Romans 5:12, commentary and pictures

By one man, Adam, disobedience brought sin into the world, and death came by sin and passed upon all men because all have sinned.
Death passed upon all in Adam, so children inherit disobedience and guilt, are born in sin with perverted natures and no natural goodness, and stand under just condemnation, having lost dependent life and access to the tree of life.
Against the one man's offence bringing condemnation stands One Man's righteousness bringing justification of life, for as Adam's disobedience made many sinners, Christ's obedience makes many righteous and gives eternal life through grace.
By bearing the penalty Christ grants the race another trial and probation, purchasing pardon, peace, life and immortality, so that all now live to prove return to allegiance.
Adam's guilt and inherited fallenness do not excuse personal sin or remove responsibility, for through Christ's strength humanity connected with God can obey every requirement, keep the holy law, and gain victory over the bias to evil.

How Sin Entered

By one man, Adam, disobedience brought sin into the world, and death came by sin and passed upon all men because all have sinned. The offence of the one bringing condemnation stands against the righteousness of One bringing justification of life, for as Adam's disobedience made many sinners so Christ's obedience makes many righteous, and as death reigned by sin so grace reigns through righteousness to eternal life by Jesus Christ, that those who believe and repent shall not perish but have everlasting life. Through His strength people may obey, following His example of perfect obedience.

The wickedness filling the world results from Adam refusing to take God's word as supreme, falling under the enemy's temptation, and choosing to act as his own law and independently of God, which brought separation from God, discord and unhappiness. Sin is not measured by the greatness of the act but by variance with God's expressed will even in the least particular, and such variance proves sin reigns in the heart, that there is still communion with the enemy and cherishing of his attributes, that the heart is divided, and that there is virtual denial of the Holy Spirit and rebellion against His law.

Sin originated not with God, who created only good like Himself, but with Satan after his expulsion from heaven when he determined to set up his kingdom on this earth. Satan came disguised as a serpent, misrepresenting God, insinuating doubts of His wisdom and accusing Him of selfishness, and promising that eating the forbidden fruit would make men as gods. Adam was made pure and noble with no tendency to evil and placed in Eden with law around him as a safeguard, yet by listening to Satan's misrepresentation Eve fell under temptation in inquisitiveness and presumption seeking forbidden knowledge, and Adam accepted the fruit from his wife's hand, fell from his high estate, and opened the floodgates of woe upon the world. Their continuing descendants who seek an experience and knowledge God never designed repeat that disobedience and will bring the same result, loss of the Eden home.

All Adam's wants were generously supplied in a pure and undefiled Eden where he began in holiness, connected with God and beloved by God, and only one prohibition was laid upon him concerning the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, with plain warning that eating meant certain death. The prohibition was a small test of obedience and trust and confidence in God, on which happiness depended, and Adam fell when Eve, having eaten herself and felt no immediate harm, offered him the fruit with its supposed advantages. God had power to hold Adam back from touching the forbidden fruit but did not, so man would remain a free moral agent and not a mere machine, and Satan could not be sustained in his charge that God's rule is arbitrary. Hence the transgression has no excuse, and by that one act sin has increased through successive ages as men and women continually do as Adam did. Transgression is disobedience to the commands of God, and had those commands always been obeyed there would have been no sin, whose penalty is always death.

Adam was placed under a test of perfect obedience to God's law not for himself alone but in behalf of all his posterity. If he had stood the trial and preserved allegiance, his obedience would have insured acceptance and favor with God, and he would have been forever established in holiness and happiness with those blessings extending to all descendants. Because he failed and revolted against God's law, all his descendants have become sinners, depraved, with sin also dimming and nearly erasing the law's writing in the human heart. God shut man out from the life-giving tree with an angel and flaming sword so sin must not be immortalized, death remains the result of sin, and immortality can be found only in Christ, proclaimed as the Redeemer to bruise the serpent's head.

The entrance of sin into the world is a mystery too deep for the human mind to explain or fully comprehend. Scripture gives sufficient evidence for this fact from the world's authentic early history, which is to be accepted on God's authority even when it does not explain why or how, and inability to comprehend it is no reason to doubt God's Word. The fall of man is a foundational Christian teaching yet rejected in practice by many who claim to be Christian.

Death Spreading Everywhere

Death passed upon all because all have sinned in Adam, so that his posterity became sinners and death came to all. Children receive from Adam an inheritance of disobedience, of guilt and death. They are born in sin with no natural goodness of their own, sold under sin with perverted natures, and stand under just condemnation. The death thus inherited from Adam is met by life imparted through Christ's righteousness received by faith, for those who have Christ abiding in them have life, even eternal life that shall never become extinct.

Adam lost the life that depended on obedience and access to the tree of life, and having forfeited immortality he could not pass on to descendants what he no longer possessed. Death is the return to dust and the extinction of life, and immortality is available only through Christ and the gospel. Sickness, suffering, pain, sorrow and death were not created by God and were no part of His original design, in which the life of no creature was to be taken. When that design is restored, sickness, suffering and death will be no more.

Adam's transgression began the race's life under sin's curse, with the glory and purity given to humanity lost, innocence driven from Eden and the tree of life, and moral darkness with misery and sickness entering human life. Death in man and in beast came only in consequence of sin, and the whole practice of taking the life of God's creatures to sustain human life, staining the earth with blood with flesh-eating and its pain and death, is the fruit of transgression that would never have been known had Eden innocence been kept and the curse never fallen. The sentence of death can be escaped only through Jesus, who offered His life as ransom and took that sentence upon Himself, so that through His blood and obedience people can receive pardon and be restored to the garden and the tree of life.

Sin corrupted humanity at its source and has continued to spread from mind to mind, with each sin echoing the original sin. The whole earth is tainted, corrupted, stricken with mortal disease and groans under continual transgression, and the curse increases as transgression increases. Its perpetuating keeps a malarious atmosphere that darkens the mind and intellect, makes truth fade, dulls conscience by repetition until sin no longer arrests the transgressor, turns the heart from enthroning God into a place of abominations, and brings one after another under disease, depravity and death. The fall is universal, dimming the fine gold of humanity, defiling the whole earth under its inhabitants, leaving the whole race groaning under accumulated woe, disease, deformity, decrepitude, imbecility and feebleness of mental, moral and physical power, until the earth is prepared for purification by fire. Even flowers, leaves, beasts and nature show death's portion, and continual transgression for over six thousand years has brought sickness, pain and death as its fruit.

Sin marred and nearly obliterated the divine likeness in humanity, weakening physical powers, lessening mental capacity and dimming spiritual vision. Humanity fell through Adam and lost its former estate with perfect holiness and happiness, human powers were weakened and selfishness displaced love, and the widespread ruin included loss of the physical and moral likeness to God that Adam had in Eden. That transgression brought loss of the image of God, debasement by sin and a bias to evil, yet God did not give human beings a new order of energies after the fall nor implant sinful propensities, but began His work of conversion at once so that through obedience and faith men might regain the lost image, have warped senses and perverted faculties restored, and gain victory over the bias to evil. Apart from that grace man is left unable to distinguish right from wrong or to meet righteousness by human strength, requiring thorough transformation of soul, body and spirit to recover what was lost.

Through the fall humanity was cut off from communion with God and face-to-face presence and brought under misery, wrath, corruption and condemnation. Adam's choice to act independently of God brought separation, discord and unhappiness, and his fall placed humanity under Satan's claimed dominion and control, under the power of the prince of darkness, sold to the enemy. All are dead in Adam, unable of themselves to do good or redeem themselves, lifted up in pride apart from the Source of strength, which makes human pardons worthless and calls for the world's Redeemer to come over the same ground where Adam fell.

The race deteriorated under sin and death, for Adam's disobedience entailed sin upon all his posterity. Seth, like Cain, inherited Adam's sinful nature and was born in sin, honoring God and doing right only through grace and faithful instruction, and his posterity was born with an inherited tendency to disobey. The fall is repeated from generation to generation as indulgence of appetite and passion, luxurious living and use of wine corrupt the blood, inflame the passions and weaken vital force, and parents transmit inflamed and corrupted blood, disease, licentious inclinations, evil tendencies, enfeebled intellects and polluted morals as an inheritance of woe from father to son, with the tendency more swiftly downward. All alike go down into the grave because of Adam's sin, but through the plan of salvation all will be brought forth from their graves. Those who have not received pardon will then suffer the penalty for their own sins.

Christ Undoing Adam

Against one man's offense bringing condemnation stands One Man's righteousness bringing justification of life, for Adam's disobedience made many sinners while Christ's obedience makes many righteous and gives eternal life through grace, and this reign of sin and death is overcome by grace through righteousness in Jesus Christ. While enemies are reconciled to God by the death of His Son, being reconciled they shall be saved by His life, joying in God through Jesus Christ by whom the atonement is received. Through His strength people may obey, following His example of perfect obedience, and faith in Him also produces zeal for good works, not freedom to continue in sin.

Adam's fall in Eden is met by Christ in Gethsemane drinking the bitter cup of suffering and death, that whoever believes in Him may not perish but have everlasting life. Adam's disobedience caused all to sin, and the death of the Son of God saves all who repent and receive Christ as personal Saviour and Redeemer, giving life to the believer, while upon those who refuse His sacrifice the sentence of eternal death is passed. Through Jesus, the promised Redeemer, come life and immortality to light, and only Christ's death on the cross of Calvary can save human beings from perishing, a redemption secured at infinite sacrifice that calls for diligent, earnest, faithful striving to cease from sin and through Christ become partakers of the divine nature having escaped the corruption in the world through lust. That death sentence is answered by Christ standing in man's place between the living and the dead to bear the punishment, grant another trial, and purchase pardon, peace, life and immortality for sinners.

Humanity lost through Adam's transgression is restored only through Christ, humanity's only hope of restoration to God's favor. Because sin had separated people from God, Christ alone, being sinless, could make an acceptable atonement, and His suffering for the world's sins corresponded to the greatness of His purity and of the offense. The whole family of Adam is lost and faces death, with no escape for the offender apart from the plan of salvation: Jesus offers His life as a ransom, takes the sentence of death, and through His blood and obedience to God's law makes pardon and favor with God possible. Christ gave Himself as a ransom for the world, taking human nature while remaining without sin; as both priest and offering, He could voluntarily lay down His life and take it up again, and His atonement fulfilled the conditions for the free gift of grace and removed every barrier to God's mercy, peace, and love for sinners.

Christ, His divinity clothed in humanity, entered the world to pass over the same ground where Adam fell, to bear the test Adam failed to endure, and to be tested and tried as all human beings are tested and tried. In the long fast in the wilderness He contended single-handed with Satan where man's salvation was at stake, meeting Satan coming as an angel of light to induce Him if possible to commit sin and place the race entirely under the dominion of evil, yet remaining victorious and defeating Satan. By overcoming every temptation of Satan He redeemed Adam's disgraceful failure and fall, facing the temptations Adam failed to overcome and winning the victory. He took human nature with the infirmities of fallen humanity and stood in Adam's place, facing Satan's temptations on the race's behalf and overcoming where Adam had failed, enduring every human test in dependence on God without yielding on one point. To do this the Son of God clothed His divinity with humanity and took upon Himself sinful, fallen human nature in order to associate with fallen humanity, though He Himself was ever pure and undefiled with no guile or sinfulness, manifesting the character of God in a life of pure, disinterested benevolence.

The first Adam was a free moral agent who abused his freedom, allowed appetite to overcome him, and by disobedience lost his innocence and by his own free will became a sinner, separating himself from the favor of God. The second Adam, Christ, was also a free moral agent held responsible for His conduct, placed in a much less favorable situation for leading a sinless life, surrounded by intensely subtle and misleading influences in the midst of sinners, amid degenerate humanity after humanity had been weakened by generations of sin. Adam was tempted while still possessing perfect strength and living in Eden, yet he believed Satan's lie; Christ faced Satan after taking on the infirmities of degenerate humanity in order to rescue people from degradation. Though He took human nature and was tempted as humans are, He had no evil propensity and never yielded to temptation, but resisted every temptation to sin and maintained His innocence, remaining ever sinless, taking the nature of man in its fallen condition without taking the taint of sin. As the second Adam He must pass over the ground where Adam fell, meet the wily foe who caused Adam and Eve's fall, be tempted in all points as man will be tempted, and overcome every temptation in behalf of man.

The guilt of humanity in every age rested on Christ as their substitute and surety, and Christ was counted a transgressor, bore sin and its judicial punishment, and endured the curse of the law so that He could redeem humanity from death and open the way to immortal life. He undertook to redeem people from that curse by becoming their substitute and surety, bearing their guilt and the wrath due for their disobedience. In Gethsemane the destiny of that lost world hung in the balance as the sins of the whole apostate world were laid upon Christ, all innocent and undeserving, as man's substitute and surety to give man another trial and probation. Though He could have refused the awful cup of suffering, the Father's wrath against transgression, wiped the blood drops from His brow, cast off the guilt, let wilful transgressors receive the penalty, and gone back to the Father, He chose to drink the cup and become the propitiation of the race. Jesus Christ as the propitiation for sins stood in Adam's place and took the penalty of his sin upon Himself, where an angel could not avail to satisfy justice.

By bearing the penalty Christ grants the race another trial and probation with postponed arraignment, purchasing pardon, peace, life and immortality and saving from immediate death, so that all now live on probation to prove return to allegiance. That second trial is due wholly to Christ, who redeemed Adam's disgraceful failure and fall by withstanding every temptation of the wily foe. The sacrifice of the Son of God provides redemption and grants humanity a second probation, opening a way of escape from sin's bondage for all who accept it, since humanity cannot overcome sin by its own strength. Through humble, firm obedience, Christ provided another trial and a way for humanity to overcome Adam's failure and regain lost Eden, securing for him another trial and a probation with the privileges and opportunities of a free man to exercise his God-given power of choice, postponing the day of arraignment so he is bound over to appear at the bar of God in the judgment.

Christ recovers what Adam lost, including forfeited dominion, pays sin's penalty to ransom from the destroyer, and restores the moral image of God in man to reshape character. Humanity fell through Adam and lost its former estate and the divine image; through Christ, people may recover what was lost, a work requiring thorough transformation of soul, body, and spirit. Christ began His work of conversion as soon as man transgressed so that through obedience to the law of God and faith in Christ men might regain the lost image of God, and through cultivation of righteous principles and in and through grace bestowed by heaven man may gain the victory over the bias to evil, have the warped senses and perverted faculties restored, have words, thoughts, and energies purified, form a new character, and overcome the debasement of sin. Thereby He places the race on vantage ground with God with all the treasures of heaven at its disposal and every possible advantage to withstand temptation, so there is no excuse for sin, and human nature is able through faith to grasp the divine nature and overcome as He overcame. Through redemption purchased by Christ's blood, people may again receive life from the tree of life, and the earth, now a desert of sin, will become as Eden rejoicing and blossoming as the rose as the eternal home of the redeemed freed from sin.

Law Grace and Life

Romans 5:12 shows that the disobedience of Adam and Eve brought wrath, wretchedness, misery and death upon the whole race and cut humanity off from communion with God, yet the law of God remains unchanged and retains all its claims. That law is the foundation of His government in heaven and on earth, and not one precept of it could be abrogated or changed to meet man in his fallen condition. Even the life of an angel could not be accepted as a sacrifice for its transgression, but the Son of God who created man could make atonement for him. By his transgression Adam forfeited all right to heaven and lost Eden, revealing both human separation from God and the justice of God. Christ clothed His divinity with humanity to reconcile humanity to the Father and bring people back to His law, not to destroy the law but to honor it and give dignity to it, opening His heart to suffer for transgression.

The penalty for that transgression had to be met, so the Son of God stepped in and pledged His own life as the penalty to give man another trial. That provision did not abolish God's law to give unconditional pardon, for the Father does not put benevolence above justice nor set aside the principles of righteousness, since to do so would exalt the sinner in impenitence and encourage transgression instead of abating it. His death does not abolish the law or permit continued transgression; it makes it possible for people to return to loyalty and keep the commandments. Death is the penalty for transgression of God's law, and if there had been no sin there would have been no death. By Adam's fall sin and its penalty entered and passed upon the whole race, for all have violated God's law and come under bondage to the law, sentenced to suffer death.

Christ as propitiation stood in Adam's place and took the penalty of his sin upon Himself, bearing that penalty as the sinner's substitute, which shows both God's love for sinners and the unchanging claims of His law. Over the same ground on which Adam stumbled He lived a life of perfect obedience and thereby redeemed man from the penalty of Adam's fall. Bearing the penalty Himself, He gives the sinner another chance, a second trial, securing another probation with the privileges and opportunities of a free man to exercise God-given power of choice, postponing the day of arraignment so man is bound over to appear at the bar of God in the judgment. He bears man's past transgressions and by imparting His own righteousness makes it possible for man to keep God's holy law, opening a way to be reinstated in God's favor. His blood and the debt He paid for past transgressions as the accepted sacrifice avail only for those who return to allegiance and obey the law they have violated, coming to God through Christ by keeping the commandments, for Christ never becomes a party to sin and did not do everything so that humans need do nothing.

Adam lost the life that depended on obedience and access to the tree of life, so he could not pass on immortality he no longer possessed. Death is return to dust and extinction of life, and immortality is available only through Christ and the gospel, through Jesus the fountain of life. The tree of life had power to sustain life and immortality and was an antidote to death, but access to it was removed after sin entered lest eating from it perpetuate sin and make men immortal sinners. Had Adam obeyed there would have been no death of man or beast, but his eating from the forbidden tree brought death, suffering and a curse upon the earth with a dark future for humanity. Through redemption purchased by Christ's blood people may again receive life from the tree, with restored eating of it in Paradise. Adam and Eve repented, believed God's promise, and were saved from utter ruin through Christ who bore human guilt and offered pardon, and at His baptism heaven was opened to humanity so that heaven and earth were united again.

The fall called for the grace of God to appear in behalf of sinners, and without the fall humans would never have learned the meaning of grace. Grace is an attribute shown to undeserving human beings who have sinned, not given to sinless angels who do His service and are obedient to all His commands, who know nothing of grace because they have never sinned and never needed it. Grace was not sought by man but was sent in search of man, and God rejoices to bestow it on everyone who hungers for it, not because worthy but because utterly unworthy, so that human need itself is the qualification that gives assurance of receiving the gift. God ordained sacrificial offerings to impress upon the fallen race the solemn truth that Adam's transgression caused death, as a perpetual reminder and penitential acknowledgment of sin and confession of faith in the promised Redeemer. That transgression could be expiated only by the death of God's dear Son, the spotless Lamb given as a ransom to save the guilty, whose death alone could atone for sin and provide hope.

Adam's guilt was made vivid when he offered an innocent victim, for its death showed him the consequence of sin which would not have occurred had he remained faithful, and the first sacrifice made vivid that because he had disobeyed death came to humanity and the animals. The victim pointed forward to the Son of God, and the offerings and priesthood represented Christ's mediation by which communication cut off by transgression was opened so the guilty sinner has access to God, but they could not save anyone apart from Christ. All are dead in Adam under death, corruption and condemnation, and this condition makes human pardons worthless. The whole family shares in the sin that entered through Adam's fall, leaving no human being able to atone for another, so that redemption through Christ is the only answer.

Warning and Overcoming

Adam's guilt and the fallen condition with its natural defects and bias to evil do not excuse anyone's personal sin or remove personal responsibility for acting out those tendencies. The inheritance from Adam gives no one an excuse for transgressing God's law, and God is not responsible for anyone's sinful actions. A perfect sacrifice has been made on Calvary and a whole Saviour given, with sufficient grace and power to work away from natural defects and tendencies, resist them, advance in the divine life, and recover God's moral image. To plead inability and blame inherited nature is to claim that sacrifice was imperfect and to cast reproach upon God.

Adam's disobedience entailed sin upon all posterity, so the race deteriorated under sin and death, yet redemption was given in God's only begotten Son. Christ took human nature and passed over the same ground where Adam fell, to be tested as all are tested, meeting Satan coming as an angel of light seeking if possible to induce Him to sin and place the race entirely under evil's dominion, yet He remained victorious and defeated Satan. That victory placed the race on vantage ground with God, with all heaven's treasures at its disposal and every advantage to withstand temptation, so there is no excuse for sin. The human family is therefore required to follow Christ's example when tested, perfecting faultless characters of steadfast purity and righteousness and leaving that example to children and children's children, which would improve rather than deteriorate the race until the earth, now a desert of sin, becomes as Eden rejoicing and blossoming as the rose. Every person now decides whether to follow the first Adam in yielding to temptation or to stand firm and resist as Christ did, choosing Satan or Christ as master, becoming a co-worker with Christ, and through obedience winning the home He has gone to prepare, humbling self to be lifted up as a son or daughter of God with eternal life.

Adam yielded to a small temptation in Eden and fell from integrity, and by that fall the floodgates of woe and of sin were opened upon the world. Man was made in God's image, richly endowed with reason and with knowledge of God and of duty, but fell by listening to the deceptive talk of Satan, a richly endowed being fallen from high and holy estate by rebellion, and by listening the holy pair gained a knowledge of transgression God never designed them to have. That sin called for the only begotten Son to pledge His own life to restore God's moral image in man, and men are indebted to Jesus Christ for the probation now enjoyed. Where Adam fell Christ overcame the three leading temptations besetting man, including appetite, by living by every word of God and refusing to tempt God or to worship Satan. It was divinity combined with humanity that enabled Christ to overcome alone, and that victory makes it possible for every son and daughter of Adam to be safe and come off more than conquerors by taking hold of the crucified and risen Saviour, for the same divine power given to Christ is given to them so none need go into iniquity.

Sin entered by one man through disobeying Jehovah's expressed law, leaving the race under Satan's claimed control and giving occasion for Satan to declare that no man after Adam could keep God's law. Christ answered by laying aside royal robe and crown to clothe humanity with divinity, becoming a babe in Bethlehem to give His life for salvation and draw men away from Adam's example. Taking human nature as man's Elder Brother, with intense interest in human beings and keen feeling of sin's sinfulness and shame, He passed over the same ground where Adam stumbled, stood against Satan's temptations and came off conqueror, proving that human beings through God's power can live sinless lives. Through His strength people may obey, following His example of perfect obedience, learning obedience in His nature during the probation and trial now granted. Redeemed youth thus placed on vantage ground where through obedience they can win back what Adam lost are to reach God's standard, resist Satan, glorify God in body and spirit which are His, and live thankful with God's peace dwelling in their hearts.

Adam as a free moral agent freely yielded to appetite, lost innocence, became a sinner, and separated himself from God's favor, while Christ as second Adam and free moral agent amid intense temptation resisted and remained innocent. Death in man and beast came only in consequence of sin, for in creation the life of no creature was to be taken; the whole practice of taking creatures' lives to sustain human life is the fruit of transgression, and had Eden innocence been kept and the curse never fallen, earth would never have been stained with blood nor flesh-eating with its pain and death ever known. By Adam's fall sin and death passed upon all, so the race groans under accumulated woe, disease, deformity, decrepitude, imbecility, and feebleness of mental, moral, and physical power, repeated generation to generation as indulgence of appetite and passion, luxurious living, and use of wine corrupt the blood, inflame passions, weaken vital force, and transmit inflamed blood, disease, licentious inclinations, evil tendencies, enfeebled intellects, and polluted morals as an inheritance of woe ever more swiftly downward. Continual transgression for over six thousand years has brought sickness, pain, and death as its fruit, the controlling power of appetite will prove the ruin of thousands, and as the close of time nears Satan's temptations to indulge appetite will be more powerful and harder to resist, while conquering appetite gives moral power to gain victory over every other temptation and slavery to appetite causes failure to perfect Christian character.

The sin of listening to the enemy's specious temptations brought guilt and sorrow upon the world and led the Son of God to leave Heaven's royal courts, take humble place on earth, suffer insult, rejection, and crucifixion by those He came to bless, and be sacrificed to save man from that crime's penalty. Their example warns against any disobedience of the divine law, including partial observance of the Sabbath, showing the Lord means what He says, that man cannot set aside His commands with impunity, and showing what infinite expense attended disobedience in Eden. Adam's weak faith and obedience gave to the world the sin Satan introduced, opening floodgates of woe, cursing earth with moral defilement, and leading to widespread violence and prevailing iniquity that brought God's judgment in the flood destroying all but one family, bearing testimony to all who shall live of sin's result. In contrast faith and obedience now must be just as firm as Adam's was weak, keeping God's commandments from hearts and lives controlled by love to God and fellow men and sustaining His great memorial, the creation Sabbath defining the true and living God, regardless of inconvenience and trial.

Since sin entered men have served self, forgetting God, breaking His commandments, and taking satisfaction in human progress, art, science, and inventions, so that railways, telegraphs, and cables have not brought the fallen world nearer the higher world. The first parents' disloyalty brought consequences humanity still faces, making labor for God increasingly trying until earth's history closes. Obedience brings men back into harmony with heavenly intelligences through whole-hearted service, self-denial, and travel on the narrow way that leads through self-denial's gate into God's city, while self-serving indulgence travels the broad road to death.

One sin brought death, woe, and loss of Eden, and even one wrong act can have far-reaching results and serve as warning to others. Adam's fall was not the last but was followed by further falls as people ignored his example and warning, violated God's law, indulged appetite and passion, grieved yet repeated the sin begun with Adam, and grew increasingly bold in disobedience. That succession of falls with worsening sin and resulting physical and moral harm comes through human disregard of God's law, not by God's special providence.