A. The sin whereby our first parents fell from the estate wherein they were created, was their eating the forbidden fruit.

There is always the question of which sin is the “primal” sin. By this some may have in mind what was the root motive in Adam’s fall (or previously in Lucifer’s). Having addressed that mystery, we ought to also consider this question from the perspective of each and every sin. What is the genesis of it? What is sin’s impetus or catalyst or axiom? There are two fairly obvious extremes one can go to with respect to that first sin of our first parents. We have hinted at it already when we looked at those commandments unpacked in the Sermon on the Mount. One is to fixate on the “fruit” while the other is to make the same mistake with the “root,” that is, to pit them against each other. But when I ask, “What is the essence of sin?” I am really asking, “What is it that makes sin so sinful?” J. I. Packer summarized the Puritan view of sin in this way: 

“They saw sin as a perverted energy within people that enslaves them to God-defying, self-gratifying behavior, and by distraction, deceit, and direct opposition weakens and overthrows their purposes of righteousness.”1

One word of clarification to ensure there is no misunderstanding. This question is asking: What was that sin? So, the surface will give us a literal-historical answer—and that really is unrepeatable, as Shedd points out: “The first sin was unique in respect to the statute broken by it. The Eden commandment was confined to Eden. It was never given before or since”2—and so “under the surface” of what is unique, one can talk about what is always present in any sin. So by “primal” we will two things: the literal-historical-unrepeatable and then also the psychological-and-ever-present.

The Primal Sin on the Surface

In the very first sin we get a preview of what is called positive law. This is to be distinguished from natural law in that while natural law is the law of God in the nature of things, positive law refers to those commands and ordinances that (as far as we can tell in this life) make no connection between moral obligation and the nature of the thing involved. A famous example regards the food regulations about such creatures as shellfish. Are these really “unclean” because of some intrinsic nature of the shellfish? Likewise with the fruit. It is obvious enough that the Genesis account does not tell us that this was an apple. We derive that from legend and artists’ renderings. We are told that it was a fruit. But how does this help? Before God had prohibited Adam and Eve from that fruit of the one tree, he had said, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden” (Gen. 2:16). In other words, we have no other information about the forbidden fruit but that it was the one that was forbidden. This of course was sufficient to oblige Adam. He had no right to further pry into its rationale. God had forbidden the thing, and that was enough. 

Now that sin has happened, there is a different kind of question than Adam’s further questioning would have been. Clearly we are not in danger of sinning because there is some forbidden fruit out there that we would be in danger of eating. So if the question is: “What was the real sin behind their eating the forbidden fruit?” it may well be a holy motive to avoid sinning as they sinned: to diagnose sin in its most formative stage.

Looking under the surface of the fruit is also not necessarily denying the literal boundary around the fruit. It is not to question whether there was in fact an actual fruit. The text says there was—therefore there was a fruit. Likewise in the New Testament, though Paul does not draw attention to the fruit per se, he speaks of that deception of the devil, which would have been read according to the historical account:

“But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ” (2 Cor. 11:3).

“and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor” (1 Tim. 2:14).

Historicity aside, the very real fruit was still the occasion for the sin and not the actual sin in Adam and Eve. One cannot say that “the fruit” was the sin because then there is no real reason to say that Adam and Eve sinned regarding it, rather than God. One cannot say that their arm motions toward the fruit was the sin, for then any identical motion toward another fruit would have likewise been sin. Augustine said, “As long as you look for evil in the overt act itself, which can be seen, you are in difficulty.”3 Calvin adds to this,

“The common idea of sensual intemperance is childish. The sum and substance of all virtues could not consist in abstinence from a single fruit amid a general abundance of every delicacy that could be desired, the earth, with happy fertility, yielding not only abundance, but also endless variety. We must, therefore, look deeper than sensual intemperance.”4

Still on the surface, one could still say that the primal sin was disobedience or even slightly down underneath, disbelief. Disobedience is to God’s command and disbelief is to God’s word as such. Since all commands of God are words of God, yet not all words of God are commands of God, it seems reasonable to conclude that disbelief is more primal than disobedience. However, we might also note that we are morally obligated to believe all that God says. So in another sense, all disbelief at least implies disobedience. At any rate, Watson notes how the serpent struck first at the weaker vessel, Eve, as an expert soldier strikes a city first at its weak point. So “This was Satan’s masterpiece, to weaken her faith.”5 We can see that underneath Eve’s being deceived was a weak grip on the promises of God. 

The Primal Sin under the Surface

Some have answered that sin is fundamentally self-love. Dabney replies to this: 

“If all sin is resolved into self-love as its essence, then is not all self-love sinful? If he answers, No, then I reply: So there is a sinful, and a righteous, self-love? He must say, Yes. Then, I demand that he shall give me the differentiating element in the sinful self-love, which makes it, unlike the other self-love, morally evil. Will he give me self-love for this differentiating element? This is but moving in a circle.”6

Given the awful reality of sin and its consequences, we might as well say that sin is self-loathing much more than that it is self-love, since sin can only destroy the self and holiness can only improve the self. 

Along those same lines, sin is unreasonable. The Larger Catechism, Question 24, builds on our previous question (Question 14 in the Shorter), that, “Sin is any want of conformity unto, or transgression of, any law of God, given as a rule to the reasonable creature.” Now we mentioned that reason per se, or intellect, is part of that essential image of God; however, the proper functioning of it has a new relationship to sin. Part of what we want to say about sin is that sin is irrational—which doesn’t mean that reason is not called into its conspiracy against God’s glory. So sin is “rational” in the sense that sinful man’s rational faculties are perverting his good sense of things; and therefore it is “irrational” in that reason is rejecting proper reason. “Sin is the divorce of will from reason,”7 Shedd comments.

Some in the early church did seem to be influenced by Gnostic assumptions about the body. It was suggested by some that the root of all sin was the sexual nature of the first couple. This view is often laid at the feet of Augustine. Now he does call this lust, but this he defines as “the love of those things which a man can lose against his will.”8 Now what all falls under that category? Is it not absolutely everything but God? Shedd argues that this is the actual full sense of the Westminster Standards, namely, “by lusting after and eating the forbidden fruit.” He then points back to Genesis 3:6 in the woman’s “seeing” and “desiring” over the fruit.9 In other words, such authors have tended to use this word “lust” as something of a synonym for covetousness, which Paul tells us “is idolatry” (Col. 3:5). Shedd hints in this direction as well:

“Adam was not created with a desire for that knowledge of good and evil which would make him like the ‘gods,’ that is, like Satan and his angels. Such a kind of knowledge as this is falsehood, not truth, and to desire it is wrong and sinful. ‘You shall not covet’ is a command that prohibits such a species of desire.”10

The early church spoke of what is called concupiscence. This is a desire or “appetite” of that lower part of a human being that is contrary to reason. John of Damascus gave the most concise and widely accepted definition: “This is the irrational part of the soul, passive and appetitive.”11 Here irrationality and sensuality come together in a way that would have been familiar to Greek thinkers. Plato had compared the lower and higher parts of the soul to the horses of a chariot being subdued and driven by its rider. The horses (or, at least one of them) being the lower appetitive part, and the rider in control representing the proper dominion of reason.12

The main candidate has been pride. Let’s go to Calvin again who says, “Augustine, indeed, is not far off the mark, when he says (In Psalmum 19), that pride was the beginning of all evil, because, had not man’s ambition carried him higher than he was permitted, he might have continued in his first estate.”13 Now Calvin goes on from there to point to the text of Genesis to show how disobedience was the primal sin worth talking about; but, really, what is worth talking about depends on the task at hand. Brakel gives a more definitive answer than most. On the one hand he allows that the first sin “is evidently a fusion of all sins.” However, considering that “a particular sin may not have been first chronologically, but first in order of importance … The initial sin must be sought in the intellect”; and thus, in being deceived, “the first sin was not pride, that is, to be equal with God, also not rebellion, disobedience, or an unwarranted appetite, but unbelief.”14

The “DNA of Sin”

Bavinck said that sin is religious—not moral.15 But of course what he had in mind is a critique of what he called the “ethical theologians” following Kant. They had reduced religion to temporal morality. In this sense, we agree with Bavinck in his criticism. However, a more total pushback to the Enlightenment would be to restore morality to its fundamental place within the religious and covenantal. In all of these considerations we must bring it back to John’s simple declaration that “sin is lawlessness” (1 John 3:4). 

Sin is legal because God is the ruler of all things. He is the rightful King and no matter where we go, we are in his kingdom. That means that God’s law stands over all things. So when the Bible says that, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23), we can be sure that sin is no innocent mistake. And there is also no such thing as a “little sin.” 

Sin is also moral. Holiness defines what sin is because sin is not just legal. Sin has other dimensions. God's holiness is a big concept. It is his being wholly other than any other being, but also his moral purity. So we can think of sin violating the holiness of God in the way of “defilement” or “uncleanness.” The book of Leviticus especially helps us understand how sin makes us unclean. It symbolizes this by the people of Israel becoming sick, diseased, touching blood or dead bodies, or engaging in other activity that makes them polluted or corrupt, like a filthy rag (Isa. 64:6) that is incapable of coming into God's presence of purest light (see 1 Jn. 1:5).

In both of these, we can see that sin is personal. Behind these considerations of the order of sin’s operation and the real root of its nature, is a more fundamental positive. What is it that sin ultimately violates? Is it ultimately the law itself? In other words: What makes sin so evil? There is a passage in James’ letter that clues us in on why it is so evil to break God’s commandments: “For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. For he who said, ‘Do not commit adultery,’ also said, ‘Do not murder’ (2:10-11). There is a “He” behind the commandments. 

But considering that sin is personal and that this Person is of infinite excellence, it must be that sin is also, in a sense, infinite. Watson explains: 

“It was against an infinite God. It was malum complexum, a voluminous sin, there were many twisted things together in it; as Cicero says of parricide, ‘He who is guilty of it, Plurima committit peccata in uno, he commits many sins in one;’ so there were many sins in the sin of Adam. It was a big-bellied sin, a chain with many links.”16

A person of infinite worth has been dishonored when we violate any of his commandments. That is why no matter how trivial a wicked deed might seem to us, in reality it deserves the wrath and curse of God. Sin defames God, distorts the soul, and destroys the world. In covering God’s glory in exchange for sin’s fleeting pleasures, we hide from our souls and others what will truly satisfy us. Hence we starve the soul in sin. In every sin, there is murder as well as idolatry: and that a mass murder. Sin is never a victimless crime. 

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1. J. I. Packer, Rediscovering Holiness (Ventura, CA: Regal, 2009), 99.

2. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, 538.

3. Augustine, On Free Choice of the Will, III.20.

4. Calvin, Institutes, II.1.4.

5. Watson, A Body of Divinity, 140.

6. Dabney, Systematic Theology, 308.

7. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, 541.

8. Augustine, On Free Choice of the Will, IV.31.

9. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, 535.

10. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, 539.

11. John of Damascus, On the Orthodox Faith, II.12

12. Plato, Phaedrus, 

13. Calvin, Institutes, II.1.4.

14. Brakel, The Christian’s Reasonable Service, I:373.

15. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, III:129.

16. Watson, A Body of Divinity, 140.