Sin Caused Death

A major platform of those who hold to the long ages of formative biology is that death is a normal part of the original creation. The position is that the fossil remains are a record of eons of natural development rather than the awful debris of a worldwide, year-long sentence of destruction executed by an angry Creator.

The Bible insists, however, that death is an enemy (1 Corinthians 15:26), a curse (Genesis 3:14-17) pronounced on all creation, including living creatures. That awful judgment was because of Adam’s rebellion (Genesis 3:17; 1 Timothy 2:14), and is not a part of God’s good creation.

Death by the design of God is so foreign to the revealed nature of God, one is at a loss to understand why anyone would want to suggest that God “authored” death in His creation, a creation that was designed to tell us of His invisible nature and Godhead. The whole message of Scripture turns on Genesis 3. All of the “good” of the environment was withdrawn with God’s sentence. The “groaning and travailing” (Romans 8:22) began at that moment, or the words of God Himself are void!

If there were eons of pain, suffering, and death before the rebellion of Adam brought death into the world, then a whole sweep of biblical teaching is thrown into the black hole of allegory. Hundreds of Bible passages are twisted from a warning and a bad consequence to a “normal” event. In the Bible, physical death is specifically identified as absolutely necessary to accomplish the atonement for sins.

There is no question that the Bible teaches that it was necessary for Jesus Christ to die physically in order to accomplish the payment for our sins (Hebrews 2:14-18). If death is normal and/or good, even if it is merely relegated to a “spiritual” effect, then the physical death of Jesus Christ becomes unnecessary and meaningless.