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Catechism #13

Q. Did our first parents remain as they were created?

A. Left to the freedom of their own wills, our first parents sinned against God and fell from their original condition.

Adam and Eve were created as perfect beings who did not know sin, suffering, or sickness in any way. That was God’s original intention, and for an unknown amount of time our first parents lived in the perfect Garden of Eden.

Everything changed the moment that Eve chose to disobey God and take a bite of the forbidden fruit. It wasn’t so much the act of eating the fruit that got them into trouble, but the willful choice to question God’s goodness.

God had made clear to the first couple that in the day they ate of the fruit, they would surely die (Genesis 2:17); this did not usher in an immediate death like with Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1-11), but rather introduced the process of death and decay. For the first time in history things began to wear out, which would eventually result in death.

The life that you and I are familiar with is far different than the one Adam and Eve knew in Eden. We live in a world where heartbreak and hunger run rampant; we see murders and mayhem, death and disease, wars and wreckage. These things come as a result of the Fall. We will one day die because of sin: “For by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and death passes upon all men, for all have sinned (Romans 5:12).”


This is not the world that God created and called very good; this is a world destroyed by sin and the subsequent curse. But take heart: God has made a way to rescue us from this sinful planet, and even now Jesus is preparing a place in heaven for those who are His children (John 14:1-6), where we will live with God free from the curse of sin.
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