ll have sinned and come short of the glory of God but through the death and risen power of Christ, all who believe
can be saved from the penalty and power of sin.
Man and Sin
The Scripture testifies to something which we all really know from experience - the fact that man is in a fallen state,
separated from God and a Servant of sin. Our experience of human nature confirms this for we never have to
teach our children to do wrong; that is a tendency which they already possess. Rather, it is necessary to teach
them the good.
God created man perfect, in the image and after the likeness of God (Gen. 1 v 26; Eccl. 7 v 29). What more
evidence of this could one desire than the testimony of God when He saw everything He had created and
"behold, it was very good." (Gen. 1 v 31)?
Man, for his part, enjoyed communion with God and, in the image of God, was
pure, rational and free. Unlike the animals, but like God, he was, and is, self-conscious, could reason and had a
spiritual nature. He was righteous, but not in himself. He was righteous because God told him His will and, until the
Fall, man obeyed. That blissful state did not last, however, because disobedience came in. Man's righteousness
and his relationship with God depended on trust and obedience. Adam disobeyed and thus, in his freedom to
choose, despised God's way and followed his own. Eve was deceived and was thus instrumental in leading
Adam into disobedience (Gen. 3). Note carefully that Adam's sin was not a mere slip, as it were, by accident.
It was deliberate and considered rebellion against God. Paul explained quite clearly that Adam was NOT deceived
(I Tim 2 v 14). God had said that in the day they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they would
surely die (Gen. 2 v 17). Nevertheless, they ate, yet thy continued to live - or so it seemed. But it was not long
before they realised that things had changed: they became aware of a separation from God (Gen. 3 vv 7 -10).
Indeed, they HAD died. They were dead spiritually and, moreover, were barred from access to the Tree of Life,
from which they should - and by free choice could - have lived (Gen. 3 vv 22 -24). In due course they died
physically too, returning to the dust from which their bodies were formed.
Now what is the importance of this truth, the account of the Fall of man? Before the Fall Adam called his wife
Isha (Heb = Woman) because she was taken out of man (Gen. 2 v 23). After the Fall, he called her name Eve,
because she was the mother of all living. (Gen. 3 v 20), indicating that all have descended from Adam and
Eve and have thus inherited that same sinful, fallen nature (Gen. 5 v 3; 8 v 21). The testimony of Scripture
reinforces this when it pronounces that "none is righteous, no, not one."
(Psalm 14 vv 1-3; 53 vv 1-3; Romans 3 vv 9-19; Isaiah 53 v 6).
David, meditating upon gross, personal sin said, "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity;
and in sin did my mother conceive me" (Psalm 51 v 5),
and that is the experience of us all. In our so-called 'civilised' society, one might
be tempted to say that there are so many 'good' people about, not necessarily Christian or in any way religious,
but who would not hurt a fly, who are always scrupulously honest, who give to charity and so on. Do we really
mean that every human being is born tainted by sin, corrupt and separated from the Divine life? Yes, assuredly
so, for one must remember that those things which we as human beings might find commendable and nice, are
not acceptable to God, because any work outside of God's work is essentially self-righteous, self-elevating and
therefore abominable in His sight. Isaiah laments, "But we are all as an unclean
thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags;" (Isaiah 64 v 6).