How did the Fall affect humanity?

How much was involved in the fall of Adam! The creature that God had set up in innocency was guilty of disobedience against the commandment of God, sin had entered into his nature, he had gone into the distance from God and was alienated against Him, and as the head of the lower creation all that was under him was brought down with him. The acceptance of the word of Satan in preference to the word of God was an offence against God’s majesty, for it involved accepting the devil as the god of this world. Moreover there was the entry of spiritual and moral death into the world to be followed with death that removed the sinner from the world into which God had brought him. Driven from the earthly paradise, and from access to the tree of life, man’s only hope lay in what God announced to the tempter regarding the coming Seed of the woman.

When we turn to Jesus, the Son of God, the Seed of the woman, the Second Man, we see the One who recovers all for the glory of God and the blessing of His creature. If Adam was disobedient unto death, Jesus was obedient unto death (Phil. 2:8). If Adam fell when tempted in the most attractive circumstances, the Son of God triumphed over the tempter when he was hungry, and in the wilderness. If by Adam sin entered into the world, by Christ the Lamb of God the sin of the world will be taken away. If by Adam man is expelled from the earthly paradise, by Christ man can enter the heavenly paradise of God. If under Adam’s headship the lower creation is brought down and into ruin, under the Headship of Christ there will be a universe of bliss, where there is no curse and no groan, and where God will be glorified. Moreover, on the ground of the death of Christ, an entirely new creation will be brought into being, where sin cannot enter, and where all is for the eternal pleasure of God.

In considering the fall of man we are apt to concentrate on the dire consequences for the human race, and to lose sight of what that dreadful event meant for God. The consequences of the entry of sin were certainly enormous, and this is seen as we find almost the whole human race swept away at the flood because of the corruption and violence that filled the old world, and as we see the condition of the world today even where there are the external benefits that have been brought by Christianity. Sin brought with it a guilty and defiled conscience, alienation from God and enmity with Him, the principle of sin in man’s nature, and all the sorrow, suffering and death that fill the world. What man did to the Son of God in putting Him on a malefactor’s cross showed what man in his nature, and in his disposition towards the God who has showed him nought but good.

Every creature of God has its own nature, and of God’s creatures on earth man has a very distinctive nature that sets him apart from all others. Alas, sin has entered into the nature of man and has brought in all the ruin, decay, disease and death that we see all around. Scripture relates plainly that this was brought about by the sin of Adam and Eve, and that every child of Adam has inherited his sinful nature. Adam’s sin made him a guilty creature, and put him at a distance from God, but it also introduced into his nature an evil principle, sin, that had not been there before. The long centuries of man’s life upon earth have demonstrated the utter ruin of human nature, but the cross of Christ has not only shown that it is incorrigible, but there God condemned the sin that controlled, and formed part of, man’s nature as away from God (Rom. 8:3).

If ever there was a fair opportunity for the distinctive qualities, capacities, resources, and tendencies of nature to manifest themselves, the lifetime of Cain and Abel furnished it. If there were ought in nature, whereby it could recover its lost innocence, and establish itself again within the bounds of Eden, this was the moment for its display. But there was nothing of kind. They were both lost. They were "flesh. They were not innocent. Adam lost his innocence and never regained it. He can only be looked at as the head of a fallen race, who, by his "disobedience," were made "sinners." (Rom. 5:19) He became, so far as he was personally concerned, the corrupt source, from whence have emanated the corrupt streams of ruined and guilty humanity — the dead trunk from which have shot forth the branches of a dead humanity, morally and spiritually dead.

For our racial head we have to go back to Adam, and to Adam in his fallen condition, for only when fallen did he beget sons and daughters. His fall came about by an act of sin, but that act induced a state or condition of sin which permeated his very being. Thereby his whole spiritual constitution was altered so fundamentally as to affect all his descendants. He could only beget children "in his own likeness, after his image" (Gen. 5:3) — the likeness and image of a fallen man. Heredity of this sort is a terrible fact, borne witness to by Scripture. Does God in the Gospel propose any remedy for this awful blight which lies upon the human race? Can He deal with the nature from which the acts of sin spring: with the root which produces the hideous fruits, as well as with the fruits themselves?

There is no other explanation of the fact that the children of Adam universally have a corrupted moral nature. The moral nature of man was first corrupted in him — our progenitor. Having become corrupted in him, it has passed on naturally as an inheritance to his descendants. They have a fallen, sinful nature through him. All his children are thus involved in his fall and ruin — the many involved by the act of the one.

As regards death, it is the penalty of sin. It was by sin that death came to Adam, but the death that came thus to him has passed on to his descendants. Involved in his moral ruin by his sin, deriving from him his fallen, sinful nature, to be righteously exempted from the death he brought in by sin, his children must establish a right to live. Not one has ever done this. They all sin, and so death justly passes to them. In the holy government of God it would be impossible to exempt from death the sinning children of Adam, although it is not their sinning that brought death into the world. It was brought into the world by the sin of Adam. It came in thus under the government of God as penalty for sin, and it necessarily passes to all that sin — which all do. Righteously, therefore, all die.

When Adam sinned he was guilty of breaking a divine commandment, sin entered into his nature, and he hid himself from the presence of God. Moreover through Adam’s guilt sin entered into the world, and death by sin. Man acquired a conscience, having through sin, and in sin, the knowledge of good and evil, but was without power to do the good or forsake the evil. In mercy God excluded man from Eden, for the tree of life was there, and man could not be allowed to eat of that tree and live for ever as a sinner in a world of sin. Against this dark background God announced the coming of the Seed of the woman who, at great cost to Himself, would bruise the serpent’s head. It was a simple and clear indication that God has purposes to deal with the entry of sin into the world, and with the effects of sin.

Alas! it was not long before Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden tree, and brought upon themselves the dire consequences of their guilt. There was the sin of disobedience that made man guilty before God; there was the distance that separated the guilty sinner from God: there entered into the nature of man the evil principle that has been transmitted to every child of Adam, with the knowledge of good and evil there was neither power to resist the evil nor to do the good; there were entirely wrong thoughts of God implanted in the mind of man and with it the hatred of God that was soon evinced by Cain; there was exclusion from the garden of delights; there was the curse on the ground and with it a life of toil and sweat; and the sentence on Eve of sorrow in her conception.

First of all then, let us observe that when sin entered into the world by the transgression of Adam, and the human race consequently lapsed into an utterly fallen and sinful condition, its effects were manifold and went far beyond the incurring of guilt. Yet the first and most obvious effect was that Adam became a guilty and conscience-stricken man. As men multiplied it had to be said that, "all the world" was "guilty before God" (Rom. 3:19), and this means, since guilt is an intensely individual matter, that every individual composing the world, every one of us, is guilty.

We have seen man on the ground of responsibility, and failing; and the tree of life, otherwise free to him without any doing or condition, untouched. Man was now fallen and sinful; separated from God, and sinful in nature. I pass over the great and solemn judgment, executed on earth as the result of this state, because it was a judicial act.