The Fall of Man

So far in our study of the Belgic Confession, we’ve studied: the basic nature and character of God, how we can come to know him, through general and special revelation, and how God is three persons in one essence. We then shifted to examine creation and providence. So far, we’ve been looking at God, and looking at the universe, His creation from His level, His perspective so as to get to know Him.

We’re accustomed to using proper terms to describe things, scientific terms, medical terms to describe things important to us. Since the Belgic Confession is set up as a systematic theology, we will apply theological terms as we go. Thus, so far, we’ve studied theology proper—that is, the study of, the doctrine of God. Theos/God, logos/study of. We’ve studied general and special revelation, that is, how God has made Himself known in His creation, and in His Word, the Holy Bible. Regarding scripture, we’ve considered its inerrancy, its supremacy, its efficacy, its trustworthiness.

Then we delved deeper into theology proper to study the doctrine of the Trinity, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. We were given broad strokes about each person, though limiting our focus on the economic Trinity. Which is to say the understanding we have of each person of the Trinity is based upon that person’s work in Creation: God the Father spoke creation into existence out of nothing (ex nihilo) through the Son, by the power and breath of the Holy Spirit. The Son is the Saviour of sinful man, and the Holy Spirit is the guarantee and the sanctifier of the saved.

Having looked at the Father’s role in creation last week, seeing that He created the heavens and the earth and all that is in them, indeed, all things visible and invisible, that He provides for and sustains all things to this day, but especially through His Son, Jesus Christ our Saviour and Lord. We turn now to the doctrine of man, and the fall into sin. The theological term for the doctrine of sin is hamartiology from the Greek hamartia, meaning sin.

We’re now entering into creation, so to speak, looking at the purpose of humanity, the fall into sin, and the resultant state of humanity. When we get to article 15, we’ll learn about the teaching concerning original sin. Then we’ll study articles 16-26, which teach us about redemption.

The Fall

It is fitting to begin with the fall into sin. Unless we know the consequences of the rebellion against God, we can’t really appreciate His amazing grace.

So like the article, we begin with the beginning. After God had created the earth and everything in it, He crowned it by creating a being/beings in His own image. From the dust of the earth, God created Adam and breathed life into him.

This of course, denies the theory that humans developed autonomously, or by chance, or from primeval creatures. God Himself created Adam, a mature man, with the ability to reason, obey and govern the earth under God, immediately. He was fully able to do this from the beginning. There was nothing essential lacking in Adam or Eve. For all our technological advances, we’re still doing the same thing as what has been done before: providing food, clothing and shelter. History is full of great technological advances and retreats. But the presumption that people who lived in caves were less intellectual than those who did not, simply doesn’t pan out. It is an assumption based on chronological snobbery—the idea that we’re clearly more advanced than the generation before us, so therefore people way back in history were far less intelligent, compared to us.

The confession says that in the garden, God formed Adam after His own image and likeness, and that it was good. Adam was righteous and holy, capable in all things to do the will of God. This was Adam and Eve’s state in the Garden of Eden. They were not yet sinners, though they were able to sin. They were as equally able to obey God’s commandments as disobey them.

Also worth noting is that God placed Adam in the garden to work. This is a natural works relationship. God placed Adam in the garden with expectations for his behaviour. He was fully capable of obeying God. Nothing hindered him from doing so. He didn’t need God’s grace before the fall because he wasn’t a sinner. He could obey, simply because he was able to obey; sin had not yet corrupted him.

Had Adam perfectly obeyed God, he would have received the crown of life and entered the true Promised Land, the true Sabbath rest. Alas, Adam sinned, he disobeyed God, and plunged himself and all humanity into sin and under God’s curse: death. So, after the fall, these things were lost. It is only through Christ’s redemption that man is able to have them again.

The Consequences

The second section of this article deals with the effects, the consequences of Adam’s rebellion, the consequences he himself and all humanity ever since experience each and every day.

Adam didn’t recognise his high position. He did not realise the potential he had within himself. He didn’t understand the privileges afforded by God, he didn’t appreciate what he had. Instead, he listened to Satan and he wilfully sinned.

Eve was deceived; Adam rebelled. When Adam rebelled, it is as though each and every one of us also personally sinned. Adam’s rebellion was a rejection of God’s authority, a denying of his creator and Lord. In his rebellion, he wilfully subjected himself and everyone else to God’s just judgement: punishment is death, and curses on humanity and creation itself.

We don’t have to look far to see sin’s effects. Every lie, every stolen toy, every lippy response, every murder, sickness, funeral, war, weed, hailstorm, tornado, flood, etc is a consequence of Adam’s rebellion. All the things God created were good, but the fall into sin affected all these good things. There is no going back; there is no turning back the clock. The only way forward is the redemption of humanity. Sinful human flesh cannot inherit God’s kingdom. The first Adam was from the earth, the Adama, the second Adam is from heaven; He redeems Adam’s fallen race.

The Effects

We must understand what happened in the fall into sin; the effects of the fall into sin. Many well-intentioned people paint the rather nicer picture of sin making us weak and unable to choose right instead of wrong. Rather than taking the humanistic view that we have a mere genetic disposition toward sin, the Bible teaches that we are evil and corrupt.

While popular culture today teaches that people are basically good, the Bible is not so idealistic. While man still possesses something of the divine image, it must be understood that sin has corrupted and ruined that image. The result is that rather than doing what God created man to do, man instead turns inward and seek to benefit himself.

Sin is so serious that it hinders everything. It prevents people from turning and repenting. It makes people love wickedness, love darkness. It makes people obstinate. They refuse God’s grace. Man doesn’t have free will; man is a slave to sin.

The idea of free will is one of the greatest lies people believe. The idea that sinful man can exercise free will is as unrealistic as running a 4 minute mile 20 feet underwater. It is impossible for sinful man to do anything apart from sin.

Sinful man willingly chooses sin every time. Now, wait a minute, you might be thinking, there are many sinful people who do good things. The simple answer to that is that they do so by God’s grace. As we saw last week, God’s providence does not permit humanity to be as absolutely evil as we could be.

Even so, from history, from Israel’s history, we know that God will give people over to their sins, so that they become hardened to any goodness or grace given by God. As western civilisation moves toward a greater acceptance of evil and wickedness Christianity is being cancelled in our culture and it won’t be long before we are persecuted. There’s no need to fear or to hide, for God is with us, as He has been with His people throughout history, we can trust Him!

The human will, apart from God’s intervention is bent to, enslaved to, totally depraved by sin. Indeed, no one can come to the Father unless the Father draws him to Himself. The mind of flesh is hostile to God. The flesh is unspiritual, not willing, not interested in seeking the knowledge of God. Truly, apart from God, we can do nothing.

It is into wickedness and corruption man is born. This doesn’t make man sinful robots. Rather, every decision man makes is influenced by sin, so that people choose sinful things. Because God demands perfect obedience, something Adam was created able to do, man hates God because he cannot do it, tainted by sin such as he is. People maim themselves because of sin, plucking out their spiritual eyes, cutting off their spiritual ears, amputating their spiritual arms and legs, so as to spite God. It is inevitable that such spiritual rebellion will show itself in physical rebellion, by destroying God’s good creation—His own image—and mutilating it into something else. I dare say that the transgender movement is the ungodding of God. It is saying, “You didn’t create me, I create me!”

The nature of sin is total destruction, and people love it! Even though it separates then from their creator, sinful man would rather die and enjoy the pleasure derived from rebelling. Sinful man buys now, and pays later. That which condemned Adam also condemns all mankind.

God’s Divine Will and Action

In Genesis, it is clearly taught that Adam was created through God’s divine will and action. There are no animal ancestors; as image bearers of God, humans are unique, and not even the angels have what we are given.

Psalm 8 identifies us as a little lower than the heavenly beings, angels—which underscores the agony of sin. Can you imagine, the human being, once described by Cornelius Van Til as “like God in every way that a creature can be like God”, has descended, fallen from the glorious position. The result is that image bearers of God go dumpster diving. Image bearers of God are aborted from their mother’s womb, shot in the streets, or have their flesh mutilated by doctors to meet their ideal self image. Sinful man cannot possibly see the truth of self—as the image of God. Rather, he tries to make himself God, and so seeks his own and other’s destruction.

Thus one image bearer harms another, through the spoken word, through violence. In contrast to this, the Christian view is that humans are possessors of dignity. We’re not merely the top of the food chain, but we’re specially created by God, in His image. Even after the fall, human life is extraordinarily valuable, much more than anything that evolutionists can try to claim.

We see this in the nature of morality. How can murder be wrong, when animals kill each other without committing crimes? Has any human witnessed an animal trial? A sentencing, anything like that seen by anyone? No? A secularist says, that’s the natural order of things. But man is not an animal. Man possesses a moral sense. If someone exploits others, people will complain. But how can this be, if evolutionists, if people claim there’s no human dignity, why should they complain? It is only because God placed the sense of human dignity that morality makes any sense at all.

Death is not natural. It is the separation of the material, the body, from the spiritual, the spirit. The first man, Adam became a living being. Not in the sense of an animal, but in the sense of a person, an image bearer of God. But though a living being, because of the fall into sin, all living beings born to him were spiritually dead, as he was spiritually dead after the fall. God in His grace saved Adam and Eve by faith in the promised seed who would be born to their descendant, that is, Jesus. Jesus is the last Adam, He is the life-giving spirit, giving spiritual life!

The creation and fall are not a myth. They describe the reality we see. Every death is a reminder that the Bible is a record of the whole human race. Why weep at death? Why consider it a loss? Because we know that death is wrong! We know that death is a curse!

God’s grace is described from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22. It is the story that though mankind deserves death, though mankind is under the curse of death, God has not treated man as his sin deserves. He graciously preserves him. He graciously saves him. He saves all who are put their faith and trust in Him. Jesus came to defeat death. Christians need to speak clearly and passionately about sin and death. So that everyone knows the stakes. The wages of sin is death, everlasting, eternal death in hell.

The Bible is honest about the truth of the situation. The fall was terrible. The condition is real. The Bible doesn’t hide anything nor does it pretend it doesn’t exist; it is frank and honest.

God, in his grace, chose not to annihilate everyone and start again. Though dead, and unable to save ourselves, God saved us. He sent the second Adam, The Righteous One, to do what the first Adam did not, and could not, do.

So therefore, the Psalmist is right when he states, “do not put your trust in human princes, or human ability or human goodness. Put your confidence in the creator. The creator sent His Son to undo the consequences of human sin. He is able to recreate us, to restore to the innocent state of Adam in Eden. More than that, He glorifies us so that we will not sin again. Then we will experience full Sabbath rest. “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known” (1 Cor 13:12). Remember also John 16:33 “These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” Brothers and sisters, rejoice, our hope is not in what our hands have done. Our hope is in Jesus Christ, who has overcome! Amen.