When we know we have done something wrong thing just don’t feel right within. We feel awkward, ashamed, and we tend to avoid the person we have done wrong against. If they try to talk to us about it we find ourselves wanting to deny it, or to minimise the wrong – and if all else fails blame someone else for it. Often we do that even when the other person doesn’t yet know. We say it to ourselves. But we also find that this doesn’t really work. We feel miserable, and that’s only the beginning of what sin has done to us.
17 Into what estate did the fall bring mankind?
The fall brought mankind into an estate of sin and misery.
It is in Genesis 3 that we are told what sin did to Adam and Eve.
First it changed their hearts from good to evil. They knew they had done wrong, that they were guilty, so they were ashamed and tried to hide from God.
Secondly, it changed their place. God drove them out of the garden of His presence and placed there the cherubim with the flaming sword of justice to prevent their return.
So man was brought into an estate or condition of sin and misery.
Sin is the burden of guilt pressing down on man’s conscience, and also the power of spiritual death within. Man no longer had the power to do good. He was dead in trespasses and sins. He was at enmity toward God.
Shut out from God he was shut out from happiness. Misery became man’s lot. God has made us for Himself and our hearts are restless until they rest in Him. But because of sin man will not rest in God.
God’s heart was so compassionate and loving, however, that He did not merely put man away. Rather He acted mightily to bring man back. Genesis 3 tells us how man’s sin separated Him from God; John 3 tells us how God’s love brought him back.
“And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God …” (Genesis 3:8)