The Guilt of Adam’s First Sin

Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, and the consequences for all of creation were devastating. We will look at these consequences over the next few days, using question and answer 18 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism, which defines the sinfulness of our estate according to Scripture.

The catechism says that the sinfulness of our estate consists first in “the guilt of Adam’s first sin.” This guilt is part of what theologians call original sin, which refers not to the first act of sin that Adam committed in eating the forbidden fruit but to the sinful condition that we inherit from Adam. Scripture makes it clear that we are accountable for Adam’s sin from conception. Today’s passage, for example, tells us as much. There has been debate, however, regarding how we can be held liable for the sin of our first parents.

One school of thought known as realism says that we are guilty of Adam’s sin because we were seminally present in Adam and thus participated in his sin. Because Adam is the father of the human race, we were all in his loins, so to speak, just as Levi was in his great-grandfather Abraham’s loins because he descended physically from Abraham (see Heb. 7:1–10). Because at least part of us was in Adam in the garden, we actually and realistically sinned when he sinned.

A key problem with realism is that it makes it difficult to understand how we could be saved by Christ’s “one act of righteousness”—His complete obedience in His life, death, and resurrection (Rom. 5:18). Paul sets Adam and Christ in parallel in Romans 5:12–21, so the way that we are counted guilty in Adam must parallel how we are counted righteous in Christ. No human being was seminally present in Christ, so we could not have actually and realistically participated in His obedience. So if Adam is parallel to Christ, we could not have actually and realistically participated in Adam’s disobedience.

The position known as federalism better accounts for the Adam-Christ parallel in today’s passage. Federalism says that Adam and Christ represent other people in such a way that what each of them did is reckoned or imputed to those whom they represent. God put the sin and guilt of Adam on the account of all human beings except Christ because Adam represented all human beings except Christ. The righteousness of Christ is imputed to—put on the record of—all those who trust in Christ because He represents them. His righteousness replaces our guilt when we trust in Him.