Fallenness & How It Is Passed Down

Great discussion last week! For those of you who missed it, we talked about "fallenness" and how this sin problem is passed down from generation to generation. The mystery was why Jesus didn’t "catch it." Our thinking and the Scriptures compelled us toward the idea that fallenness is not a substantive thing, like a disease germ, but rather a deficiency. In scriptural terms, it is a deadness of spirit, requiring new birth of the spirit by the Spirit. When Adam and Eve sinned, they lost the ability to bequeath a healthy spirit to their offspring. Because we are born without a healthy, living spirit, our flesh takes over and our every inclination is selfish and sinful. Even as Paul emphasized, we were "dead" in our sins (Eph. 2.5; Col 2.13).

Had it been possible for Mary alone to conceive Jesus, Jesus also would have been born with this deficiency. But as Neal Wolbert pointed out, Christ’s having God as His father compensated for the deficiency from Adam. Jesus, even more so than John the Baptist, was full of the Spirit from the womb (He didn’t have to wait till His baptism; the manifestation of the Spirit on that occasion was a different kind of event).