Life on the Highest Plane # 14

Physical death was the certain, even though more remote, result of sin. The judgment upon Adam included the curse of physical death.

Genesis 3:19, "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."

From the day Adam sinned the seed of physical death was in his body and finally reaped its harvest in full.

Genesis 5:5, "And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died."

Thus we see God's sentence of death, both spiritual and physical, meted out as a result of sin.

The Effect of Adam's Sin Upon the Human Race

We have seen the disastrous effect of Adam and Eve's sin upon themselves. The question naturally arises, "Did it affect any on else? Can we trace the sin in the human family back to the first sin in the first man, its federal head?" Let us reason backward.

Sin is a Fact.  Man is a sinner. One needs only to be closeted with himself for a single day to have sufficient proof of this statement. But if he should be loath to admit the evidence given in his own thought, feelings, desires, words and acts, let him listen to the gossip of a small town, or read in the daily paper of doings in town or city. Man is a sinner. To deny the reality of sin is not only to disbelieve God's Word and to make Him a liar but it is to discredit one's own experience and observation.

1 John 1:8, 10, "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us."

Sin is a Universal Fact. Every man is a sinner. There are no exceptions to this rule except the Man, Christ Jesus. God's Word says, "There is no man that sinneth not."

Romans 3:10, "As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one."

Romans 3:12, "They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one."

Every truly honest man knows and admits that he is a sinner. At one time self-righteous Scribes and Pharisees brought to the Lord Jesus a woman taken in the act of adultery. To tempt Him that they might accuse Him, they asked if they should fulfill the law of Moses by stoning her. In reply the Lord Jesus said, "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her." And "being convicted by their own conscience, they went out one by one." Who among the readers of this book is "without sin?" Men differ in the degree of sin in the life not in the fact of sin. Many men are naturally kind, generous, genial and loving but "there is none righteous."

Every man is a sinner before he sins. Sin is far more than an act; it is a state, a nature, a disposition, a tendency. Sin is an inner reality before it is an outer manifestation. Sin is a desire before it is a deed.

James 1:15, "Then the lust, when it hath conceived, beareth sin; and the sin when it is full grown, bringeth forth death."

Who has not seen a baby give vent to tempter, self-will, stubbornness and anger before it could talk or walk! Men were born  in sin. We are all of us "by nature the children of wrath." Humanity inherited a sinful nature.

By God's appointment Adam was the federal head of the human family. He was the seed of the race, and all the coming generations were in him. Adam was not only man but he was the womb of mankind. As forerunner of the human race, he was also its representative.

Therefore Adam's sin was not his sin alone. All mankind was vitally affected by it. Adam's sin put the poison of sin in the human germ; the result was the moral and spiritual ruin of the race,collectively and individually. Adam was created without sin. By an act of his own will he became a sinner. "What man thus became, men are."

"Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?" (Job 14:4). "That which is born of the flesh is flesh" (John 3:6). Adam fell and by that fall received a corrupt nature. Then he begat sons in his own likeness (Genesis 5:3). They inherited his sinful nature and so the poison of sin went on down through the human race until all men are involved.

Romans 5;12, "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 5:19, "For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous. 

~Ruth Paxson~

(continued with # 15)