We have all felt it. A pull towards disobedience, a desire to live our lives "on our own terms." Though we may know God's plans for our lives, or at least the commands that He gives us, we find it impossible to follow through. How often do we resolve to improve, only to find ourselves slipping into the same habits and patterns that we just swore off?

Why can’t we escape these sinful impulses? To find the answer, we must start at the very beginning. When God created the world, as recorded in Genesis 1 and 2, we are told over and over that He made everything good. Indeed, we see in the Garden of Eden a perfect paradise where Adam and Eve, free from any stain of sin, walked in fellowship with God Himself.

Then, tragedy struck. Only a few pages later, in Genesis 3, we read the account that theologians throughout history have rightly called the fall of man. In this story, seduced by the crafty words of the serpent, Adam and Eve took and ate the forbidden fruit, believing that it would make them more like God.

With this simple act, sin entered the world. Nothing would ever be the same.

Once sin entered the world, it spread like the weeds it created. Adam and Eve were banished from the garden, denied the fellowship with God that they once enjoyed. Only one chapter later, the Bible records the first murder. Cain kills his brother Abel, jealous of his superior sacrifice. The Bible only reveals further patterns of sinfulness, as the world found itself scarred by sin in all its aspects. This is true even today. We only need to take a look at the news to see the effects of Adam's original sin in our world. We cannot deny that the world is not as it should be. Instead, it is marred by sin.

The evidence is within us, in our own sin nature. When Adam sinned, the Bible teaches that he did so as our representative, meaning that from his first sin, all of us have inherited a sinful nature that permeates our very souls. In the book of Ephesians, Paul describes our natural state as "dead in our transgressions and sins" (Ephesians 2:1). This is not something we learn. It is natural to us, even before our birth! In David's famous lament over his own sin, he writes, "surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me" (Psalm 51:5). From Adam, we all received the curse of a sinful nature, all stemming from his original sin in the garden.

Death Through Adam

What does this mean for us? First, it means that in our natural state, we are inclined towards sin. When I was younger, I struggled with the concept of working my way towards God. I would exhaust myself by trying everything I could to overcome my sin by knowing more about God and by trying my best to be perfect. This, however, brought me nothing but frustration and dejection, as I found myself constantly falling into the same sinful patterns that I had struggled with for years. Despite my best efforts, I could not go more than a few minutes without sin.

You may have felt this too, the struggle between sin and effort. The exhausting fight to overcome your sin by your own work. This is a battle that we cannot win, a losing battle that is common to all men. One of church history's greatest theologians, Augustine of Hippo, remarked centuries ago that we are "not able to not sin." Because of Adam's first sin, then, sin has become a universal problem.

Similarly, this means that we can never work our way towards God. In the book of Romans, Paul writes bleakly about our sinfulness. Try as we might, Paul explains, none of us can by our works be counted righteous. In chapter 3, Paul concludes that "no one will be declared righteous in God's sight by the works of the law." No matter how many good works we do, then, we cannot overcome this sinful nature that has been given to us from Adam's original sin.

Life Through Christ

Perhaps, like the Apostle Paul, you may be tempted to give up, crying, "What a wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?" (Romans 7:24). There is, however, hope. God was not surprised by our sinfulness, but He knew that we needed someone to overcome our sinfulness and provided a better sacrifice for us in the form of His own Son, Jesus. Because of God's great love for us, not due to anything that we could do, we can be justified before God because of Jesus's sacrifice.

Later in Romans, Paul affirms this, writing, "God demonstrates His own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Notice the beauty of this verse: we bring nothing to the cross. It is never because of our own righteousness that we are justified before God, but only because of God's love and mercy, demonstrated through Jesus's sacrifice. What a great hope!

Just like our sinful nature, there is a universal aspect to this life through Christ, as all people are offered salvation based on their faith, not their works. We can again turn to Romans 5, where Paul writes, "Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people. For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous" (Romans 5:18-19). What a beautiful promise! We do not need to bring any good deeds to the cross; indeed, we cannot. Instead, Jesus paid it all for us, that through faith and faith alone we are counted as righteous before God.

Be warned, though: our sinful desires do not go away when we confess faith in Jesus and are empowered to live righteously. Our sinful nature is still within us, and we are called to fight against the flesh. However, there is a promise in this too: we are made new. Through Christ, we are provided with all that we need to fight against this sin. Though the battle is hard, we are equipped through the Holy Spirit to fight the battle and grow in obedience to Christ. If you want to learn more about this, I encourage you to check out Josiah Leuenberger's recent post on sanctification.

So then, friends, as we consider the challenging topic of our sinfulness stemming from Adam's original sin, may we rest in the hope and peace that Christ has taken our sinfulness upon Himself on the cross, freeing us to be counted as righteous through faith in Him!