Passage Read: Deuteronomy 24-27
Meditation Verse: 24:16
Thought
If this is what God declares in His Law, then this is also how God Himself operates. That means no man dies for Adam's sin but Adam alone. I die for my sin and Adam dies for his. The concept of original sin can only mean that Adam's sin was the first, and I sin in his likeness. It cannot mean that I deserve death because Adam sinned. I deserve death because I'm just like our first representative: I also like to explore what it means to do what God says not to. As Paul writes, death comes to all men because all men sin. God told Cain that sin was like a living, hunting being, crouching at Cain's door, seeking to capture Cain. Paul describes it as having taken up residency in our flesh. So it clearly works hard against us all, and we all fall at one time or another, or many, many times. So the Scripture is right when it says "all have sinned," and so we all alike are under condemnation because of our own sin, but not because of Adam's sin. Sin came into the world through Adam, and it hunted me down, enticed me and I surrendered myself to its control. I die for my own sin, not Adam's, but I prove myself his true child by walking in his same disobedience.
Application
No one is condemned by God for Adam's sin. God even told Cain that he had the capacity to master sin rather than be mastered by it. But Cain submitted to sin, as does every one of us despite our ability to resist. We all sin, and it is our own sin that condemns us, so I need to be careful not to teach that people are condemned because of Adam's sin. That is contrary to this instruction in God's Law, and it goes against God's further affirmation and confirmation through the prophet Ezekiel, "The soul who sins will die."