Original Sin

The key to the last distinction, Mustafa, has to do with the difference between being personally accountable for another's actions and having to pay the consequences of another's actions.

If the waitress spills coffee on you as you're on your way to an job interview, you're certainly not personally accountable for her actions, but the reality is that you may still have to pay the consequences of those actions. I don't believe that God condemns me, you or anyone else to hell because of Adam's sin. But Adam's sin did create consequences for all of us in that the perfect fellowship we were created to have with God has been broken, and on our own we are unable to repair it. As a consequence of Adam having broken that perfect world, we live in a now fallen world.

When my wife and I got married, my aunt made us a handmade quilt, the type of thing that becomes a family heirloom. It was a treasured possession. One we chose not to mount on a wall for display purpose but actually used. One day my wife had it with her in the car when she got stuck on a mud road. She had always heard that when you got stuck in the mud put something under the wheels to give you traction. Believe it or not she choose to do that with the quilt. Needless to say she ruined the quilt (nor did she get herself out of the mud with it). We still have it. We were able to wash most of the mud out of it. But there are still stains. And there are also a few rips in the outer layer. I suppose it could still be passed on to our kids as a family heirloom. But it is a stained and ruined heirloom that my kids will inherit. Not as a result of what they did. Not something they will be held accountable for. But something they will nonetheless have to pay the price for as a consequence of their mother's actions.

So, I don't dispute that this is a spiritual issue. The separation from God that Adam and Eve experienced did indeed damage them and their soul. And they in turn continued to damage the world in which they lived and raised their family, who likewise were unable to erase the stain either. And eventually the stain of that fallenness rubs off on us. Have you ever met a person who never sinned, who always submitted, who never sought their own way and always sought to know and follow God's way? I have not. Our world can never go back to being like that which Adam and Eve were graced with, and we individually can never live without that stain they made in our lives, not in our own power anyway, not apart from God acting to restore us to the relationship he intended for us to have with him. For apart from the work and grace of God in our lives we always fall just a little bit short of his true will that he has for us. But that leads us to another conversation, not the subject of this thread.