Immediately after the fall we see many painful consequences.
What went wrong for the world that God created and described as good, to now be riddled with evil, pain, and death? The answer is, the fall. We read of it in Genesis 3. After God created our first parents, Adam and Eve, he put them in the Garden of Eden to “work and keep it” (Genesis 2:15). He also gave Adam the command not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:17). But our first parents failed to obey this command and sinned against God by eating the forbidden fruit (Genesis 3:6).
Creation, Covenant and Fall
With this one act of disobedience, they plunged themselves and all their descendants into sin and misery. They and all of us as their descendants fell from grace and came under the wrath of God. For when God commanded Adam not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he entered into a covenant or a contract in which Adam represented all his descendants. His obedience could have meant blessings for all of us just as his disobedience meant death and suffering for all of us.
Adam and Eve plunged themselves and all their descendants into misery.
Immediately after the fall we see many painful consequences, like shame as Adam and Eve cover their nakedness with leaves (Genesis 3:7). This shame also comes with fear as Adam trembles at the sound of God walking in the garden (Genesis 3:8). The relationship of Adam and Eve is also strained to the point that Adam indirectly accuses God of giving him a wife who caused him to sin (Genesis 3:12). However, it can be argued that the three major consequences of the fall are total depravity, the deformed image of God in man, and death.
1. Mankind Is Totally Depraved
Total depravity means that because of the first sin of our first parents which in theology is also called original sin, all of us who descend from Adam and Eve are born sinners incapable of doing any spiritual good to please God. We might do some “good” things humanly speaking like being generous to the needy and poor, helping the sick and many more “good” things. However, these cannot earn us a right standing before God because they are tainted by sin which we are born with.
All of us are incapable of doing any spiritual good to please God.
The helplessness of our state is echoed in the question of Proverbs 20:9, “Who can say, ‘I have made my heart pure; I am clean from my sin?'” (Proverbs 20:9). Or as one psalmist declares, “The LORD looks down from heaven on the children of man, to see if there are any who understand; who seek after God. They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one” (Psalm 14:2-3; 53:1-2). Later Paul issues the same verdict on all mankind. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).
2. The Image of God Deformed
The second major consequence of the fall was the marred image of God in man. When Adam sinned, he lost part of the image of God. In Genesis 1:26-27 we read that God created man in his own image and likeness. Some view these two words “image” and “likeness” to mean two different things. However, they are synonyms; they mean one thing. Now the question is in what way is man in the image or likeness of God?
The Bible shows us that the image of God in man can be seen in a broader sense and narrower sense. In the broader sense man is the image of God in that he has intellectual and rational powers. He is a moral being and has a sense of right and wrong; a spiritual being; a relational being. Man shares all of what are called God’s communicable attributes, such as: love, wisdom, truthfulness, patience, kindness, and jealousy.
We are no longer holy in our standing before God.
In a narrower sense the image of God in man is seen as perfect knowledge, righteousness and holiness (Colossians 3:10; Ephesians 4:24). When man was first created, he had the image of God both in a broader and narrower senses. But after he sinned in Genesis 3, he lost the image of God in the narrower but not the broader sense. Today, man no longer has perfect knowledge; he is no longer righteous in his own merit, and he is no longer holy in his standing before God.
However those who have believed in Christ are being renewed in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness. In glory, heaven, they will once again possess these attributes in their perfection.
3. Man Is Destined to Die
Spiritual and physical death.
The third major consequence of the fall is twofold: spiritual death, which occurred immediately after our first parents sinned; and physical death, which came later. Paul puts it succinctly in Romans 5:12, “Just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.” “As human beings,” Randy Alcorn has observed, “we have a terminal disease called mortality. The current death rate is 100%. Unless Christ returns soon, we’re all going to die.” All this, because of the fall.
But the Story Doesn’t End There
Though Genesis 3 begins with the thickest darkness in the history of mankind, Genesis 3:15 provides a glimmer of hope: “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.” What God is saying here is that the alliance of man and Satan which was forged in disobedience and rebellion has to be broken for man to be restored to paradise. Genesis 3:15 is the gospel.
God foretells the salvation of man from sin through the offspring of Eve.
In this verse God is foretelling the salvation of man from sin and its consequences through the offspring of the woman, Jesus Christ (Galatians 4:4). Christ crushed the head of the serpent mainly through his death on the cross and resurrection. Today everyone in Christ is being renewed in God’s image so that ultimately he will not be totally depraved and even though he dies he shall still live (John 11:25). Praise the Lord for the seed of the woman!
