Adam's Original Sin;
Introduction
Review: Genesis 3:20, “And Adam called his wife's name Eve; because she was the mother of all living.” Eve’s designation as the mother of all living indicates the unity of the human race. This indicates that there are no homo sapiens that are not descendants from Adam and Eve, and it indicates that there is one human race. This is important because in distinction from the angels there is a corporate unity in the human race. We will see the significance of this as we go on into some of the doctrines that need to be developed, i.e. the doctrine of the federal headship of Jesus Christ and the idea that there is one human race and we are all related to one another therefore because of the fact that there is one man whose sin affects all of us there is one man, the God-Man, who can die for all of us. Because of this unity of the human race God can provide perfect salvation. That wasn’t possible for the angels. Each angel was created individually, so there is no corporate unity among the angels, no procreation among the angels. So Eve is the mother of all living. This is further supported by Acts 17:26 where Paul said, “And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation.”
Another
thing that flows out of Genesis 3:21 is the principle that there is a
resolution to the shame problem. The reality was that Adam and Isha were both naked
and not ashamed. Is the shame related to one another or is the shame related to
the two of them in relationship to God? The end of chapter two points out that
they were naked and not ashamed. The nakedness was not an exposure to one
another. The shame was not related to other human beings, the shame has to do
with God. Because when we come to Genesis 3:7, “And the eyes of them both were
opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together,
and made themselves aprons.” The context indicates that the covering is
designed to cover up their nakedness in relationship to God, not in
relationship to each other. Because in verse 8 we read, “And they heard the
voice of the LORD God walking in the garden
in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence
of the LORD God amongst the trees of
the garden.” So they are trying to solve their problem through their own
solution. Verse 10, “And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was
afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.” Their nakedness there is
directly related to their fear of God and their exposure of their relative
righteousness before the perfect righteousness of God. So this puts a new slant
on things, that this has to do with exposure of man’s inability, exposure of
man’s unrighteousness, and exposure of his rebellion.
So
God is going to provide a temporary solution to this problem in verse 21 where
He makes garments for them of skins. Although this does not tell us
specifically that He gave them instructions related to the sacrifice, that He
gave them doctrine related to the shedding of blood as it is developed
throughout the Scripture, the implication is nevertheless there because in
order to make garments of skin there has to be the death of the animal. This
verse points out that God provides a perfect solution whereas man’s solution
was no solution. This is a constant theme throughout the Scripture; that man’s solution
is no solution and the divine solution is the only solution, and that has implications
for everything from salvation to solving problems in life. So this begins at
the fall. All man’s problems began at the fall and all solutions must begin
with the divine solution of salvation, otherwise they are nothing more than
temporary fixes, just a patch, and it doesn’t work. So operation fig leaves was
nothing more than an inadequate attempt to cover up a problem, and even though it
had some temporary benefit it had no lasting benefit. A point that we have to
understand is that human viewpoint often comes up with all kinds of workable
solutions which seem to alleviate the pressure for a while but in the long run
there is no adequate solution. In fact, all human viewpoint solutions end up
creating more problems down the road than a divine viewpoint solution.
Then
in verse 22, “And the LORD
God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and
now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat,
and live for ever…” Here we have a divine conversation again between God the Father, God the Son and God
the Holy Spirit. Yahweh Elohim is the speaker and it is believed that this
refers to the second person of the Trinity; He is the one who reveals Himself. “The
man has become” is a qal perfect tense the verb hayah in Hebrew, and the
perfect tense (there is no present tense in the Hebrew, there is just the
perfect tense and the imperfect tense) can be simple past, and it can also be
perfective action which is completed action. We have to look at the context,
and the context tells us that when God says that the man has become like one of
us He is not simply saying the man became like one of us, simple past, but He
is emphasizing the present and ongoing results of a completed action. That is
perfective action. The action isn’t still going on, it is finished, and He is emphasizing
the present results of a past action. When there is a perfective idea here it
is emphasizing an action that is over and done with, it is not still going on. The
present results are such that man is now in some sense like God, and that means
in a sense radically different from being in the image and likeness of God. This
is a degenerative state. He has become this way, it represents a change, so
that excludes anything related to the meaning of image and likeness.
The
first thing we have to ask is: What does this phrase “knowing good and evil” mean?
Option one: it refers to human good and evil; option two: it refers to positive
righteousness and evil, and that is saying that man was aware of positive righteousness
before the fall and now he knows what sin is because he has had an experience
with sin. So once again we are back to a conclusion that the knowing here is an
experiential knowledge. But that is a problem. If this is experiential
knowledge of sin then we have a problem because God is the one speaking here
and He says the man has become “like us.” God does not have an experiential knowledge
of evil. He has an awareness of evil; He knows what evil is by His own intuitive
omniscience, but He does not have a personal experiential knowledge of evil. So
we have to ask in what sense man knows good and evil as God knows good
and evil. In what sense does man after the fall know good and evil in the same
way that God knows good and evil throughout all eternity?
There
are three basic ways that question can be answered. First of all, we have to
understand that all of these come out of the general meaning of the Hebrew word
yada. Yada has a lot of different meanings. It can mean to know
through observation and experimentation; it can mean to know experientially; it
can mean to know intimately; it can mean to know sexually. Sao let’s look at
the options here. Basically what we are saying is that the first option is to
know something experientially. We can eliminate that because God does not know
evil experientially. The second option is that God knows something
intellectually or through observation. For God that would be an eternal observation,
omniscience, more of an academic intellectual simple cognitive awareness of
what something is. Well that may be true but man’s knowledge of good and evil
at this point is not a mere cognitive act, man is not simply aware intellectually
of what sin is. He has sinned, he has an experiential knowledge of sin. So it
can’t be restricted to a mere academic, intellectual or cognitive knowledge. The
comparison indicates that the knowledge man now has is the same as the
knowledge God has. So what this does is it eliminates completely the idea that
good and evil stand for human good and sin, or even righteousness and sin. It
has a different connotation here. What we have is resolved, we think, by the
fact that we have in this statement a reconstruction where there is the
preposition Lamedh attached to the infinitive construct of the verb yada,
and in some case that indicates purpose but here it has more of a gerundive
idea of knowing. But the context indicates the idea of determining what good
and evil is, and this fits the context best. Because if we go back to the first
part of the chapter the serpent comes along and says they won’t die, “your eyes
shall be opened, and ye shall be like gods, knowing good and evil.” The
temptation is to be like God. And God is the ultimate determiner of what righteousness
and evil are. It is God’s character that is the absolute measuring rod of all
ethics, of morality, of fight and wrong in the universe. Man wants to be “like
us.” Man wants to be the final authority in his life. He has rejected God’s
authority: God doesn’t have the authority to say that this is right or wrong. Eve
began to walk into that trap when the serpent asked the question: Has God
really said? As soon as he asks that question she starts to look at that tree
and think: How do we know He is right? How do we know that if we eat that it is
going to be a harmful thing? She put herself in a position of judging the
veracity of God’s prohibition. By yielding to the question, by even
entertaining the question, Eve has put herself in the position where she is
acting like God and is questioning God’s authority and His right to command and
determine moral and ethical absolutes in the universe. So when we look at this
phrase, what it means to become like God to know good and evil, it means to act
as if you are God, being the final or ultimate reference point for values,
morals and meaning in life. Once man put himself in that position he is acting
like a little god and he is spiritually dead. He is divorced from God and he
has a new problem, separation from God and spiritual death. He is spiritually
dead but still physically alive. God has announced that he will eventually
return to dust, that physically he is in a position of deterioration and his
body is subject to corruption.
He is
going to die, but apparently there was one option available to man and that was
the tree of life. Because of what God said, “lest he put forth his hand, and
take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever,” it would be
possible for man in his deterioration and depravity to be corrupt and
spiritually dead and yet to eat from the tree of life and go on living in a
corrupt body that would be under condemnation and continue to deteriorate and
to shrivel. So God guards them from this horrible fate and erects a guard at
the gates of Eden, a cherub with a flaming sword who prevents man from being
able to come to the tree of life.
Genesis
3:23, “Therefore the LORD
God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he
was taken.” The word for tilling here is the same word we have in the initial mandate
to Adam, the Hebrew word abad, which means to work, or to cultivate. It
can mean to serve or to worship, but here it is tied to cultivation so it has
the connotation of manual labor. And then the conclusion in verse 24, “So he
drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims,
and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of
life.” Cherubs were always associated with the holiness of God, and so we see
that the area of Eden is still the throne of God, the area of God’s presence on
the earth, and so the cherubim is stationed there in order to protect the
holiness and integrity of God. The implication of sword in Scripture is the
power of life and death and governmental power. We think this implies that
throughout the pre-flood period in the antediluvian dispensation that God’s
presence is still on the earth and He is executing judgment. There is no
provision for delegation of judicial power to man in that dispensation. The
contention is that God is still mediating justice through the angels in the
antediluvian world.
Is
Adam viewed in the rest of Scripture as a historically existing individual? Or
is he viewed as some sort of allegorical type or picture? The Scriptures
consistently portray Adam and Eve and the story of the fall as a historical
event, not as some allegory.
1)
In
Luke 3:38 Adam is listed along with all of the other historical figures in the
genealogy of Christ. If Jesus doesn’t go all the way back to Adam then we can’t
argue that He is truly human. Adam must be a historically existing individual
if he is listed in the genealogy of Christ. The principle in Scripture is that
if it just proven in one point it is proven completely.
2)
In
Romans 5:14 we are told that Adam is the source of spiritual death for the
human race. This is represented in contrast to what Jesus Christ has provided
for us in salvation. “Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over
them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression, who is
the type of him that was to come.” When the Scripture uses type [tupoj] it doesn’t mean he did not
literally exist because the types all did literally exist but they were used to
foreshadow or picture something. If Adam wasn’t a historical figure then the
entire analogy between Adam and Christ and statement “from Adam to Moses” are
rendered meaningless. Therefore to understand the fallen state of the race Adam
must be a historically existing individual.
3)
In
1 Corinthians 15:22 Paul refers to Adam in establishing the reality of the resurrection.
So the conclusion is that if Adam wasn’t a genuine historically existing
individual then there is no resurrection. The argument is that because of Adam’s
decision physical death entered the human race (v. 21). This isn’t spiritual
death, it is physical death because the subject is physical, bodily resurrection.
Then in v. 45 of the same chapter we read, “And so it is written, The first man
Adam was made a living soul [quote from Genesis 2:7]; the last Adam was made a
quickening spirit.” Paul again draws a parallel and an analogy between the
first Adam and the second Adam, and since the last Adam is a historically
existing individual, the first Adam must be as well, otherwise the parallel breaks
down.
4)
The
importance of marriage as a divine institution in then understanding of both
marriage and divorce is built on a historically existing Adam and Eve, Matthew
19:1-6. Verse 4, in Jesus’ reply to the Pharisees, said: “Have ye not read,
that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female.” That is
from Genesis 1:26, 28.
5)
In
the New Testament there are a couple of passages that deal with the role of men
and women in marriage and the role of men and women in the local church and the
worship setting. 1 Corinthians 11:8, 9; 1 Timothy 2:8-14. In 1 Corinthians 11
Paul bases his whole argument for role distinctions in the public worship service
of the church on the order of creation. Paul, like Jesus, quotes from Genesis
chapters one and two and does not see a contradiction between the two accounts.
6)
Conclusion:
If the account in Genesis 1-3 is not historically accurate then there is no
basis in the New Testament teaching for sin, salvation, bodily resurrection
from the dead, marriage, family, or the distinct roles within marriage and the
worship service in the New Testament church. That shows why creation is
important. You can’t come along and just allegorize or mythologize the first
eleven chapters of Genesis as if they are just some sort of morality play
because everything that the New Testament teaches is predicated upon the
historical accuracy and veracity of that account. If you do away with Genesis
1-11 you may as well do away with the cross, with Jesus, the deity of Jesus,
the authority of Scripture. You basically destroy Christianity. That is why
Genesis 1-3 is such a battleground, because the devil knows that if you destroy
that you cut out the foundation for the rest of the Bible.
1)
The
first point has to do with Adam’s loss of dominion. This is described in theology
as original sin because it was the first sin, it was the sin that mattered. No
one can commit any sin that has a billionth of the consequences of Adam’s sin. And
all Adam did was eat a piece of fruit. Man is placed—Genesis 1:26-28—as God’s
representative over creation. But when he sinned he abdicated his position to
Satan, so that Satan became the ruler of the planet. For example, in Luke 4:6: “And
the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of
them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it.” Jesus
doesn’t dispute it. Furthermore, a couple of the titles that are ascribed to
Satan indicate his authority over the planet: 2 Corinthians 4:4, he is called
the god of this age; Ephesians 2:2, he is called the prince of the power of the
air. Furthermore, he is the king of the kingdom of darkness into which we are
all born. This again indicates his position of authority. In Acts 26:18 there
is a prayer, with reference to Paul’s role as a Gentile missionary: “To open
their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the dominion of
Satan unto God.” The word for “dominion” there is the same concept that we have
in Genesis 1:26-28. We are born in the dominion of Satan, and under his
authority, his power. This is the same ideas presented in Colossians 1:13, “Who
hath delivered us from the domain of darkness, and hath transferred us into the
kingdom of his dear Son.” So there is the contrast between the kingdom or
domain of darkness, the dominion of darkness, to the kingdom of His beloved
Son. Even though we are still living in Satan’s domain we now have a different
authority over us and that is the Lord Jesus Christ.
2)
Man
is born in a state of spiritual death. Adam was created in a state where he was
spiritually alive but all of his descendants are born in a state of spiritual
death. We see this is Ephesians 2:1-3, “And you hath he quickened, even though
you were dead in trespasses and sins: wherein in time past ye walked according
to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air,
the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience: among whom also we all
had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the
desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath,
even as others.”
3)
Man
is born spiritually blind. 2 Corinthians 4:3, 4, “But if our gospel be hid, it
is hid to them that are lost: in whom the god of this world hath blinded the
minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of
Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.” Man is blinded by the
message and the ruler of the cosmic system. 1 John 5:19, “And we know that we
are of God, and the whole world [cosmic system] lies in the power of the evil
one.”
4)
Man
is condemned because of his relationship to Adam, not because of personal sins.
That is one of the most difficult things for a lot of people to understand. You
sin because you have a sin nature; you sin because you are a sinner. You are not
a sinner because you sin; you were condemned because of your possession of the
sin nature and the imputation of Adam’s original sin, not because of anything
that you did. This goes back to an ancient heresy called Pelagianism which
plagued the early church. Pelagius thought and taught that every person was
born in the same state that Adam was created in; therefore we are all neutral,
and we are condemned because of the decisions we make. And that has been
clearly and correctly recognized as heresy since the fifth century AD. The
reference point is Romans 5:12: “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the
world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have
sinned.”