A Bender Byte Moment:

Have you ever read Genesis (first book in the Bible), chapter 2? It says in sentences (verses) 16 & 17: "the LORD God commanded the man, 'You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.'"

Adam and Eve one day listened to Satan (disguised as a serpent) who lied to them and told them: "'You will not surely die,' the serpent said to the woman. 'For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.'"²

Satan told Adam and Eve a lie. He contradicted God's Word and said it was okay to eat from the forbidden tree.

The sin of Adam and Eve was disobeying God and doing what they wanted...instead of listening to God. They listened to Satan and their own reasoning, thinking God was keeping something wonderful from them, which He was not. And that's just like all of us. We think we know better than God. We think God is restricting us, keeping something from us, and we have a better way. Just like Adam and Eve, we are tempted to choose to believe Satan rather than believe God. Here it is: "When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it."³

From that moment they became spiritually separated from God -- He sent them out of the Garden of Eden, banned them from the tree of life, and instead of living forever, they eventually died. Death was not part of the Garden of Eden. The Bible says, "The penalty of sin is death." This is why Jesus came...to carry for us the penalty of our sin, so we would not die eternally separated from Him. When Jesus died on the cross, He fully paid for all of YOUR sin, and today offers you complete forgiveness and eternal life. The Bible says, "The penalty of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."⁴

 

I don't Like The Idea Of Being Guilty because someone else did wrong!

"And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind."⁵

Original Sin's Meaning Today

Shai Linne, Christian rapper and church planter, discusses important nuance about Original Sin below.

This is what I would say to someone who says the idea of original sin, being guilty in Adam, that's unfair. I'm like, what's up with that? There's a couple of ways I would answer that. One way would be that we all understand the idea of having a representative stand in our place. It's the whole reason why we have US embassies. Nobody would say, wait a minute, I'm not over in that foreign country. It's not fair for this guy to represent me, you know what I mean? Or take it to the realm of sports. If you're on a football team and one guy commits a penalty, the whole team is going back 10 yards. The dude who didn't commit the foul, doesn't say, wait a second. That's unfair. No, you're on the same team.

And so it's the same thing with Adam. God determined that we would all be on Adam's team. Once Adam committed the foul, then we get penalized for it. But then you have the good news, which is the flip side of that, which is that we're on Christ's team. Those who trust in Christ receive the points that he scored. We were on the bench. We didn't even get into the game. Christ scores the points, and then we win as a team. Nobody ever says, wait a second. It's not fair that Jesus Christ died in my place. What's up with that? No, no one ever says that. When we started talking about fairness, we're talking about what's just and what's right, and God is just and he'll absolutely do what's right in every case.

Please Watch Full Video on this page.

(1) Genesis 1:27,28
(2) Genesis 3:4,5
(3) Genesis 3:6
(4) Romans 6:23
(5) Ephesians 2:1-3