Q. Did our first parents continue in the state in which they were created?
A. Our first parents, being left to the freedom of their own will, fell from the state in which they were created by sinning against God.
Commentary
The catechism now records the tragic turn in human history. Our first parents did not continue in the holy and happy state in which they were created; being left to the freedom of their own will, they fell. Adam and Eve were made upright, with no corruption in their nature and every advantage to persevere, yet their righteousness, though real, was mutable, capable of change. God left them to the liberty of their own will, neither forcing them to stand nor compelling them to fall, and in that freedom they chose to rebel. “God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes” (Ecclesiastes 7:29). The fall was thus no fault in their Maker and no necessity in their nature, but the free and inexcusable act of the creature.
Their fall consisted in sinning against God. Tempted by the serpent, they distrusted God’s word, coveted what He had forbidden, and presumed to seize the place of God in deciding good and evil for themselves. “She took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate” (Genesis 3:6). The outward act was the eating of forbidden fruit, but the inward sin lay deeper: unbelief, pride, and rebellion against the goodness and authority of God. In that single transgression, the whole law was broken, and the covenant of works was shattered.
The consequences of this fall were beyond all reckoning, for Adam fell not as a private man but as the covenant head of the human race. By his sin, he plunged himself and all his posterity into a state of sin and misery, losing the original righteousness in which he was made and corrupting the nature he would pass on to every child of man. This is the somber background against which the gospel must be understood. We are not basically good people in need of a little improvement, but fallen creatures, ruined in Adam and unable to recover ourselves. Yet the same Scripture that tells us how deeply we fell also points us to the only remedy: the grace of God in Jesus Christ, the second Adam, who came to undo what the first Adam did and to raise His people into a state of salvation that can never be lost.
Scripture Proofs
“So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate” (Genesis 3:6).
“See, this alone I found, that God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes” (Ecclesiastes 7:29).
“Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned” (Romans 5:12).
2nd London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689
6.2: Our first parents, by this sin, fell from their original righteousness and communion with God, and we in them whereby death came upon all: all becoming dead in sin, and wholly defiled in all the faculties and parts of soul and body.