“Salvation” series (post #4)

Now that we have determined that there is a God and that He is perfectly holy, we are ready to turn our attention to ourselves. That’s why I’ve entitled this 4th post in the “Salvation” series “You Are a Sinner.” However, as you read that title, don’t think that I’m singling you out for indictment. The post’s title could just as easily be “I Am a Sinner” or “We Are All Sinners.”

The human race became a race of sinners when its genetic, biological father, Adam, sinned by eating the fruit of the Garden of Eden’s tree of the knowledge of good and evil. While Adam’s wife, Eve, took the lead in that sin by eating the fruit first, Genesis 3:6 tells us that Adam was right there with her when she did it and quickly joined her in the sin. As the verse says:

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. (E.S.V., emphasis mine)

Actually, Adam eating that fruit was more blatant sin than Eve eating it. I say that for two reasons. First, it had been straight from God Himself that Adam had received the command not to eat that fruit (Genesis 2:15-16). God hadn’t even created Eve yet when He had told Adam to stay away from that fruit (Genesis 2:18-25). As for how Eve had heard about the command, evidently it had been Adam, in his God-ordained role as the spiritual leader of the home, who had passed the word down to her (1 Corinthians 14:34-35).

Second, 1 Timothy 2:14 teaches that Eve eating that fruit can be explained by the fact that she was deceived by the serpent (with the fallen angel, Satan, demon possessing the serpent’s body and speaking through it). Adam, on the other hand, was not deceived. In other words, Eve didn’t fully understand the ramifications of what they were doing, but Adam did. I’m in no way saying that Eve should get a free pass or that her lack of spiritual discernment should let her off the hook. I’m simply pointing out that her sin really was the result of her being deceived. In Adam’s case, though, he knew perfectly well that biting into that fruit would set him in direct violation to God’s command.

Some have theorized that once Adam saw that his wife had eaten of the fruit, his motivation for joining her in the sin was his great love for her and his desire to remain with her, even in a sin-lessened existence. This attempted explanation for Adam’s willful disobedience might make some sense, I suppose, but let’s not downplay the fact that his eyes were probably dancing at the site of that fruit as much as Eve’s were. Remember, Adam never objected to what she was doing, and he certainly didn’t stop her. His job as the head of the home was to do his best to keep Eve and himself innocent and righteous, but he failed at doing that.

And so, it was by way of this one catastrophic act that Adam introduced sin not only into his own physical body but into the physical body of each of his future descendants. That’s how he brought death to his entire race. God had warned him, “…in the day that you eat of it (the forbidden fruit) you shall surely die” (Genesis 2:17). This death was not only a physical death but also a spiritual one.

First, there is the fact of physical death. As Romans 5:12 says:

Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all have sinned…(N.K.J.V.)

It should be noted that the Hebrew wording of God’s warning to Adam literally means “dying you shall die.” This explains not only the fact of physical death itself but also the typical aging process that culminates in death. You see, Adam’s sin didn’t just introduce sin and physical death into his race, it also introduced weakening eyes, hearing loss, heart disease, cancer, strokes, breathing conditions, backaches, mental disorders, gum disease, lost teeth, sore joints, and all the other physical ailments that we humans must deal with as the aging process takes its toll on each of us. The Bible’s most descriptive and poetic passage on this aging process is Ecclesiastes 12:1-7. Those verses describe the aging body as a silver cord that becomes loosed, a golden bowl that becomes broken, a pitcher that becomes shattered, and a wheel that becomes broken. Obviously, each of those items is something that doesn’t function properly anymore.

So, there is surely the fact of physical death. But then there is also the fact of spiritual death. Passages such as Ephesians 2:1-5, Colossians 2:13, and 1 Timothy 5:6 teach that each person is born “dead in trespasses and sins.” To be “dead” in this way cannot refer to physical death because the people being described in these passages are still very much physically alive. What, then, does it mean to be “dead in trespasses and sins”?

Here again we must take things all the way back to Adam to find the explanation. When Adam ate of that forbidden fruit, he didn’t instantly die physically (even though the aging process that would eventually lead to his death was begun), but he did instantly die spiritually. To sum up, he became separated from God. He was no longer walking in perfect relationship with God, daily fellowship with God, or unity with God. Figuratively speaking, a great gulf now stood between Adam and his Maker. He was now cut off from God’s spiritual life (Ephesians 4:18) as well as God’s spiritual light (Ephesians 4:18; Romans 1:21; 1 Peter 2:9). For that matter, so was Eve. Thus began the sinful state of the entire human race.

One thing that most people don’t understand is that an individual doesn’t become a sinner the moment he or she commits that first sin. No, the individual commits that first sin because he or she is a sinner. Does a fish swim to become a fish or does a fish swim because it is a fish? You know the answer. Likewise, you don’t sin to become a sinner, you sin because you are a sinner.

And when did you become a sinner? It occurred at your moment of conception in your mother’s womb. In Psalm 51:5, David says of himself, “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me” (N.I.V.). To be conceived in sin means that you had Adam’s nature of sin and rebellion against God coursing through you from the first moment the spark of physical life was struck in you. This is the consequence of being a product of the tainted seed that began in Adam’s body and has flowed down through his entire race ever since. A newborn baby might have its mother’s eyes or its daddy’s nose, but there’s no doubt that it has Adam’s sinful nature. That sinful nature, in turn, will inevitably cause the child to commit specific acts of sin as the child grows. For example, Psalm 58:3 says:

Even from birth the wicked go astray; from the womb they are wayward and speak lies. (N.I.V.)

The conclusion of all this, then, is that the entire human race abides under the sentence and doom of sin. As Ecclesiastes 7:20 says:

Indeed, there is not a righteous man on earth who continually does good and who never sins. (N.A.S.B.)

Likewise, in Romans 3:23 we read:

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. (N.K.J.V.)

Friend, you’re in this sinking boat and so am I, and in light of the fact that our Creator God is perfectly holy, it’s the worst possible boat in which we could find ourselves. Therefore, we should thank God the story doesn’t end there! We should thank Him there are more posts to come in this series. We should thank Him that He loves us enough to have provided a way by which we can have all our sins forgiven and be brought back into right relationship with Him. This provision has come to be known as the plan of salvation, and in my next post I’ll lay out the details and particulars of this plan. So, be sure to come back for that post, and we’ll discover together how unholy sinners can get to spend eternity with a holy God. Until then, hang in there, fellow sinner. We’re getting to the good part now.