The COGC rejects the Augustinian doctrine of inherited original guilt — the idea that all humans are born bearing the legal guilt of Adam's specific transgression. In the COGC's reading of Romans 5:12 ('death spread to all because all sinned'), the emphasis falls on personal sinning rather than on imputed Adamic guilt. Each person dies because each person sins, not because they bear inherited guilt for Adam's act alone.

Whatever was transmitted through Adam — mortality (the loss of the tree of life), a sinful nature, or a tendency toward sin — it is not understood as making all humans legally guilty before God from birth. The COGC's conditionalist anthropology sees the primary consequence of the Fall as mortality rather than inherited guilt: Adam and Eve lost access to the tree of life and became mortal, and their descendants share this mortality.

All people do in fact sin and are therefore in need of the redemption offered in Christ. The COGC affirms the universal reality of human sinfulness without the Augustinian framework of total depravity and imputed Adamic guilt. This position is consistent with the broader conditionalist and non-Trinitarian tradition and with the COGC's Arminian emphasis on genuine human freedom and responsibility.