This is a question posted and posed on social media by a reader of my blog essay entitled “God is NOT Good All the Time!”[i]
“So, is God to be blamed for our Sin?”
The short answer is Yes.
The long answer is No, and then Yes.
Before you get to my Yes, No, Yes, it’s important to note that Martin Luther himself, and other Reformers, in the Book of Concord’s documents, give an unequivocal “No.” God is not responsible for Sin. I’d like to argue that Luther and the Reformers did not get it right, but that would be more than presumptuous. Likely foolish. That being said, as best as I can see, I disagree with the Reformers. Before that, here’s some of the Book of Concord before my Yes, No, Yes.
Augsburg Confession Article XIX
Concerning the Cause of Sin
“Concerning the cause of sin they teach that although God creates and preserves nature, nevertheless the cause of sin is the will of those who are evil, that is, of the devil and the ungodly. Since it was not assisted by God, their will turned away from God, as Christ in John 9[44], “When [the devil] lies, he speaks according to his own nature”[ii]
Formula of Concord
Solid Declaration, Article I: Original Sin, paragraph 7
“Second, it is also clear and true, as the nineteenth article of the Augsburg Confession teaches, that God is not a creator, author or cause of sin. Instead, by the instigation of the devil, ‘through one human being’ (which is work of the devil) ‘came into the world’ (Romans 5[:12]); 1 John 3[:8]). To this day and in this state of corruption, God does not create and make sin in us, but along with human nature, which God still in this day and age creates in human beings, original sin is transmitted through carnal conception and birth from father and mother through the sinful seed.”[iii]
Smalcald Articles
Part III: The Third Part of the Articles, I: Concerning Sin
“Here we must confess (as St. Paul says in Romans 5[:12]) that sin comes from that one human being, Adam, through whose disobedience all people became sinners and subject to death and the devil. This is called original sin, or the chief sin”[iv]
So, Now On to my Yes, No, Yes.
The Short Answer of Yes
Yes, because God is necessarily omnipotent and omniscient and omni-omni (everything-everything).
This, by the way and not incidentally, means God is also blamed (responsible for) our faith because faith is part of the everything. This responsibility for our faith that God has and uses is something we dislike, not to say abhor, even more than God being responsible for our sin. This is so, it’s important to remind ourselves, because we will not be taken out of the game of salvation. We must be a player.
The Long Answer of No, and then Yes
No, because our sin is not pedestrian mistakes (“I should have said ‘Thank you’”) or true horrors (“Yes, I did murder that man!”) but rather refusing to believe that God is responsible for everything, including our sin. Fundamental, Foundational, so-called “Original,” Sin is not an action of wrong or bad belief or behavior, it is rather believing and acting as though our relationship with God depends on our believing and acting. Is God responsible for that which we believe and do to reject God’s relationship with us based on God’s decision to disregard our beliefs and behaviors as qualifiers for God’s love and acceptance? Logic would say no, God is not responsible for this. It’s our rejection, not God’s rejection. We are responsible. But then we have to place that along-side of God being God, God being responsible for everything.
More about that “everything”: Think about that just a bit more with me please. We in Christian circles like to talk of Jesus “taking on our Sin” and thereby freeing us up. We usually use that phrase to describe what we think is Jesus, being God incarnate, being punished in our place, this all being done within the legal recompense system of the Law. But drop that (no little thing!) and instead, this: God is so responsible for everything as to be responsible for that which God is not responsible. Jesus, “takes on our sin” as being the one who says “ok, I’ll be responsible for the fact that you kill me by ‘yessing’ me all the time and not living the ethic to which I invite you and then you literally crucify me.” In other words, he forgives. He “takes on our sin” by forgiving it without our merit. But we will not have it! “No, you can’t just forgive me!” we say. “We are responsible people! We are responsible for it and we will pay the price for it and be back in the right place with you, God.”
We are then back at the place of Yes, God is responsible for our Sin.
God is responsible for everything, our sin (unfaith) and our faith. To hedge on this is to believe in ourselves instead of God for establishing and maintaining our relationship with God. God doing this establishing and maintaining of our relationship with God is our salvation. If we want to protect a belief in God’s Goodness by saying God is not responsible for our sin we then give up God’s salvation. To protect God’s Goodness is to give up God’s salvation. To protect God’s Goodness is to give up Christ. This is where I see the particular rub up of the Book of Concord (see above, including within it, Luther) against Luther. Luther is always at pains to slay any teaching that disregards or undermines or cancels Christ as Savior. I cannot see how standing firm on God’s goodness and insisting that God is not responsible for sin and evil allows also for Christ’s total sovereignty over sin. That being said, there may be a way to understand the Goodness of God in different way. Once we understand Luther’s insight into the distinction of Law and Gospel we may be able to see and say that God’s Goodness comes in the Gospel’s destruction of the Law. So, now, on to that Law and Gospel distinction.
Law and Gospel
Luther’s insight on the distinction between Unpreached God and Preached God, Law and Gospel, becomes significant and pivotal. One God with two Words, Unpreached (Law) and Preached (Gospel). Perhaps the “Good” that God is, the “Good” that the Book of Concord means to name and protect, is not naming the essential being and character of God but rather the existential action of God that is the Gospel destroying and putting an end to the Law. God is good in and through the Gospel which does away with the Law. Perhaps it is precisely here that we find that Luther could say, in the end, God is Good. But, on with the discussion.
Where does this distinction and description of Law and Gospel come from?
We get there by viewing the big picture: Our problem is not evil and needing to fight evil with good. Our problem is God, who makes evil and good happen while we are left watching the results and unable to change things. We have no power to change evil happening to us or good happening to us. Of course the police can stop the thieves and of course the neighbors can bring over casseroles. Yes, things are contingent. But things are also independent. Both keep happening no matter our efforts or contributions to stop or accomplish either one. Good things keep happening, even in the midst of Evil (the so-called “silver lining” as well as all the benevolence shared after disaster as well as all the world going on with their lives as they are oblivious to the hurt others are knowing). Evil things keep happening, even in the midst of the Good (the disasters that occur simultaneously with new possibilities (e.g. a baby is born as the mother dies), the corruptions that develop within good institutions). Whoever or Whatever (God) is behind all of this is the Problem. Religion, then, is our attempt to impact God, move God to do right by us instead of letting all the Bad and Good just ripple across the centuries. But, as Martin Luther put it: “The gouty foot laughs at this doctoring.”[v] There is no remedy.
God alone is the solution to the problem of God.
Thus, as Gerhard Forde notes succinctly: “the solution to the absolute is absolution.”[vi] Listen, please, to Forde’s helpful description of all of this:
“When all is said and done, the pain and sorrow and mourning continue. The cry goes up nevertheless, Why? As Luther could put it, ‘The arrow of conviction remains stuck fast in the human heart’ (Packer, 218). All such declamations accomplish is to throttle the preaching of the gospel. They substitute lame explanations and shallow comfort where there should be proclamation.
The only solution to this kind of necessity is the proclamation. That is, if God rules all things by absolute necessity, then our only recourse is to attend to what he (sic) does do. The solution to the problem of the absolute is absolution! There the immutable God does ‘what is necessary”! God is ‘determined’ to have us back! But we can see that only in Christ Jesus.
Apart from Jesus we are on our own. Luther could even say that apart from Jesus God is indistinguishable from the devil.
And apart from Jesus we have to attempt to redo God more to our liking or do what most moderns do, dispense with him (sic) altogether. But the gouty foot laughs at such doctoring.”[vii]
Law and Gospel. Where does this distinction come from? It’s not a set of glasses we put on to view the Scripture.[viii] Law and Gospel are not new or invented theological topics or categories. They are the way to name what is happening to us when both the world (life/experience) and the biblical scripture encounter us. They are the way to name what is happening to us when we encounter the Absolute. Normally what we do when we encounter the Absolute is name it as Law only. God is the Law. And we engage the Law with religion, with religious belief and behavior. Religion is all about justice done for any injustice, recompense paid for any injustice. Debts must be paid and there must be a resolve to do and be better.
So why does God, in our thinking, have to be “Good” and thus operating within and as the Law, requiring good behavior and belief? Because without this being true, life is a nightmare. We are adrift. If God is Good, then our actions (belief/behavior) have a chance at impacting a good outcome for us. But if God is God, owner and establisher of both Good and Evil, we are at a loss, powerless.
How does this all relate to the question of God being responsible for our sin? There a difference in this question depending on how we define sin. Sin on the one hand are actual things done or left undone. Sin, on the other hand, is deeper (original): it is unfaith (see Romans 14). Of course we can and do decide to do evil things. Actual sins are not necessitated. But unfaith? Because faith is not something we do, but is rather done to us, so too with unfaith. Unfaith (distrusting God) is not something we do. Unfaith is done to us. Is this a wrong conclusion? Is it wrong to say God creates/gives both unfaith and faith? No, it is correct, and it is this hard and difficult truth that we know as the “what” of what’s called “election” (God elects to give both unfaith and faith). It is the “what” that we know, but not the “why.” And it is the “why” that is the darkness that cannot be known but only “solved,” only dealt with, only engaged, only destroyed by the proclamation and promise of a particular and personal election.
The conversation goes like this:
Me: “Am I elect? Am I chosen?”
God: “Yes, you are!”
Me: “But who is not elect? Who is not chosen?”
God: “That is not your concern or for you to know. It’s only my knowledge that knows this.”
Me: “But how will others know if and when they are chosen or not?”
God: “I will tell them! I do tell them! Every day! Actually, I tell everybody, every day. There is this group of people called the Church that has the job to do this telling!”
Me: “But do they hear?”
God: “Some do. Some don’t.”
Forde again:
“As it is often put, we must know the ‘what’ of the hidden God. But at the same time we cannot know the ‘why.’ We must know that God is the immutable one who elects and rejects.
We are not running the show. But we cannot know why one and not the other is among the elect. If we knew that we would turn it into a legal system and it would destroy us!
Faith in the word of proclamation is the only way. What the revelation tells us is that we cannot know the hidden God. We cannot even know that God is hidden. Hiddenness is, paradoxically, a revealed truth! This should be apparent to us in the cross.”[ix]
Why apparent in the cross? Because in the actual event of injustice that is the crucifixion of Jesus we come to the knowledge/awareness that God is just/unjust outside of our control…..outside of our sight, our awareness. This God is hidden from us, beyond us. Doing stuff we can’t control. The innocent man that should not be killed, according to the Law, is killed. The Law is not doing its job! There is injustice where there should be justice. Why doesn’t the Law work? Why do the innocent suffer? Why do the evil people thrive? This is Hidden from us. And we cannot find the answer and will not find an answer because we only operate, think and move, within the Law, within a legal structure. And this, this human operation, modus operandi, because we must have agency in our destiny.
This is the Absolute (hiddenness) for which there is no solution but by Absolution! It can’t be solved within the legal system. The legal system is only a merit system. But God does not work by merit. God works by mercy.
The Demand Word, the Law, brings forward and lays bare the “why” question and is unanswerable. It’s not unanswerable because its illogical or unjust. When we live in and by the Law alone we can see how things are and can be illogical and unjust: the good suffer even if obeying the Law and the bad thrive even if disobeying the Law. It’s unanswerable because it’s not an answer that is ours (humans) to give. In this way, the Law’s decisions are not only unanswerable, they are vicious and produce distress (Luther’s “Anfechtung”).
But the Gospel Word does not answer the question of how one is elected and one is not or one has good things happen and one does not.
Rather, the Gospel Word breaks the “why” question in two, destroys it, by doing the electing and doing the good in time and space to individuals who hear this Promise (“I Forgive You, I Give you Life”). Demand is not the only thing that kills (Demand kills us). Promise also kills! Promise kills the Demand that kills us, and replaces (too small a word! “Resurrects” is better!) the Death that is Demand with the Life that is Promise. Promise does a final killing: destroying the Demand.
What is evil? It’s not just bad stuff happening, it’s that we have no say in our destiny. It’s that circumstances are just circumstances and we have no agency to correct them or change them. No agency is a scandalous affair! Scandalous to us!
This is despair.
What is good? It’s not just good stuff happening, it’s that we do have a say in our destiny. It’s that circumstances are just circumstances and we do have agency to correct them or change them. Agency is a wonderful affair! Wonderful to us!
This is pride.
Gospel kills both despair and pride. Gospel says our destiny is in God’s hands based on God’s decision, not our merit or demerit. And this decision is Mercy, not based on our merit or demerit, but only God’s being, decision and action.
UnPreached God: Law (First Word of One God)
One God, in Majesty and Hidden, The Unpreached God, The Law, is always Demanding me and only accuses me and will not bless me because I will not and cannot obey. Is it God’s fault that I will not and cannot obey? Yes, because humans are a part of who/what God created and by nature, by creation, will not and cannot obey or stop believing that when obedience is accomplished it will put them back in relationship with God. Humans cannot not live for themselves. It’s who we are. We cannot and will not believe that we have no Free Will when it comes to unity or relationship with God. We cannot and will not believe that the Law is not given to us in order that we would accomplish it for the good of our relationship with God instead of simply for the good of our relationship with other people and all of creation.
Preached God: Gospel (Second Word of One God)
This same One God, Incarnate and Revealed, the Preached God, The Gospel, is always Promising me and only forgives me, not because I have lived in the Law or accomplished anything in the Law or that the Preached God has done anything to effect my accomplishment of the Law, but because God acts and decides outside of the Law (Outlaw) to be pure Mercy. The declaration of Jesus Christ to love and forgive outside of the Law, the Gospel, is the only thing that can destroy, kill, God’s Law, the Unpreached God, the Majestic God. The Apostle Paul put it this way: “Christ is the end of the Law.”(Romans 10:4).
The Battle is Not Good (God) vs. Evil, But Rather Good and Evil (God) vs. Mercy (God)
In protecting God’s Goodness we are defining God as Goodness within the confines and definition of the Law where there is always a battle between good and bad. But what if God is actually not the Law or even defined within the boundaries of the Law? What if God gives laws, but is not the Law? What if God is Outlaw, giving Forgiveness, Mercy, outside any rule of Law. What if God gives Mercy for Mercy’s sake, for God’s sake, and not for our sake? What if God is Justifier, not Just?
If and when God is the Law and God operates within the Law with Justice, blame for sin, a breaking of the law or even a distrust of God, cannot be laid upon God. But what if the very nature of God is not Justice, not Just, but rather Justifier, Forgiver. What if the nature of God is Mercy, outside of the Law’s justice? God can be blamed for sin (as Creator of all things, sin included, the logic is there) but this same Creator God is not, by nature, Just, but rather Justifier. God is not Just, a Judge requiring a payment plan for restitution, but rather is Forgiver, based only on God’s disposition. Not merit that leads to forgiveness. But mercy for mercy’s sake.
The Unpreached God, Hidden and Majestic, is not Good or Evil, but rather only God, but is seen and experienced as Evil by us because we only know the Demand in the Unpreached God.
The Preached God, Revealed and Incarnate, is not Good or Evil, but rather only God, but is seen and experienced as Good by us because we only know the Promise in the Preached God.
Listen to some of Steven Paulson from the Outlaw God, Volume 2, on things related:
“Free will is the Trojan horse inserted into Luther’s Troy (of the most active God who works all in all), and more pointedly, of Luther’s preaching of the gospel. The gospel does not assume free will – in fact quite the opposite. It assumes nothing but sin and Christ’s absolute forgiveness of it. To the contrary, Erasmus’s ‘churchly cause’ says humans are at fault for evil, and that fault is noncompliance with the law of God. Since the law must be the eternal mind of God, and is God, opposition to the law is a power that raises itself against God. Then the coup de grace of the argument is swung: if the power once existed in humans to rebel, it may also exist again to reverse the rebellion and fulfill the law. Erasmus was stuck between two different opinions regarding sin: free will must have existed; it may exist again. Erasmus’s deceit is that sin is a human power that can be reversed – but the power must be acknowledged before a sinner can be blamed, and that same power over sin must somehow be reborn in order to have the Christian life that is then presented as an annulment of the old sin by a new saint. If Erasmus could prove that Adam fell by a bad choice of the will, then the correction must be a good choice of the will in an imaginary future. The only cost to God is to relegate grace to the role of “helper” to this will – but that cost is ultimately to God’s benefit, isn’t it, since it shields him from evil, suffering and death, even though it does remove his almightiness? Who could disagree with all these things?”[x]
God is immutable necessity. To say God is not immutable is to say God is not God. Where does that leave us with the problem and origin of evil?
If evil is not just bad stuff, but uncontrollable destiny (despair) and controllable destiny (pride) ……the problem is not evil, it is God. Our problem is God.
Religion develops because we don’t like God being God. We take the laws and make them Law and make God Law who can be changed by our beliefs and behaviors.
So, then, in the end, will there always be the evil things done and left undone and things will never be better?
No.
We can change the evil we do to ourselves. But you could argue that the evils we do to ourselves don’t stop, don’t change, because the deeper problem we have is with the evil that God does to us: we can’t merit destiny. We lash out at small problems….neighbors and nations….because our big problem…..God…..is untouchable and we are angry and take it out on others. We hate others because we hate our own life, our own condition.
So, when will peace come? Not when we learn to love each other. This we will never learn. It will come when we have faith in God. We will stop lashing out against each other when we stop lashing out at God. On the practical and existential level how does this work?
It works As/When contentment in life comes because faith in God brings with it the loss of having to prove and substantiate ourselves in acquiring more of anything or everything, including God, and including the age-old capital of land and wealth the acquiring of which drives cultures and nation-states as well as individuals to distraction and destruction.
I’ll close now by wondering out loud: just what is it we are afraid of if God is indeed responsible for our sin? I’d like to suggest it’s not really that we are afraid of calling God out and then and there hurting God’s feelings, or worse, hurting or damaging God’s honor. I think that’s what is normally the reason given. The Honor Thing. But I think that is disingenuous. With all of that feigned concern I think what we are doing is covering for our own rage. What rage? Our ire is up because we simply do not want and will not be benched from the game of salvation. We will not be disempowered. We will not be sidelined. We will not be done in. Not by anyone. Not even God. Religion is our first and last defense against an Immutable God.
So, God must step up and step in to save us in spite of ourselves. Mercy will not be outdone or removed. God prevails.
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[i] Johan Bergh, “God is NOT Good All the Time,” August 24, 2026, Field Notes From A Religion-less Christian, blog, www.religionlesschristian.org
[ii] Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert, eds., Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, , Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 2000, p. 53
[iii] IBID, p. 533.
[iv] IBID, p. 310
[v] “So we begin to see the point of Luther’s pithy saying: ‘This gouty foot laughs at your doctoring.’ (Luther’s Works, 33:53). Gout was an excruciatingly painful, and in those days virtually incurable, affliction. It was a disease that just would not yield to the doctors’ manipulations. The more the doctors attempted to do something about it, the worse it got.” Also, this: “Luther’s reply to Erasmus was, ‘Who are you kidding, Erasmus? Everybody knows already, or at least fears or even resents the God who rules all things by necessity and foreknows nothing contingently! The pain of God cannot be removed by theological doctoring. The problem is to get this God off our backs!’ The question is, how is this to be done? How is the gouty foot to be healed? One thing is for certain. It is not done by redoing God’s ‘job description.’ That only makes matters worse.” (Gerhard Forde, The Captivation of the Will, Eerdmans Publishing, Grand Rapids, Michigan/Cambridge, U.K., 2005, p. 34)
[vi] IBID p.45
[vii] IBID, p.45
[viii] As Steven Paulson aptly points out in the Outlaw God podcast episode “Loving the Law” of September 17, 2026, 1517.org. I highly recommend not only this podcast episode to you, but the entire podcast series entitled Outlaw God, produced by 1517.org.
[ix] Gerhard Forde, The Captivation of the Will, Eerdmans Publishing, Grand Rapids, Michigan/Cambridge U.K., 2005, p.40
[x] Steven D. Paulson, The Outlaw God, Volume 2: Hidden in the Cross, Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 2019, p. 122
