Consequences of Sin
Text: (No specific text; topical — principles drawn from Gen. 1-3; Rom. 6:23; 8:22; Matt. 25:41, 46)
Series: Restoration Sermons
Date:
Speaker: Ed Rangel
Location: Waupaca Church of Christ
Bible Version: NASB 1995
Sermon Type: Topical
Learning Objectives
By the close of this lesson the hearer should be able to:
- Distinguish between "sin" and "the effects of sin" — explaining why this distinction matters.
- Trace the consequence of sin through three expanding spheres: the effect on man, the effect on the earth, and the enormity of sin as only God can estimate it.
- Explain what was lost when man sinned — dominion, companionship with God, physical integrity — and identify the Scripture reference for each.
- Explain from Rom. 8:22 why the natural world itself suffers from the consequences of man's sin.
- State the final consequence of sin — eternal punishment — from Matt. 25:41, 46 without qualification or softening.
Thesis
The consequences of sin extend further than any human being can trace them. They begin in the ruin of the individual who sinned — the loss of dominion, the weakening of every capacity, the severance of companionship with God. They spread outward to the earth itself, which was subjected to futility when its steward fell. And they culminate in a consequence only God can measure and only Scripture can announce: the eternal punishment of the unrepentant dead. No one can estimate the far-reaching consequences of sin — but every person sitting in this room is living inside them.
Burden
There is a difference between sin and the effects of sin. Sin is the act; the consequences are everything the act set in motion. Most people, when they consider the problem of sin, think about the act and its immediate consequences. The burden is to press further — to trace the consequences outward from the individual to the earth and forward from the present to the eternal — so that the hearer understands not just that sin is wrong but what sin does.
Introduction
"No one can estimate the far-reaching consequences of sin." The claim is not rhetorical; it is theological. The consequences of a single act of disobedience in the garden still ripple through every human life, every natural system, and every moral order in the world. The person who thinks they can see to the end of the consequences of their own sin has not looked far enough.
The distinction the introduction draws — between sin and the effects of sin — is more than semantic. The effects of sin persist long after the act has been repented of, forgiven, and removed. The person who has been forgiven of their sin does not thereby reverse its consequences in the physical world, in the relationships it damaged, or in the systems it affected. The grace that removes sin does not unring every bell that sin rang. This is part of what makes sin serious: the act and its consequences are not the same thing, and only one of them is addressed by forgiveness.
I. The Effect of Sin on Man
The first and most direct consequence of sin falls on the person who sinned.
Man was created in the image of God (Gen. 1:27). The image is the original: before sin, man reflected God — in rationality, in moral capacity, in the ability to make choices, in the call to stewardship and dominion over creation. The image was not perfection — the capacity to sin was present — but it was genuine resemblance, genuine relationship, genuine standing.
Man was given dominion over all things (Gen. 1:28-29). The assignment of dominion was man's commission: to exercise authority over the created order, to develop and tend what God had made, to be the governing intelligence on earth under God. The dominion was real; it was entrusted; it came with accountability.
When man sinned, he delivered his dominion to Satan (Luke 4:6). In the wilderness temptation, Satan shows Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and says: "I will give You all this domain and its glory; for it has been handed over to me." The delivery was not God's intention — it was the consequence of Adam's defection. The person who was appointed to stewardship abdicated to the one who had offered to make him a god, and the creation that was given to be governed by man became the territory of the one who had corrupted its governor. Hence the devil became "the god of this age" (II Cor. 4:4) and "the ruler of this world" (John 12:31). These titles are not compliments — they are diagnoses.
Man ruined by sin. Four consequences fall directly on the person who sinned. Disease and death came to the body: "the wages of sin is death" (Rom. 6:23) — the physical dissolution that the body now undergoes, beginning at birth and ending at the grave, is the consequence of sin's entrance into the world. All powers of mind and soul were weakened: the rational capacity was not destroyed but was corrupted; the moral faculty was not eliminated but was bent; the will was not removed but was enslaved to what the corrupted desire demands. And — most fundamental of all — man lost companionship with God. The relationship that had been the source of every other good — the walking together in the garden, the fellowship that was man's purpose and God's gift — was severed.
When man fell, everything under man fell with him. The creation that was placed under man's authority fell when its authority fell. The consequences extended outward through every domain of the created order.
II. The Effect of Sin on the Earth
The consequences of Adam's sin were not contained within the human person — they extended to the entire natural world.
The mineral kingdom was cursed. The physical ground itself was affected: "cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you will eat of it all the days of your life" (Gen. 3:17). The curse on the ground was a consequence of the sin of its steward.
The vegetable kingdom was blighted. "Thorns and thistles it shall grow for you" (Gen. 3:18). The natural world that had been entirely available to man for food and sustenance became resistant, difficult, and in some forms hostile. The garden became the field; the abundance became the sweat of the brow.
The animal kingdom degenerated. The animal world before the fall is described in terms of harmony: Adam named the animals; there was no predation in the original order of things. After the fall, the animal kingdom reflects the same disorder that entered the human sphere. Disease, competition, predation — all are consequences of the disorder sin introduced.
The earth received a double curse: with Adam, thorns and thistles grew (Gen. 3:17-18); with Cain, the fertility of the soil was specifically cursed: "When you cultivate the ground, it will no longer yield its strength to you" (Gen. 4:11-12). The consequence moved from the general (thorns and thistles) to the specific (reduced fertility).
"The whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now" (Rom. 8:22). Paul's statement is definitive: the suffering of the natural world is not incidental — it is the direct consequence of the sin of the person who was placed over it. All nature has deteriorated; lower animals have disease, sicken and die; the systems of the natural world operate under the subjection to futility that man's fall introduced.
III. The Enormity of Sin
The two previous sections have traced consequences that human observation can partially see. The third section moves to what only God can fully know.
Only God can estimate the full enormity of sin. The human person who has sinned does not perceive the full weight of what they have done — not because they are indifferent but because their perception is finite. The finite mind cannot comprehend the infinite offense of disobeying the infinite God. The person who has a realistic sense of their own sin is closer to the truth than the person who has minimized it, but neither has arrived at the full estimation that only God can make.
Man is unable to see the enormity. Blinded by pleasure: the person in the act of sinning is experiencing what sin provides — the pleasure that sin always offers and always fails to sustain. The pleasure obscures the weight. Unable with finite power to comprehend it: even apart from the blindness of pleasure, the human mind cannot hold the full weight of the moral debt that sin accumulates.
The enormity of sin is seen in its punishment. Some deny any punishment of sin — a denial that is itself evidence of sin's blinding power. The evidence is everywhere: "the journey of human life is strewn with tears"; "the earth is dotted over with graveyards." Every tear, every grave, is a consequence of sin. The world in which tears and graves are normal is not the world God made; it is the world that sin made out of the world God made.
Punishment of sin after death. The consequences of sin do not end at the grave. "Then He will also say to those on His left, 'Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels'" (Matt. 25:41). "These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life" (Matt. 25:46). The eternal punishment is the ultimate consequence of the sin that began in the garden — the final accounting for the dominion that was delivered to the enemy, the image that was defaced, the companionship that was rejected.
Application
Every person in this room is living inside the consequences of sin. The disease that touches your family, the difficulty of the ground that you cultivate, the grief that attends human life — all of these are consequences, not of your individual sin alone, but of the sin that entered the world and extended through every domain of the created order.
The appropriate response to this reality is neither despair nor denial. Despair forgets that the God who announced the consequences of sin also announced the plan to reverse them (Gen. 3:15 — the seed of the woman). Denial refuses to see the world as it actually is.
The appropriate response is honest reckoning: sin is serious because its consequences are serious. The person who treats sin lightly has not yet traced the consequences. The person who has traced the consequences is ready to hear the gospel — which is the announcement that the consequences can be escaped, not by being minimized, but by being paid for.
Conclusion
"No one can estimate the far-reaching consequences of sin." Every tear confirms the statement. Every grave extends the evidence. Every nation under the dominion of the one who received the abdicated stewardship is the testimony of a world that sin remade. And yet: the God who set the consequences in motion when sin entered has not abandoned the creation to its consequences. "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son" (John 3:16). The scale of the consequences is matched by the scale of the remedy. The Son who came was given for the world that sin had touched in every dimension — to restore the image, to reclaim the dominion, to renew the creation, and to remove the eternal punishment from those who receive what he came to provide.
Invitation
"The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rom. 6:23). The wages are what sin earns; the gift is what God provides. The person who has seen the consequences of sin can understand the value of the gift.
Believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God. Repent. Confess his name. Be baptized for the remission of your sins (Acts 2:38). The consequence that sin earns is eternal punishment; the gift that obedience receives is eternal life. The choice is between them.
Word Study
| English Term | Greek Term | Basic Meaning | Usage in This Sermon | Sermon Significance | Key Texts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wages / Consequence | opsōnion | Pay for service — the ration or wage given to a soldier. | Used in Rom. 6:23: "the wages of sin is death." | The word implies earned payment: death is what sin has coming to it, what it has earned, what it deserves. The consequence is not arbitrary punishment — it is the natural and just outcome of the act. The metaphor of wages makes the consequence of sin as certain as a paycheck. | Rom. 6:23 |
| Subjected to futility | mataiotēs | Emptiness, vanity, purposelessness. | Used in Rom. 8:20 for what the creation was subjected to: "the creation was subjected to futility." | The word (mataiotēs) is the same word used in Ecclesiastes (LXX) for "vanity of vanities." The natural world, subjected to futility by man's fall, groans in the same condition that the Preacher named: the purposelessness of a creation cut off from the orientation that gives it meaning. | Rom. 8:20-22 |
| Eternal punishment | kolasin aiōnion | Age-lasting correction/punishment — kolasis (punishment, chastisement) + aiōnios (eternal, age-lasting). | Used in Matt. 25:46 for the final consequence of sin. | The same adjective (aiōnios) describes both the punishment and the life in Matt. 25:46 — "eternal punishment... eternal life." The parallel structure of the grammar makes the two destinies equally permanent. The person who denies the permanence of punishment on the basis of God's mercy must also deny the permanence of life on the same basis. | Matt. 25:46; Matt. 25:41 |
| Groans / Suffers | systenazō | To groan together — the collective groaning of the creation under its subjection. | Used in Rom. 8:22: "the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together." | The word is corporate and intense. The groan is not the discomfort of inconvenience — it is the birth pain of creation waiting for a delivery that has not yet come. The creation's suffering is purposeful (it waits for the revealing of the sons of God), not endless; but it is real and it is caused by sin. | Rom. 8:22 |
Scripture Interlock Table
| Theme | Boles' Outline | Supporting Scripture |
|---|---|---|
| "Man created in the image of God" — what was before sin | I.1 | Gen. 1:27 |
| "Dominion over all things" — what sin forfeited | I.2 | Gen. 1:28-29 |
| "It has been handed over to me" — dominion delivered to Satan | I.3 | Luke 4:6; II Cor. 4:4 |
| "Wages of sin is death" — man ruined by sin | I.4a | Rom. 6:23 |
| "Thorns and thistles" — earth cursed | II.4a | Gen. 3:17-18 |
| "Whole creation groans" | II.5 | Rom. 8:22 |
| "Eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels" | III.4a | Matt. 25:41 |
| "Eternal punishment... eternal life" | III.4b | Matt. 25:46 |
| "Wages of sin is death; free gift is eternal life" | Concl./Invit. | Rom. 6:23 |
| Baptism for remission — escaping the eternal consequence | Invit. | Acts 2:38 |
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Converted from H. Leo Boles, Outline 151. Primary text: none stated; topical. OCR corrections: "EFECT" → "EFFECT"; "a.nd" → "and"; "Uohn" → "John". Doctrinal audit: the eternal punishment (Matt. 25:41, 46) developed without softening — the parallel structure of the grammar (same adjective aiōnios for both punishment and life) affirmed; the dominion-delivered-to-Satan point (Luke 4:6) developed from the text rather than from speculation about Satan's nature; Rom. 8:22 used carefully — the creation groans, but the groan is purposeful (Rom. 8:19-21); Gen. 3:15 introduced in the conclusion as the first announcement of the remedy; invitation retains full obedient response (Acts 2:38).
