Resolved: A living human can never live their lives without sinning. A sinless Perfection debate.

I"ve been looking forward to having a debate since I joined September 30th, even though I"m kind of nervous about it. If not for having recently read A Conspiracy of Paper by David Liss, I would not have known what a pugilist was. :-) In this debate, I'll be defending the claim that no human can live his entire life without sinning. We have agreed to exclude Jesus, crazy people, and infants from consideration (see the comments section). We have also agreed to the presupposition that the Bible is the authoritative word of God. With that presupposition in mind, the truth of the matter should come down to scripture and reason. Before I begin, let me define what I mean by "can," since the word can be taken in two senses. Natural ability: This includes whatever latent natural power we have to act or refrain from acting. If a person has a natural ability to act, then they can act in that sense. If they have a natural inability, that means they can't act in that sense. Psychological ability: This includes our mental predispositions to act. If a person has a psychological ability to act, that means they are willing to act or they have the proper motive, preference, desire, or inclination. If a person has a psychological inability to act, that means they can't act because they are unwilling or they lack the proper motive, desire, inclination, etc. An illustration might help to make this distinction clear. In Titus 1:2, we find that God "cannot lie. " Given that God is all-powerful, surely he has the natural ability to say things that aren't true. Nothing physically prevents him from doing so. He has the raw power. What he lacks, though, is the inclination. God's perfectly good character renders him incapable of lying. His inability to lie is due to a lack of inclination since his entire nature is perfect and holy. So God has a natural ability to lie but he does not have a psychological ability to lie. My position is that people have the natural ability to live without sinning, but they do not have the psychological ability to live without sinning. Without the psychological ability, they simply can't avoid sin their entire lives. My first argument comes from the fact that we all have a natural inclination to sin. Jeremiah 17:9 tells us that "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately corrupt. " Jesus taught in Luke 6:43-45 that a person"s behavior is determined by the condition of his heart (see also Ezekiel 36:26-27). Since the condition of the heart, according to Jeremiah, is corrupt, it follows that we are all determined to sin. We can't avoid it. We have sinful hearts, and we sin as a result. In Matthew 7:18, Jesus said that "A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit. " We cannot behave contrary to the condition of our sinful heart. It is no wonder, then, that Paul tells us that before our conversions we are "dead in our sins" and that we are "by nature, children of wrath" (Ephesians 2:1-3). Those are strong words. Paul doesn"t say that we happen to sin or that we happen to be children of wrath. Rather, we are dead in sin, and we are by nature children of wrath. A person who is dead in his sin cannot change his own heart. Jeremiah asks rhetorically, "Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? " He answers, "Then you also can do good who are accustomed to do evil" (Jeremiah 13:23). A person cannot simply choose, by an act of his own free will, to stop sinning. He is dead in sin, and only the power of God can raise him to spiritual life. That is why Jesus said that "No one can come to me unless the Father draws him" (John 6:44). My second argument comes from the fact that the Bible explicitly says in many places and in many ways that all people sin and that there is no person who does not sin. I won't bore you with a long list of scripture references because this is not a controversial claim. I'll just give you one reference: Romans 3:9-12 "What then? Are we better than they? Not at all; for we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin; as it is written, 'There is none righteous, not even one; there is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God; all have turned aside, together they have become useless; there is none who does good, there is not even one'. " My opponent may rightly point out that to say, "All have sinned," is not the same thing as saying, "All must sin," or that "Nobody could have avoided sinning. " The question for the debate is not whether anybody ever has lived without sinning, but whether anybody ever could live without sinning. But I want to make an inductive argument from this scripture. If it's true that people can live without sinning, then there is only a probability less than 100% that they will sin. If the probability of their sinning were 100%, then it would be impossible for them to not sin. Since the Bible explicitly tells us that everybody sins, then the probability of the next person sinning is exactly 100%. Since the probability that each living person will sin is 100%, then it is impossible for anybody to live without sinning. Let"s look at it another way. If it only happened that everybody sinned, then it would only be a matter of probability that each person happens to sin. Nothing would compel them to sin, after all. But if it were a matter of probability, then we should expect that of the billions of people who have lived on this planet, that at least a handful of them would go without sinning. But nobody does. The best explanation for why nobody lives without sinning is because they can't. My third argument comes from the sovereignty of God and his purpose for creating man. As Jonathan Edwards argued in The End For Which God Created the World, the ultimate end in all things is for the sake of God's own glory. God is glorified in the full demonstration of all of his attributes, which include both his mercy and his wrath. If people did not sin, then God's mercy would not be evident in their lives. God has two purposes for people--to demonstrate his grace or to demonstrate his wrath. The only way either can be demonstrated is if we sin, which means that whether your life reveals God's glory through the demonstration of his grace or through the demonstration of his wrath, you must be a sinner. And since everybody fits in one category or the other, it follows that everybody must sin. After explaining that God has mercy on who he wills and hardens who he wills, Paul raises an objection: "Why does he still find fault? For who resists his will? " (Romans 9:19). That is a great question, but notice that the question only makes sense if, in fact, God finds fault in people even though they are the way they are because it was his will. The question of who resists God's will is rhetorical with the answer being, "Nobody. " Paul reveals in verses 22-24 that God's purpose in creating vessels of wrath "prepared for destruction" (cf. Proverbs 16:4) is so that "he might make known the riches of his glory upon vessels of mercy. " Since God's purpose is to reveal his glory by the demonstration of both his wrath and his mercy, and since God's wrath and mercy cannot be revealed unless people sin, and since people cannot resist God's will, it follows that nobody can live without sinning. And it looks like I made it under the character limit. :-)