in all points tempted like as we are,” he was “yet without sin.”
So how is it that all men and women are born into sin, but Jesus was not? One prevalently taught solution to this problem is the idea that Mary was without sin, and therefore she could not pass on the sin nature to her son, Jesus. This teaching is referred to as the Immaculate Conception—that God acted upon Mary’s soul and kept it immaculate (i.e., without sin). This teaching flies in the face of what the Bible emphatically states: all have sinned and come short of the glory of God; there is none righteous, no, not one; there is none that doeth good; all we like sheep have gone astray; death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned; etc.
To answer the question of how Jesus was not born into sin, we need to go back to the garden of Eden and the original fall of mankind; we need to go back to Genesis 3. In the first six verses of that chapter, we are given the account of the fall of mankind. The serpent, who was “more subtil than any beast of the field” (Genesis 3:1), spoke with Eve in the garden: “The serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die…And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat. (Genesis 3:4–6). While verse six tells that Eve gave the fruit of the tree to Adam and that he ate of it, it is clear from this passage (and others) that Eve was the first to eat of the forbidden fruit.
The fact that Eve was the first to sin (i.e., to disobey the commandment of God) is a very important and somewhat confusing truth of the Bible. The confusion comes about from Romans 5:12: “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Romans 5:12). This is further confirmed in 1 Corinthians 15:21–22: “For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” This begs the question: If Eve sinned first, why does the Bible tell us that sin entered the world by Adam?
Given the foregoing discussions regarding Jesus’ birth and the fall of mankind, we are now ready to answer the question of how all men and women are born into sin while Jesus was not. First, from the discussion of Mary, we can state that Mary was a sinner, but Jesus was not. Second, from the account of the fall, we can state that Eve sinned first, yet sin entered the world by Adam.
The conclusion that we must draw from these two statements is this: the sin nature is passed down to the child from the father! Jesus was born without sin because Mary’s (i.e., the mother’s) sinful nature was not passed down to him; and sin entered the world by Adam because Eve’s (i.e., the mother’s) sin nature was not passed down to her children. Praise God for his infallible Word!