The Entrance of Sin and Misery

 By Pastor Benjamin Glaser - Posted at Thoughts From Parson Farms:

Why Things Are Bad and Why They Stay That Way

Good Morning!

Having heard much of creation and the early moments of the life of mankind the catechism is now going to transition from the big picture to the ordinary providence of God in the history of humanity. As we noted in our stroll through the shorter catechism last year the divines are interested in moving us through the story of Christianity by taking the building block approach to education. They are very much of the school that says you need to learn to crawl before you can walk, and walk before you can run. We have a lot of questions about the why’s of life and the how’s and the when’s, but the beauty of the way the Westminster men designed each of the standards of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church is that they are not interested in learning us at the end of a firehose. You eat a whole cow with small bites. If then this is an appropriate and helpful way to understand the simplicity of the Reformed faith founded on what the Bible has to say about reality. We know the existence of sin because it is all around us, and in us. The inquiry we have now is how did that come to be the norm since God did not make the world a fallen place? Well, let’s let the Q/A’s for today explain what happened:

Q. 21. Did man continue in that estate wherein God at first created him?

A. Our first parents being left to the freedom of their own will, through the temptation of Satan, transgressed the commandment of God in eating the forbidden fruit; and thereby fell from the estate of innocency wherein they were created.

Q. 22. Did all mankind fall in that first transgression?

A. The covenant being made with Adam as a public person, not for himself only, but for his posterity, all mankind descending from him by ordinary generation, sinned in him, and fell with him in that first transgression.

Q. 23. Into what estate did the fall bring mankind?

A. The fall brought mankind into an estate of sin and misery

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