In the creation, we know that God made everything very good. Last week, we learned in Gen 3, that our first parents were tempted and fell by eating of the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Adam tried to gain understanding apart from God’s truth.

This fall is a major event in biblical history because it plunges humanity into a state of sin and misery. Man is separated from God because God is a holy God and cannot tolerate sin. Through the fall, man loses his original righteousness and his whole nature is corrupted which is commonly called “original sin.”

Another term we use is “total depravity” that describes the condition of man. It means that in our sinful condition nothing we do is good. The prophet Isaiah said “all our righteous acts are like filthy rags.” Because our whole nature is corrupted by sin and because we are separated from God, even the “good” we do is tainted.

No matter how bleak things looked in Gen 3, there is hope. In God’s mercy and grace, he did not leave man in sin and misery. As stated earlier, biblical history does not end at the fall. There is redemption. This is where we see God’s grace. This is where we see God become man in order to save us.

This is where we see salvation that has come through Christ. The reason of the fall of Adam that God came to this world in the person of Jesus Christ, fully God and fully man, in order to save his people.

Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 6, Section 2
But this sin they fell from their original righteousness and communion with God and so became dead in sin and wholly defiled in all the parts and faculties of soul and body.

Related posts:

1. Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 7, Section 5
2. Westminster Confession of Faith Chapter 3 Section 3
3. Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 6, Section 6