The Fall of Man

In order to properly consider the fall of man, we must begin with what he has fallen from.  In the beginning, “God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” (Gen. 1:27).  It has been hotly debated what it means to be made in the image of God, whether this is a reference to the rational part of man (the capacity for thought), to the relational part of man (the capacity for love), or to the reverential part of man (the capacity for worship), or some other thing or combination of the things.  Personally, I think it is probably all the above.

However, we can get a glimpse of what the image of God is in those passages that refer to our being restored to the image of God.  Two such passages in the New Testament are Eph. 4:24 and Col. 3:10.  Eph. 4:24 reads, “And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.”  The phrase “after God” means “after the image of God.”  Similarly, the apostle speaks of putting “on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him” (Col. 3:10).  Both these passages, though they are slightly different, essentially are saying the same thing, namely, that the restoration of the image of God in man takes place in regeneration, conversion, and sanctification.  An implication of this is that the main element of the image of God in man is the reverential aspect of it, or the ability to worship God properly as we ought.

It is this from which we have fallen, and therefore when the apostle Paul begins to lay out the desperate state of man in order to make way for the good news of the gospel in his letter to the Romans, this is where he begins.  And though he does not state the case in terms of the despoiling of the image of God in man, this is what he is talking about when he speaks of the suppression of the knowledge of God and exchanging the glory of the Creator for the worship of the creature (see Rom. 1:18-25).  Though we know God on some level, we have rejected Him and have put the relentless pursuit of self-sovereignty in the place of glad submission to the Father.

This is what happened at the very beginning, wasn’t it?  God gave Adam and Eve the command not to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  Instead of obeying God, they were willingly deceived by the Serpent, choosing to follow their own desires above joyful obedience to God.  They exchanged the Creator for the creature.  The Fall of Man was the result.

What happened at that point?  The curse that fell upon Adam and all his offspring was death, according to the terms of God’s covenant with Adam: “And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Gen. 2:16-17).  Now certainly physical death is partly to be understood here.  But Adam and Eve did not immediately die in that sense.  Rather, we are on surer footing if we understand death as the curse accompanying disobedience to the Divine command in its fuller sense as encompassing spiritual, physical, and eternal death.  Thus, Adam and Eve were not only going to die physically (which they did, see Gen. 5:5), but also they immediately died spiritually, and were exposed to die eternally.

What does it mean to die spiritually?  The apostle Paul again comes to our aid with his words to the Ephesian church: “And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins; wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience: among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others” (Eph. 2:1-3).  Here we learn that spiritual death is characterized by bondage to the world, to the Devil, and to the lusts of the flesh.

And it is a condition into which we are all born.  This is surely what the apostle means when he says that we were “by nature” the children of wrath.  Whether you understand “wrath” here as a reference to God’s wrath or to human wrath (I think the former is surely correct), either way it means that we don’t become sinful by education or imitation but rather because we were born with sinful natures.

In other words, as the old children’s rhyme puts it, “In Adam’s fall, we sinned all.”  Though this may appear to us to be a hard saying, it is the Biblical position.  It is the lesson of Romans 5:12-21, which is neatly summarized in Paul’s words to the Corinthians: “For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Cor. 15:21-22).  Adam acted as a federal head and representative of the human race, and his tragic choice was the choice of us all.  As a result, humankind is born bent in on itself, turned in against God.  Theologians call this “original sin,” the fact that we are not sinners only because we sin, but more fundamentally we sin because we are sinners.

The whole of our nature is thus affected by this fall. We are not warped in some corner of our heart; it is mind, heart, and will that is affected.  It is the reason why sin is so universal.  Some have commented that the doctrine of original sin, though very distasteful to men, is nevertheless one of those Biblical doctrines which is readily observable.  And so the apostle writes, “we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin” (Rom. 3:9).

A tragic consequence of this is spiritual inability to turn towards God, apart from the intervening and efficacious grace of God.  Our Lord himself said, “No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day” (Jn. 6:44).  Note the language of ability – or rather, inability – “no man can.”  The apostle uses similar language: “the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God” (Rom. 8:7-8).  We are in the “flesh” as the result of the Fall, and it is only the grace of God that can turn us back toward him in faith and repentance.  (A false implication from this doctrine is that unregenerate men are not responsible to repent and believe.  But, as John Gill pointed out long ago, though we have lost our ability to obey, God has not lost his right to command!)

Though it is true that the depravity into which we have fallen is total, in the sense that every aspect of human nature has been affected by it, it does not mean that the image of God in us is annihilated.  There are still remnants of it left, like a great statue whose greatness has been completely marred by time and tempest, but which still retains marks of its creator’s genius.  The same is true with us.  It is for that reason that the apostle James, speaking of men generally, can say, “But the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison. Therewith bless we God, even the Father; and therewith curse we men, which are made after the similitude [image] of God” (Jam. 3:8-9).  All men are still made in the image of God, and that image is to be respected.  It is the lack of such respect that is behind many of the cruelties of our age and of ages past.  There is one human race, a race made in the image of God, and it is on that basis that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves.

What is the lesson we are to learn from the doctrine of the fall of man into sin?  It is this: that we are not what we once were or what we were meant to be.  We need to be saved, the image to be restored, and to be returned to that state from which we are fallen.  As a result of The Fall, we were not only marred in our own image, but also alienated from the presence and favor of God.  Our sins have hidden His face from us (Isa. 59:1-2).  We need redemption from the bondage of sin, atonement for the guilt of our sins, propitiation for the punishment due to our sin, and reconciliation for the alienation caused by our sins.  Only the Lord Jesus Christ can rescue us in our fallenness.  He is the one who came to save his people from their sins (Mt. 1:21).  Let us therefore come to him, trusting in him and thus find in His blood the “double cure” which “saves from sin and makes me pure.”