Genesis Principles - Sin

One final Genesis Principle. One final big principle. That is the condition we all have come to know as "sin". The biblical version occurs in Genesis 3.

You know the story. It begins, "Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field ..." (Gen 3:1), an ominous beginning to be sure. Satan in serpent form asks, "Did God say ...?" Contradicting God, he informs Eve that she could be "like God" (Gen 3:5). The outcome? "So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate" (Gen 3:6). Well, you know the rest. God came and found them hiding. They finally revealed their sin. Everyone paid the price. Each player in the scenario -- the serpent, the woman, and the man -- received their curse. Adam and Eve were banned from the garden. Not a pleasant story. Sin had entered the world.

There are more details in that story, more components to get a clearer picture of the Genesis Principle of Sin. You see, we tend to think of sin as "bad things". Sometimes they are more like "mistakes". (I've actually had people tell me that. "I don't sin; I just make mistakes.") Genesis (and God) would disagree.

First, the severity of the problem. God warned Adam, "Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die" (Gen 2:17). (And clearly Adam passed that on to Eve.) Now, let's see. If "sin" is "a mistake", doing a "bad thing", one would think the consequence would fit the crime. So ... what ... maybe an hour or two in the corner of the garden or something? No. "In the day that you eat of it you shall surely die." Wait! Death? Really? For eating a piece of fruit? Sin, you see, is far more serious than "a mistake" or "a bad thing". It is a violation of God's command, an act of Cosmic Treason. As Eve demonstrated in her actual intent, it is an attempt to "be like the God" in ways we are not authorized. It's a big deal.

Second is the principle known as "Original Sin". Now, the term may be used to refer to the event itself -- Adam and Eve's first sin. But usually it refers to a human condition that has existed ever since that first sin. You see, the Genesis Principle of Sin holds that "sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men" (Rom 5:12). The Genesis Principle is that all humans are born with a sin nature because of Adam's sin. There is no such thing as "innocent" in these terms (with the sole exception of Christ). Sin is not an action anymore, but a condition. It's a condition we've all inherited (so to speak) from our father, Adam. Humans are not "basically good". They are rotten at the core.

So, sin is a serious, deadly problem and sin is a pervasive, all-encompassing problem. These are two components of the Genesis Principle of Sin. The good news is that there is a third piece. God told the serpent, "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel" (Gen 3:15). This verse is called among theologians "the Protoevangelium" -- the First Gospel. No sooner did Adam inflict the pervasive and deadly problem of sin on the universe but God arrives with a solution. His Son would arrive one day in the form of a human -- an offspring of Eve -- to crush Satan's head. It wouldn't be without injury ("You shall bruise his heel"), but it would be successful. Thus, included in the Genesis Principle of Sin is the Gospel, the promise of redemption, the provision for salvation from the problem of sin. In a very real way, then, throughout history anyone whose confidence of salvation was in this early promise of God for redemption by His Son, the Christ, would be a "Christian", saved by faith in the Son of God.

The Bible takes the subject of sin very seriously. Its consequences are deadly, both spiritually and in so many other ways. All creation is subject to sin (Rom 8:20-22). The consequences range from immediate spiritual death all the way to permanent separation from God. No one escapes the problem. God explained (repeatedly) the depth of the problem with tools like the Law and His commandments to illustrate how far we are from what we ought to be. We, in turn, minimize it. And the Bible harkens back to the event as proof text of other concepts (e.g., Rom 5:12; 1 Tim 2:12-14; etc.). It is, in some sense, one of the singular main themes of the Bible and all Christianity. It is the "Bad News" answered by the Good News. It's big ... really big. Minimizing it doesn't make it go away. Thank God for the Good News of His remedy, the sacrifice and resurrection of His Son.