To Christians: How comes God punish mankind for the sin of one man.?

Question

Adam sinned and thus became imperfect. Why did God create us imperfect before we commit any sin?

Answer 1

The early Christians could not read well, esp the part of the OT where it says a son will not be punished for his fathers sins..

Answer 2

Genesis says that the world, so far as adam and eve were concerned or knew, was perfect before they ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Once this knowledge was released into the stream of mankind (if you will) it was impossible to go back to the perfect balance that existed before their transgression (sin). We all know how hard life - after the sin of Adam and Eve - can be; even to the point of seeming like a punishment, but it is not so simple.

For the sake of analogy, say you really love to go to a certain beach. The beach is beautiful and the water always seems cool and refreshing. Then one day you come across an article in the newspaper that says thousands of endangered plants and animals were uprooted and killed in order to make this beach accessible for people. You would never be able to visit that beach in the same way again. This is not an exact analogy, but nonetheless makes the point. The perfect harmony of Eden was only possible so long as Adam and Eve were theselves perfect. To be perfect as mortals meant having no concept of greed, lust, envy, selfishness, pride etc. According to the cosomolgy these things did exist (e.g. they were reasons Satan turned against God), but God protected Adam and Eve from them. But he also gave Adam and Eve free will and thus could not keep this reality completely from them. If God had withheld the full spectrum of reality (which includes good and evil) Adam and Eve would have been more like robots or dolls in a doll house than Humans with free will. God loves humans too much to not give them the freedom of choice. He wants us to love him, and even gives us the grace to be able to, but he does not force us. God made us men and women, not wind-up dolls. BTW - if I'm not mistaken this creation story is essentially the same in all three post-Abrahamic religious traditions (i.e. Chritianity, Judaism, Islam).

Answer 3

Yeah, I know it seems so harsh at times. The thing is when Adam sinned it truly infected the human race. The sin nature was passed from one generation to the next right in the blood. That is why Christ was not conceived by a human father, but by the Holy Spirit. The sin of Adam and Eve affected us in so many ways and even the animals, the weather everything about our world changed.

Answer 4

Firstly, your usage of the word "perfect" and "imperfect" is most wrong when applied to Adam or God's creation.

Second, Adam was created without sin, in a pure state. He was considered perfect only in the sense that he was made in the way God wanted. His perfection is not the same as God's perfection. God is perfect in His being. Adam was perfect insofar as he was created as God intended.

Third, when Adam sinned, he did not fall from perfection (your kind of thinking). Rather he fell from a morally pure state to a sinful state. His nature becomes corrupted by sin. Not only that, death entered the world.

Fourth, we are not punished for what Adam did. Our own sins are enough to consign us to hell fire without blaming Adam, and in your case, God. Rather our situation is such that we are in Adam, so in Adam we also die. But we can be in Christ, so that in Christ we shall live. So are you in Adam or in Christ?

Answer 5

The same way that we can all be forgiven by the sacrifice of innocent blood. Jesus died on the Cross and rose the 3 days later to redeem what was taken from us in the Garden of Eden. It's all there in the Bible. It is worth studying out!!
Not to be nit-picky, but you contradicted yourself in your question.
Adam was given free will. God gives us the choice to want to be with Him. Adam made a bad choice and suffered the consequences while breaking God's heart in the process. God has always provided a way out of sin. In the New Testament God comes to us as the man Jesus. Check out the virgin birth. He walked among us, teaching, healing, casting out demons. And when the time was right, He sacrificed the flesh that day on the Cross, using the blood to purchase His Church so that we can become the way that we were in the Garden. Study Acts 2:38. That is what we must do to be saved. Believing isn't enough. The devils also believe and they can never be forgiven.

Answer 6

You are a descendent of Adam when you are born into this world.

You CAN also be a descendent of Jesus and have NO CONDEMNATION for the sin of Adam.

1 Cor 15:22, 45-49
22 For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.

45 So it is written: "The first man Adam became a living being"; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. 46 The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. 47 The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven. 48 As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the man from heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. 49 And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven.
(from New International Version)


Rom 8:1-2
8:1 Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,
(from New International Version)

THOSE WHO TRUST CHRIST AVOID ALL PUNISHMENTS.

Answer 7

Eating the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil is the first independent act by the human being in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve cannot be said to have been fully aware of the extent of their transgression because they did not yet have knowledge of good and evil. They do, however, know that God has told them explicitly not to eat of that tree. In that respect, they are like children, who may understand that certain behavior is expected but do not fully understand why.

Like any concerned parent, God wants his children to learn and accept responsibility for their actions, however painful it may be. Indeed, God has lovingly provided all the arrangements in the garden - a secure life, the edict against one tree -but also the capacity for free choice that will cause Adam and Eve to mature. He knows perfectly well where the humans are in the garden, but he asks his question, “Where are you?” to draw the story out of them and begin the process of moral development.

God becomes angry not so much at the act of disobedience but at Adams and Eve’s avoidance of responsibility. Significantly, the word SIN is not introduced into the Bible until later when Cain murders his brother, Abel. It seems that Adam and Eve’s worst transgression is their scapegoat, and the couples moral life will finally begin when they can acknowledge having done wrong.

Eve and Adam leave their fathers protective abode, as children must. God knows it is time for them to face life as adults in an imperfect world. The heart broken parent appoints a guard at the garden’s gate to prevent Eve and Adam from regressing to a childhood devoid of adult responsibilities but also to prevent himself from softening and allowing them to return.

Answer 8

This is what the Catechism of the Catholic Church says:

404 How did the sin of Adam become the sin of all his descendants? The whole human race is in Adam "as one body of one man".By this "unity of the human race" all men are implicated in Adam's sin, as all are implicated in Christ's justice. Still, the transmission of original sin is a mystery that we cannot fully understand. But we do know by Revelation that Adam had received original holiness and justice not for himself alone, but for all human nature. By yielding to the tempter, Adam and Eve committed a personal sin, but this sin affected the human nature that they would then transmit in a fallen state. It is a sin which will be transmitted by propagation to all mankind, that is, by the transmission of a human nature deprived of original holiness and justice. And that is why original sin is called "sin" only in an analogical sense: it is a sin "contracted" and not "committed" - a state and not an act.

Answer 9

God simply gave us a choice, and we chose and choose the wrong one. We ALL sinned in Adam. As God is 1 in essence, so is humanity. If we were Eve, we wouldve done the same thing because for some odd reason the human heart tends to gravitate toward darkness and away from God. Fortunately, he sent Jesus and we have a way we can be back in his presence!

Answer 10

Because we carry the "SIN" gene sort of speak. Every sin that could be committed resides in us in seed form kind of. If we exercise that "sin" by action then that sin gets stronger and more difficult to resist the next time we are tempted by the sin. Some people come to love their sins so much that they will find every reason in the world to hang on to them and not give them to Jesus so he can put them to death on the cross which is what baptism does.