We cannot attribute to God the vices of humanity. Some people believe that God made people sinful. Instead, they should look for God’s handiwork in Adam’s nature when it was still whole and uncorrupted. The blame of our ruin rests solely upon us, not with God. The only cause of our sinful conditions comes from our fall from our original condition.

No one should argue that God could have provided a better way four us by preventing Adam’s fall.  This objection should be repulsive to every true Christian because it relates to the mystery of predestination (which I will treat later). Meanwhile, let’s remember that our ruin is attributable to our own depravity. We cannot charge God himself, the Author of nature. It is true that nature has been mortally damaged. But there is a great difference from a wound inflicted by outside forces and a wound inherent in our first condition. It is plain that this wound was inflicted by sin. Therefore, we have no ground to complain except against ourselves. This is carefully taught in Scripture, for even the Preacher says, “Behold, I have found only this, that God made men upright, but they have sought out many devices” (Ecclesiastes 7:29).

Therefore, since humanity was made upright by the kindness of God, humanity’s destruction can only be attributed to itself alone because people by their own desires fell into vanity.

“Blogging the Institutes” is my on-going attempt to paraphrase John Calvin’s work, the Institutes of the Christian Religion. You can find out more about the series in the Introduction. For all the posts in this series, check out the Master List.