There Is No Firewall

Because one person disobeyed God, many became sinners. But because one other person obeyed God, many will be made righteous.   Romans 5:19

If the story of Adam and Eve were just an ancient story, it wouldn’t be worth our time, but what happened in the Garden has direct consequences for your life and mine. Human beings are not like pebbles on a beach; we’re like leaves on a tree.

If the root of a tree is diseased, then the disease will spread to every part of the tree. Adam’s sin affected all who came from him. The disease flows from the root, and the blight of sin appears on every leaf of the human tree.

When sin entered the world, God announced that there would be an ongoing battle (see Genesis 3:15). In every generation, men and women would try to rise above the power of evil, but they would never be wholly free from its power. That’s why the apostle Paul said, “Everyone dies because we all belong to Adam” (1 Corinthians 15:22). Through Adam’s sin, a virus has entered into the human network, and there is no firewall.

But the New Testament makes it clear that just as we are all descended from Adam and in that way networked to him, so it is possible, by faith, for men and women to be networked to Christ—or as the Bible puts it, “joined with Christ” (Romans 6:3).

Just as the consequences of Adam’s failure in the face of temptation flow to us through our union with him, so the consequences of Christ’s triumph over temptation will flow to us through our union with him.

Paul called Christ “the second man” (1 Corinthians 15:47). The first man sinned in the Garden, and the result was the condemnation of the whole human race. Years of human history, recorded in the Old Testament, demonstrated conclusively that none of Adam’s descendants were able to overcome the power of sin.

But God did not leave us in that place. The Son of God took on our human flesh and became another Adam. This “second man” confronted our enemy, and just as the first Adam’s failure spelled death for everyone in his family, so the last Adam’s triumph spells life for everyone in his family.

For further reading, see Romans 5