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2. SIN ORIGINATED IN THE ANGELIC WORLD.
The Bible teaches us that in the attempt to trace
the origin of sin, we must even go back of the fall of man as described in Gen. 3, and fix the
attention on something that happened in the angelic world. God created a host of angels, and
they were all good as they came forth from the hand of their Maker, Gen. 1:31. But a fall
occurred in the angelic world, in which legions of angels fell away from God. The exact time of
this fall is not designated, but in John 8:44 Jesus speaks of the devil as a murderer from the
beginning (kat’ arches), and John says in I John 3:8, that he sins from the beginning. The
prevailing opinion is that this kat’ arches means from the beginning of the history of man. Very
little is said about the sin that caused the fall of the angels. From Paul’s warning to Timothy,
that no novice should be appointed as bishop, “lest being puffed up he fall into the
condemnation of the devil,” I Tim. 3:6, we may in all probability conclude that it was the sin of
pride, of aspiring to be like God in power and authority. And this idea would seem to find
corroboration in Jude 6, where it is said that the fallen angels “kept not their own principality,
but left their proper habitation.” They were not satisfied with their lot, with the government
and power entrusted to them. If the desire to be like God was their peculiar temptation, this
would also explain why they tempted man on that particular point.
3. THE ORIGIN OF SIN IN THE HUMAN RACE.
With respect to the origin of sin in the history of
mankind, the Bible teaches that it began with the transgression of Adam in paradise, and
therefore with a perfectly voluntary act on the part of man. The tempter came from the spirit
world with the suggestion that man, by placing himself in opposition to God, might become like
God. Adam yielded to the temptation and committed the first sin by eating of the forbidden
fruit. But the matter did not stop there, for by that first sin Adam became the bond-servant of
sin. That sin carried permanent pollution with it, and a pollution which, because of the
solidarity of the human race, would affect not only Adam but all his descendants as well. As a
result of the fall the father of the race could only pass on a depraved human nature to his
offspring. From that unholy source sin flows on as an impure stream to all the generations of
men, polluting everyone and everything with which it comes in contact. It is exactly this state of
things that made the question of Job so pertinent, “Who can bring a clean thing out of an
unclean? not one.” Job 14:4. But even this is not all. Adam sinned not only as the father of the
human race, but also as the representative head of all his descendants; and therefore the guilt
of his sin is placed to their account, so that they are all liable to the punishment of death. It is
primarily in that sense that Adam’s sin is the sin of all. That is what Paul teaches us in Rom.
5:12: “Through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin; and so death passed
unto all men, for that all sinned.” The last words can only mean that they all sinned in Adam,
and sinned in such a way as to make them all liable to the punishment of death. It is not sin
considered merely as pollution, but sin as guilt that carries punishment with it. God adjudges all
men to be guilty sinners in Adam, just as He adjudges all believers to be righteous in Jesus