Copyright © 2006 By Doug Lawrence. All Rights Reserved.
Catechism Of The Catholic Church Reprinted With Permission.
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St. Paul also cautions that many of us, (even the best of us) due to our fallen
human nature, are still easy marks for "old scratch" the devil:
2ndCorinthians 11:3 But I fear lest, as the serpent seduced Eve by his subtilty, so
your minds should be corrupted and fall from the simplicity that is in Christ.
The words "subtilty" and "seduced" hint at sins of the mind and
the flesh, but the specific details of Adam's sin have never been
revealed. We'll probably have to wait until Judgment Day to hear
the rest of the story.
In choosing to commit the first sin, original
sin, Adam broke the only Commandment of
God, the only law that was likely in
existence at the time. Roughly translated,
it was:
You sin … you die.
This is known as "The Law of Sin and
Death". And since people still sin, and still
die today, we can be sure that this very
important legal concept still applies.
By his disobedience and envy,
man joined with Satan in active revolt against God. Doing so,
Adam forfeited the grace, (unmerited favor) with which God had
always blessed him.
Without grace, man became subject to aging, disease, death and corruption (both
physical and spiritual). God's grace was also the only thing that made Eden
possible. Without grace, Paradise would soon disappear, leaving Adam and Eve
virtually alone in a world that was very different than what they were accustomed
to.
Genesis 3:16 - 19 To the woman also he said: I will multiply thy sorrows, and thy
conceptions: in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children, and thou shalt be under
thy husband's power, and he shall have dominion over thee. And to Adam he
said: Because thou hast hearkened to the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the
tree, whereof I commanded thee, that thou shouldst not eat, cursed is the earth
in thy work: with labour and toil shalt thou eat thereof all the days of thy life.
Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee, and thou shalt eat the herbs of the
earth. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou return to the earth out
of which thou wast taken: for dust thou art, and into dust thou shalt return.
Genesis 3:24 And he cast out Adam: and placed before the paradise of pleasure
Cherubims, and a flaming sword, turning every way, to keep the way of the tree
of life.
By his pride and infidelity, Adam also traded away everything that he owned, all
the physical, temporal gifts he had been given by God …
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