Faith Baptist Church
4258 Botetourt Road
Fincastle, Virginia 24090
(540) 473-2325
Romans 5:12-21
If Adam would have known the sorrow he would bring into the world by disobeying God he still would have sinned. It was his choice to sin. It was not the will of God for Adam to sin, Jm.1:13-15. Since God made Adam with free will God left that choice up to him. Yes, the omniscience of God always knew what Adam would do. The omniscience of God always knew what Lucifer would do. And I want us to all understand something here. God’s creations were all perfect in the beginning and his plans were perfect as well. It is the matter of free will that decides whether things will stay perfect. Lucifer and Adam chose against the perfection of God. Both fell. Lucifer knew his fall would be eternal and there would be no hope for him once he crossed the justice of God. Mankind, however, being made a little lower than the angels was given a second chance for God would offer salvation to fallen mankind. You have the choice of being saved. However, you do not have the choice of being born as a sinner. The imputation of Adam’s original sin falls on all the human race which means everyone, at some time dies. As we will see even the Virgin Mary had a sin nature because she had an earthly father. The Catholic doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary is a false teaching. As we will see, however, she didn’t pass down the sinful nature to Jesus because the sin nature is passed down genetically through the man.
Now, this imputation is called a temporary imputation which means at death the old sin nature dies with the body. At death born again believers go to heaven without the sin nature and those who go to hell go without an old sin nature.
Since God is not the author of sin. The sin nature is passed down genetically. It is not imputed to the human race by God.
The words sin [harmartia] and death [thanatos] are found in Rom.5:12. They occur frequently in the Rom.5:12-21 passage. The word sin [harmartia] is preceded by the definite article, the, and in the Greek grammar the definite article, when present before a noun or participle, identifies something or someone specific. The use of the article in this passage before the words sin and death personifies these two words. In our passage we see the original sin was disobedience as noted in Rom.5:19. It was committed by Adam, and its subsequent result of death embodies the sin and death that has been passed down through Adam to all mankind. This is where sin and death started. Sin entered into the world and by that sin death passed upon all men. The words entered [eiselthen] and passed [dielthen] have the same root word, elthen.
This verse deals with the original entrance of sin into the world and the death that is passed [dia] on to all mankind due to the penalty of that one sin. Death passed upon all mankind, for in that sin all have sinned. On one hand we are made in our souls in the image of God because God gives to all people their souls, but to contaminate our human origin comes the sin nature passed down genetically by man. Thus the sin nature contaminates not only the mortal body which eventually dies; but it also contaminates the immortal soul so that we are all born spiritually dead as well. Rom.3:23 “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God,”
This is why even believers in Jesus Christ unfortunately sin until we die. Our nature to sin is not removed at salvation, only at death.
Until then God has given every believer his indwelling Holy Spirit to prompt us to resist disobedience to God and to stay under God’s Spirit control, not the sin nature control.
We do not sin because of our environment, or due to external temptations; we sin because it is our nature to sin, Eph.2:1-3, read...
When the believer sins he goes against a new righteous nature in him or her, and confession is then needed. That righteous nature comes by belief in Jesus Christ, Rom.5:17, Titus 3:5-7.
Thank God the imputation of Adam’s sin is not eternal. Now some would question these biblical findings on the imputation of Adam’s sin to mankind and say that it is not fair that we should be condemned for something someone did over 6,000 years ago. However, this type of thinking leaves out the goodness and the justice of God. The justice of God condemns all sin and he did not have to show his goodness by sending us our Savior. Justice condemns all sinners, but it also opens the door to grace and subsequently makes every person a candidate for the imputation of God’s righteousness. All one has to do is turn to the One who carried our sins away at the cross and accept him. We are all helpless to save ourselves so we need to turn to Christ for our eternal salvation.
There is no argument that we are sinners. We know we all sin. The sin nature is the distorter of the soul. It distorts our thinking, our will, our emotions, our conscience, and our self-consciousness. This is why we cannot think spiritually, nor live righteously apart from salvation.
At salvation the righteousness of God is imputed to our souls and thus a new nature comes into our thoughts and as we grow in God’s word and learn obedience to God our new nature conforms us to be more like Jesus Christ. And so with this new nature we are called upon to heed the words of Rom.6:12-13 “Let not sin therefore, reign in your mortal body; that ye should obey it in its lusts. Neither yield your members [your body] as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin [old sin nature] but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead [spiritually dead] and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.”
When the Christian sins he yields his soul to the disobedience of his sin nature and he acts out either in some form of sin whether it be an overt sin of the flesh, or the speech or his covert mental attitude sins.
The outworking of the sin nature varies from person to person, but they are characterized by two basic trends, self-righteousness or immoral thoughts and actions.
Paul said in Rom.7:23 that he recognized the sin nature warring against his mind to bring him into captivity to the law of the sin nature which was in his body. So we see once again that sin is always present with us and we must not give ourselves over to our old sin nature. If we do we have been captivated to obey its disobedient wants. This knowledge must compel us to hide God’s word in our hearts and obey it as we learn from Ps.119:11.
Never forget, that though you are in Christ and the Holy Spirit is in you, you and I are also still in Adam.