In order to understand the sin, they need to experience it, do they not?
Seriously, that is among the many crazy things they believe. An old friend explained how this stuff works to me. He was raised in the Assemblies of God. As he said, as long as you believe the initial premises of the faith, it all makes sense. I think we tend to think that because their religion is crazy, they're stupid. They aren't. They're just people who believe crazy shit. And face it: What religion doesn't expect its followers to believe crazy shit? It just seems more "normal" to its adherents because they've been familiar with it all their lives, and because its practices have been around for a very long time.
My friend was born again when he was about four. He did all the right stuff, as far as his religion was concerned. Consciously or subconsciously, that was probably to gain status in his community. In his teens, he was a Pharisee of the Pharisees. Talked in tongues and all that. Then he went to college. First to a small bible school. But one of his teachers--the one who taught him Hebrew--was a Harvard graduate. So David did learn some stuff.
But not enough, so he decided to transfer. To Michigan State; I'm not sure why. He found they were willing to accept his "Witnessing" courses for credit. He became an atheist, and went to grad school, where he studied the history of ideas. Wrote his dissertation about a 15th century theologian, and continued to focus his studies on religion.
As I said, he explained that it was fine for him as a teen to commit sins like having sex. And even dancing, though he had to be careful about that. But occasionally sinning was a good thing to do, because you could then repent, and start all over.
Kind of like penny stocks maxing out the a/s, doing a reverse split, and starting to dilute all over again.
