The Christadelphian August 1898, C.C. Walker

“Why Did Adam Sin?”

B. S.—Adam was in the “very good” state before he sinned. He was not in the state his descendants are in. They are heirs of death: he was not. They have the sentence of death “in themselves” (2 Cor. 1:9): he had not. Paul had to say, “sin dwelleth in me.” “I see a law in my members warring against the law of my mind” (Rom. 7:17, 23). Adam could not have said this. You ask why then did he sin? You will see the answer if you consider what his sin was, and what were the motives that led him to fall into it. He ate of the forbidden tree because Eve believed on the positive assurance of the serpent that it would make them wiser than they were and place them on a level of equality with the elohim (Gen. 3:5). It was what men would call a good motive acting with a wrong belief. They had not had that experience that would have taught them that the word of God must be true. A want of knowledge through a lack of experience left them open to believe that the suggestion of the serpent might be correct, and that they ascend to a higher plane of being by eating the fruit which they were forbidden to touch. Sin, as disobedience, arose in their case from a wrong opinion concerning a matter of lawful desire, and not from what Paul calls “sin in the flesh.” It became sin in the flesh when it brought forth that sentence of death that made them mortal, and all their children with them: that is, this sentence, passed because of sin, affected their bodily state and implanted in their flesh a law of dissolution that became the law of their being. As a law of physical weakness and death, it necessarily became a source of moral weakness. That which originated in sin became a cause of sin in their posterity, and therefore accurately described by Paul as “sin in the flesh.” It may shock you to think that such a condition attached to the Lord Jesus in the days of his flesh. But there is no cause where a full enlightenment prevails. He partook of our very nature that in him it might be redeemed and perfected. He did no sin, but he was physically “made sin for us who knew no sin.” He was sent forth in the likeness of sinful flesh that sin might be condemned in him: that through death he might destroy that having the power of death. It is so testified (2 Cor. 5:21; Rom. 8:3; Heb. 2:14), and we have nothing to do but believe the testimony, even if we could not see through it. But in point of fact, reason discovers a sublime beauty in this the highest of the works of God with man.