Death By The Sin

Romans 5:12

Spiritual death is the result of Adam’s sin as our representative and substitute in the garden and our sin in him.

In Romans five the Holy Spirit uses four distinct words to describe what Adam did in the garden of Eden. In verse 12, it is called “sin.” In fact, in the Greek text, it is twice referred to here as “the sin.” It is called “the sin” because it was the first sin and because it is the fountain of all sin. In verse 14, it is called a “transgression.” The Apostle John tells us that every sin is a transgression of the law (1 John 3:14). Adam’s sin, and our sin in him, was a transgression of that law which God made with Adam as our representative (Gen. 2:17). In Romans 5:19, it is called “disobedience.” It was an act of willful disobedience to the revealed will of God. Then, in Romans 5:15-20, the Apostle uses the word “offence” four times to describe Adam’s sin, because sin is abhorrently offensive to the holy Lord God. This word, “offence,” conveys the idea of a fall.

That is why we refer to Adam’s sin as “The Fall.” It was the offence, or the fall, by which Adam and the entire human race represented by him fell from a state of honor, integrity, righteousness, life, and happiness into a state of dishonor, sin, unrighteousness, death, and misery.

Though Adam’s sin is represented to us as the simple act of eating that fruit which he was forbidden by God to eat, his act of sin was much more complex than most imagine.

He sinned against light and knowledge, when he was in full power to have resisted temptation. Adam’s sin was the height of ingratitude to God his Maker. It was an affront to God in the highest degree. It was an act of willful unbelief, making God a liar, rejecting the truthfulness of his word. It was an act of intolerable pride, an affectation, pretense, and assumption of deity, of equality with God. It was an act of unparalleled selfishness by which Adam displayed a total disregard, lack of concern for, or even thought of, affection or care for God, his creation, or any of the human race, with whose souls he had been entrusted!

We flinch from acknowledging it, but the fact is, all acts of sin have these three elements in them. Every act of sin is an act of willful unbelief, intolerable pride, and horrible selfishness. Because of the sin of Adam, we all by nature live in God’s world with our fists shoved square in the face of the Almighty in willful unbelief, intolerable pride, and horrible selfishness, until God himself is pleased to break our rebellion and make us new creatures in Christ by his almighty, irresistible, sovereign grace. This is the fallen state of man!

Don Fortner