When I was 2 years old my father made a decision on behalf of his family – to move from the Netherlands to Australia. This is but one of many decisions he made that impacted me, but clearly it was a most significant one in terms of shaping what my life would be like.
16 Did all mankind fall in Adam’s first transgression?
The covenant being made with Adam, not only for himself, but for his posterity, all mankind, descending from him by ordinary generation, sinned in him, and fell with him, in his first transgression.
In Romans 5:12-15 Paul points out that death though not natural to humanity is something that confronts us all as he draws attention to the connection between death and sin. How do you explain death? It is the consequence of sin, declaring that we are all sinners. How is it that we are all sinners? Because we are all descendants of Adam who sinned first.
What the Bible teaches is that Adam was our representative, or ‘federal head’ of the human race.
This divinely chosen arrangement, whereby Adam determined the destiny of his descendants, has been called the ‘covenant of works’. If he had obeyed and stood all men would have been righteous for he acted for all men. But when he sinned and fell we all sinned and fell in him for he acted for us all.
Since his sin transformed his inner nature and brought spiritual death and depravity, that sinful nature would be passed on seminally to his descendants as well. Therefore, humans are not sinners because they sin, but rather they sin because they are sinners.
Pascal said that the doctrine of original sin seems an offense to reason, but once accepted it makes total sense of the human condition. It also opens the way to understand God’s way of salvation.
All mankind descending from Adam by ordinary generation sinned in him. God brought one Person into the human race through an extraordinary generation. Our Lord Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary without any human father. Since he did not descend from Adam by ordinary generation he was not guilty of Adam’s first sin. But He came into the world, that being sinless, He might be our second Adam and represent us in His perfect obedience and by His death for our sins secure our forgiveness.
In Adam we sinned; in Christ we are forgiven. Adam’s fall made us all sinners. Christ’s obedience puts us in the state of being regarded and treated as righteous.
“Therefore, as through one man’s offense judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation, even so through one Man’s righteous act the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life.” (Romans 5:18)