THE FALL OF ALL

 

THE FALL OF ALL

Westminster Shorter Catechism 16

Quest: Did all mankind fall in Adam’s first transgression?

Ans: 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.

Introduction

Image from Web

If you’ve ever wondered how the world got into the state it’s in, well, that’s what we’re looking at in the following. It doesn’t take the intellect of a rocket scientist to understand that there is something wrong with our world. Things explode, countries war with each other, and the biggest tragedy of all is that people die!

We see sin, misery and death all around us – but the question is, how come? The strange thing is that some people think that sin, misery and death are normal. “It’s all a normal part of life”, they say. Death is a normal part of life? That’s ludicrous! Ridiculous! That’s absurd! How can death possibly be a normal part of life? Life is a normal part of life – not death.

So, the first thing we need to hold onto is that the world (as it is at the moment) is not normal. It’s abnormal. And by saying that the world now is abnormal we are not saying that the world at the moment is not real. Of course it’s real! How much more real can you get than two world wars last century? How many millions of people died in those two world wars and all the other wars of the last century? The point I make is that sin, misery and death are real, but they are abnormal.

So, we need to ask the question: When did the world become abnormal? Well, that’s what Westminster Shorter Catechism Q & A 16 is spelling out for us.

The Natural Head

When the Apostle Paul was speaking to the Athenian philosophers on Mars Hill, he told them that God made the heavens and the earth and everything in them. Then he says. “And He has made from one blood every nation [ἔθνος] of men to dwell on the face of the earth…” (Acts 17:26).

When we look around the world at every nation on the face of the earth, do we see any people group who are immune to death? Is death common to all mankind? Yes! Why? Because God has made from one blood every nation on the face of the earth. Or, as the New International Version renders that verse, “From one man He made every nation of men…” So, we see then that we, even all nations, are descended from one man, one original blood.

All sons of Adam die. Therefore, Adam is the Natural Head of Mankind. We know this to be true from the account given in Genesis. We read in Genesis 2:7 that the LORD God formed a man out of the dust of the ground. He breathed into his nostrils and man became a living being. Then we read in Genesis 2:21-22 that the LORD God took one of the man’s ribs and made it into a woman.

Image from Web

So, even Eve came from that one first man – Adam. So, we see then that Adam is the Natural head of the whole human race. Every human being of every nation, tribe and tongue is genetically descended from Adam.

Now, here’s where things are a bit less obvious. How did we come to inherit the guilt Adam’s first sin. Notice that our Catechism speaks only of Adam’s first transgression. We’re not held responsible for any other sins Adam committed, only this first one. Romans 5:12 says, “Just as through one man sin entered the world and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned.”

So, how can the Scriptures say that we all sinned, when clearly it was Adam who sinned? It was through Adam that death entered the world and changed the world from normal to abnormal. So how come we are subject to death when it was Adam who transgressed God’s Law? Well, it partly has to do with our genetic make-up.

Genetics is the big thing at the moment. But do I have to die because I have inherited bits of DNA from Adam, because, as the Bible puts it, I’m of one blood with Adam? Well, however distant Adam is from you and me, his blood still circulates through our veins.

But is this how we inherit the guilt of his transgression? Is it simply because we are genetically related to him? Is this what the Catechism means when it says that all mankind, descending from him, sinned in him, and fell with him in his first transgression? Well, there has to be more to it than this, doesn’t there? For what about Jesus?  Is He not one of Adam’s posterity just like us? (We’re talking about His humanity, of course).

The Scriptures make it clear that Jesus was the fruit of Mary’s womb – that He was born of her. i.e., of her substance. It stands to reason that if Jesus is going to die to redeem human beings, then He must also be a human being of our substance – of our DNA in today’s terms. Therefore, Jesus needs to be made of the same stuff as you and me. He needs to be descended from the same blood, i.e. Adam.

In fact, the genealogy given in Luke 4 traces His lineage all the way back to Adam. And Hebrews 2:14 couldn’t make it much plainer that Jesus, like us, is the flesh and blood of Adam. It says there, “Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared the same” (Heb. 2:14).

So, we can see that there has to be something more to it than the guilt of Adam’s first sin simply being transmitted to each of us through our genes. Jesus shares our genes, but, unlike us, He doesn’t share our Original Sin, which is to say that Jesus did not inherit a corrupt nature like us on account of Adam’s first sin. How can this be?  Well, I believe it has something to do with the “overshadowing” of the Holy Spirit at the moment of Jesus’ conception in the womb of the virgin as mentioned in Luke 1:35.

All have inherited a depraved nature on account of Adam’s first sin. When Adam sinned, he suffered the loss of original holiness, knowledge, and righteousness. This means that all his offspring are born suffering the same loss – all except Jesus that is. Yes Jesus, like the rest of us, is genetically related to Adam. But He did not inherit a corrupt human nature from Adam. That is, He did not inherit a nature lacking holiness, true knowledge of God, and righteousness like the rest of us.

Jesus is the God-Man – two natures united in one Person forever.  Therefore, how can a holy God take upon Himself the fallen nature of a human being? The answer is that He can’t, and He didn’t. So, we see then, that God has made Jesus Christ the only exception when it comes to inherent or Original Sin. All the rest of us are guilty of Adam’s sin on account of Adam being our Natural Head.

We’re guilty by virtue of the fact that we’re descended from him by ordinary generation, as our catechism says. We are guilty because we belong to the human race. Yes, we may say that Jesus is descended from Adam by generation. But we may not say that He is descended from him by ordinary generation. Jesus’ generation was anything but ordinary. It was extraordinary – a miracle!

Having thus established that we are guilty of Adam’s first sin because we are all descendants of Adam who is the Natural Head of Mankind, we now need to consider Adam as covenantal head.

The Covenantal Head

When Adam sinned God declared Adam and all his posterity guilty of transgressing His Law, i.e. breaking His covenant – the Covenant of Works as it was then. Therefore, not only has our guilt of Adam’s first sin to do with blood, but it also has to do with imputation. Imputation is simply a judicial or legal transaction. Therefore, imputation is not a physical transaction.

In his book Saved by Grace, Anthony Hoekema quotes C W Hodge and writes,

 

“‘Imputation’ is a legal or judicial term; it means to reckon to the account of another. It is used in three connections in the New Testament: of the imputation of Adam’s sin to his posterity (Rom. 5:12-21), of the imputation of the sins of His people to Christ (2 Cor. 5:21), of the imputation of the righteousness of Christ to His people.”[1]

Imputation then is the ascribing or charging a condition from one person to another. This is what takes place in the High Court of God. It’s as David says, “Blessed is the man to whom the LORD does not impute [or charge] iniquity” (Psa. 32:2). The Apostle Paul quotes this verse in Romans 4:8.

But what happened to Jesus on the cross right about the time when He cried out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” Well, God at that point was imputing or crediting or transferring all our iniquities to Him. God cannot look upon sin, and Jesus had the sin of the world on His shoulders on the cross. As Habakkuk, under inspiration of the Holy Spirit, says of God, “You are of purer eyes than to behold evil and cannot look on wickedness” (Hab. 1:13).

This was a legal transaction. It was the time that God made Him who knew no sin become sin for us (Rom. 5:21). Notice that Jesus became sin for us. He didn’t become a sinner for us. Therefore, this was a moral imputation not a physical transference. There was no exchange of any genetic material on the cross. It was a judicial transaction that took place. The guilt of our sin for the innocence of Christ’s righteousness. God transferred our guilt from our account to the account of Jesus. And God transferred Jesus’ righteousness from His account to our account.

Well, the same kind of thing happened to us when Adam sinned. Only, unlike Jesus whose nature was not affected in the transaction, the nature of the whole of mankind was affected by Adam’s first sin. God declared all mankind, apart from Jesus, guilty sinners on account of what Adam did, just as He declares believers righteous on account of what Jesus did.

But here’s the key to understanding all of this. It has to do with representation. Jesus on the cross was representing His people when He died for them. He was taking away the guilt they had incurred for Adam’s first sin. And, also, the guilt incurred through their own personal sins. And He was, of course, paying the penalty guilty sinners owe God for transgressing His Law. Therefore, Jesus was our Representative before God on the cross. Jesus is our Covenant Representative. He is our Mediator between God and us.

But what about Adam in the Garden? Who was he representing? He was representing all of mankind in the covenant arrangement God had made with him. He is the Federal or Covenant Head of all humanity. He was our “Covenant Representative” – our Mediator between all mankind and God. God chose Adam as our Covenant Representative. You or I wouldn’t have chosen a better human being than Adam. God had created Adam in His own image and likeness, with true knowledge, holiness, and righteousness. Adam was the best there was. He was perfect.

Now, when God entered into covenant with Adam, he became, not only our Natural Head, but also our Covenant Head. Therefore, whatever Adam did, we did because he was representing us before God in the Garden. It’s like the Australian Prime Minister representing us if he goes to America or somewhere, as Vic Lockman has pointed out, “The debts he incurs are our debts. The wars he declares are our wars. The peace he secures is our peace.”[2]

A representative represents a group of people, even a whole nation. And since we are one blood with Adam, in the Garden he represented the entire human race, i.e. apart from Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is God’s replacement Representative. And in order for Him to be Adam’s replacement, it was necessary that He be without sin of His own.

You or I, or any other human being since Adam, are disqualified from representing mankind in the Covenant of Works. We were disqualified the moment Adam ate the forbidden fruit. For that was when God declared Adam and all his posterity guilty sinners. And a guilty sinner cannot represent another guilty sinner in God’s court of Law. Can a liar represent another liar, or an adulterer another adulterer? People guilty of the same charge as the one being charged cannot represent other guilty people in God’s court of Law. Any representative before God has to be righteous.

There only ever were two righteous people (in every sense of the word) who walked on the planet earth – Adam before the Fall and Jesus after the Fall. But when Adam broke the Covenant of Works, he broke it as our Covenant (i.e., our Federal) Head or Representative. Therefore, not only did this, his first sin, affect mankind’s relationship with God, it also affected our genetic make-up.

We became mortal, i.e. subject to death, placed under God’s curse. For the wages of sin is death, which means that we inherited, if you will, the death-gene from Adam. If Adam hadn’t sinned as our representative, we would instead have received the life-gene. How do we know this for sure? Well, note particularly the second part of Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” We receive God’s justice in Adam. But we receive God’s grace in Christ.

Conclusion

We see then how the world got into the state it’s in. It’s all to do with what is stated in Westminster Shorter Catechism Q&A 16. It’s all to do with Adam’s first sin, which also is our sin. But aren’t you glad and thankful that God took the initiative to remedy our demise? Even right after Adam broke the Covenant of Works, God was revealing to him a new representative, a new Covenant Head, and a New Covenant, viz., the Covenant of Grace.

And in the fullness of the time God sent forth this new Covenant-Representative, born of a woman, born under the Law. And God satisfied His justice by pouring out His wrath on Him as He hung on the cross with all our sins hanging round His neck. And because God was satisfied with the work of our new Representative, He poured our His grace upon us instead of His wrath or justice. Therefore, God has provided an escape from the guilt we have inherited from, and the punishment we are due for, Adam’s first sin. We escape God’s wrath through faith in Jesus Christ.

We’ve considered something of what WSC 16 is spelling out for us when it asks: Did all mankind fall in Adam’s first transgression? And we’ve seen that: 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.

May the gracious God help and encourage each one of us to keep on seeking eternal life in His gift of Christ Jesus.

---

[1] Anthony A. Hoekema, Saved by Grace, (Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1994), 175.

[2] Vic Lockman, The Westminster Shorter Catechism with Cartoons, (Published by Vic Lockman, Yreka, California, 1996), in illustration of Q. 16.