Sinful Nature and the Crucifixion of the Christian With Christ

The Book of Genesis records the historically vital account of the Fall of man. Now, there are those who are skeptical of this account. It seems to them very unlikely that a race can be condemned to eternal damnation just because its progenitors took a secret bite of the forbidden fruit. Firstly, the fruit-nature correlation itself seems to them incongruous. Then, there is the issue of justness of such damnation. However, there is something about this account that is unignorable; and, that is that it stands out as the most legitimate explanation of the root of human devolution.

Genesis 3 records the first lie of Scripture, the demonic lie that man would not surely die if he ate the forbidden fruit but would rather become like God knowing good and evil. The first part of it was blatantly false; the effect of the fruit was instantly fatal on both Adam and Eve, for the moment they sinned they died spiritually. The opening of their eyes meant their spiritual death in the same manner that the opening of the rich man's eyes in hades meant his physical death. However, from the perspective of the devil, it wasn't so much really death, for to him the opening of eyes really was the life he wished to have, the life of eternal separation from God. The opening of eyes also marked the genesis of shame for human kind. It also marked the genesis of maya or a web of delusion, which is the life that is governed by the temporal separated from the eternal. The matrix of this carnality is so intense that God Himself had to provide for Adam and Eve garments of skins and all visions of the divine, thenceforth, also include the idea of "covering".

However, the devil was also blatantly false when he asserted that man would become like God knowing good and evil; for, firstly, man could never become like God; and secondly, God doesn't know good and evil; He knows only good in its moral perfection. He is good. It is the depraved state of man (of knowing good and evil, not as God knows but as the devil knows) that produces all forms of false images of God and religion in the world.

It must be understood that the Bible doesn't say that God condemns humanity because of its sinful nature. But, it says that man in his sinful state is already dead in his sins.

Genesis 3 is the point of the beginning of sin, carnality, and the works of the flesh that stands eternally opposed to the life of the Spirit. Therefore, God had to affirm that His Spirit would no longer strive with man who is just flesh (Gen.6:3). Flesh and blood could never inherit the kingdom of God because every child that is born in this world is born into a body of death (Rom.7:24). The earnest expectation is for the redemption of this body (Rom.8:19), that could have never been possible apart from the sacrificial death and resurrection of Jesus Christ by the eternal Spirit (Rom.8:11,23). Therefore, in the redeemed there is no answer for deliverance from sinful tendency apart from the work of the Spirit (Rom.8:13). And, there is no eternal deliverance from sin apart from the resurrection of the body (1Jn.3:2; Rom.8:29).

The condemning factor is the rejection of Christ by which one becomes identified with the crucifier rather than the crucified. Those who are crucified with Him are those who accept Him (Gal.5:24). Therefore, also, those who accepted Him and then reject Him through apostasy become guilty of double crucifixion of Christ and become bereft of repentance (Heb.6:4-6; Heb.12:16,17).