Something becomes very special to you when you make it with your own hands and put your “blood, sweat, and tears” into it. Possessing little woodworking skill, the closest I’ve come to this feeling is assembling my desk and bookshelves together. However, because I am not good at assembling things, I had a little sweat and tears in this work.1 Therefore, when I look at my desk and bookshelves in my office at home, I smile. They are special to me. I feel like, in some way, I made those with my own hands.
This is the state of man before God as seen in Genesis chapter 2. According to 2:7, God “got his hands dirty” with man. He fashioned him from the dust of the earth. He breathed life into the nostrils of man. As I pointed out from chapter 1 as few weeks ago, God made man in his own image. Man, made apart from the rest of creation, reflected God’s glory in the world. He was given a mandate to be fruitful and multiply (possibly to fill the earth with the glory of God). God spoke with man and man was able to communicate with his Maker. This is the beautiful picture that exists in Genesis 1-2 between God and his prized creation, man.
However, in chapter 3 all of this takes a turn for the worse. God had commanded Adam and Eve not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Adam is instructed that if he does, he will die (spiritually and physically). Yet, though lacking nothing, we read of the man and the woman disobeying God’s instruction in Genesis 3:1-7 as they are tempted by the serpent and eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
There are many details that could be pointed out as mistakes made by the man and the woman along the way. For example, as the serpent questions the woman and blatantly contradicts God in his conversation with her, she adds to God’s instruction, saying, “God has said, ‘you shall not eat of it or touch it’” (3:3 – italics added). Also, the man should have stepped in and spoken truth instead of remaining silent in the midst of the serpent’s conversation with the woman. Finally, both of them could have fled from the serpent. But in the end, they simply failed to follow God’s commands, doing what he forbade; they sinned.
And with this sin against God, all of history takes a turn for the worse. This is indeed a horrible and climactic point in the story of redemption. It is the turning point, as God’s good creation (i.e. Genesis 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, and 31) becomes an evil, helpless, and depraved creation in need of redemption from sin and reconciliation to its Maker. Adam’s sin had greater consequences than he could ever have imagined.
Adam’s sin affects more than himself; it affects everyone who would be born after him. Though you cannot necessarily see it in Genesis 3, a survey of the rest of Scripture shows that this chapter begins a downward spiral for all of humanity. Adam’s sin spreads to all men and corrupts all of mankind.
This is apparent even in the next chapter. The beautiful picture of the creation living in peaceful relations with its maker and one another in chapter 2 stands in sharp contrast to the events of chapter 4 as Cain gets angry with his brother and kills him. This is clearly an assurance to the reader that the effect and corruption of sin did not stop with Adam. The corruption of sin spreads to all men, making them evil in their nature (Genesis 6:5).
The New Testament picks up on this as well, specifically Paul. He has no problem drawing from many passages in showing man’s corruption in Romans 3:10-18.2 And when Paul turns to the source of man’s corruption, he looks no further than the fall, writing in Romans 5:12, “Through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so sin spread to all men, because all sinned.” In Adam, all mankind is wrapped up in and cursed by Adam’s sin.
The sin of Adam brings about consequences. First of all, the serpent, the man, the woman, and the land are cursed. The serpent is made to crawl upon his belly and eat dust (Genesis 3:14); the woman is to have pain in childbirth, desire her husband, and be ruled by her husband (3:16);3 the man is cursed to toil in his labor, for the ground is cursed to grow forth thorns and thistles (3:17-19). And remember God’s warning that man would die (2:17)? This is truly the result of the sin of Adam. When one reads the genealogy of the descendants of Adam in chapter 5, the recurring phrase “and he died” is there most definitely to show the triumph of sin in the life (and death) of mankind.
The effects of sin from the fall in Genesis 3 are devastating: man is dead in his sins (Ephesians 2) and unable to turn to God without being drawn (John 6). After the fall, man is depraved. That is to say, sin has corrupted every fiber of his being so that, apart from the grace of God, man is evil. Carson notes, “The impact of sin on human beings reaches to every facet of our existence, our will, our bodies, our emotions, our imagination, our reason, our relationships. Doubtless the Bible says much more than this; it certainly does not say less.”4
This does not mean that every man is as evil as he could be. Rather, the fact that God’s grace is shown in some part to all men keeps them from being as evil as possible. Therefore, we see people showing acts of kindness who are not believers. However, we should not look over the fact that because of the fall man is evil in his nature and depraved (something Jesus affirms in Matthew 7:11). We should remember this so that we do not forget man’s need is outside of himself, for he is depraved.
All of this is done because of Adam’s sin in the garden; it definitely affects more than himself.
Man’s rebellion against his Maker is the problem that mankind has. The bible clearly diagnoses this. Therefore, we need look no further. Don’t look to man to try to diagnose his problem. Don’t look to the latest psychology magazines. Look to Scripture, for only there will we be able to truly uncover man’s dilemma.
If you start elsewhere, you will miss the problem and give the wrong solution. For looking somewhere other than the Bible for man’s problem will lead you to something else than the gospel of Jesus Christ as the solution. You will distort the good news for mankind. How often do we hear this happening in the happy-go-lucky messages from pulpits across America!
Again, Carson is helpful here, noting, “Weigh how many presentations of the gospel have been ‘eased’ by portraying Jesus as the One who fixes marriages, ensures the American dream, cancels loneliness, give us power, and generally makes us happy. He is portrayed that way primarily because in our efforts to make Jesus appear relevant we have cast the human dilemma in merely contemporary categories, taking our cues form the perceived needs of our day. But if we follow Scripture, and understand that the fundamental needs of the race are irrefragably tied to the Fall, we will follow the Bible as it sets out God’s gracious solution to that fundamental need; and then the gospel we preach will be less skewed by the contemporary agenda.”5 He is surely right! Man does not know what is relevant to his needs, because outside of Scripture he does not understand what his true need is; he doesn’t understand the effect of the Fall and the spread of sin.
Adam plunges man into sin: we cannot simply “unplunge” ourselves. We need someone else to undo this problem, for God is one who judges (i.e. his actions with Adam and Eve in Genesis 3:14-19, his actions with Cain in 4:12-15, the death of Adam and his descendants in Genesis 5, and his wrath which we will catch a glimpse of in Genesis 7 with the flood).
But here, in man’s dark hour of rebellion, God foretells of his plan of redemption and consequent provision for his people. In Genesis 3:14-19, as God is giving the curses, he foretells of his plan of redemption. It might not have been clearly understood at the time, but looking back it is quite clear. He says to the serpent in Genesis 3:15, “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel.” This is clearly a foretelling of Christ dying on the cross, yet triumphing over Satan, evil, and death hat. For Revelation 12:9 assures us of the identity of the serpent, saying, “And the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world.” And Revelation 12:11 tells us of how Satan is defeated, saying, “And [the saints] overcame [Satan] because of the blood of the Lamb.” Paul’s words in Colossians 2:13-15 conform to this, as he writes, “And when you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, [God] made you alive together with [Christ], having forgiven us all our transgressions, having canceled out the certification of debt consisting of decrees against us and which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. When He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him.”
God also shows as early as Genesis 3 that sin will require a sacrifice and his willingness to provide one as he kills an animal and covers Adam and Eve’s nakedness with its skin (3:21). Finally, he preserves a line through which his Messiah would come as Abel is killed, for it is written in Genesis 2:25-26: “And Adam had relations with his wife again; and she gave birth to a son, and named him Seth, for she said, ‘God has appointed me another offspring in place of Abel; for Cain killed him.’ And to Seth, to him also a son was born; and he called his name Enosh. Then men began to call upon the name of the LORD.” God’s kindness here is then revealed in Luke 3:23-38 as we read of the genealogy of Jesus Christ and see that it is traced back to “Enosh, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God” (Luke 3:38).
And Adam himself serves as a type of the one who would redeem man, according to Paul in Romans 5:14. Therefore, Christ becomes the head of those who believe, giving righteousness and life, as Adam was the head of all mankind, giving sin, corruption, and death. Adam plunges man into sin and death and Christ conquers sin and death for his people. For “Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who are asleep. For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all [of those who believe] shall be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:20-22).
Christ’s redeeming work is then foretold in these early chapters of Genesis as he is the second Adam, succeeding where Adam failed (in the face of every temptation), spreading his righteousness to them, saving them from the wrath of God, and giving eternal life to those who believe.
If you are not a believer, the obvious answer to this is that you need to repent of your sins, place your faith in Christ, and take on his righteousness as you trust in his death as paying the penalty for your sins before the Father. However, since most of us are believers, let me encourage you in doing the following:
1) In our evangelism, point out the climactic point of the fall in redemptive history.
The Fall, Adam’s sin, is why we need redemption. If you start with what creation says of God and man (as we discussed last time) and then move to the Fall, then men will be forced to look for any good news. And we know that the good news is the gospel, that God has provided a solution.
In a world where modern man is looking for answers as to why we cannot stop wars, poverty, hate, etc. only the Fall and the spread of sin which began in Genesis 3 gives the answer. We have a door of the answer and the only thing that fully diagnoses man’s problem and provides the solution – the Scripture.
2) We must treat sin seriously because God does.
If the Fall and God’s judgment afterward teach us anything, it is that sin should be treated seriously. Therefore, let us remember again Jesus’ warning that if your hand causes you to sin should cut it off. He didn’t mean this literally as he was using hyperbole (an exaggeration for the sake of making a point), but his point most definitely is that sin needs to be avoided at great cost and treated with utmost seriousness. If we are dismissing sin in our life as something that does not need to be dealt with, we misunderstand the view the Bible gives us of the seriousness of sin.
3) We must renew our minds to the fact that sin no longer has a controlling power over us because we have trusted in Christ and his redeeming work.
Don’t believe the lie that you are bound to struggle with the sin (or some sins) that you are struggling with currently. As William Marshall preached a few weeks ago: we are no longer slaves to sin. Therefore, because of the gospel, we are to fight against sin by the strength of Christ.
And let me add a note on this point. When you strive to live holy and fight sin, remember that you can do it only because of the work of Jesus Christ. If you forget that Christ and his gospel are your strength to do these things, then you will often find yourself trying to do it in your own strength to merit his approval. Instead, we should pray for Jesus’ strength because he has already made us approved before the Father. This is the danger of forgetting Ephesians 1-3 when reading chapter 4, for example. Paul exhorts us to walk worthy because of the grace and strength of Christ in our lives, something which he explained in the first three chapters. And this is how all of the New Testament exhortations are set up. Therefore, walk in Christ’s strength, knowing that you are his, in your battle against sin and for holy living.
May we reflect the glory of the one who is the second Adam, our Savior, our Redeemer, the Christ; and by his grace and strength. Amen.