Glorious and Depraved (16): Inherited Sin

Genesis 5 tells us,

When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. ² He created them male and female and blessed them. And he named them adam [man] when they were created. ³ When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth.

Though mankind is made in God’s image, and that hasn’t changed even after Adam’s rebellion, yet each offspring of Adam is in his, Adam’s, image. Paul explains further what is meant by this.

¹² Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned— ¹³ for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. ¹⁴ Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come. (Romans 5:12-14, ESV)

Death is the penalty for sin. Every human being dies because every human being has sinned. But not just their own sin. As Paul argues, sin cannot be attributed penalty-wise unless there is a law broken. But the law of Moses was not given until many generations of humans had lived and died. Those humans who did not have Moses’ law were being penalized for breaking the law against eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They were guilty, somehow, of Adam’s sin in the garden.

The venerable theologian, Charles Hodge, quotes the Westminster Confession of Faith:

The sinfulness of that estate whereinto man fell consists in the guilt of Adam’s first sin, the want of original righteousness, and the corruption of his whole nature, which is commonly called original sin, together with all actual transgressions which proceed from it.

The consequence of inheriting Adam’s sin is guilt for his transgression. We are, by nature, as Paul says in Ephesians 2:3, “children of wrath.” As he further explains in Romans 5:15-17,

¹⁵ But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. ¹⁶ And the free gift is not like the result of that one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. ¹⁷ For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ. (NIV)

We did not literally commit the sin, but Adam, as our representative, did, and the consequences apply to all his offspring. His guilt is imputed to us, reckoned as belonging to us, just as Christ’s righteousness is imputed to those who believe in him. The action of the head of the human race becomes that of his children, and the action of the head of the new race, Jesus Christ, becomes that of his “children.”