Original Sin And Its
Consequences
The disobedience and
transgression of Adam and Eve is called Original Sin. What happened? As we have
previously said, God gave Adam and Eve permission to eat the fruit of all trees
except the fruit of the tree "of the knowledge of good and evil."
Here is what the Bible says: "You may freely eat of every tree of the
Garden; 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 die"(Genesis 2:16-17). In
other words, God said to Adam and to Eve, "You may eat the fruit of all of
the trees that are in the Garden and that are edible; it is only the fruit of
the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that you should not eat. On the day
that you do eat it, you shall die."
A
guilty person wants an accomplice. Satan, who had been an angel and had
disobeyed God, becoming Satan, felt guilty and terribly alone. He could keep
company only with the other Satans, the demons. His nature had been perverted;
he was unable and is unable ever to think about goodness. He always thinks and
desires evil. He always seeks evil for others. He was jealous of man. He saw
that he was so very happy in Paradise in the company of God. So he put his evil
plans into action. As the spirit that he is, he entered the body of a snake.
Then he climbed the tree of "the knowledge of good and evil." He
waited there. Eve came and peered at the tree. Satan intruded upon her
curiosity. He asked her, "Tell me, Eve, is it true that God told you not
to eat the fruit of all of the trees?" Eve answered, "No. He told us
to eat the fruit of all the trees except the fruit of the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil, because if we did we would die." The serpent said,
"You shall not die. God knows that on the day that you eat of that fruit,
your eyes will open and you will become as gods. You will know good and
evil." Eve liked Satan's sweet and slanderous words. She stretched out her
hand. She took a fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. She ate
some, and she also gave some to her mate, Adam. They ate together. Immediately,
"their eyes were opened" and they realized that they were naked
(Genesis 3:1-7).
Because
many people say that the Bible is being metaphorical and that by the fruit of
the knowledge of good and evil the Bible refers to the sexual relationship of
Adam and Eve, we repeat here that this is not true. God had decreed the sexual
relationship of Adam and Eve when he told them to "increase and
multiply." Then what shall we say is the original sin? It is the
denunciation of God. If you will, it is the attempt of man to disenthrone God
and to enthrone himself in His place, to become God in the place of God. It is
not merely that he ate fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
St. John Chrysostom says about Eve, "She was filled with grandiose
imaginings, hoping to be equal to God." Hoping to be equal to God, she
lost her senses.
That
is original sin. And its consequences? A.) Spiritual death. That is, the
separation of man from God, the source of all goodness. B.) Bodily death. That
is, the separation of the body from the soul, the return of the body to the
earth. C.) The shattering and distortion of the "image." That is,
darkness of mind, depravity and corruption of the heart, loss of independence,
loss of free will, and tendency towards evil. Since then "the imagination
of man's heart is evil "(Genesis 8:21). Man constantly thinks of evil. D.)
Guilt. That is, a bad conscience, the shame that made him want to hide from
God. E.) Worst of all, original sin is hereditary. It did not remain only Adam
and Eve's. As life passes from them to all of their descendants, so does
original sin. We all of us participate in original sin because we are all
descended from the same forefather, Adam. This creates a problem for many
people. They ask, Why should we be responsible for the actions of Adam and Eve?
Why should we have to pay for the sins of our parents? they say. Unfortunately,
this is so, because the consequence of original sin is the distortion of the
nature of man. Of course, this is unexplainable and belongs to the realm of
mystery, but we can give one example to make it somewhat better understood. Let
us say that you have a wild orange tree, from which you make a graft. You will
get domesticated oranges, but the root will still be that of the wild orange
tree. To have wild oranges again, you must regraft the tree. This is what
Christ came for and achieved for fallen man, as we shall see in the following
sections.
Our Creator and Maker,
ours is the fault. Adam and Eve, listening to Satan, blasphemed. Out of
egotism, they allowed themselves to be misled. They distorted the
"image." They darkened the beauty of the soul. They weakened the
nature of mankind. Because of them, we became unrecognizable. "The
imagination of our heart is evil." We constantly think of evil. We feel so
guilty. We are so far away from You. We have been grafted to evil. We have lost
our self-control and our free will to do good. We thank You for Your love, and
for sending Your Only-begotten Son to regraft us to goodness. For giving us the
possibility of returning to You. You, Lord "want every man to be saved and
to come to the knowledge of the truth." Do not deprive us of this. Do not
deprive anyone of salvation. We thank You Lord.