fhansen
Oldbie
And yet Adam didn't gain something at the Fall, as in a "sin nature", rather he lost something: communion with God. His decscendants would lack all "knowledge of God", alienated from Him as they are. This alienation or separation is the state of injustice that we inherit; its's the essence of man's death, the "death of the soul" as it's been called, and the reason for further sin. Man cannot retain moral integrity once apart from God, the source of all true morality/ righteousness for him. Man cannot play God and live. Man was made for communion with God.Angels are spiritual beings sinless, finite and immortal. They were originally created by God in order to promote His glory and to serve him. Angels are sexless, incapable of prorogation, and therefore the number of angels is fixed. Angels are intelligent beings and possess the attributes of knowledge and freedom of the will. Like man, angels originally had the ability not to sin and also the ability to sin. All created angels originally existed in a state of grace.
The fall of the evil angels seems to be pride. (Is. 14:12-15) Just why Satan and the angels sinned is unknown as sin is an irrational entity. The cause of this sin of rebellion lay entirely in angelic mature-free will…..with no excuse for temptation or any defect in their angelic nature.
The moment each angel willing sinned, they were judged by God. II Peter 2: 4 For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of darkness, reserved for judgment; hell was specifically created for Satan and his angels (Mt. 25:41).
The state of the evil angels is misery. They know they are judged and waiting for eternal judgement. “Have You come to destroy us? (Mark 1:24). Evil angels cannot be forgiven as Jesus’ substitutionary atonement for sins is incarnational. Jesus is our substitute, “being made in the likeness of men” (Phil 2) and not of angels.
On the other hand, the good angels were also judged to into a state of glory, when the evil angels were judged unto condemnation.. Luke 20:35 suggests the angels are likened to resurrected believers. Good angels and resurrected believers no longer have the ability to sin and therefore cannot sin.
———————
God created man, producing his body from the earth, but his soul from nothing and joined it to the body. Man’s spirit, breathed into him by God, is closely related to the soul. The spirit is that faculty of the soul through which the person relates to God (Ps 51:10; Rom 8:16; Eph 4:23) as God is only spirit. The function of our spirit, the deepest part of our being, is related to the spiritual realm: it enables us to contact and receive God Himself. The spirit is the part of us that most directly worships and prays to God (see John 4:24 and Philippians 3:3).
An unbeliever does have a spirit. However most of the capacities of the unregenerate spirit are dead and inoperative; at the new birth, God implants new capacities in the spirit. Romans 8:10: “If Christ is in you, although your bodies are dead because of sin, your spirits are alive because of righteousness”.
Man is created in the image of God meaning the proper disposition Adam’s will was to do only God’s will and his intellect had a greater natural knowledge of God than his fallen children. The image of God in Adam is known as natural perfection in which he could perfectly know, love and glorify God as creator. The image of God not only comprehends all moral but spiritual virtues….that all of Adam’s mind, will, heart, are in complete communion with God. This image is nothing else than God’s righteousness embodied in man.
The natural sense of the Genesis account is that God had made man and every other creature as propagative beings. Like begets like, as is the way of all living creatures. God created supernaturally at the beginning (six days of creation), but He designed into His creatures the ability to propagate and “fill the earth” without any further supernatural acts of creation (post seventh day).
This righteous condition which God created Adam, with all its excellence, Adam would also have propagated to his posterity had he not fallen. In other words, had Adam not fallen, Adam’s children would have inherited this righteousness.
THE FALL
In Genesis, death and sin are absolutely linked together. “for on the day that you eat from it you will certainly die.” Adam was created with unique characteristics. Adam had the ability not to die, but also the ability to die. Adam had the ability not to sin and the ability to sin. When Adam sinned, God withdrew Adam’s ability not to sin and his ability not to die. Adam lost his original righteousness. Adam is now left with sin and death. This is the curse. Mankind is not guilty of Adam’s sin…but the divine punishment of God is all his descendants through propagation, inherit the condition God left him in.
Adam's original righteousness ceased to exist and in its place was introduced a state of moral depravity and this new state of moral depravity is now their natural state or condition and it is passed by the common course of nature to all Adam’s descendants.
The fact that any human dies regardless of age is indicative of Adam’s death passed on to all humanity. The fact that any human sins regardless of age is evidence of Adam’s sin passed on to all humanity. All humanity inherits Adam’s death and his guilt. All humanity needs the forgiveness of sins regardless of age.
What about infant sin?
So how is it possible that an infant can be sinful and guilty without having committing actual sins personally?
The soul of the newborn infant is derived from its parents, in the same way Eve’s soul was derived from Adam. Scripture informs us God breathed life into man only once and we are never told that it was repeated. Therefore, God breathed the breath of life (soul) into Adam not Eve. Eve acquires her soul from Adam. We see a similar instance in the Incarnation. Jesus derives his sinless nature from the Holy Spirit and not from Mary.
In conformity to Scripture, the place where the seat of sin resides is the soul. This is the immaterial part of man. In the Fall, Adam’s sin now resides in his soul. Adam’s sin is passed on from parent to child through propagation. That propagation includes the sinful soul. How this occurs is unknown and how the soul contracts sin is unknown.
With the soul contaminated, we inherit Adam’s sin. When the sinful soul is passed on from parent to child through propagation, this explains how a infant could be sinful and guilty without having committed sins personally.
This then also relieves God from the charge of being the author of sin or responsible for its continuance. Adam and Adam’s descendants are solely responsible for the continuance of sin. Sin is therefore not an external substance or learned behavior of the environment, but the very part of the essence of what it means to be a person.
Everything follows from seeds of it own nature. No black crow ever produces a white dove, nor a ferocious lion a gentle lamb, and no man polluted with inborn sin ever begets a holy child.
Upvote
0
