The Nature of Sin, Part 2: Original Sin
When asked about Original Sin people will often refer to the Biblical account of the fall of Adam and Eve. In the story both Adam and Eve have been created and are enjoying relaxed fellowship with God in the Garden. God had told Adam (not Eve) that he could eat of any tree in the Garden but must not eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Later Satan came in the form of a serpent to Eve to tempt her into eating from that tree, and both Adam and Eve ate. This personal desire to gain wisdom, and defiance of the instructions of God, is what is referred to, rather loosely, as Original Sin. We saw in the last posting that this not the first occurrence of sin, but it is the first human sin. This simple act of questioning God and disobedience had profound implications for humankind and scholars and theologians have talked about and debated these implications for millennia. Let’s think about those implications for a little bit.
But before we do that, we have to understand the way God created human beings.
Genesis 2:7 Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. (NIV)
1Thessalonians 5:23 May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. (NIV)
Hebrews 4:12 For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
The point of these verses is that in creating human beings, He created them with three parts. Scripture says that humans are made in the image of God but understand that since God is spirit it cannot be true that we look like God as if He has a body. Being in the image of God refers to our personality, conscience, and intelligence. The material body, made from the dust of the earth, was designed to interact with the world through its 5 senses: touch, taste, sight, smell, and hearing. A person worships and communicates with God through his spirit being, breathed into Adam at the time of his creation and inherited from him. After all, Adam is the common ancestor of every single human on the planet today. The soul is itself tripartite and encompasses the conscious and unconscious minds and the person’s emotions and will.
Ephesians 2:1-2 As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.
But the commission of this Original Sin severed the connection between human and God and our spirit died. As originally created, human beings were wondrously complex but unified beings. Body, soul, and spirit worked together in unified interaction with God and the world. But that ended with Original Sin. When connected to God our spirit acted as a sort of anchor, keeping us ‘rooted and grounded’ to Godly principles and standards of conduct. When the connection was severed there was no longer a restraint against the ways of the world. Paul, writing to the Galatians, describes it well:
Galatians 5:17 For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want.
The human spirit is what makes us superior to animals. We can interact with the divine, spiritual, and heavenly realms through our spirit, but if we don’t take care of it, we can never enjoy God, never be spiritual, and never grow in divine life. Without connection to God, the human spirit has no source of spiritual nourishment or refreshment. As a result the human spirit sort of ‘withered on the vine’. Without the indwelling Holy Spirit in us, brought on by our acceptance of Jesus as Savior, our human spirit is not fully functional. This is why a person, in spite of outward success and fame, can nonetheless feel a void in his heart when he lays his head on the pillow at night. This void is not something which can be filled by anything the world has to offer. As a result all the work of the day, all the effort, and all the striving for success brings no satisfaction. No amount of success, riches, or fame can fill that hole because the human spirit groans for spiritual nourishment supplied by the King of the universe.
Because of this withering effect, this disconnection from God, a human is not able to love God or the things of God until his human soul is regenerated. This regeneration is what happens when a person accepts Jesus as his Savior.
Let’s return to the original question: What happened after the Original Sin? The consequence of Original Sin is something we will dig deeply into in later posts, but we can look at it briefly here. For whatever time Adam and Eve were in the Garden they were in a sort of relaxed fellowship with God. Their normal life included walking and talking with Him. They had been made perfectly, sin hadn’t yet entered, so they were holy and righteous. They could see God and not die. But sin did enter, and here’s where the ‘rubber meets the road’. As our ancestral father, his thought processes and habit patterns have been passed to all of us who are his subsequent generations. Because Adam and Eve sinned, we thus have a propensity to sin.
But here’s the interesting thing. Having been made perfect, his normal life was holiness and righteousness. Adam had to choose to disobey; he chose to sin. In other words Adam had to choose not to follow God. He had perfection and gave it up. We, his children, have the opposite situation; because of our propensity to sin, we have to choose to follow God. But it is not a natural choice. We have to choose to live contrary to our human nature and in line with God’s character. But that is indeed good news: We have the right and ability to choose. And God’s answer is even better news.
Romans 5:17 For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ!