Genesis 3:13-21 And the LORD God said to the woman, What is this that you have done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.… I. THE RECORD BEFORE US IS THE HISTORY OF THE FIRST SIN. It needed no revelation to tell us that sin is, that mankind is sinful. Without, within, around, and inside us, is the fact, the experience, the evidence, the presence of sin. It is sin which makes life troublous and gives death its sting. The revelation of the Fall tells of an entrance, of an inburst of evil into a world all good, into a being created upright — tells, therefore, of a nature capable of purity, of an enemy that may be expelled, and of a holiness possible because natural. From man's fall we infer a fall earlier yet and more mysterious. Once sin was not; and when it entered man's world it entered under an influence independent, not inherent. II. THE FIRST SIN IS ALSO THE SPECIMEN SIN. It is in this sense, too, the original sin, that all other sins are copies of it. Unbelief first, then disobedience; then corruption, then self-excusing; then the curse and the expulsion. Turn the page, and you shall find a murder! III. THE ORIGINAL SIN IS ALSO THE INFECTIOUS SIN. Not one man of all the progeny of Adam has drawn his first breath or his latest in an atmosphere pure and salubrious. Before, behind, around, and above there has been the heritage of weakness, the presence and pressure of an influence in large part evil. Fallen sons of a fallen forefather, God must send down His hand from above if we are to be rescued ever out of these deep, these turbid waters. (Dean Vaughan.) Parallel Verses KJV: And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat. |
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