Cheryl Schatz

Anon y mous,
Welcome to my blog and to this conversation!

You said:

We didn’t all sin “in” Adam. Death spread to all men because all sinned. Adam, whose name means humanity, is the archetype for mankind.

The nature of humanity was, in Adam, to die.
The nature of humanity in Christ, to live.

I agree that we didn’t all “sin” in Adam. That is a common error that takes Adam’s guilt and makes it our guilt but that can’t be true. But we were “in” Adam when he sinned and our physical death is part of what we received through our first father. But Scripture doesn’t say that we die only because we are from a mortal, but it clearly links our sin to something that has been spread to us.

But if the only “nature” of humanity through Adam is merely physical death, then how is it that sin “entered the world”? Remember the passage doesn’t say that “death” entered the world, but rather it was “sin” that entered. How did sin “enter” the world if sin involves only one man?

The Greek term for “enter” means;
a move into: 15.93
b happen: 13.110
c begin: 68.7
d begin to experience: 90.70
live with 41.24
Louw, J. P., & Nida, E. A. (1996). Vol. 2: Greek-English lexicon of the New Testament : Based on semantic domains

The questions that don’t seem to have a logical answer are how one man’s sin could cause sin to move into the world? And how is it that death is “spread” to all men since this death is attached to the fact that all sin?

“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”
This is such an important part of Christianity. God who loves us, made us alive in Christ, freeing us from the wrathful rule of the prince of the power of the air and bondage to our passions, and created us anew for good works.

There are several questions I have with your interpretation, if we are freed by Christ to the bondage of our passions, then why do we still have these passions inside?

If you don’t know God, then it is impossible to see sin in its proper perspective.

I agree that the world’s view cannot see sin in its proper perspective.

“As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath.” Eph.2:1-3

This depicts the habitual style of life which had characterized these believers prior to their conversion. Had Paul intended to convey the notion of inherited sin nature at the time of their birth, he easily could have expressed that idea by saying,
“you became by birth children of wrath.” But he didn’t.

But Paul did say that we were “children of wrath”. Look at the interlinear print below: