As extreme as it might seem, it does not contradict logical axioms for someone to be sinless. In fact, something one does not have the ability to carry out or avoid (like involuntary thoughts) cannot bring guilt on a person anyway. They have no choice in the matter and thus cannot have committed some error! This requires that if the Bible did say that anyone sins by not performing or abstaining from something they are genuinely incapable of achieving, it would be wrong. Also, there is no such thing as a particular sin that all people must struggle with or give into; the very fact that something is a sin does not mean it is unavoidable, and certainly not some highly specific belief, intention, or deed. Nor is it by necessity true that if good and evil exists, everyone will at some point sin even if the exact offense differs from person to person. One person's vulnerabilities have no inherent connection to another's, just as one person sinning has no inherent connection to whether someone else sins.
Additionally, not everyone is as evil as they could be, for everyone could always be slightly more evil than they are (at a minimum by seeking to more deeply relish or cling to some wicked motive or by carrying out one more sinful act), and not everyone has necessarily committed the worst possible sins—and no, mere murder is not the worst thing that can be done to another person, not by far. Nowhere does the Bible claim otherwise. This does not deter some from holding that parts of the Bible like Psalm 14:1-3 and 53:1-3 declare that all humans sin, regardless of how differently it manifests in each individual's case. The first three verses of both chapters are almost identical in their wording. Here they are:
Psalm 14:1-3—"The fool says in his heart, 'There is no God.' They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there is no one who does good. The Lord looks down from heaven on all mankind to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God. All have turned away, all have become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one."
Psalm 53:1-3—"The fool says in his heart, 'There is no God.' They are corrupt, and their ways are vile; there is no one who does good. God looks down from heaven on all mankind to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God. Everyone has turned away, all have become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one."
Reading the New Testament, one can find such verses referenced by Paul in the book of Romans.
Romans 3:9-12—"What shall we conclude then? Do we have any advantage? Not at all! For we have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under the power of sin. As it is written: 'There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.'"
The Old Testament, even before the book of Psalms which Paul appeals to, has already given examples of people the very words call blameless or innocent, as I will showcase later in this post. This helps clarify whether Psalm 14:1-3 and 53:1-3 are hyperbolic, entirely literal but speaking about only the people of the speaker's own lifetime, or entirely literal and speaking about all people from all generations. Yes, even if the first three verses of these two Psalms were meant to convey that no one alive at the time is righteous or at least fully righteous, it would not necessitate anything about all previous or future people. But in its more immediate context, Romans 3:9 is primarily if not exclusively setting up a Scriptural refutation to the idea that either Jews or Gentiles are guilty or blameless on the wholly irrelevant grounds of their ancestry/nationality.
Actually, even the more widely touted Romans 3:23 which comes shortly after, saying all have sinned, is explicitly addressing this very issue.
Romans 3:22-24—" . . . There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus."
The context is about how being a Jew or Gentile does not make someone sinless or disqualify them from the salvation of God and Christ, for both Jews and Gentiles have yielded to sin, though Gentiles were not formally revealed the Law that fairly exhaustively details what is and is not sin. This does not necessarily have anything to do with every single person sinning at some point in their life just because they are human! So, too, Romans 3:23 does not actually make some incredibly clear statement about how every single person inevitably falters on an ideological or moral level. Many other verses in one way or another pertain to the same philosophical subject of holistic and constant innocence, and not in a way that contradicts the truths of pure reason already mentioned.
Exodus 23:7—"'Have nothing to do with a false charge and do not put an innocent or honest person to death, for I will not acquit the guilty.'"
Someone who fallaciously holds that no one is truly or ultimately innocent would probably assume that the innocence Exodus 23:7 speaks of is merely a matter of having not committed the exact sin being falsely charged against them by others, or in a broader sense having not committed any sins deserving of being punished by human courts while still being guilty in some separate way. While the content of the verse is certainly consistent with the idea that some people become or remain absolutely sinless across all categories of their life, other parts of the Bible do more sharply admit that it is indeed possible for some to not sin at all.
The most famous example of a specific person with this standing is Job, though the total sinlessness ascribed to him multiple times in the book sharing his name is not as commonly emphasized as the man himself. Sometimes, people even try to trivialize the extent of the "blameless" status attributed to him, such as by insisting that he was only perfect in some ways or largely consistent in his devotion to righteousness. The very beginning of Job does not hint at such partial correctness on the titular figure's part.
Job 1:1—"In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job. This man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil."
Job 1:1 is extremely straightforward. At one time, a man named Job lived in a given region, and he was blameless at the time of the narrative's beginning. The verse does not say that Job merely assumed he was blameless or that he called himself as much. No, it says he was blameless, something that in this case is not limited to whether or not he had committed a particular wrong in a given scenario. God himself acknowledges this sheer blamelessness in Job 2:3. Of great significance is that even if Job slipped into irrationality and sin later in the account, leading to his exclamation to God that he repents in dust and ashes (42:6), this would not have any relevance to whether he was morally perfect beforehand. And, as shown, the opening of Job does outright call him literally perfect by another word, so the concept of innocence seems to very clearly be invoked.
And Job is not the only person in the Bible about which such things are said. The priest Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth are also called blameless and upright in Luke 1:5-6. So is Noah in Genesis 6:9. Now, once again, I want to point out that nothing about unflinching moral perfection is logically possible in itself or contrary to the doctrines of the Bible as clarified by its very literal statements. Why would anyone ever think that moral perfection is by nature unattainable, if there really is good and evil, or that it is something the Bible denies is within human grasp? Only because they are irrational due to making assumptions.
Another person in the Bible, Asaph, the author of Psalm 73, describes his own innocence. Without calling himself morally flawless in all ways at all moments of his life, he does call himself innocent in a way that does not exclude total, constant righteousness:
Psalm 73:12-13—"This is what the wicked are like—always free of care, they go on amassing wealth. Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure and have washed my hands in innocence."
Asaph claims that he, like Job (though he does not mention Job), has been innocent even while witnessing the wicked prosper despite their evil, which discourages him to the point of wondering if there was any benefit to keeping himself morally pure. Afterward, he insists that the wicked will be destroyed by God in the same way that a dream ceases to exist when someone wakes up (73:18-20). Their demise might not have happened yet, but they will not escape annihilation forever. Of course, the part of Psalm 73 most relevant to the main topic of this post is that Asaph says he has maintained his innocence despite great personal despair. There is nothing logically or Biblically that means this cannot be entirely literal.
Later in Psalms, chapter 106 more specifically, the author uses the wording of genuine innocence to refer to the children of the Israelites whom the adult community killed in sacrifices to idols. Nothing about the wording suggests the idea that only children can be innocent, as some might assume, but here it is said plainly that the sons and daughters sacrificed were innocent. This contradicts the concept of everyone being automatically, hopelessly guilty of sin regardless of their actual thoughts and behaviors simply by being human.
Psalm 106:34-38—"They did not destroy the peoples as the Lord had commanded them, but they mingled with the nations and adopted their customs. They worshiped their idols, which became a snare to them. They sacrificed their sons and daughters to false gods. They shed innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan, and the land was desecrated by their blood."
One can find an pair of additional references to blameless people, not in a way denying the possibility of such people, in Proverbs 11.
Proverbs 11:5, 20—"The righteousness of the blameless makes their paths straight, but the wicked are brought down by their own wickedness . . . The Lord detests those whose hearts are perverse, but he delights in those whose ways are blameless."
Some people are called wicked, and some are called blameless. Again, to be blameless is to be innocent, and to be blameless in an ultimate entails the total absence of guilt on the individual's part. There is no denial of human innocence either as something logically possible or something already exemplified by certain people to be found in Proverbs 11. Not that it makes a difference as to what Proverbs 11 says and absolutely not as to what is logically possible or impossible either way, but this is not the only portion of the Bible that clearly labels some innocent, even if not by that exact term. Some humans are obviously innocent according to the Bible.
In certain cases, fixation on the false idea that no person can be innocent is often paired by its adherents with the false idea that the guilty can be punished arbitrarily by a governmental body, supposedly deserving almost any treatment someone feels like imposing on them (at least, in a criminal punishment context). This, too, is illogical and unbiblical. Deuteronomy 25:1 affirms that some people might be innocent even when others are guilty, with only the guilty being deserving of punishment by other people if applicable to their sin(s); Deuteronomy 25:3, along with other passages, emphasizes that not even the guilty deserve to be punished past a certain extent. If something is so severe that even the guilty cannot deserve it, then it is utterly evil and should never be done to or by anybody.
Not all people are necessarily guilty, no one is automatically bound to sin because they are human, and no one who has made themself guilty by their beliefs or actions will commit additional wrongs just because they have already made some moral mistake. Innocence is not beyond anyone's reach (Deuteronomy 30:11-14, Matthew 5:48), and even those who are guilty have inflexible human rights to not be treated in certain ways; obviously, at least obviously to anyone who is rationalistic, if something is inherently immoral, it should never be inflicted upon anyone at all. What lies some will arbitrarily give themselves over to about what objective reason and Biblical theology entail about human nature!
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