2013 Doctrine Series #4 – The Fall (Original Sin)

In our article on creation we said that God created everything and declared it “good.”  But, as we saw in our article on providence, sometimes things do not work out perhaps the way in which God had originally planned.  What happened?  The answer, in a word, is sin.
We see the story unfold in Genesis 3.  Adam and Eve were placed in paradise and were given only one commandment: Do not eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  The serpent tempts Eve to eat from the Tree and then Eve gives the fruit to Adam and he eats.  God then throws Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden and they become subject to sickness and death.
All of us, as descendants of Adam have inherited this sinful nature and the physical, emotional, relational, and spiritual brokenness that comes along with it.  The Bible puts it this way in Romans 5:12, “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned.”
It is not just people who are broken because of sin.  The whole world is out of whack as a result of sin as well.  Romans 8:20 says, “For the creation was subjected to futility.”
The doctrine of original sin says that, as a result of the Fall, Adam’s first sin, all human beings inherit a sinful nature and are broken and subject to sickness and death.  Also, as a result of the Fall, all of creation is broken and works in unpredictable and dangerous ways.  G. K. Chesterton, in his book Orthodoxy, writes that original sin “is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved.”  Do you really need me, or anyone else to prove to you that there really is sin in the world and in your own life?  All we have to do is watch the news, or take a good long look at our own lives.
Besides the original sin that we all carry around, it does not take very long and we have actual sin, sin that we actually commit ourselves.  Romans 3:23 says, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”  Sin is sin; no sin is worse than another.  James 2:10 says, “Whoever breaks one commandment is guilty of breaking them all.” (Good News Translation)
We all have a sin problem.  In the next article we will see what God has done for us to solve that problem.