The origin of sin in humanity began with Adam’s voluntary sin or transgression against God in paradise. Adam and Eve yielded to the temptation of the fallen angel Satan whom God had exiled to earth after the Fall of the angels.[1] In committing this first sin, Adam and Eve became slaves to sin with Satan as their master.
THE NATURE OF THE FIRST SIN
God forbade Adam and Eve to eat the fruit of one particular tree which He called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 2:17). God allowed them to eat of all the other trees in the garden (Gen. 2:16). There was nothing detrimental per se in eating from the trees in the garden, so why was it sinful to eat of this one tree? There are lots of opinions regarding this question but it’s probably best to consider it a pure test of obedience since God did not explain this prohibition.[2] He simply required Adam to demonstrate his willing obedience to the will of God.
In disobeying God, Adam rejected God’s will for his life and substituted his own will, something all people still do. Certain characteristics of the first sin are obvious. As Berkhof writes “In the intellect it revealed itself as unbelief and pride, in the will, as the desire to be like God, and in the affections, as an unholy satisfaction in eating of the forbidden fruit.”
THE TEMPTATION OF THE FIRST SIN
The first sin was occasioned by the temptation of human beings. This temptation was from without and this may be the reason God provided His redemptive plan for humanity and not for fallen angels. Humans fell to temptation from without where the angels who disobeyed God were not subject to external temptation but disobeyed God by their own inner nature, possibly because of pride (Cf. 1 Tim. 3:6).
THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE FIRST SIN
The immediate concomitant of the first sin was the total depravity of human nature.[3] And immediately connected to this were the loss of communion with God through the Holy Spirit and a sense of shame and guilt, and having sinned, it would ultimately result in physical and spiritual death.
After Adam first sinned, the “guilt of Adam’s sin, committed by him as the federal head of the human race, is imputed to all his descendants. This is evident from the fact that, as the Bible teaches, death as the punishment of sin passes on from Adam to all his descendants” (Rom. 5:12-19; Eph. 2:3; 1 Cor. 15:22). As a result, everyone conceived by human beings are born in a fallen depraved state in which they have the absolute inability to NOT sin. God’s imputation of the guilt of Adam’s first sin to all his progeny is manifested in the fallen nature in all human beings and is referred to as the Fall. In their fallen and depraved state, they have no ability to seek God and humans cannot change this nature without divine assistance.
By His righteous will and perfect purpose and for His glory, God chose not to exercise His eternal wrath upon fallen humanity immediately. “In strict justice God might have imposed death on man in the fullest sense of the word immediately after his transgression, Gen. 2:17.”[4] But God chose not to impose death so that He could have His redemptive plan work out in creation to save those fallen whom He chose before the creation of the world to receive the blessing of His plan for salvation from His eternal wrath (1 Tim. 5:21, Mt. 25:31,41, Acts 13:48, Rom. 8:29-30, Jn. 10:27-29, Mk. 8:38, Jude 6).
By the grace of God, He had in place a plan of redemption that would save His chosen ones, the elect, from eternal death. The redemptive plan is applied only to individual elect persons These chosen ones are the elect whom He predestined to everlasting life (Eph. 1:5-6). The rest of humanity are the reprobate who will not receive redemption but will receive God’s eternal wrath, a righteous and just act of God, at the end of the age on Judgment Day (Mt. 25:41, Jude 4). S
[1] Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (The Banner of Truth Trust, 2012), 217. “God created a host of angels, and they were all good as they came forth from the hand of their Maker, Gen. 1:31. But a fall occurred in the angelic world, in which legions of angels fell away from God. The exact time of this fall is not designated, but in John 8:44 Jesus speaks of the devil as a murderer from the beginning (kat’ arches), and John says in 1 John 3:8 that he sins from the beginning. The prevailing opinion is that this kat’ arches means from the beginning of the history of man.” This angelic fall occurred in order prior to the fall of humanity.
[2] Berkhof, 218.
[3] Berkhof, 222.
[4] Berkhof, 217.
