Genesis 3:1-24

Genesis 3

Consider: (1) some of the consequences, and (2) some of the corroborative proofs of the fall.

I. Beside and behind the outward consequences, there were inward results far more terrible. A disease had appeared on earth of the most frightful and inveterate kind. This disease was (1) a moral disease. The grand disease of sin combines all the evil qualities of bodily distempers in a figurative yet real form, and turns not the body, but the soul, into a mass of malady. (2) The disease is universal in its ravages. The entire being is encrusted with this leprosy. The whole head is sick and the whole heart faint. (3) This disease is deep-seated in its roots. Its roots are in the very centre of the system, and it infects all the springs of life. It makes us cold and dead and languid in the pursuit of things that are good. The enemy, through the subtle power of this disease, has penetrated into the very citadel of man, and waves his flag of victory upon its highest battlements. (4) This disease is hereditary. It is within us as early as existence; it descends from parent to child more faithfully than the family features or disposition or intellect. (5) This is a disease which assumes various forms and aspects. Its varieties are as numerous as the varieties of men and of sinners. In that great hospital, that magnificent madhouse called the earth, we find all kinds and degrees of moral disease, from the fever of ambition to the consumption of envy, from the frantic fury of the conqueror to the dull idiocy of the miser. (6) This is a disease which defies all human means of cure, and a disease which, if not cured, will terminate in everlasting destruction.

II. Apart from the declarations of God's word, there are strong and startling proofs of a fall. (1) There are all those dreadful phenomena mentioned above, which are connected with man's present diseased moral condition. (2) The doctrine of a fall alone explains the anomalous and ambiguous condition of man. The fracture he has suffered has, in its very fierceness and depth, opened up a light into his structure. From the great inequality of human character we cannot but conclude that a catastrophe must have overwhelmed the whole mass of mankind and reduced them to a medley of confusion. We find the echo of man's fall in every strain of primeval song and in every breath of old tradition.

G. Gilfillan, Alpha and Omega,vol. i., pp. 98, 130.

References: Genesis 3 F. W. Robertson, Notes on Genesis,p. 24.; J. Wells, Bible Echoes,p. 19; J. Brown, Good Words(1885), p. 676; Homiletic Magazine,vol. xii., p. 79.