Death Entered Through Sin

Death Is Not Natural

(Romans 5:12)

Because death comes to everyone, we accept it as something natural. But death was not originally natural. Death entered the world through one man’s sin and spread to all humanity. Yet through another Man, death itself was transformed.

1. Death Did Not Originally Exist
Adam was not created as a being subject to death. God gave him just one prohibition: “If you eat of it, you will die.” This warning was given before sin or death had entered the human world. Yet Adam disobeyed that one command. We might think that one act of disobedience should have been overlooked, but it brought devastating consequences. From that moment, Adam came under the reign of death, and when the time allotted to his body had run out, he died. Death did not originally exist—it was sin that brought it into the world.

2. Death Came Upon Us
Sin entered Adam himself and changed his once innocent nature, and that sinful nature was passed down to all his descendants. Therefore, people do not become sinners because they commit sins; they commit sins because they are sinners by nature. We may ask why Adam’s sin should affect us, but we are not separate islands—we are all part of one connected land. Adam, as the representative of humanity, sinned, and his sin became the sin of all humanity. Thus, death spread to everyone. That death begins with separation from God and extends to physical death and eternal death.

3. Death Is Now a Passage
Yet we who failed in Adam have been made alive in Jesus Christ. Our relationship with God has been restored, and we have been delivered from eternal death. Therefore, even physical death is no longer the end, but a brief passage to a place more beautiful and joyful than words can describe. The Lord came in the flesh and prepared that way for us. So let us never take death for granted or treat sin lightly. Since we can do nothing by our own strength, let us cling to the Lord and follow Him until our very last breath, revealing the eternal life within us through the way we live.

Overseer Sung-Hyun Kim