Benefits Of Being Justified Through FaithSample

Adam doesn't represent you anymore

“Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.”

The Bible teaches that all of life needs to be viewed through two men (Adam and Christ), through two acts (an act of disobedience and an act of obedience), and through two destinies for all people: death and life.

The brilliant physician and pastor, Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, wrote, “God has always dealt with mankind through a head and representative. The whole story of the human race can be summed up in terms of what has happened because of Adam, and what has happened and will yet happen because of Christ.”

This is the key biblical passage about the truth of original sin: That all of us sinned in Adam because he was our representative. The natural human response is: “Wait a minute! That’s not fair. Adam sinned and his sin was charged to me?”

The idea of original sin is especially difficult for those of us in the West because of our pervasive individualism. I understand original sin is less foreign to Africans and Asians because they intuit the solidarity of a tribe or a village. In Africa, if the chief converts, the whole village converts. But the idea is not completely foreign to us. For example, when one player on a football team jumps offside, the whole team is penalized, and no one has any trouble with that.

This is the teaching of original sin: Adam was our representative. When he sinned, we sinned, so we were born in sin. I may not like this teaching. I may not like it that when Adam sinned, that sin was charged to me. But I love that Christ could be my representative and, when He paid for my sin, that forgiveness was given to me.

Original sin paves the way for the cross of Christ. It paves the way for the gospel, in which Christ died in my place. We don’t like Adam representing us. But we love Christ representing us.

Winston Churchill famously described the British pilots of World War II thus: “Never in the field of human conflict have so many owed so much to so few.” But this is even more true of the gospel: Never in human history have so many owed so much to just one.