The third chapter of the book of Genesis clearly states that Adam and Eve failed the test of probation. Adam and Eve, parents of the human race broke God’s commandment. “The laws of God are the directions on the package of life.”
Mankind through Adam chose to disobey and by so doing chose death instead of life. Even though, man as he was created possessed the ability not to sin, our first parents willfully chose to obey the evil counsel of Satan the tempter.
The fall of man is a historical reality. Humanity by this deliberate act of willful disobedience became sinners. Our first parents fell into sin and became slave to sin:
“Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?” (Romans 6:16).
The event of the fall is the darkest day in the history of mankind. The parents of the human race chose death instead of life, evil instead of good, bondage instead of freedom and their choice was for them and for us (descendants).
By the fall, man lost the right to be himself. Man became naked, ashamed and fled from the presence of God his only Creator. We all die because of the fall. By obeying Satan man became his servants: “You become servant to whom you choose to obey.”
Further, by this wicked act of our first parents, the entire human race sinned against God. Sin is evil. The complex contradictions between man and God, husband and wife, and between man and nature, appeared as the consequence of sin.
Sickness, disease, poverty, greed, human slavery, evil thoughts, evil desires, rape, murder, self-righteousness, self-religion, devotion to idols and all lying and wickedness have their root to man’s corrupt nature handed down through birth from the fall (Romans 3:23; Psalm 51:5; 58:3).
By the fall, a silent world stood before the Creator guilty and punishable by death. Every attempt of man to establish his own righteousness before God is ruled out:
“Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Romans 5:12).
But someone may ask; how did it all happen? In short, Satan from another part of God’s creation entered this earth disguised as a serpent or clothed as a serpent and a creature of the earth and thus belonging to the earth, managed to deceive the first lady of the earth, and then Adam followed. Here is the Biblical account:
“Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?
And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.
And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof,and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat” (Genesis 3:1-6).
The presence of the two trees meant temptation was permitted; however, there was no need for them to fail. Man was well informed and prepared for the test. Temptation for man is always subject to the human will and desires ( James 1:14-15; cf. Genesis 4:7).
Eve was deceived into disobedience, but her husband Adam was not. He willingly followed her disobedience (cf. Romans 5:12-14; 1 Timothy 2:14). Although, both were culpable, the Bible places the event of the fall squarely on Adam. Adam and Eve sinned against God by their own free will. Sin when acted upon becomes a state.
We are sinners by nature and sinners by choice. Our inherited corrupt nature is the reason we all sin without exception. Man is unable not to sin (cf. Romans 3).
As a result of the fall, man is not as he was made; his nature is corrupt and rotten to the core and is perishing. Sin is taking your eyes away from God; sin is to trust something, someone plus God; sin is a mistake; Sin is a lie; sin is missing the mark; sin is a trespass of divine limits; sin is a principle; sin is death; sin is a contradiction and a confusion.
Further, sin is destructive of all good – it is an act against the goodness and grace of God. Sin is immoral and irrational. Only fools make a mockery of sin (cf. Proverbs 14:9).
Like Adam and Eve, existence for each of us depends upon our obedience to the word of God. Liberty without law is license and responsibility without freedom is bondage. Life for man is obedience to God’s command; likewise, disobedience is death.
A fact we may not agree with is the fact that; naturally, every man hates God and rejects His rule. The sad part of it all is that, to date many people still prefer the evil ways of Satan to the righteous ways of God. Many people choose to follow both ways, but here is the truth:
“No man can serve two masters: “for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other” (Mathew 6:24).
Satan came into this world through a lie and holds man in bondage through a lie. Through deception and by the permission of man, Satan and his host of fallen angels and demons entered the world and still occupy the world. Satan is still active in the world by the will of man.
Satan is said to be the father of the unregenerate because man chooses to obey his voice and to follow his evil ways. I hope you can now understand why Jesus said the following about fallen man:
“Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it” (John 8:44).
Here is a summary of the indictment against the human race for your study (cf. Psalm 14; Romans 3:10-18):
1. There is none righteous, no, not one. Righteousness is the criterion by which sin is judged.
2. There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. Naturally man hates.
3. All gone out of the way, they are together become unprofi table; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.
4. Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips.
5. Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.
6. Their feet are swift to shed blood.
7. Destruction and misery are in their ways.
8. And the way of peace have they not known.
9. There is no fear of God before their eyes.
The whole world is bound to plead guilty before at God’s tribunal; no man can expect to be justified there on the grounds of his own works, and not even by being obedience to the law of God. What man desperately need is a new birth or imputed righteousness.
The divine law requires righteousness from every man without exception. But, then, how may a man be justifi ed, or declared righteous? If God requires righteousness and if man is a sinner or a transgressor, how can he stand before his holy God?
Man cannot save himself. As a result of the fall, man is beyond repair and only rebirth can give him a new start and a clean slate. Man needs a new nature. He needs a transformation and not a reformation.
To bring about that, man needs someone outside himself to plead his case before God. Man needs a substitute to assume his guilt and punishment. Unfortunately, angels cannot stand in for man, they are fallible themselves. The only way out is for God to enter man’s world and save man and nature or else man is lost forever.
The wages sin pays is death – man sinned, man must die. By man sin and death are in this world by man also it must be eradicated and destroyed:
“For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead” (1 Corinthians 15:21).
Graciously, God chose to enter man’s world to save him. As already mentioned, an eternal plan was already in place to save man from sin and death. Man can be declared righteous or justified through the substitutionary death of the incarnate Son of God Jesus Christ. Here is the divine testimony:
“And I looked, and there was none to help; and I wondered that there was none to uphold: therefore mine own arm brought salvation unto me; and my fury, it upheld me” (Isaiah 63:5; cf. John 3:16).
Righteous living is life, peace and joy for every man. Conformity to God’s righteousness is the only means by which man can experience the highest felicity for which his nature is created. Let me briefly explain what Biblical righteousness is.
The “righteousness of God” or “justification” is a legal declaration issued by God in which He pronounces a person free from quilt. To justify means ‘to pronounce and treat as righteous.” Pardon and mere forgiveness from God is not enough to pay for the damage done through the fall.
Let me use this illustration to show you how the righteousness of God works:
“You may wrong me and come to me; and I may say, I forgive you. But I have not justified you. I cannot justify you. But when God justifies a man, He says, ‘I pronounce you a righteous man.’ Henceforth I am going to treat you as if you never committed any sin.”
Now, tell me, does this sound like something man can achieve or do by self-eff orts or merit? The answer is absolutely no. The only way this much needed kind of righteousness can come to any man is through “the grace and mercy of God.”
Further, the only way God can justify the ungodly without any infringement to His own absolute holiness is true His substitute man Jesus Christ. God cannot act against His nature. He cannot overlook sin and neither would He “acquit the wicked.”
Through Jesus Christ, God is able to “justify” all those who come to Him for salvation. He is able brings them into a right relationship with Himself while remaining perfectly righteous. In Christ, God does the very thing which in the law He says He would not do (cf. Exodus 23:7).
Jesus Christ is God’s only answer to man’s precarious and hopeless situation:
“But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no diff erence:
For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.
Jesus Christ is where God meets man – our “Mercy Seat.” He is every man’s reconciliatory and mediator. The expiation which is provided in Christ averts the wrath of God and wipes out the sinners guilt:
“Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29).
Today, all generations can rejoice for the fact that God has done exactly what He planned out to do from the beginning. The testimony of the Bible is that, two thousand years ago, Jesus Christ, who was in the form of God, in the incarnation, “emptied” Himself and took on our human nature and “tasted death for every man” (Hebrews 2:9):
“Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Philippians 2:5-11).
While He was fully God, Jesus became fully man to experience death for every man. He assumed the guilt and punishment for our sin and sins. He never ceased to be God while He was on earth, but He chose not to exercise His prerogatives as God. He lived among us as one of us and even became the servant of all men.
Here is another reason for the incarnation. Since the people Jesus had to save were men subject to death, He, the Son of God, also became like one of us (the Son of man) so that through death He can destroy the works of Satan and deliver man from bondage:
“Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil.
Wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people. For in that he himself hath suff ered being tempted, he is able to succour them that are tempted” (Hebrews 2:16-18).
Humanity under first man Adam failed, but the new humanity, under Jesus Christ, the last man Adam, did not fail and would not fail.
First man Adam disobeyed and brought shame and death upon himself and his descendants, but the last man Adam obeyed and brought life and immortality to all mankind; to all who choose to believe.
The second man Jesus Christ overcame evil by choosing the Father’s will over His own will. And so complete and satisfying was His Calvary sacrifice that He has become not only the redeemer of Adam’s fallen race but the governor of God’s universe as predetermined.
Satan contrived Adam’s fall and became the possessor of the power of death and is called “the prince of the authority of the air.” Through the power of death through sin, Satan gained control over Adam and his descendants. But, this power and authority Satan possesses is forever broken by Jesus Christ.
From: The Man Nobody Can Ignore. Thanks for reading