1. Our first parents, being seduced by the subtlety and temptation of Satan, sinned in eating the forbidden fruit. God was pleased, according to his wise and holy counsel, to permit this sin of theirs, having planned to use it to his own glory.
2. By this sin they fell from their original righteousness and communion with God, and so became dead in sin, and wholly defiled in all the parts and abilities of soul and body. (WCF 6.1-2)
Over the past several months, we have been working our way through the Westminster Confession of Faith. So far we have looked at Holy Scripture (WCF 1), The Trinity (WCF 2), God’s Eternal Decree (WCF 3), Creation (WCF 4) and Providence (WCF 5). Over the next few weeks - in WCF 6 - we will be exploring humanity, sin and punishment, which as we’ll see will show us just how hopeless we are but how gracious and awesome our God is.
And that’s where this chapter begins, at the very beginning with “our first parents” Adam and Eve. You see after God had created the “heavens and the earth” (Gen 1:1 c.f. Gen 1) He then created man in His own image (Gen 1:26a, 2:7) to essentially imitate Him. Adam and Eve were to “have dominion” over the animal kingdom and plant life (Gen 1:26, 29, 2:18-20a) and they were to also create other humans (Gen 1:28a, 2:21, 24). Now this is the interesting thing, our first parents were created and they were commissioned and worked with the law firmly in their hearts, being able to obey the commands of God flawlessly, yet (as the confession states here) they “being seduced by the subtlety and temptation of Satan, sinned in eating the forbidden fruit” (Gen 2:15-17, 3:1-6 c.f Rom 5:12-21).
Now as we’ve seen over the past few months, God is in total and utter control of all that there is (WCF 5), and so how on earth was Satan able to get into the garden? (Gen 3:1-5 c.f. Rev 12:9, 20:2), well the confession states it clearly, “God was pleased, according to his wise and holy counsel, to permit this sin of theirs, having planned to use it to his own glory.” This shouldn’t take us by surprise right? Because not only is God providentially in total control, but He also has decreed all that will come to pass (WCF 3), thus it might not make sense to us here and now, but Paul’s comments might be helpful, ‘God bound all men over to disobedience, so that he may have mercy on them all’ (Rom 11:32). It’s as British theologian Chad Van Dixhoorn once observed, “it is perhaps the first irony, and arguably the greatest irony in history, that the creator planned to use Satan’s supposed subtlety to display ‘the depths of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God’ (Rom 11:33).
And this is where we come to where we first started, this part of the confession will show us just how hopeless we are and that’s because our first parents sin really and truly had an effect on us all. “By this sin they fell from their original righteousness and communion with God”. What is the confession summing up here? Well that essentially because communion was broken between creator and creation, between God and His people, there was no longer a relationship that we could mend ourselves, no because of our first parents rebellion sin had entered the human race and “so (we all) became dead in sin” (Rom 5:21-21). That’s the result of our first parents rebellion, that’s our inheritance of their labor, we are all born “wholly defiled in all the parts and abilities of soul and body.”
This is why Jesus needed to come, this is why we needed a new Adam live and labor under the law of God and bring back that which was lost. And that is something Jesus did flawlessly. He was born of supernatural means (Matt 1:18-25), born under the law (Gal 4:4-5), he never once sinned (Heb 4:15) and His resurrection justifies anyone who puts faith in Him (Rom 4:25 c.f. 1 Tim 1:15-16). The fall was decreed and providentially seen to, but so was redemption and salvation in Christ and all for the glory of God