Christians answer please?

Question

Christians, how come in the Bible it says that because Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, they were punished for it. But in Deuteronomy 24: 16 it says "Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their father; each is to die for his own sin". So why does God punish Adam and Eve's children for their sin, when it later says that children shall not be punished for their parents sins.

Justahh, I am an atheist. I was asking this question to see what kind of crazy excuses Christians would make.

Answer 1

God Bless your mischevious soul...

The reason for the Deuteronomy passage was that prior to that, whole families could be stoned for the sin of one person in the family.

It's not enough to simply read the Bible, or to pull quotes out of context. You have to understand the context and the audience to whom the scripture was written...

Answer 2

Thank you for bringing up this question. It's a good question and deserves a good answer. I'm not a biblical scholar myself, but I searched online and found several editorials that contain explanation that might be of interest to you (and fit with my understanding of the bible; click on the source link to read more).

My own interpretation is that God warned Adam and Eve about what would happen if they ate the forbidden fruit, so they received the consequences God had forewarned. It wasn't a punishment. The first punishment happened after Cain killed Abel and lied about it (2).

We are not being unjustly punished for Adam and Even's original sin though, rather they set a legal precedent for what would happen when we sin (1). For example, we all complain about the hefty monetary fine when we get caught speeding, but that number was set once it became common and necessary. Therefore, as Deuteronomy says, each is to die for his own sin. But God didn't send us to a dead end though; He still provided a way out.

Answer 3

Genesis does NOT say that the children of Adam and Eve were punished for their parents' sin. By our first parents, sin came into the world, so the world was no longer a perfect place. We are NOT all held guilty of the sin of Adam and Eve, but we enter a world in which we will necessarily sin, as part of being human, and then bear the responsibility for our sin.

The Deuteronomy quote is from a section of governmental law of the day, and if you compare it with other nations of the time, it is a very modern and advanced piece of legislation. It has nothing to do with moral responsibility.

So, where is the inconsistency you believe you have found?

But, praise be to God for a much greater inconsistency, that instead of leaving us in our sin, He made His perfect Son bear that burden for us, so that we might be freed from the weight and punishment of sin forever.

Answer 4

When Adam and Eve sinned they did not die , nor were they put to death.

Their death was two part, first they died a spiritual death, they were now separated from perfect communion with God. They no longer walked with God in the cool of the evening.

Second, they would now at some point get old and die a physical death. Prior to this, they did not age as we do, nor were they going to die a physical death.

Now, in Deuteronomy, it is speaking of the act of putting a human to death for a sin against the laws of Moses. It was stating that you could not substitute a father for a child , nor vise versa, nor put both of them to death for the sin of breaking the laws of moses.

Putting this in modern day terms. A child goes to Prison for drug possession. I as a mother or father cannot take my childs place. My child get the death penalty for a crime, I cannot take his or her place.

My father gets a prison sentance of 60 years, He dies after serving only 30 of them, my son does not have to go to prison and serve the rest of the 30 years of the sentence.

This is what the verses are speaking about, and we should be glad that it is in there, because there have been cultures that have practiced this, mostly in debtors prison situations.

Answer 5

What they got from the tree of knowledge was the seed of sin, and it became part of Adam and Eve's lives. Leviticus 17:11 tells us that life is in the blood. Blood is contributed by the male upon conception, and with that goes also the seed of sin, or sin nature.

It is not a punishment that God placed on their children, but a natural act that placed God in a predicament. He now needed to redeem man kind.

Hence, Jesus

Answer 6

You are taking the Bible as a judicial fact and not the literary fact that it is......

Yes, God punished Adam and Eve, but since has made sins only familial, or generational,......but what you are refering to means that children who sin, won't make their parents liable for them......Read the chapters that precede and follow what you quoted.....

You are reading some heavy Old Testament things, so helping you a pastor should, or some other friend. They were establishing the law for Israel at the time that it was written.....

Answer 7

Hello,

Many of the Christian sects are divided on this issue of original sin. I never really bought into it. It is not direct from the bible but an exercise in theolgy by St Augustine who lived in 530AD. Though I disagree with the pricnciple itself, this scholar was a very brilliant mind and that teaching has been incorporated into Christianity for the last 15 centuries; in short a lot of people bought it.

To go into it all would take pages and hours but I see the good old Wikipedia has an interesting article worth reading.

Answer 8

The Bible teaches that when Adam and Eve sinned that God's curse came on this world. It also teaches that Adam was the representative of all humanity. It has nothing to do with parentage. It has to do with the leader of the human race bringing sin and death into the world.

Answer 9

Because of the loop. They didn't choose God and the children do not choose God either. We are punished for our own sins, but some sins indirectly effect the children. Aids for example, kills the parent and leaves the kids without a parent. They aren't being punished but it is a NATURAL consequence and SIN that enters the whole world is a natural consequence. Just look at the animals they die because of the natural consequences.

Answer 10

Exodus 34:6-7 (NIV) And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, "The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation."

But what does this Old Covenant "generational curse" stuff mean in the practice of a life of faith NOW? What many believers do not know is that through the work of Christ on the cross, we have another option available. This freedom in Messiah was even prophesied in the Old Covenant. What is true must still be believed and actualized by us in practice, so we need to "hear" the word of the Lord and then enter into the "rest" that God has promised.

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Answer 11

The children of Adam and Eve was not punished for their parents sin. Adam and Eve was thrown out of Eden for disobeying God and there for they where punished for their sin. The Adam and Eve had children and when they sinned God punished them and so on and so on and so on. If we sin, we face the consequences.