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Scripture Reading: Gen. 3:1-8; Rom. 5:12, 14-16; 7:14b, 17-18, 20-21; Eph. 2:1, 5a; 4:18; 1 Cor. 15:22a
I. Not only:
А. Transgressing against God’s commandment — Rom. 5:14b.
B. Falling under God’s condemnation — v. 16b.
C. Estranging man from God — Gen. 3:8; Eph. 4:18.
D. Spoiling man from fulfilling God’s purpose:
1. Expressing God in His image.
2. Representing God with His dominion.
II. But also:
А. Receiving Satan’s evil thought, feeling, and will into the inward parts of man’s soul — Gen. 3:1, 4-5.
B. Taking the tree of knowledge into the members of man’s body — 3:6:
1. Man’s body being transmuted into flesh — Rom. 7:18a.
2. Satan becoming sin within man — vv. 14b, 17, 20.
3. Sin acting as evil in man — v. 21.
C. Deadening man’s spirit — Eph. 2:1, 5a.
D. Letting sin enter into man — Rom. 5:12a.
E. Making man the victim of death — vv. 12b, 14a; 1 Cor. 15:22a.
Focus: Through man’s fall Satan’s personality became one with man’s soul, and he was taken into man’s body to be sin working as evil in man’s fleshly members.
In the previous lesson we saw Satan’s plot to spoil man. In this lesson we want to see the real significance of man’s fall. Among most Christians the understanding of man’s fall is altogether inadequate. For this lesson we need to read the verses in the Scripture Reading attentively, slowly, and carefully so that we can be impressed with these portions of the Word.
Romans 5:14 refers to “Adam’s transgression.” Adam transgressed against God’s commandment. Man’s fall was a transgression against God’s first commandment. Adam forsook the tree of life, which denotes God as life, to pursue the tree of knowledge, which signifies Satan as the source of death (Gen. 2:8-9, 17; 3:1-7).
Adam’s one offense caused man to fall under God’s condemnation. Romans 5:16 speaks of Adam’s “one offense unto condemnation.” Man transgressed against God’s commandment and fell under God’s condemnation.
Man’s fall estranged man from God. Genesis 3:8 says that man hid himself from God’s presence. Right after man’s fall, man hid himself. This means that man was estranged from God. Ephesians 4:18 tells us that man in his fallen state is “alienated from the life of God.”
Man’s fall spoiled man from fulfilling God’s purpose, which is to express God in His image and represent God with His dominion (Gen. 1:26).
Through his fall, man received Satan’s evil thought, feeling, and will into the inward parts of his soul. For this point we need to read Genesis 3:1, 4, and 5 to show that Satan’s thought was injected into man’s mind, his feeling was injected into man’s emotion, and his will was injected into man’s will. This means that man’s soul was stolen by his fall; it was taken over by Satan.
Genesis 3:6 says that Eve ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge, gave it to Adam, her husband, and he also ate of it. What people eat gets into their physical body. By eating the tree of knowledge, man took the tree of knowledge into the members of his body.
God created man with a pure body, but something of Satan was received into man’s body, and man’s body changed in nature. It was transmuted into the flesh. In other words, it was corrupted. Man’s body, by being corrupted in man’s fall, became flesh, full of lust. In Romans 7:18a Paul says, “I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, nothing good dwells.” The flesh is the corrupted body.
Through man’s eating the tree of knowledge, Satan entered into man and became the very sin within man. To see this point we need to read Romans 7:14b, 17, and 20. In verse 20 Paul says, “If what I do not will, this I do, it is no longer I that work it out but sin that dwells in me.” Romans 7, especially in verses 8, 11, 17, and 20, indicates that sin is a person, the embodiment of Satan, and is living and acting within us. Sin is a personification of Satan. Actually speaking, the sin within us is Satan. At least we can say that the sinful nature within man is the nature of Satan. The sin within man refers to his inward sinful nature. This inward sin is just Satan himself indwelling our corrupted body, that is, our flesh.
In Romans 7:21 Paul says, “I find then the law with me who wills to do the good, that is, the evil is present with me.” When Satan entered into man, Satan became sin within man. When this sin acts in man, this sin becomes “the evil.” The evil is the action of sin. When sin acts in us, it becomes the evil.
The real significance of man’s fall is that man received Satan’s thought, feeling, and will, Satan’s being, Satan’s personality, into the inward parts of his soul. Thus, man’s soul became one with Satan’s person through man’s fall. Also, Satan as sin got into man’s body, making man’s body the flesh. Satan indwells this flesh as sin, as fallen man’s sinful nature. When this sin acts, it is the very evil that moves and acts within man. Through the fall, man’s being, man’s personality, man’s soul, has been filled with Satan’s being, with Satan’s personality. Satan dwells in man’s body as sin, which acts as the evil. Thus, through man’s fall, man became one with Satan. This is the reason that the children of men eventually are called in the Bible the children of the devil (1 John 3:10). Fallen man became one with Satan in his personality and in his nature. Man and Satan are one, so the children of men actually are the children of the devil. This is the focus and the real significance of man’s fall. We need to point out that man’s fall was a receiving of Satan’s being into man’s being and a taking of Satan himself into man’s body, corrupting man’s body and transmuting it into the flesh.
Man’s fall also resulted in the deadening of his spirit (Eph. 2:1, 5a). Ephesians 2:1 says that in our fallen state we were dead in our offenses and sins. This means that our spirit was deadened. To be deadened means that the function of our spirit was damaged. The deadness of our spirit pervaded our entire being and caused us to lose the function that enabled us to contact God. Thus, through the fall, man’s soul became one with Satan’s person, man’s body became Satan’s dwelling place, and man’s spirit was deadened.
Through man’s fall, man let sin enter into him. Romans 5:12a says that through one man sin entered into the world. Actually, the world here means mankind. When sin entered into man, that really meant that Satan entered into man.
The real significance of man’s fall is that Satan was taken into man, sin entered into man, and man became a victim of death (vv. 12b, 14a; 1 Cor. 15:22a). Romans 5:12b points out that through sin entering into the world, death passed on to all men. Death is the ultimate result of man’s fall. Romans 5:14a says that from Adam to Moses, death reigned. Death even became a king. First Corinthians 15:22a says that in Adam all die. Thus, all mankind is a victim of death through man’s fall.
In this lesson we have to stress how man became one with Satan in his three parts. Every part of man was ruined, corrupted, and deadened, making man a hopeless case. Sin entered into man, moving, damaging, and killing man, and man is now altogether under the tyranny of death. Man is a victim of death. It is not just man transgressing against God, not just man falling under God’s condemnation, but man receiving Satan into himself. Satan’s being entered into man’s being, and Satan himself as sin entered into man’s body, making man’s body the flesh. Through all this, man’s spirit was also deadened.
We must make all these points so clear and so impressive to the saints. Then we can go on to help the saints to see the need of life. There is not just the need of an objective salvation but the need of a subjective life. Lesson 4 and this lesson are crucial so that we can have the proper experience of life.
We must do a good work to make all the saints clear about how Satan spoiled man and how man fell. It is not just a matter of man transgressing against God and falling under God’s condemnation but a matter of man taking in something. We may use the illustration of a mother warning her child not to take in something poisonous. This is the mother’s commandment. If the mother leaves home and the child takes in that poison, this is not merely a transgression against the mother’s commandment. It is a receiving of the poison into the child’s being. This is an illustration of what happened when man fell. When God comes in to save us, He does not just take care of our transgression and of our being under His condemnation. He also works to take away the poison and to rescue us from death.
