But That’s Not Fair!
It’s easy for us to blame Adam and Eve for messing it up for the rest of us by eating the forbidden fruit in the garden and bringing in sin. (I felt bad about the coke bottle incident. At least I didn’t do what Adam and Eve did!)
It’s even easy for us to accuse God of being unfair by making us pay for their sin. We shouldn’t have to pay sin’s penalty of death when they were the ones who ate the fruit, right? We weren’t even born yet!
So why do we have to pay for Adam and Eve’s sin? I answer this question in the short video above and blog post below. (Check out both. They’re not identical.)
Thanks, Mom and Dad—Sorry, Kids!
We have our parents to thank for our hair color, eye color, and skin color.
We have the world’s first parents—Adam and Eve—to thank for our sin nature.
God created Adam and Eve innocent and sinless. But it didn’t take long before they rebelled against God and ate the forbidden fruit. Their actions ushered sin into the world and changed them.
It distorted their original human nature and turned it into a sin nature. Sin became part of who they are.
If you take two sinners and bring them together, what kind of child will they produce? — A sinner.
Two sinners can only produce another sinner. Just like we inherited our physical features, we inherited our sin nature.
Have you thanked your mom and dad yet?
Or apologized to your kids yet?
Before you do, consider this. We may have been born with a sin nature thanks to Adam and Eve’s sin, but we sin by our own free will. We choose it.
We’re All Born Vipers in a Diaper
I heard one of my favorite pastors, Voddie Baucham, once say that our babies aren’t the sweet little angels we suppose. They’re vipers in a diaper.
He’s right.
Tell a toddler, “No,” and see how quickly he reveals he’s a sinner.
Put one exciting toy in front of two toddlers and see what happens.
Think they’ll smile and offer it to the other?
Not a chance—unless they already know they don’t like the toy and just want to get rid of it. Two toddlers and only one toy will strike fear into any reasonable adult.
We’re All Guilty of Sin Because We’ve All Sinned
We may have been born with sin in our hearts because of Adam and Eve’s sin, but we’re not going to stand before God and be judged for what they did. Our own sin condemns us.
Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—
Romans 5:12 ESV
Perhaps Adam and Eve Were Defective?
If Adam and Eve fell to temptation the first time Satan tempted them, perhaps they were defective. Perhaps God made a mistake when He created them, and we would’ve done better.
Are you buying that?
Let’s consider a few truths God’s Word teaches us about our Lord:
- Everything He does is right and good (Psalm 145:17).
- He is faultless in all His wisdom and ways (James 3:17).
- His love for us is perfect for God is love (1 John 4:8).
Armed with these three truths alone, we can rightly conclude that Adam and Eve were not a cosmic mistake.
They were in fact a perfect couple blessed with free will, which they used to willfully exchange God’s Truth for Satan’s lies and sin.
We would’ve, too.
Had we been in Adam and Eve’s place, we’d have done what they did. We, too, would’ve given into temptation eventually.
We’re Image-bearers, Not Divine Clones
All of us were made in God’s image, in His likeness. We’re image-bearers, not divine clones.
None of us are God. We don’t possess His divine nature, and thus, we’re all capable of sin. God isn’t, but we are.
Even in Adam and Eve’s original sinless state, the possibility to sin always existed. They were born without sin but not without the ability to sin.
Nevertheless, Adam was still always the perfect one for the job God created him to fulfill—to be our founding father.
And Jesus has always been the perfect One to save us from the sin Adam ushered into the world and to give us eternal life.
Adam chose to sin. Jesus chose to obey perfectly.
Our sinless and obedient Lord was qualified to stand in our place on the cross and pay for our sins.
For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.
Romans 5:19
Amen!
So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being” the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven. As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the man from heaven, so also are those who are of heaven.
1 Corinthians 15:45-48
Imputation: A Fancy Word for a Simple and Powerful Truth
Because by nature—sin nature—we are all natural-born sinners, and we willfully choose to sin, we’re all guilty without any hope of salvation.
BUT, if we repent of our sin and trust in Jesus’ work on the cross to pay for our sin, God does something amazing. He imputes Christ’s righteousness to us. This means He credits us with Christ’s righteousness.
It’s as if everything Christ did, we did. As if we obeyed God, paid for our sin on the cross, defeated sin and death, and rose from the grave.
And what’s even more amazing is that while we absolutely would have done everything Adam did—and thus we fully deserve the sentence of guilt from sin—we would never have done what Jesus did.
We would never have obeyed God perfectly. It’s not in our nature. Or our desire.
We don’t sin because we’re sinners. We’re sinners because we sin.
The shock isn’t that we have to pay for sin even though Adam and Eve disobeyed and ate the fruit.
The shock is that Christ left His throne in heaven to come to earth and lay down His life for us. He obeyed God and paid or our sins.
Through Christ’s willing sacrifice, God imputes His righteousness to us, sinners without excuse. Amazing.
but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Romans 5:8
What about you?
We’re all guilty without excuse because we all sin. But in Christ, we’re made free.
Will you trust and believe and be made free—guiltless before our holy God?
Don’t walk away like Cain. (Stay tuned for that story in my upcoming post and video about Genesis 4.)
The first Adam was tested in the garden of Eden, and failed. The last Adam was tested in the garden of Gethsemane, and won. The first walked towards a tree to carry out the ultimate act of damning disobedience. The last did so to carry out the ultimate act of saving love.
— Barry Cooper, Simply Put Podcast
