The Depth of Sin
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2018 · 25 November 2018
In the opening of Genesis 3, you have the record of the serpent in the Garden tempting Eve, and her subsequent disobedience to God, and then Adam following in her disobedience. And immediately upon that disobedience, they were both filled with shame, as indicated by the awareness of their nakedness in verse 7, and the sewing together of fig leaves to cover themselves.
This incident has monumental impact. Up to this point, according to Genesis 1:31, God saw all that He had made in the six days, and it was very good. Genesis 2, is an expansion of the creation of man on day six. And so at the end of Genesis 2 everything is still very good. But when you come to Genesis 3, a dramatic change takes place and from then on everything is very bad.
The narrative of Genesis 3:1-7 describes for us the first act of human disobedience which brought about the curse on all mankind: the Fall. The impact of that Fall has touched every part of the universe. It is accurate to say that absolutely everything wrong in our world is because of sin. If there were no sin, everything would be very good. Everything created in heaven and on the earth would be very good as it was on day six.
But because of sin, everything is very bad. From World Wars, terrorism, mass murders, serial killings, accidents, fires, crippling and maiming of people, nuclear reactor disasters, pollution, cancer, heart disease, all illnesses to all broken relationships, all divorce, all orphaned children, all drugs, all crime, all dereliction in all forms. In summary: all evil, all sadness, all failure, all death is because of sin.
So, Genesis 3 as a point of origin is critical. In fact, it is arguably the most important chapter in the Bible because it explains why the rest of the Bible tells the story of redemption. Everything in the physical world dies, and sin is the killer. Who changes gentle children into murderers, tender mothers into hateful mothers, and their fathers into absentees? The answer is sin.
Any accurate understanding of the way things are in the world demands an understanding of sin. Listen to Romans 8: 20, “For the creation was subjected to futility, or to emptiness, not of its own will but because of Him who subjected it.” In other words, it wasn’t that the whole of creation wanted this fallen condition; it was the punishment of God for the sin of man.
The creation itself, Romans 8:21 says, “Also will be set free from its slavery to corruption.” Currently the entire creation, everything that was made on the six days of creation, is in slavery to corruption. And that’s why verse 22 says, “The whole creation groans and suffers like the pain of childbirth together until now.” Because of sin, no part of creation now exists as God intended it to be.
You are not the way God intended you to be. Animals aren’t the way God intended them to be, and plants aren’t the way God intended them to be. The water and land, and mountains, and all the planets, and all of the stars, and all that goes into infinity is not what God originally made it to be. It is all reduced to, look at verse 20, futility, to be a failure.
And then, in verse 21, there is a slavery to corruption. Slavery indicates an inability to free oneself, a bondage that can’t be broken. Here is this universe unsuccessfully trying to achieve its intended purpose. That simply can be defined by two words: decay and eventual death. Everything in the universe is going in that direction, and is groaning under a constant severe pain as in childbirth.
And verse 23 adds, “And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan.” Paul here is talking about believers. Everybody groans, even believers feel the weight of that, eagerly waiting for our adoption as sons and waiting for the redemption of our body. We’re waiting to finally be released from this enslavement to corruption to be recreated in Christ.
Jewish theology does not believe in total depravity; they do not believe in original sin. They think we all come into the world with a clean slate and we have the privilege of making a decision that relates only to us. And if you question that, all you have to do is read Genesis 3:7, where Adam and Eve felt shame for the first time. Before that they were without any shame because there was no evil in their mind or in their actions.
But all of a sudden their eyes were opened and they knew they were naked. All of a sudden they were having thoughts they had never had before. All of a sudden, they were thinking things they never thought before, and the paralyzing reality of wickedness caused them to be embarrassed, and so they had to cover themselves. And there is the first indication of evil thoughts.
Then, the next thing is, they hid from God, to run from God so God has to come and find them. And God confronts them about what they did and Adam says, “The woman You gave me, she did it.” And we hear blame shifting. He didn’t really blame Eve, Adam in fact blamed God. He said, “The woman You gave me.” He said: I went to sleep single; I woke up with Eve.
So, now you have a guilty conscience, you have feelings of shame, you have hiding from God. And then, you have the unwillingness to accept responsibility for your sin which shifts the blame not on another person but on God Himself. And then, God pronounces a curse on them and the whole universe felt the curse. And Satan was cursed more than any other being.
And the woman would be cursed with pain in childbirth and with marital conflict. And the man would be cursed because the ground would be cursed, and so the ground would start bringing forth thorns and thistles. And at the end of Genesis 3, and both of them are driven out of the Garden because God had to protect them from eating the tree of life, lest they live forever in a cursed condition.
We don’t know when between the sixth day and the seventh day, the birth of their first child came. We don’t know when the Fall came; we don’t know how long they lived in the bliss of Eden. But in Genesis 4, when they conceived a child, they had already fallen. They brought forth sinful children who needed to make a sacrifice to God. That was not needed if you weren’t a sinner and fallen.
And then, in Genesis 4 there is murder. Cain kills his brother Abel. And in Genesis 4:19, Lamech took to himself two wives. Now, there is polygamy. And in verse 23, “Lamech said to his wives, Adah and Zilah, ‘Listen to my voice, give heed to my speech for I have killed a man for wounding me.’“ Here is a second murder out of vengeance. After then the genealogy of generations of Adam.
Genesis 6:5-7 says, “Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6 And the Lord was sorry that He made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. 7 So the Lord said, “I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, creeping thing and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.”
Noah was a righteous man,” verse 9 says. He was apparently along with his wife, his sons and their wives the only righteous people left. Verse 13 says, “The end of all flesh has come before Me, for the earth is filled with violence through them, and behold, I’m about to destroy them along with the earth.” And God in the Flood, destroyed them and the earth in the sense that He reshaped it.
The Bible’s clear descriptions of the extent of man’s sin is found here in Genesis 6. And man has not gotten better. It isn’t that God created man and he’s been getting nobler. God created man and he instantly got worse after the Fall and he keeps getting worse. Man’s sin is systemic, it is inside man. Verse 5 says, “Every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”
This is an elaborate description of depravity. And we are just in Genesis 6. It is so bad that God drowns the entire planet, except for eight people in the worldwide flood. Look at Genesis 7:23, “So He destroyed all living things which were on the face of the ground: both man and animals and birds of the air. Only Noah and those who were with him in the ark remained alive.”
Genesis 7:24 says that Noah and his family finally saw the water subside after 150 days. And in Genesis 9:1, Noah is given the same commission Adam and Eve were given, “Be fruitful, multiply and fill the earth.” And in verse 2 it says, you can rule the animals. What God is saying there is you can kill anything you want. Verse 3, “Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you, even the green herbs.”
Initially before the Fall they were not allowed to kill animals. There was no death because there was no sin. Now, they can actually kill the animals that have been provided for them. Be fruitful, multiply, and by the time you get to the end of Genesis 9, you have a terrible situation. Noah is drunk and he’s exposed in some sexual way, and here you have the first sexual sin.
And then in Genesis 11 you have strife and there is confusion of languages. And in Genesis 12:10-12 you have lying. Abram lies about his wife, Sarah, saying she is not his wife, because he doesn’t trust God. Then starting in Genesis 13:7, you have strife between Abram’s flocks and Lot’s. In Genesis 13:13 it says of Sodom, “The men of Sodom were wicked exceedingly and sinners against the Lord.”
In Genesis 14 you have the first war. In Genesis 16: 4, you have adultery, Abram with Hagar, producing a son. In Genesis 18:20 the Lord says again, “The outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah is indeed great and their sin is exceedingly grave.” Things are getting worse. It just goes on like that. What changed is recorded in Genesis 3. By one man, sin entered the world, and death passed to all men because all have sinned.
In the New Testament there are words to define sin, such as to miss the mark, to go astray, to transgress. It means to do evil, to fall, to disobey, to be obstinate, to be unrighteous, to be culpable, to be ignorant, to have a debt, to be evil, to be opposed to God, all of those things. We sum it up in 1 John 3:4, “Sin is the transgression of the law.” Sin is disobeying God.
Sin is any personal lack of conformity to the moral character and law of God. Anything less than the holiness of God is sin. If you are not as holy as God is, that’s sin. And if you do anything to violate His law, that’s sin. Any thought, any word, any act, or any omission that is inconsistent with the perfect, holy character of God, or in any way violates His law, is sin. It is lawlessness.
What is sin like? Sin is defiling, it is a disposition of the heart that corrupts everything we think, everything we say, everything we do so we have to say the heart is deceitful above all things, desperately wicked. Even the best about us is filthy rags. It is a deep defiling in our very nature that corrupts everything we do. Secondly, sin is also rebellious. It is by nature the despising of God.
Sin is also ingratitude. It like the nine lepers who were healed by Jesus and never came back to say thanks. Sin is to take everything that God has given us in His created world and never thank Him. Sin also consumes you. There is a push to do as much sin as they possibly can. Proverbs 4:16 says, “They can’t sleep unless they do evil. They stay awake just to perpetrate wickedness.”
Sin is fatal. The soul that sins shall die, Ezekiel 18 says. And Romans 3 says, “The wages of sin is death.” And man can’t do anything about it because his heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, Jeremiah 17. The whole head is sick, as Isaiah 1:4-6 says. He’s sick from the tip of his head to the tip of his feet. And he has been blighted with a disease that will kill him.
There’s no human cure. There’s no way that the sinner can expiate his sin even in hell. That’s why hell lasts forever, it doesn’t eradicate his sin. Nothing man does can cure the deadly malady. It will kill him physically as it has killed him spiritually, and it will ultimately kill him eternally. God rejects them because they are sinners.
How many people does it affect? 1 Corinthians 15:22 says, “In Adam all died.” Romans 5:12, “By one man sin entered the world and death by sin because all have sinned.” And everybody dies so everybody’s a sinner. Romans 3:10 says, “As it is written,” and this is taken from Psalm 14, the first three verses, “there is none righteous, not even one. There is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God.”
Romans 3:23 sums it up, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” That’s why David in Psalm 51 says, “In sin did my mother conceive me.” He doesn’t mean he was an illegitimate baby, he means at the point of conception he was already a sinner. Not everybody is as bad as they could be. But everybody is bad enough to be damned to hell.
So what does sin do to us? As you heard so clearly tonight, all of this is true about us, and this is exactly who we are, and this is exactly what we deserve, eternal punishment. But God has placed our iniquity on Christ. He bore our sins in His own body. God punished Him in our place. That is the glory of the gospel. Ask the Lord to forgive your sin, He’ll hear that prayer and answer it. Let us pray.