The Orthodox
Faith
For St Paul Orthodox Youth Society - Brisbane
By Fr. John Abdel-Karim
June 2009
14 - ORIGINAL SIN
The disobedience
and transgression of Adam and Eve is called Original Sin. What happened? As we
have previously said, God gave Adam and Eve permission to eat the fruit of all
trees except the fruit of the tree "of the knowledge of good and evil." Here is
what the Bible says: "You may freely eat of every tree of the Garden; but of the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat, for in the day that
you eat of it, you shall die" Genesis 2:16-17). In other words, God said to Adam
and to Eve, "You may eat the fruit of all of the trees that are in the Garden
and that are edible; it is only the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good
and evil that you should not eat.
On the day that
you do eat it, you shall die."
A guilty person
wants an accomplice. Satan, who had been an angel and had disobeyed God,
becoming Satan, felt guilty and terribly alone. He could keep company only with
the other Satans, the demons. His nature had been
perverted; he was unable and is unable ever to think about goodness. He always
thinks and desires evil. He always seeks evil for others. He was jealous of man.
He saw that he was so very happy in Paradise in the company of God. So he put
his evil plans into action. As the spirit that he is, he entered the body of a
snake. Then he climbed the tree of "the knowledge of good and evil." He waited
there. Eve came and peered at the tree. Satan intruded upon her curiosity. He
asked her, "Tell me, Eve, is it true that God told you
not to eat the fruit of all of the trees?" Eve answered, "No. He told us to eat
the fruit of all the trees except the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good
and evil, because if we did we would die." The serpent said, "You shall not die.
God knows that on the day that you eat of that fruit, your eyes will open and
you will become as gods. You will know good and evil."
Eve liked Satan's
sweet and slanderous words. She stretched out her hand. She took a fruit from
the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. She ate some, and she also gave some
to her mate, Adam. They ate together. Immediately, "their eyes were opened" and
they realized that they were naked (Genesis 3:1-7).
Because many
people say that the Bible is being metaphorical and that by the fruit of the
knowledge of good and evil the Bible refers to the sexual relationship of Adam
and Eve, we repeat here that this is not true. God had decreed the sexual
relationship of Adam and Eve when he told them to "increase and multiply." Then
what shall we say is the original sin? It is the denunciation of God. If you
will, it is the attempt of man to disenthrone God and
to enthrone himself in His place, to become God in the place of God. It is not
merely that he ate fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. St.
John Chrysostom says about Eve, "She was filled with
grandiose imaginings, hoping to be equal to God." Hoping to be equal to God, she
lost her senses.
That is original
sin. And its consequences?
A.) Spiritual
death. That is, the separation of man from God, the source of all
goodness.
B.) Bodily death.
That is, the separation of the body from the soul, the return of the body to the
earth.
C.) The
shattering and distortion of the "image." That is, darkness of mind, depravity
and corruption of the heart, loss of independence, loss of free will, and
tendency towards evil. Since then "the imagination of man's heart is evil
"(Genesis 8:21). Man constantly thinks of evil.
D.) Guilt. That
is, a bad conscience, the shame that made him want to hide from
God.
E.) Worst of all,
original sin is hereditary. It did not remain only Adam and Eve's. As life
passes from them to all of their descendants, so does original sin. We all of us
participate in original sin because we are all descended from the same
forefather, Adam. This creates a problem for many people. They ask, Why should we be responsible for the actions of Adam and Eve?
Why should we have to pay for the sins of our parents? they say. Unfortunately, this is so, because the consequence
of original sin is the distortion of the nature of man. Of course, this is
unexplainable and belongs to the realm of mystery, but we can give one example
to make it somewhat better understood. Let us say that you have a wild orange
tree, from which you make a graft. You will get domesticated oranges, but the
root will still be that of the wild orange tree. To have wild oranges again, you
must regraft the tree. This is what Christ came for and achieved for fallen man,
as we Shall see in the following
sections.
Let us pray
Our
Creator and Maker, ours is the fault. Adam and Eve, listening to Satan,
blasphemed. Out of egotism, they allowed themselves to be misled. They distorted
the "image." They darkened the beauty of the soul. They weakened the nature of
mankind. Because of them, we became unrecognisable. "The imagination of our
heart is evil." We constantly think of evil. We feel so guilty. We are so far
away from You. We have been grafted to evil. We have
lost our self-control and our free will to do good. We
thank You for Your love, and for sending Your Only
begotten Son to regraft us to goodness. For giving us the possibility of
returning to You. You, Lord "want every man to be saved
and to come to the knowledge of the truth." Do not deprive us of this. Do not
deprive anyone of salvation. We thank You Lord.