We Inherit Adam and Eve’s Sin Nature

We Inherit Adam and Eve’s Sin Nature

Though created without sin and spiritually alive, their sin changed the default condition of man. They corrupted not only themselves, but us as well. Man is now born with a sin nature, bearing the guilt of sin, and spiritually dead.

Though both sinned, Adam was the one officially held responsible. God created Adam, the first man, as His vice-regent on earth and the titular head of the human race. When Adam acted, he acted for all his future descendents. When he sinned, he brought all of us down with him. His sin was our sin, his fall our fall.

As a result, we inherit the bad fruit of his original sin: guilt, a sin nature, physical death, and spiritual death. All this was passed from him to his children, from them to their children, and all the way down to us and our children. The Apostle Paul put it this way:

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned— (Romans 5:12)

Thus, Adam’s sin brought both physical and spiritual death into the world, not only for himself but also for all mankind, because Adam’s sin is counted against all of us.

Some people may wrongly suggest that God’s holding us responsible for Adam’s sin in unjust. Righteousness is one of God’s perfections; He’s incapable of being unjust. Besides, I’m no innocent being blamed for Adam’s sin. I’m well aware of my own sin nature. Every day I sin many times, often without a second thought.

In many places Scripture declares the truth that men aren’t innocents but are wicked by nature (Gen. 6:5, 8:21; Exod. 32:22; Rom. 3:12, 7:21). One is in Genesis when it speaks of the flood. We learn that it was because of man’s wickedness that God destroyed all but Noah and his family in the flood. He looked at man and saw only evil:

The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. (Genesis 6:5)

God didn’t spare Noah because Noah didn’t have a sin nature like all the rest of mankind who were destroyed in the flood; He spared Noah in spite of it, out of love and mercy. We are no different.