HOW MAN SINNED

 

HOW MAN SINNED 

Westminster Shorter Catechism 13

Quest. Did our first parents continue in the estate wherein they were created?

Ans. Our first parents, being left to the freedom of their own will, fell from the estate wherein they were created, by sinning against God.

Introduction

In the following we’re going to be talking about one of the biggest mysteries in the universe. What we’ll be looking at is a bigger mystery than the building of the pyramids. It’s a bigger mystery than the building of Stonehenge. What we’re looking at is: How man sinned. Notice that we’re not asking why man sinned, though we’ll need to touch on this. But we’re asking the question How?

Free Will

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Our first parents, Adam and Eve, were created perfect. Part of that perfection was that they both had free will, which is to say that before the Fall the wills of our first parents were free from bondage.

Now, we need to be really careful to define our terms when we talk about “free will.” First, we need to try to define what we mean by man’s “will.” Then we’ll talk about “free” will. Right then, we human beings operate according to our will. Our will is the faculty we use to make decisions. If you will, our will is our “choosery.” And we always choose according to our will. Therefore, our will is that faculty we use to determine or choose the course of action we will take in any given situation.

Think about it, a human being never acts against his own will. We might act against our “better judgment” as we say. But we will never ever go against our own will. If someone tries to force us to go against our own will we will resist. Why? Well, it’s because we only ever operate in accordance with our own will. We most certainly don’t like being forced to do things against our will. For instance, a criminal may be arrested by the police against his own will. Therefore, he will not want to get into the back of the police car, but he must, or else! But even though he might comply, he is being held against his will. He wants to or wills to remain free from the police. Or like the little boy whose teacher told him to sit down in class or else! The little boy said to his classmates, “On the outside it might look like I’m sitting, but on the inside I’m still standing!” He hasn’t acted against his will. He has simply chosen to sit down in accordance with his will.

Whether someone physically forces you, or whether they verbally threaten you, you are still freely exercising your own will when you comply. But (and here’s the point) you always will and only ever choose to obey or disobey that which is in accordance to your will. If you do not will it, you will not choose it. If you do not want it, you will not pick it. Your will then, is your “choosery.” And your actions are always in line with your “choosery.”

Right, what would happen then, if there were something wrong with your “choosery”? What would happen if your “choosery” were affected by sin, or as we say, in bondage to sin? All your decisions would be affected, wouldn’t they? It would mean that you would have a bias toward sin, wouldn’t it? It would mean that you would be inclined towards disobeying God, for that’s what sin is. Therefore, it would mean that you would have a tendency toward bad and not good.

Now, in saying this we’re not suggesting that everyone with a bias toward sin is as bad as they can possibly be. To be sure a thief is not as bad as a murderer. Nor is one who covets as bad as a thief. But nevertheless, ALL who do these things are bad, sinful! This is the way things were with mankind after the Fall. Genesis 6:5 sums up our condition after the Fall, “Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”

Those of you who are familiar with the TULIP acronym will understand this verse in terms the “T” which stands for “Total Depravity.” To have every intent of the thoughts of your heart only evil continually is to be depraved in your total being. It doesn’t mean that you are as bad as you can possibly be. But it does mean that your will decides only for that which is bad or evil in spiritual terms, which means that your “choosery” isn’t functioning the way it was designed.

And just in case you think that this verse, Genesis 6:5 (just quoted), applies only to the time before the flood, let me remind that Paul says the same thing in the New Testament. In Romans 3 he says that Jews and Greeks or Gentiles are all under sin. And, quoting from the Psalms he says, “As it is written: ‘There is none righteous, no, not one; there is none who understands; there is none who seeks after God. They have all gone out of the way; they have together become unprofitable; there is none who does good, no, not one’” (Rom. 3:10-12).

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So, under inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Paul, the Lord’s Apostle, declares that there is none who does good, no, not one. What does he mean by “good”? Well, he can’t mean there is none who helps old women across the street, for there are! He can’t mean that there is none who gives money to charity, for there are! He can’t be talking about those things that we call good. So, what is he talking about? Well, that’s the very question WSC 13 is asking. Did our first parents continue in the estate wherein they were created?

How were Adam and Eve created? In what condition were they? Were they created in the estate or condition of neutrality as alleged by those who follow the teachings of Jacob Arminius? Are the Arminians correct when they teach that Adam was a neutral party in the Covenant of Works that God entered into with him before the Fall? It’s important that you consider this question, as it impacts on your view of the Fall, which in turn influences your view of the Gospel. If Adam’s will was neutral, then he did not Fall from a position of good but merely fell from a position of neutrality.

Do you see what I mean? It’s absurd to suggest that Adam and Eve were neutral in the pre-Fall Covenant of Works. Why? Because to claim neutrality is to claim disengagement! If you claim that Adam is neutral, i.e., unbiased toward good before the Fall, then you are saying that man took no part in the Covenant of Works!

When you put your car into neutral what happens?  Does the gear engage to drive you forward or in reverse? The car doesn’t want to drive you anywhere, does it? And because it’s in neutral it just idles, it cannot do anything – it cannot move! So how can anyone suggest that God left Adam’s will in “neutral” before the Fall? For this would mean that God never actually engaged Adam. It would mean that Adam just sat in neutral, idling! But was this the way God created our first parents? Didn’t God put them in gear, in D for drive, by blessing them and saying to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth”? (Gen. 1:28).

If God created Adam neutral, then why did He place him in the Garden and engage him to tend and keep it? Adam was created to work in the Garden, and not to be idle (Gen. 2:15). And more than this, how is it possible to enter into a covenant (as the LORD did with Adam) if one of the parties is neutral?

Did the LORD impose His covenant on Adam against Adam’s will? Or did Adam freely and willingly enter into the covenant with God? And why wouldn’t Adam freely and willingly enter into a covenant with God? Well, the only two reasons would be that he was either against God or that he was neither for nor against God, i.e., neutral.

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So, in what estate then, in what condition, in what “gear” were our first parents when they were created? Were they created bad, in R for reverse, or were they created in N for neutral? or were they created good, in D for drive? The answer to this is found in Genesis 1:31a, “Then God saw everything that He had made; and indeed it was very good.”

Were our first parents’ part of everything God had made? Were their wills part of everything God had made? Yes? Well, this means that Adam was a man of “good will” – good will toward God and his wife Eve. In other words, he had a disposition toward loving God and his neighbour (even Eve) as himself. Therefore, what we’re saying then is that God did not leave Adam’s gearstick in neutral when He created him. Rather, the gearstick was in “G” for “good.”

So, it was from the estate of goodness our first parents fell, and not the estate of neutrality. This makes the sin of our first parents much more heinous than that advocated by those who teach neutrality. This makes our sin all the more repulsive. For this means that fallen man is actively engaging his will to reverse himself away from God. For if man only goes according to his will and his will is no longer a good will, then there truly is none who does good, no, not one as the Psalmist and the Apostle say. For how can anyone do the good the Apostle speaks of, unless he goes against his own will?

If the gearstick of your will is jammed in “B” for Bad, then how can you will yourself to put it into “G” for good? You can’t, because you won’t go against your own will! So, when we talk about free will we’re talking about what our first parents and all mankind lost when they rebelled against God.

Before the Fall they were able to do good (or bad if they chose). But after the Fall, they and us with them, as the Scriptures say, are able to do only (spiritual) bad, evil. This is what we mean when we speak of the bondage of the will as opposed to free will. However, we should note that fallen man is always free to exercise his own will. But since his will is bad and not good, he will – if left to his own devices – choose bad over spiritual good every time. He is free to choose good if he wants, but he won’t because he doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to because his will is bad – it is in bondage. A bad “choosery” = bad choices every time.

There’s a lot more we could say on the subject of Free Will. However, our purpose here is to look at the fall of our first parents from the estate wherein they were created. So, having somewhat looked at the subject of the will, even free will, let’s now consider what happened to the free will our parents had when they were created.

Free Fall

We won’t spend too much time on this as we will be covering this subject in more depth in its place as we continue through the Westminster Shorter Catechism. But when we talk about the Fall of man we are talking about a great mystery.

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When the Devil tempts you and me to sin, he does so by simply appealing to our sinful nature. It’s like being offered a million dollars to do some dastardly deed. We might begin to picture ourselves on a luxury yacht or in a mansion with a Rolls Royce parked in the driveway. Mind you, you’d need more than a million for these kinds of things, but you know what I mean. We are tempted to sin because of the selfish pleasure or gain it might bring us.

Even as Christians, we have a malfunctioning “choosery” which means we struggle somewhat deciding on the right moral course of action on account of a residue of sin remaining in us. Some things are obvious to us. Other things are not so obvious. We talk about grey areas of morality, moral dilemmas. We don’t always know right from wrong in black and white terms. But our first parents didn’t have our problem when they were created. Their “chooseries” were in perfect working order, which is to say that their wills were free from all malfunctioning, free from bondage. There was no computer virus in their system of thinking. There was no loose little Pac-man eating away at their decision-making abilities.

So, what caused our first parents to sin? Well, Adam tried to blame his wife (and God), and Eve tried to blame the Devil – as we see in Genesis 3. But, as you know, the LORD God didn’t accept their feeble excuses. Instead, He held each morally responsible for his own and her own moral actions. In other words, the LORD God declared each one guilty of mutiny and rebellion against His authority.

Why did our first parents exercise their free will and break God’s covenant with them and instead covenant with Death and the Devil? Well, that’s the mystery that God hasn’t been pleased to reveal to us. There was no sin in the hearts of our parents before the Fall. Therefore, Satan couldn’t appeal to their sinful nature as he can to us. But Fall they did as Adam broke the covenant God had made with him. And, since he was representing all mankind, all mankind has broken the Covenant of Works. And, in this, Adam placed the collective will of man, and the wills of every human being apart from Jesus, into bondage to sin and Satan.

Let’s consider Genesis 3:9-12 as a Scriptural example of the Fall of man. The LORD God there asks Adam three questions after the Fall. First question, Where are you?” To which Adam replied, “I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself.” Second question, “Who told you that you were naked?” Third question, “Have you eaten from the tree which I commanded you that you should not eat?”

Let’s take the 3^rd question first. God knew that Adam had eaten the forbidden fruit. So, why did He have to ask Adam? Well, it was most likely to give Adam opportunity to explain his actions. But not only that, the question was to remind Adam of his covenant with God. And God was reminding Adam of the specific verbal commandment or outward test He had given Adam. This refers back to Genesis 2:16-17, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but 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.”

Man, as you know, was made in the image and likeness of God, an aspect of which was that he had God’s Moral Law written on his heart in positive terms. Which is to say, as we’ve already noted, that Adam was created very good, which means also morally very good, along with all creation as it says in Genesis 1:31. And if he was morally very good then even his will was morally very good. So, we might say then that Adam was a man of good will. But was Adam showing good will toward God by disobeying His Moral Law and by eating the forbidden fruit when God had commanded him not to?

So, Adam exercised his free will and consciously chose to disobey the God who had made him. Whatever sinful thoughts Adam was having before he bit into that fruit we can only guess. But what we are told is that Adam broke the covenant, not by physically murdering his wife and children, but by eating the forbidden fruit. So, he exercised his free will and began his free fall into the estate of sin and misery by eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

So, we know HOW man fell. He fell by disobeying God by eating the forbidden fruit. But the mystery remains – WHY? What compelled the good-willed Adam to disobey God? We don’t know. But we can see by the answer he gave God that he really meant to disobey God. “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree and I ate” (Gen. 3:12). So we see that Adam is not only blaming Eve, but also God. “The woman whom You gave to be with me.”

Do you see what’s happening? Adam is blaming God for ultimately making him sin. “If You hadn’t given me that woman in the first place, then I wouldn’t be in this pickle!” So, is Adam right in his assessment? Did God make him sin? Or did Adam freely fall of his own free will? Let’s rephrase the question: Did Adam sin against God or did God sin against Adam?

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What was the 2^nd question again that God asked Adam? “Who told you that you were naked?” Herein I believe we see proof that Adam sinned against God and not God against Adam. Adam had been created very good by God, which, among other things, means that Adam loved God and his neighbour (Eve and his future offspring) as himself. But now he is concerned only with his own nakedness. Immediately after the Fall he is concerned only with himself. Among other things he is trying to hide from God the embarrassment of his nakedness, by hiding in the bushes. It’s as if he’s been caught skinny dipping or something! “Who told you that it is wrong to skinny dip in public?” “I just know – instinctively, I guess!”

So, we see by Adam’s answer then, that he knows that he has broken God’s covenant. Before the Fall he was not ashamed of being naked (Gen. 2:25). But after the Fall he is ashamed, which is to say that Adam is experiencing a feeling of guilt. The question is, What is making him ashamed? What is making him feel guilty? Why would Adam be feeling guilty if it were God who had sinned against him by giving him the woman as Adam was alleging?

And then when we consider the 1^st question God put to Adam, we can see that Adam’s fall was indeed a free fall. “Where are you?” Why wasn’t Adam looking for God to try to find out why God had caused him to break the covenant if he really was as innocent as he was alleging? What else are we to conclude other than that Adam had exercised his free will and in so doing began to free-fall from grace? Therefore, to state the obvious, God did not cause Adam to sin. Rather, Adam sinned of his own free will.

Before we wind up our present discussion, there’s one more thing we should note. Adam now had a guilty conscience to contend with. Unlike before the Fall, he now had an accusing conscience. “Adam, you’re naked!” His own guilty conscience was telling him he was naked. Why didn’t his conscience tell him that before? Well, it’s because his will was free before the Fall. His will was free because he had never gone against his conscience.

Up until the Fall he had always done that which was good. But he damaged his will when he somehow went against what he knew to be good. For some reason he had turned on himself – that’s the mystery. Somehow Adam acted against his own will – his own good will. He went against his own conscience. He as it were cut off his own nose to spite his face. He stabbed himself in the back! He took offence at being created in the image and likeness of God. He didn’t like what he saw in the mirror, so he tried to cover himself up with a fig leaf! Whatever way you look at it, his will was no longer free, but rather it was in some kind of self-centred bondage.

Man in Adam no longer had good will toward God and men. Rather he bore ill will toward God, even blaming Him for his own fallen condition. Is this not what you see around you today? Man bears ill will toward God by either trying to ignore Him or blame Him for the state of sin and misery in the world today. Therefore, man to this very day is still sinning against God, like our first parents so long ago. Like Adam they transgressed the covenant (Hos. 6:7).

Conclusion

Our will is in bondage until it is set free by the grace of God through His Son Jesus Christ. Therefore, Jesus Christ is the only One who can set us free from our bondage to sin. Only the blood that Jesus Christ shed on the cross can wash away our sins. He took the penalty owed to God’s justice for those who believe in Him for salvation. If by God’s grace you are trusting in Him to save you, then you are free indeed!

We’ve been looking at Westminster Shorter Catechism 13: Did our first parents continue in the estate wherein they were created? And we’ve seen something of the fact that Our first parents, being left to the freedom of their own will, fell from the estate wherein they were created, by sinning against God.