“Adam’s Transgression”

Romans 5:14

Adam’s sin included all aspects of sin. His one transgression was a total, complete breach of God’s holy law. The laws of God, according to James 2:10, are so intertwined that he that “offends in one point is guilty of all.” One of the old writers said, “Adam, at one clap, broke both tables of the law, and all the commandments of God.” If we carefully read the summary given of God’s law in Exodus 20:1-17 it becomes evident to us that Adam’s one act of rebellion, sin, and disobedience was, indeed, a transgression of each of the commandments.

1. He chose another God, when he followed the devil.

2. He idolized and deified his own belly. He made his belly his God. He bowed to and served his inward lusts rather than the Lord his God.

3. He took the name of God in vain when he refused to believe him. He spoke God’s name, but reverenced him not as God.

4. He kept not the rest and estate wherein God had set him, thus violating, breaking, and disregarding the sabbath day, which typified the salvation of sinners by trusting the finished work of Christ. Thus, he despised God’s Son and God’s salvation.

5. He dishonored his Father which was in heaven. Therefore his days were not long in that land which the Lord his God had given him. He was soon cut off from life, expelled from the garden, and banished from the presence of and communion with the holy Lord God.

6. He murdered, in the most horrible massacre of all history, himself and all his posterity. Adam, by his one act of transgression, not only broke all God’s holy law, but slaughtered the entire human race.

7. He committed spiritual fornication and adultery. He went whoring after other gods. Fornication and adultery are horrible evils, but no form of immorality compares with the evil of spiritual adultery, which is idolatry.

8. He stole that which God had set aside not to be meddled with. Thus, his sin brought trouble to the whole world, just as Achan’s sin was that which brought trouble to all Israel.

9. He bore witness against God when he believed not his word. Unbelief is the blasphemously daring declaration of Adam and his offspring that God is a liar (1 John 5:10).

10. He coveted an evil covetousness, which cost him his life, and all this brought death upon all his family.

It is this death, this spiritual death, which is the result of Adam’s sin, which Paul speaks of when he says, “In Adam all die.”

Don Fortner