By Wes Nunley

Article I: God’s Right to Condemn All People
Since all people have sinned in Adam and have come under the sentence of the curse and eternal death, God would have done no one an injustice if it had been
His will to leave the entire human race in sin and under the curse, and to condemn them on account of their sin. As the apostle says: The whole world is liable to the condemnation of God (Rom. 3:19), All have sinned and are deprived of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23), and the wages of sin is death (Rom. 6:23).

Article 1 goes straight to the root of the problem by stating “all people have sinned in Adam” and therefore deserve condemnation. Our problem with sin began when the 1st man sinned, this is what Romans 5:12-18 is talking about. “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.” Rom. 5:12 In the garden Adam represented all of humanity that would come after him. When Adam fell humanity fell. When Adam sinned he represented you and I and everyone else. Not only did Adam represent us when he sinned his sin spread to us. At the precise moment Adam sinned God would have been utterly just to wipe out the human race and never create another man. The fact I am writing and you are reading is evidence of God’s kind mercy and patience and proof that God is gracious. When Adam sinned God did not wipe out humanity. Our God is a gracious God.

Article 1 is really just an explanation of Romans 3:19 “we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God.” The entire world is liable to God’s condemnation because God is the Divine law giver; He is the only one who is truth, righteousness and goodness. What makes reality reality is God. The whole world is held accountable to God because God rules the world He created. All men have transgressed God’s law therefore all men deserve God’s wrath. Adam brought sin into the world and therefore death, death is the penalty for our sin, death physically and death eternally is what we all deserve.

Wes Nunley is an undegraduate student at Boyce College in Louisville, Kentucky. You can follow him on Twitter at @yelnunsew.