But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my
mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.
—Rom. 7: 23.
The previous chapters deal somewhat at length with the
creation and fall of man and with the consequences to the race of Adam's fall.
The purpose of this chapter is to summarize the consequences of Adam's fall as
they appear in the race today. The results of the fall are two in
nature—physical and spiritual.
The physical consequences of the fall relate to health
and disease, life and death.
It is reasonable to suppose that Adam in his primitive
state possessed perfect health and was immune to physical disease. This is not
stated in the Bible in so many words; but by reasoning from effect back to cause
—from a provision of physical healing in the redemptive plan of Christ back to
disease, the only necessity for that physical healing—we readily establish the
fact that physical sickness was in some way a result of the fall. Sickness is in
a sense the mere absence of health We may say, then, that we lost health and
incurred disease through the fall of our foreparents.
The ultimate physical consequences of Adam's fall are the
loss of natural life and the appointment of physical death ( Heb. 9:27). It
would seem that Adam's state in the Garden of Eden was one of conditional
immortality. Had he been constitutionally immortal, then it would have been
impossible for him to die. But we have learned before that physical death was a
part of the penalty to the Edenic law. Hence Adam could not have been absolutely
and unconditionally immortal. From Gen. 3: 22, it would seem that by eating of
the tree of life Adam might have lived forever. This was equal in a sense to
immortality. When Adam sinned, he forfeited for himself and for the race this
right to perpetual immortality. " Therefore the Lord (loaf sent him forth
from the Garden of Eden .... and he placed at the east of the Garden of Eden
Cherubims. and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the
tree of life" (Gen. 3: 94). In losing this right to the tree of life, he
naturally incurred physical death, for death is but the cessation of life.
The physical consequences of Adam's fall, then, are the
loss of perpetual health and the contraction of physical sickness and suffering;
the forfeiture of perpetual life and the entailment of physical death.
The spiritual consequences of the fall, like the physical
consequences, are of two kinds. They relate to purity and depravity and to
innocence and guilt. Purity and depravity, like health and disease, stand
opposed. The one is merely the opposite of the other. Purity is the positive,
depravity the negative. In the loss of the divine image—purity, righteousness,
and holiness—Adam incurred moral depravity and as we have learned, transmitted
it to his posterity.
Innocence and guilt are to the soul what life and death
are to the body. But guilt, unlike depravity, can not be transmitted, for guilt
is invariably associated with personality and personal responsibility. It is
through the influence of depravity, coupled with temptation from without, that
"all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. "
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