Doctrine of Sin
By Jerry Batson, Th.D.
Special to The Alabama Baptist
A prime reason for taking seriously the fact that all of us sin is that sin brings death. Such is the unwavering declaration of Romans 6:23, “The wages of sin is death.”
When we think of death as the ultimate result of sin, we must enlarge our understanding of death to match the scope of the Bible’s description of death. To do so, we must think of physical, spiritual and eternal death.
The earliest mention of death belongs to God. Before sin entered the picture, God warned Adam against partaking of the fruit of a forbidden tree, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Gen. 2:16–17).
Physical death
Because of sin, Adam experienced physical death. The record of his death is forever recorded in these words, “All the days that Adam lived were 930 years; and he died” (Gen. 5:5).
The same terse obituary attached to Adam’s descendants, beginning with his son Seth, “All the days of Seth were 912 years; and he died” (Gen. 5:8).
Throughout the chapter, the phrase “and he died” attached to Enosh (v. 11), Kenan (v. 14), Mahalalel (v. 17), Jared (v. 20), Methuselah (v. 27) and Lamech (v. 31). The only break in the litany of death was Enoch, who bypassed death because God took him (v. 24).
While some Bible students speculate that God’s creative intention was from the beginning that humans would die, the usual understanding is that physical death came as a result of the sin of disobedience to God’s warning about the tree of the knowledge of good an evil.
Every tombstone in every cemetery stands as a stark reminder that part of the wages of sin is physical death.
Spiritual death
When God pronounced to Adam and Eve concerning fruit from the forbidden tree, “In the day that you eat of it you shall surely die,” He must have had in mind a death beyond physical death.
Rather than dying physically on the day they ate fruit from the forbidden tree, Adam and Eve were expelled from Eden to life outside the garden. Hence, God gave humans to understand that distinct from physical death is the reality of spiritual death.
If we think of physical death in terms of the separation of soul from body, so we can think of spiritual death as the separation of a person from God. The sin of Adam and Eve resulted in their separation from God, viewed as life on the outside of the Garden of Eden.
Eternal death
We might say eternal death is the extension forever of spiritual death. Separation from God in this life extended throughout eternity is the essence of spiritual death. Revelation 20:14 speaks of eternal consignment to the “lake of fire” as “the second death.” This second death is eternal death.
The first death is physical and one with which every mortal has a divinely set appointment (Heb. 9:27). The second death faces those whose separation from God continues beyond their lifetimes, but for those who come to God through Christ prior to physical death the second death has no power (Rev. 20:6).
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