why are we responsible for original sin?

[drich0150]

why do we suffer the consequences?

To live in a world without consequence is to live in a world absent of a true choice.
We have been given this life to Choose. To love and worship God or to love and worship ourselves, our doctrines, theologies and/or philosophies. We live with consequence because we have a true choice to make.

and why do we still die even after our sins are atoned for?

The death this body, your body will experience is not the true death. At the end of this life you will experience a transformation, not actual death. The second Death, is The True death, this is one any true believer will be spared from.

 

[Bible2]

'we' did not exist when adam was alive.

We existed when Adam was alive in the sense that Levi existed when Abraham was alive: we were genetically in "the loins" of Adam just as Levi was genetically in "the loins" of Abraham (Hebrews 7:9-10).

If he is the common ancestor of all human beings, we simply share some common genetic material which determines things about our bodies and certain predispositions of our personalities.

We inherited the disposition of sinfulness from Adam: "For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners" (Romans 5:19).

And so we inherited his condemnation: "by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation" (Romans 5:18).

We're all separate beings from adam

Now we are, and as separate beings, because of our inherited disposition of sinfulness, we have all chosen to commit sin ourselves: "all have sinned" (Romans 3:23). So original sin is not our only guiltiness before God. So it becomes superfluous with regard to our guiltiness. So even if you could convince God to cancel original sin, it wouldn't make any difference: you would still have to answer for your own sins. So having a problem with original sin won't help you to escape God's judgment for sin. Only Jesus can help you (as all of us) with that: "For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Romans 6:23).

 

[heymikey80]

MLEN, that's an interesting point, and it leads up to something I was struggling to describe on human terms.

Say a rich uncle had disowned your parents. You might share some genetic traits with the uncle -- but you wouldn't share in the wealth of other things he had; nor would you share in a relationship with the disowning uncle. To me that's part of the "inherited" status we find ourselves in, before God.

If we were in a redemptive relationship with God, we wouldn't die. Yet our lineage has been disowned from that relationship. So we suffer the consequences. Even worse, that lost relationship has us resorting to evil, where we intentionally exploit or ignore one another through our limitations and independence from God, and so we lead ourselves into sin by the very way we live: apart from God.

This is not to exclude the consequences of genetic or innate sinfulness. I think both are at work in people.