12. Consequences of the Fall Reviewed

CHAPTER XII Consequences of the Fall Reviewed 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. - Romans 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 ( Hebrews 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 Genesis 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" (Genesis 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. " In the order of reception, disease in the physical and depravity in the spiritual naturally precede death and guilt. In redemption, however, this order is reversed. In the physical experience we are first healed of our diseases as an earnest of complete redemption, and ultimately delivered from mortality. In our spiritual experience we are first forgiven of our guilt and ultimately cleansed of depravity. Just as the elements of physical disease and disintegration in the physical ultimately result in the death of the body, so the elements of depravity, together with temptation from without, ultimately result in the death of the soul. There is one difference to be noted between the redemption of the soul and the redemption of the body. The former is perfect in this life; the latter, from the nature of things, can not be perfect until death is swallowed up in victory in the resurrection at the last day.

Redemption through Christ meets every human need. What we lost in Adam, we regain in Christ. Thus, we have in the physical, divine healing for disease, immortality for death; and in the spiritual, justification for personal guilt, and sanctification for depravity.