Question:

If I have free will then how am I held responsible to Adam and Eves sin? I
did not have any say nor free will in that and you say I am the reason for
sin? I mean seriously think about it, why because of the fact that Adam
and Eve ate some fruit that was offered to them in a garden make ME guilty
by association? (seems to fairytalish) I do not think that if you or I
were put in that situation that we would deliberately disobey a “God” that
we could actually hear. I don’t know about you but if I actually heard God
audibly or would have seen God and He told me not to eat a fruit, then I
would obey simple as that. This is only one of the many questions that
keep me from believing. And ok sure you can grant the point of free will
and how they had it, but if God knew His creations nature of accepting
temptations then how is that loving and why does that make me guilty and
hell bound starting from birth unless confessing to God? It seems like we
all got screwed over which makes look God shady.

Answer:

Bottom line, you are NOT responsible for the sin of Adam and Eve. You
have apparently heard and been taught the false doctrine of original sin.
This non-biblical idea was created by the Catholic theologian Augustine a
little after AD 400 (It is possible that he did not make up this doctrine,
but that he defended an idea which was around earlier than that).
Augustine created this heretical doctrine in order to explain another
unbiblical practice which had crept into the church by the fourth century
AD, which is infant baptism. Augustine asked why we were baptizing our
babies. Instead of the obvious, which is to reject infant baptism (which
denies the necessity of faith for salvation), he devised the convoluted
teaching that babies are born already guilty of the sin of Adam. By the
way, he used Romans 5:12-19 to defend this idea. If one were to read only
Romans 5:12-19 and ignore the entire rest of the Old and the New Testament
one might reach the conclusion that Paul is telling us that we are
literally born guilty of the sin of Adam. That is NOT what Paul is
teaching. There are so many passages which immediately refute this false
doctrine that it is almost not worth narrowing it down. Let me suggest
Ezekiel 18:19-20, Revelation 20:11-13 to get you started. Let me give you
an assignment. Find ten passages in the New Testament (in the gospels and
the letters) which make it clear that we are not judged for someone else’s
sins. Nothing is more clear from scripture than the fact that God judges
us for our own actions, not for those of others. Anything else is clearly
not just. One thing I can say for sure is that God is fair and just.

John Oakes, PhD