Old Testament Study - Sin, The Fall and Moral Freedom

From the creation account, Genesis moves in chapter 3 to the

account of the sin of man. To understand properly what is going on

here we must first discuss a number of concepts. We will skip much of

the detail of chapters 3 through 11 and look only at the important

features.

Man was created by God. Notice here the basic assumptions vis-a-

vis man's original condition, which may be summarized in three words:

sinless, guiltless, and free. Man was created in the image of God

(the imago dei), with god-like though limited endowments. He had

fellowship with God who placed him in a perfect environment (i.e.

'paradise'). And he was free.

Freedom: some today emphasize that man is a free moral agent.

While man was certainly created morally free, whether he remains

genuinely free today has been widely debated. To be free, it is

argued, means to be enabled to make moral choices without compulsion;

that is free from anything which compels a choice one way or another.

The Bible assumes that man was created absolutely free, in this sense,

with regard especially to his choice of whether to serve God or not.

While he was given work to perform, he was not burdened by his toil.

He was also provided with a clear cut test of obedience: to serve God

or not. Without sin or guilt, he was genuinely free to obey or

disobey.

The Bible says that the occasion of man's sin is the story of the

temptation of the serpent and of man's yielding to it. The biblical

data emphasize that sin comes not from within man but from outside

him. This is the first introduction we receive to a power in the

universe which is hostile to God; though we are not told where this

power comes from, we are given hints that it came as a result of

disturbances within the ranks of the spiritual created beings before

the creation of the universe.

This occasion for sin - this temptation to disobedience -

involved the questioning of both the motives and the veracity of God.

God's command - that man was not to eat the fruit of the tree of the

knowledge of good and evil - was an arbitrary one; the tempter begins

by questioning whether God really indeed said what he said. When this

fails, the tempter questions the consequences, denying the veracity of

the promised punishment. Finally he throws doubt on God's motivations

- 'For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and

you will be like God, knowing good and evil' - while appealing to

man's desire to be greater than he is, to have the forbidden, to know

that which remains hidden, to be what God had not intended. So above

all, it must be emphasized that the occasion for sin came originally

from outside of man, and that the temptation was to reject what God

had said, and to disobey. Sin was to do that which was forbidden. Man

ate the fruit, and he fell.

Man was sinless, he was guiltless, and he was free. When he fell

he became sinful, guilty and morally enslaved to sin. Something

happened to man's nature, not just his legal status, before God. He

was created morally good, yet now he is morally sinful; he is

predisposed now toward sin.

This we must understand if we are to come to an

understanding of the biblical data, for the writers of the bible

understood that from this point on throughout history there was

something amiss in man, something which continually pulled man from

that which God intended. If I were to hold a pencil in the air and

then release it, one might say it were free to do what it would, to go

wheresoever it might.

Yet, in fact, that pencil is under compulsion to do one

thing only - to fall; and this it will do every time. That

which compels the pencil is, of course, the force of gravity. For all

that the pencil might appear to be free, it is, in reality, able to do

only one thing.

The same is true of man, or so say the biblical writers. However

free man might appear to be, he is in reality compelled always in one

direction: toward sinful disobedience of that which God has commanded.

When man is released, freed to do whithersoever he would, he

invariably will move toward sin. It is this facet of his nature -

this predisposition, or compulsion, toward sin - that governs his

every moral choice. Not only does man commit acts of sin, there is

something fundamental within his being which will, if left alone,

cause him to sin every time.

This is not, as the biblical authors see it, the only result of

sin; there are many others as well, and several are discussed in the

narrative of Genesis chapter 3. Woman is condemned to bear children

in pain all her days, and is given a positional - though not personal

- status subordinate to that of her husband. For the man, work has

become burdensome toil; natural evils which entered into creation on

the heels of man's fall have made the earning of a livelihood more

difficult. In addition, mankind has forfeited his dominion over

creation. And, most importantly, there is the passing of the greatest

penalty: the introduction of death into the cosmic sphere.

Of death, there are several types. Physical death has now become

a part of sin's penalty - 'for dust you are and to dust you will

return. ' But, more importantly perhaps, there is a spiritual dying as

well. Man loses that relationship he once had with God and becomes in

fact, as the book of Romans tells us, God's very enemy. So complete

is this dying that Ephesians 2:1 tells us that we were dead in our

trespasses and sins.

Thus not only has man as a result of his action become

sinful, guilty, and enslaved to sin, he has in fact died and

become helpless indeed. And if man is truly dead in sin, and if

'dead' really means 'dead', then man is able to do no more to save

himself and reverse the effects of disobedience than a dead man could

restore his own physical life.

Calvin Culver

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