With the entrance of sin into the garden a devastating chain of events happened within relationships and creation. In the Fall of Mankind into sin you learn what went wrong with the world in which you live. Sin is like a contagious infection that spread like a rapid plague through this world infecting the heart of man and the creation God made.

First, sin infects man’s relationship with God. The first man and women were created to know God and fellowship with Him in the Garden of Eden. The garden was a temple where they could, walk, talk and worship God.

Rather than responding to God in dependence their sinfulness craved independence. Like a teenager desiring independence from their parents, such is the state of man ever since the Fall—in a battle to become god in ourselves or create our own gods that were lift up higher than the One True God [Romans 1:21-25]. All gods we create are cheap imitations and lead man into confusion and frustration because they never quite satisfy like a relationship with God.

Second, sin infects affects man’s relationship with one another. Sin has devastated and disintegrated human relationships. I have seen in my short lifetime the devastating effects of sin within relationships. I have seen how bitterness and anger rip apart friendships, how temptations and immorality explode a marriage, how rape and abuse tailspin a women’s trust in a man, how a woman’s words emasculates a man, how fathers neglect their homes, how mothers forsake their babies, how siblings splinter over self-centered rivalries and jealousy, how tyrant bosses inflict their fearful subjects with slavish tactics, how governments sponsor genocide upon people groups. Sin has infected every relationship at every level. Man’s inhumanity to man has been the story of human history.

Third, sin infects all of creation [Genesis 3:17-19; Romans 8:20-22]. Humans are not the only ones affected by the Fall. The material world now resists man and makes life hard for him. Creation groans under the affects of the Fall. Sickness, crime, poverty, injustice, suffering, famine, death—this in not the world God created it to be. The sin of mankind is the source. So what must be done? What did God do? What can man do?

The infection of mankind sin has been passed down from generation to generation. It has permeated every living soul. As discussed, sin infects man’s relationship with God, man’s relationship with fellow man, and all of creation bears the scars of sinfulness. God, like a Great Physician is able to remove the cancerous tumor at a cost with consequences [more on this next week].