GRACE BAPTIST CHURCH

BIBLE DOCTRINE

SPIRITUAL DEATH

Don Fortner


Chapter 23

"In Adam all die." – 1 Corinthians 15:22

Here are four words which reveal what happened when our father Adam sinned in the garden. These four words must be understood. They are necessary. They are vital. Until these four simple words are understood there is no understanding of anything else taught in the Bible. – "In Adam all die."

When God gave his law to Adam, the sanction of the law was death: physical death, spiritual (moral) death, and eternal death. "The wages of sin is death!" As soon as Adam sinned, he and all his posterity became mortals, stripped of that immortality of body which God had given him in creation, and became subject to and infested with all the corruptions of sickness, disease, and death; and a spiritual, moral death seized his being, a spiritual, moral corruption and death which is passed upon all men, generation after generation. – "In Adam all die."

Because of Adam's sin, and our sinning in him, the understanding of man is darkened. His mind and conscience are defiled. We are filled with inordinate affections. Our wills, by nature, are biased toward everything that is evil. We have a natural taste and relish for sin. Yet, until regenerated and saved by the grace of God, all the sons and daughters of Adam are to every good work lifeless and reprobate. Everyone by nature is born in a state of spiritual death, being dead in trespasses and in sins. This is the language used by the Holy Spirit to describe man's lost condition – "In Adam all die" (Rom. 5:12; Eph. 2:1-3).

As we were all born sinners, in a state and condition of spiritual death, we were all also born "children of wrath," under the curse of God's holy law and subject to eternal death. Eternal death is the just wage and retribution paid to sin by God. Eternal death is the wrath of God revealed against all unrighteousness. It is that which shall forever torment the children of disobedience, unless we are saved from it by the obedience and death of the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, the last Adam.

This eternal death is the curse which Zechariah saw in his vision, as a flying roll flying over the whole earth, by which all the wicked are cut off forever (Zech. 5:1-3). God's elect are saved from this universal curse, because (and only because) Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law and delivered us from the wrath to come. He is made of God unto us both righteousness and redemption; and we are now made righteous in him.

The Result of Adam's Sin

Spiritual death is the result of Adam's sin as our representative and substitute in the Garden. It is the result of our sin in him.

In Romans 5, the Holy Spirit uses four distinct words to describe what Adam did in the garden of Eden. In verse 12, it is called "sin." In fact, in the Greek text, it is twice referred to there as "the sin." It is called "the sin" because it was the first sin and because it is the fountain of all sin. In verse 14, it is called a "transgression." The Apostle John tells us that every sin is a transgression of the law (1 John 3:14). Adam's sin, and our sin in him, was a transgression of that law which God made with Adam as our representative (Gen. 2:17). In Romans 5:19, it is called "disobedience." It was an act of willful disobedience to the revealed will of God. Then, in Romans 5:15-20, the Apostle uses the word "offense" four times to describe Adam's sin, because sin is abhorrently offensive to the holy Lord God. This word, "offense," conveys the idea of a fall.

That is why we refer to Adam's sin as "The Fall." It was the offense, or the fall, by which Adam and the entire human race represented by him fell from a state of honor, integrity, righteousness, life, and happiness into a state of dishonor, sin, unrighteousness, death, and misery.

Though Adam's sin is represented to us as the simple act of eating that fruit which he was forbidden by God to eat, his act of sin was much more complex than most imagine. He sinned against light and knowledge, when he was in full power to have resisted temptation. Adam's sin was the height of ingratitude to God his Maker. It was an affront to God in the highest degree. It was an act of willful unbelief, making God a liar, rejecting the truthfulness of his word. It was an act of intolerable pride, an affectation, pretense, and assumption of deity, of equality with God. It was an act of unparalleled selfishness by which Adam displayed a total disregard, lack of concern for, or even thought of affection or care for God, his creation, or any of the human race, with whose souls he had been entrusted. We flinch from acknowledging it, but the fact is, all acts of sin have these three elements in them. Every act of sin is an act of willful unbelief, intolerable pride, and horrible selfishness.

Adam's sin included all aspects of sin. His one transgression was a total, complete breach of God's holy law. The laws of God, according to James 2:10, are so intertwined that he that "offends in one point is guilty of all." One of the old writers said, "Adam, at one clap, broke both tables of the law, and all the commandments of God."

Adam's one act of rebellion, sin, and disobedience was a transgression of each of the commandments (Ex. 20:1-17). He chose another God when he followed the devil. He idolized and deified his own belly. He made his belly (his lusts) his God. He took the name of God in vain when he believed him not. He kept not the rest and estate wherein God had set him, thus violating, breaking, and disregarding the sabbath day. He dishonored his Father which was in heaven. Therefore his days were not long in that land which the Lord his God had given him. He murdered, in the most horrible massacre of all history, himself and all his posterity. He committed spiritual fornication and adultery. He went whoring after other gods. Like Achan, he stole that which God forbade; and his robbery is that which troubles all Israel and the whole world. He bore witness against God when he believed not his word. He coveted and his covetousness cost him his life, and brought death upon all his family.

It is this death, this spiritual death, which is the result of Adam's sin, which Paul speaks of when he says, "In Adam all die."

Total Depravity

Spiritual death is the total spiritual, moral corruption, and defilement of human nature. The Word of God gives us only a very brief account of what happened to Adam after the fall. Perhaps that is because he was very quickly recovered from it by the grace of God, who brought him to life, repentance, and faith by his irresistible power, and gave him a higher, nobler standing in Christ than he had before he fell.

Immediately after the fall, God sought Adam out, called him by his grace, and promised a Savior, the Seed of the woman, by whom he and all elect sinners would be recovered from all sin. Because these things happened so quickly after the fall, we are not informed about all the mischief, misery, and madness Adam experienced as a result of his sin in spiritual death. However, some of the sad effects of the fall are clearly revealed in the Word of God. Here are seven things involved in the spiritual death of the human race, seven sad consequences of Adam's sin.

There is in fallen humanity a general corruption and depravity of all the powers and faculties of the soul, which are all immersed in sin, and full of it. All the members of the body are willingly yielded as instruments of unrighteousness. There is in us all a propensity and proneness to all that is sinful, an inordinate desire after the lusts of the flesh and of fulfilling them. We all by nature serve our lusts and pleasures. We serve our lusts as our highest pleasures by nature, because we are all by nature lovers of sinful pleasures more than lovers of God.

There is, also, a terrible disinclination to all that is good, and an utter aversion to it. We all hate good and love evil. Indeed, the carnal mind is enmity against God and all that is good.

Moreover, there is an impotency, an inability to do that which is good; hence man is represented as being without strength, having lost it, and become unable to do anything that is spiritually good. He can sin with a high hand and a willing heart; but no man can, of his own accord and by his own power, cease from sin, repent of sin, and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.

Sin has brought the entire human race into a state of slavery to sin, Satan, and the world. This is what we commonly call the corruption and depravity of nature. This is the effect of the first sin of Adam. This is the proverbial "Pandora box" from whence have sprung all spiritual maladies and bodily diseases. All the disasters, distresses, mischief, and calamities, that are, or have been in the world, are the result of sin.

Man's Only Hope

The only hope of salvation and deliverance from this state and condition of spiritual death is the free grace of God in Christ, the last Adam. – "For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive" (1 Cor. 15:22). As sin and death came by the doing and dying of the first representative man, Adam, so righteousness and life come to God's elect by the doing and dying of the second and last representative man, the Lord Jesus Christ, the second Adam (Ps. 69:1-4). Salvation comes to sinners by grace alone, by the free, sovereign, unconditional grace of God in Christ (1 Cor. 1:30-31; Col. 2:9-10. Here is the wisdom, grace, and goodness of God. – He permitted the sin and fall of our father Adam, that we might be saved by the work of Christ, the last Adam, to the praise of the glory of his grace!


Don Fortner, Pastor
Grace Baptist Church
Danville, Ky.



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