Posted by webbie on [17 Jan 2010 07:47PM]
In Reply to: Jessie and Webbie, please tell me what is going on in Romans 5:12 - 19 posted by Jesse Morrell on [09 Jan 2010 12:04AM]
jbaber@prodigy.net  Notify me about Responses? (yes)

I would like to elucidate on this sentence:

5.This passage is not teaching that we contributed to Adam's sin, but that Adam contributed to our sin. It says by Adam's actions we have become sinners (We have chosen to sin).

Ro 5:12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:
13 (For until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law.

Since sin is not imputed where there is no law, it is arguable that if even if Adam had not sinned in the way that he did, it is certainly not a sure thing that all of his choices would have been correct. Since he would have had no knowledge of good and evil, what would have determined his behavioral choices? Certainly not the knowledge of good and evil, which he did not have. His behavioral choices would have been determined by some other criteria, whether pleasure, comfort ease, pain, suffering, convenience, inconvenience, etc.

I would say that it would have been inevitable for Adam and Eve, prior to the fall, to have done things of which God disapproved. But since there was no knowledge of good and evil, those transgressions would not have been imputed as sin. God would have surely corrected them, and in due time, without having the knowledge of good and evil, they nonetheless would have come to a perfect understanding of what was allowed and what was not allowed. All of this could have been accomplished without sin entering in. In the end, Adam's righteousness would have been based upon an experientially moral code, taught by God Himself.

It was by the introduction of the knowledge of good and evil that sin entered into the world (in a sense it was activated), because it was the knowledge itself that made something sinful. Without the law, sin is not imputed. Without the knowledge of good and evil, Adams transgressions would not have been imputed as sin, unless of course he transgressed a SECOND time.

So, since it was the introduction of the knowledge of good and evil that caused mankind's decisions to be potentially sinful, it can be said that Adam's sin caused many men to be sinners, not by changing their nature to be one of sin, but by introducing the one thing that makes all decisions potentially sinful, by introducing the knowledge of good and evil, which alone causes choices to be sinful.

webbie

The introduction of the knowledge of good and evil is what corrupted mankind. It made otherwise morally neutral choices, whether good or bad, sinful. It is in knowing something to be evil and choosing it anyway that sin effects our death.

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