Q. Into what state did the fall bring mankind?
A. The fall brought mankind into a state of sin and misery.
Commentary
Having shown that all mankind fell in Adam, the catechism now describes the condition into which we fell, a state of sin and misery. It is a state, not merely a series of acts. We do not first exist in a neutral condition and then commit sins that spoil it; we are born already in this state, sinful and miserable from the womb. “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me” (Psalm 51:5). Every child of Adam enters the world in this fallen condition, and apart from the grace of God in Christ, no one escapes it.
The state has two parts. The first is sin: the guilt of Adam’s transgression reckoned to us, the loss of original righteousness, and the corruption of our whole nature, out of which flow all our actual transgressions. The second is misery: the whole weight of consequences that sin brings down upon us, the loss of fellowship with God, His wrath and curse, and all the sorrows of this life and the next. Sin is the root, and misery is the fruit. Because we have broken God’s law in Adam, we lie under all the penalties that law attaches to sin. “All our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment” (Isaiah 64:6), and one act of trespass led to condemnation for all (Romans 5:18).
Understanding our condition rightly matters for everything that follows. A man who thinks himself basically well will see no need of a physician; only the one who knows he is sick will seek a cure. The doctrine of sin and misery is not given to crush us into hopelessness but to drive us out of ourselves and toward the only remedy.
Scripture Proofs
“Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me” (Psalm 51:5).
“We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away” (Isaiah 64:6).
“Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous” (Romans 5:18–19).
2nd London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689
6.3: They being the root, and by God’s appointment, standing in the room and stead of all mankind, the guilt of the sin was imputed, and corrupted nature conveyed, to all their posterity descending from them by ordinary generation, being now conceived in sin, and by nature children of wrath, the servants of sin, the subjects of death, and all other miseries, spiritual, temporal, and eternal, unless the Lord Jesus set them free.
6.4: From this original corruption, whereby we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil, do proceed all actual transgressions.