Originally Posted by
nrajeffreturns
I can start the process of figuring out what it means, by realizing what it doesn't mean.
It obviously can't mean literally every person who has ever been conceived and who ever will be conceived, because if "all" meant literally "all" than it would be saying that Jesus sinned, since Jesus is a person, a person who was conceived and was born and had an apparently normal infancy, crying, getting hungry, wanting sleep, and all the other "selfish" things that infants do that Calvinists apparently believe to be sins but aren't.
So, once we know that "all" doesn't mean literally all because we have come up with at least one person who it doesn't include, we can conclude that "all" could have been hyperbole like when you say "Everyone's getting on my nerves today" it doesn't mean literally everyone. Then we can continue to use common sense and read the verse in context. Maybe it referred to all adults in the 1st century who were accountable for any acts of rebellion against God they had committed.
It couldn't have included David's baby, for the reasons I already mentioned.
It's logical to conclude that since babies can't repent, they can't sin, and that if babies can't sin then they don't sin, and therefore were not the beings Paul had in mind when he said that all have sinned. He had to be referring to all who have the ability to sin and who have made a conscious choice to rebel against what they know God's will to be, or, if they don't know about God, against their conscience.
That's a good start toward understanding what "all have sinned" was intended to mean.