3. How Should We Define Sin?

The first question that needs to be clearly defined is, “What is Sin?” That is not an inconsequential question. Many books on conception control have an unbiblical view of sin and as a result they exhibit both legalism and antinomianism.

Scripture says, “By the law is the knowledge of sin” (Rom. 3:20). We must be “convicted by the law as transgressors” (James 2:9), and since all “sin is lawlessness” (1 John 2:4), and since the Biblical maxim is that “where there is no law there is no transgression” (Rom. 4:15), that means that this whole debate must be settled from the law of God alone. Narrative passages may illustrate the law, but it is the law alone that can define any given thought, goal, motive, or action as sinful.

This means that the burden of proof for sin is on those who call conception control sin. NCC advocates often try to reverse the burden of proof and ask, “Where does the Bible justify the use of conception control?” Though I will later show that the Bible does explicitly justify conception control, the question may expose a kind of legalism. As we will see, the Bible gives individuals and families maximum liberty (whatever is not forbidden is allowed) while church and state are limited by the Regulative Principle of Government (whatever is not commanded is forbidden). This is such a critical principle that it is worth expanding upon.

The Regulative Principle of Government

The Puritans wrote entire books on the Regulative Principle of Government as the necessary foundation for defending the liberties of the individual and the family. Against Lutherans, who argued that the church and state could do anything that the Bible did not explicitly forbid, the Puritans showed how the Bible severely limits the powers of the church and state. I will not write a book on the Regulative Principle of Government, but the following paragraph is a very brief statement of how it would apply to the church.⁵⁰

Christ as the King and only Lawgiver,⁵¹ has given to His Church a system of government and discipline that is complete.⁵² This historic jus divinum⁵³ principle of church government requires that all laws,⁵⁴ methods,⁵⁵ and goals⁵⁶ of church government and discipline must be either expressly set down in Scripture⁵⁷ or be deduced from the Scripture by good and necessary consequence,⁵⁸ with nothing being added⁵⁹ or taken away⁶⁰ by mere human authority⁶¹. Even the circumstances of discipline (all things being done decently, in order, and for edification)⁶² must not go to the right hand or to the left hand of the authorizations given in Scripture.⁶³

The Principle of Liberty

In stark contrast to the Regulative Principle of Government was the equally important Puritan doctrine – the Principle of Liberty. This principle insists that unless the Bible explicitly limited their liberties in some area of life, the individual and family have maximum liberty to do anything they want, and no one else’s conscience or rules should bind their conscience. Again, entire books have been written on this subject, but the following incredibly abbreviated summary captures the essence of this Reformed position:⁶⁴

God alone is Lord of the conscience,⁶⁵ and has left it free from any doctrines or commandments of men⁶⁶ (a) which are in any respect contrary to the Word of God,⁶⁷ or (b) which, in regard to matters of faith and worship, are not governed by the Word of God. ⁶⁸ Therefore the rights⁶⁹ of private judgment⁷⁰ in all matters not limited by the Bible are universal and inalienable.⁷¹

Applying these two principles

To apply the Regulative Principle of Government to the individual (as several NCC advocates have inconsistently done) turns Biblical ethics upside down and removes the “liberty” from the Biblical phrase, “the Perfect Law of Liberty” (James 1:25). I don’t have to find a verse in the Bible that allows me to use a tractor, wear a colorful tie, ride an airplane, or heat food with a microwave.⁷² Instead, anything that is not forbidden by the Word of God is allowed.

If I later find that microwaving food produces a product that will give me cancer (something that I currently doubt) then I should quit using the microwave, because the Bible tells me to take care of my body. Since science is not infallible, we should use care in how far we impose such logic, and we should recognize that legitimate disagreements can occur in interpreting the scientific data.

In any case, when this principle is applied to conception control, I believe the Reformed position should be that unless Biblical principles make it very clear that conception control is indeed a sin, conception control is a liberty.

I will later try to show that Biblical principles do indeed make certain forms of conception control a sin. Likewise I will show that many of the methods called “birth control” are also a sin (IUD, RU-486; “the morning after pill,” etc.). Unless a specific law can be appealed to in order to discredit a given conception control method, we should not treat it as sin. To remove such liberty and call it sin is akin to the legalism of the Pharisees, who bound people’s conscience with the traditions of man (Mark 7; etc.).

Applying this to the Onan passage of Genesis 38

The Onan passage (Gen. 38) is often marshaled as evidence that God does indeed forbid conception control (the spilling of seed without the purpose of conception). Certainly this passage opposes selfishness in the use of conception control and it also illustrates six concrete laws that were broken by Onan. However, neither the Onan example nor the law of God show our BLCC practices to be in sin.

It is a critical point of Biblical ethics to distinguish between a historical exemplification of sin (Onan) and the specific laws that outline that sin. On my interpretation of the example of Onan, I can show six laws that were broken:

1. Onan violated the Levirate Law of Deuteronomy 25:5-10.
2. He violated the laws of vows (Numb. 30).
3. He violated the law of inheritance (Deut. 21:15-17).
4. By refusing to have any children by Tamar, he violated several passages (Gen. 1:22; 9:1; Deut. 25:5-10; etc.).
5. He violated the jointness of the dominion mandate given to both male and female (Gen. 1:28; cf. 1 Tim. 5:14; etc.).
6. He likely violated laws related to her sexual desires (Ex. 21:10; 1 Cor. 7:33-34; Song of Songs; etc.).

Those six things made the way he engaged in coitus interruptus to be a clear violation of the law of God. Nowhere in the law is coitus interruptus condemned in and of itself, and it is certainly not condemned when used for the purpose of spacing babies or limiting the size of the family (for example, planning to limit it to seven or ten or twelve).⁷³ (See chapter 4 below for more details on why Onan’s motives, goals, and standards were humanistic.)

As we will see in the rest of this book, other supposedly broken laws (such as the command to be fruitful and multiply) are commands that we vigorously promote as well and have no intention of breaking.

Apply this to the “argument from silence”

Applying the principles above, we consider the “argument from silence” that is frequently used by NCC to be faulty. Many people have challenged me to prove that the Bible authorizes birth control. Though I will later show clear evidence that the Bible does indeed show that “wasting seed” was not considered to be a moral sin in all circumstances,⁷⁴ and is indeed commanded in some passages,⁷⁵ we have already seen that this is the wrong question to ask. Even if those passages were not present in the Bible, you cannot prove sin by an argument of silence, or all of us would need to quit using computers, cell phones, etc.

A rejoinder that has sometimes been made has been that the Bible would have condemned birth control if it had existed in those days, but that the Bible doesn’t address the question simply because birth control was not yet happening on the scale that it is today. Their claim is that most birth control methods are a modern phenomenon that was unheard of in the ancient world and unthinkable.

This too is false. The following conception control methods were widely used in the ancient world during the very centuries in which the Bible was being written: lactation,⁷⁶ rhythm/mucus/natural planning,⁷⁷ coitus interruptus,⁷⁸ barrier,⁷⁹ ovulation suppression,⁸⁰ and spermicide.⁸¹ Less well known was female sterilization, but Hippocrates knew of it.⁸² Unfortunately, herbal abortifacients were common throughout the known world, ⁸³ and believers did all they could to make such unethical birth control methods illegal.⁸⁴ We will demonstrate that God’s law clearly spoke against all abortifacients. The ancient Jews also had extensive discussions of when conception control was allowed and when it was not allowed. So even though it is clear that Jews opposed masturbation, permanent sterilization, or any medications that damaged the body or the fetus, those same Jews used both barrier and spermicidal methods of birth control and did not consider it to have violated the Scripture.⁸⁵

So there is no basis for the common argument that birth control was not available or known in the ancient world. Virtually every form of birth control that is being used today had equivalents in the ancient world. This means that even if there had been silence in the Bible toward the very limited forms of birth control that we advocate, it would prove the opposite of what the NCC advocates claim. If the so-called “silence” argues for anything, it argues that prevention of fertilization and wasting of seed was not the issue that NCC have made it to be.

However, I would encourage both sides of the debate to use nothing but Scripture to define the issue. I have brought external evidence up not because it is in any way normative, but simply to answer the NCC misuse of external evidence. The Bible alone is our authority. In the following chapters we will look at some of the Biblical arguments used by the NCC camp to see which ones have merit and which ones do not.