R.C. Sproul

We grow ill.

We die.

Our faculties have been weakened.

We become addicted and enslaved by certain passions in a sense of bondage where we were made with a kind of volitional freedom originally that was not affected before the fall and so on.

We still have those faculties, however.

We can still think.

We can still choose.

We still have bodies.

We're still alive.

We're still human.

With the loss of our innocence, we have not lost our humanity.

But what has been lost is what the theologians call conformitas.

We have lost obedience.

And as disobedient creatures,

we have besmirched and fogged the mirror that was made to reflect the holiness of God, so that now when the animals and the rest of nature looks at us, those of us who are still thinking, breathing, feeling images of God, they see people whose behavior does not conform to the character of God.

And that's what has been lost.

And that's what we call, in simplest terms, sin.

And that's what I'm going to deal with in the second half of this series is what this loss of conformity means.

How seriously have we been affected by the fall?

How deep does the sinful corruption of our humanity penetrate?