In Joshua 7 despite the com­mand of God some of the Israelites took the things of Jerico devoted to destruc­tion, and that caused the dis­plea­sure of God towards the peo­ple. It is often thought that because of the sin of a few all the peo­ple became sin­ners. Does the sin of a sin­gle man really makes all oth­ers sin­ners? If it is so, where is jus­tice? If a fam­ily mem­ber com­mits a crime and because of it you are called a crim­i­nal though liv­ing right­eously wouldn’t you cry out for justice?

We read in Romans,

Rom 2:9 There will be tribu­la­tion and dis­tress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, 10 but glory and honor and peace for every one who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. 11 For God shows no par­tial­ity. 12 All who have sinned with­out the law will also per­ish with­out the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. 13 For it is not the hear­ers of the law who are right­eous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified.

Wow! So we will all be judge for our own sins, not for the sin of oth­ers. So then how should we under­stand the pas­sage in Joshua 7 where cer­tain Israelites col­lected the things devoted to destruc­tion in Jerico and the anger of the LORD was kin­dled against them. These Israelites cer­tainly sinned, but did their sin­ful act make the rest sin­ners? I doubt it.

So what hap­pened then? Well, God clearly instructed the chil­dren of Israel not to take those things, and lis­ten to what He had to say:

Josh. 7:13 …thus says the LORD, God of Israel, “There are devoted things in the midst of you, O Israel; you can­not stand before your ene­mies, until you take away the devoted things from among you.”

That is, not indi­vid­ual sin, but the sin of Israel as a whole is in ques­tion.
The sin of a few can have a very neg­a­tive effect on the whole. How many wars were fought because of the arro­gance of kings? When the lead­ers sin, the peo­ple suf­fer. Were they all made sin­ners? Not at all. Every­one is respon­si­ble for his own sins, but the com­mu­nity as a whole is respon­si­ble to deal with the sins of a few to avoid a greater tragedy.

Let me remind you that the Day of Atone­ment was for the nation, not for indi­vid­ual sins. Of course, to qual­ify for enter­ing the Holy of Holies the high priest had to purify him­self, but the sac­ri­fice he offered was for the sin of the nation, that is, for the sin com­mit­ted on the national level, not for the indi­vid­ual sins. Indi­vid­ual sins were taken care of by the sin sacrifices.

One pas­sage used in sup­port of the above the­ory is the following:

Rom 5:12 There­fore as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned…

Does Paul mean that Adam made all sin­ners? Just read the pas­sage care­fully. Of course, before Adam there was no sin, so his sin was the first, but the pas­sage doesn’t say sin was passed to all men, but that death spread to all men. Why? He gives the rea­son: “because all men sinned”. The very rea­son that death spread to all men is because they sinned, not because they were born sinners.

To under­stand what Paul says let us deal with the Gen­e­sis pas­sage. God offered life or death to the first cou­ple. They were to choose life.

Now here I need to warn about some of the false claims of Cre­ation Sci­ence. I used to be their big fan, ordered their pop­u­lar and sci­en­tific mag­a­zines, I still have many of them. Until in one of the issues they back­tracked on a num­ber of their ear­lier claims and stated that we should not have trusted them, but should have ver­i­fied every­thing for our­selves. Wow!

That was the last time I had any­thing to do with them. If those who claim to be sci­en­tists are so blinded by fun­da­men­tal­ism that they twist real­ity, they should not be in ministry.

One of their old claims was that because God made every­thing per­fect, entropy (the mea­sure of dis­or­der in ther­mo­dy­nam­ics) had to be zero. Such claim is utterly fool­ish. Entropy is related to heat. The hot­ter a sys­tem, the greater the entropy, and the greater the dis­or­der. Zero entropy, that is, zero dis­or­der requires that the tem­pre­ture be absolute zero (-273 Cel­sius — pretty cold indeed). On that tem­per­a­ture all move­ment stops. No life is pos­si­ble. Where there is no entropy there is no fric­tion, and with­out fric­tion one could not walk on earth. It took many years for Cre­ation Sci­ence to realise this very basic ther­mo­dy­nam­i­cal fact, and thor­ough­out those years they deceived their audience.

Now if there was entropy then death was built into the sys­tem. Entropy causes every­thing to wind down and die. Yes, with­out God’s life sus­tain­ing power Adam and Eve would have died. This is why they were to choose the tree of life. With­out God’s sus­tain­ing power death is inevitable. Thus, when they sinned and were cast out of the gar­den they sim­ply went on their dying ways. There was no need for some kind of genetic mod­i­fi­ca­tion, for eter­nity was not built into the sys­tem. The source of eter­nal life was and has always been God. Apart from God every­thing is wind­ing down, every­thing is dying. And Adam choose death over life.

Now look at what God says when they are cast out of the garden:

Gen 3:22 The LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us, know­ing good and evil. Now, lest he put forth his hand, and also take of the tree of life, and eat, and live for­ever…”

Oh, they were kicked out to pre­vent them from eat­ing of the tree of life, for if they ate of it, and only then, they would have lived for­ever. Their descen­dants, liv­ing in the absence of God’s life sus­tain­ing power, all died nat­u­rally, as entropy brings about death. Sin led to the lost access to the life-giving tree, and even­tu­ally to death.

Now let us return to Romans 5:12. We saw that because of sin death came to mankind. While they were meant to enjoy God’s life-sustaining power, they all had to live with­out it. It is not sin (or sin nature) that spread to all men, but death. And the pas­sage says it is because all sinned, not that they were all born sinners.

There­fore the sin of one man can­not make all oth­ers sin­ners. Sin, as ever, remains the per­sonal choice, not a nature. If it was a nature, one had an excuse.