Post #5 The doctrine of Original sin: How Adam's sin led to inherited corruption.

Introduction: 

   In these series of posts, I've been unpacking the doctrine of original sin, and how it explains what took place in the fall of Adam and Eve. Hardly no theologian doubts there being some connection between the sin of our original parents in Eden and its devastating affects on creation and humanity. The debate comes about in defining what that relationship is and how sin got from the garden to us. I thought today before we continued, I would explain the positive value of studying what can be a challenging doctrine.

What good is there in knowing about original sin?

    Why devote so much time to this
doctrine? I'll admit when I preached on this subject, it did not make me feel good as a person. To be reminded again and again that I have resident evil on the inside of me, brought about by myself, and inherited from Adam and Eve does not sit well in my sinful flesh and mind. 

    Yet, as a Christian, such a study causes me to look outside of myself to the second Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ. When we find our conception of ourselves governed by truth, rather than just feelings, such truth helps makes better sense of whom we are called to be upon saving faith in Jesus Christ. I have two-takeaways from studying the doctrine of original sin.

A. To grasp the greatness of God’s love in saving faith.

D. Martin Lloyd Jones noted that to understand the heights of God’s love, we must understand the depth of our disease – sin. Paul labors to parallel and contrast the first Adam to the last Adam, Jesus Christ. 

The Apostle Paul wrote in Romans 5:6-8 For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. 8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

      B. To grasp Christ’s imputed righteousness in saving faith.

    As we go along in these posts, I'll repeat again this important word "imputation" or "accrediting" of the actions of one to the many. If we are to properly understand Paul's teaching of Christ's righteousness imputed to all born-again in saving faith, in Christ, we must also arrive at understanding how Adam's sin was imputed to all human beings born in him naturally. 

    Moreover, Adam's imputed guilt, inside of me, which explains why I knowingly and willingly commit actual sins, was imputed onto Christ, on the cross. We could say the Bible teaches a "triple imputation", namely Adam's sin and guilt onto me, my sin onto Christ, and then His righteousness imputed onto me at saving faith. 

    It is the guilt of sin, the offense, the curse, which Christ bore. Although He was never a debtor to God's moral law, He nonetheless came to be treated as such (2 Corinthians 5:21; 1 Peter 2:21-25). Hence,

Romans 5:15-16 But the free gift is not like the transgression. For if by the transgression of the one the many died, much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abound to the many. 16 The gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned; for on the one hand the judgment arose from one transgression resulting in condemnation, but on the other hand the free gift arose from many transgressions resulting in justification. 17 For if by the transgression of the one, death reigned through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.

    That then explains the value of studying the doctrine of original sin. We have noted from our previous posts two propositions about original sin,

(1). Original sin initiated with Adam.

(2). Original sin imputed guilt.

    Today we want to look at a third component of original sin...original sin led to inherited corruption. What follows are notes from a series of messages I preached from Genesis 3 and Romans 5:12-21. In those sermons I lay out in full what I am writing here in these posts. 

Original sin led to inherited corruption. Romans 5:12-14.

This present post and the last one touches upon two questions we derive from the "Young Baptist’s Catechism" by Adam Murrell, the stimulus behind this series, as well as what the children are studying in our church on Wednesday nights.

Question 29: Did all mankind fall in Adam’s Sin? 

Answer: All mankind, descending from Adam, sinned in him, and fell with him in his first transgression.

Question 30: Into what state did the fall bring mankind?

    Answer: The fall brought mankind into a state of sin and misery.

    Adam's guilt is legally imputed to all of the human race. As it pertains to the corruption of sin itself, we find there is an inheritance of the pattern of Adam's sin by us all. These questions touch upon this first reality of the inherited corruption which flows from original sin.

A. The representative head’s practice transferred the corruption. Romans 5:12

Why did human beings have imputed Adam’s guilt (the legal crisis before God), followed by the inheritance of his corruption (the moral crisis of man before God)? It all has to do with representative headship.

Romans 5:12 (best handled in the KJV) reads,

 “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.” 

Genesis 5:3 “When Adam had lived one hundred and thirty years, he became the father of a son in his own likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth.”

      The argument of Paul here involves how the corruptive sin of one man came to be passed down to every human being. The principle at work here is what we call “representative headship” or “covenant headship”. Louis Berkhof summarizes this in his systematic theology, pg 221,

“The tempter came from the spirit world with the suggestion that man by placing himself in opposition to God might become like God. Adam yielded to the temptation and committed the first sin by eating of the forbidden fruit. But the matter did not stop there for by that first sin Adam became the bond servant of sin. That sin carried permanent pollution with it and a pollution which because of the solidarity of the human race would affect not only Adam but all his descendants as well.

One thing we notice in the Bible, that I pointed out last week, is how sin and all its affects were “imputed” or “accredited” to the entire human race by this one man Adam. Why is that? It all has to do with his representative or covenant headship. 1 Cor 15:22 “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.”

B. The representative head’s pattern repeated the corruption. Romans 5:13-14

This concept of "representative headship" operates in Paul's exposition of Adam and Christ as representative heads of the respective groups of all humanity and redeemed humanity. Romans 5:13-14 “tells us for until the Law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. 14 Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come.”

Think of a giant circle, labeled “Adam”.

Had Adam broken any laws or commands that would lead to his initial sin being imputed? He had. God had given him a handful of commands in Genesis 1:26-28 and Genesis 2:16-17, what theologians call the “Covenant of works”. 

He stood in our place, on a probationary time-frame to determine whether he would obey God and love God, or instead disobey God and love himself more than God. Adam failed. Romans 5:18a “So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men…”.

When Paul states “death reigned from Adam until Moses”, he is speaking of God’s moral law (inscribed upon the conscience at Adam’s creation, inscribed upon tablets at Sinai for Moses and the people). 

As long as I am in that circle of the first Adam, I am indeed corrupt, bent from God, a sinner, and a lawbreaker. Unless I’m somehow rescued from that first circle, my condemnation hangs over me from the moment of my conception. Eph 2:2 “in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.”

C. Proving how a representative head can corrupt.

      As one illustration of how a representative head of a bloodline can lead to the repeated corruption of that head onto the descendants, as well as imputed guilt, we only need to look at a particular King. I showed you in a previous post how King David functioned as a representative head of Israel. When he numbered the armies of Israel in 2 Samuel 24, his sin, its guilt, was credited to the whole nation, resulting in the deaths of 70,000 men. David interceded for the nation. Nevertheless, the deed was done, highlighting how the sin of a representative head of a people in the Bible to judgment on Israel. 

    There is another king, of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, Jeroboam, son of Nebat. You’ll recall in the nation of Israel’s history, there were three kings (Saul, David, Solomon). After Solomon’s death, Israel divided into two nations, the Northern confederacy of ten tribes, led by Jeroboam, and the Southern Kingdom of Judah, centralized in Jerusalem, led by Rehoboam. The split occurred in 930 b.c., with Rehoboam, as I said, leading ten of the twelve tribes Northward in Israel.

As you read of exploits of Jeroboam, you find he was a wicked king, introducing idolatry into the Northern Kingdom. His sin, his pattern, would become replicated in his successors. His son Nadab took over in 1 Kings 16:25, described in 16:26 as “doing evil in the eyes of the Lord, walking in the ways of his father and in his sin which made Israel sin”. 

The Northern Kingdom would persist for 209 years, with nearly 20 kings in succession. I count at least fifteen references to “the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat”, or some similar reference, ascribing the pattern and practices of Jeroboam to the wicked kings that ruled in the Northern Kingdom (1 Kings 11:26; 12:2,15; 15:1; 16:3,26,31; 21:22; 22:52; 2 Kings 3:3; 9:9; 10:29; 13:2,11; 14:24; 15:9,18,24,28; 17:21; 23:15).

Representative headship, in the case Jeroboam as the lead king, explains why his sin, his pattern, was imputed and replicated in the line of succession. Sadly, his sin pattern would come to be repeated also in the Southern Kingdom of Judah. The Southern Kingdom would survive 136 years beyond the Northern Kingdom, yet you’ll read how the sins of one man polluted two Kingdoms, nearly forty kings, illustrating for us a small picture of original sin in the whole human race.  

Closing thought for today

So, we’ve seen so far how original sin initiated with Adam, how because of  original sin God imputed Adam's guilt to us all. In today's post, we've studied how Adam's original sin led to the contraction of internal corruption in us all. In our next post, we will examine how original sin contributes to our inward bent away from God.