The Fall Did not Damage The Image of God

by Dr. Peter A. Kerr

The Image of God Was Never Broken

One of the most quietly influential assumptions in Western Christianity is that something essential in humanity broke at the Fall. We are often told Adam’s sin did more than introduce disobedience into the world—it damaged the image of God itself. Humanity, on this telling, is not merely sinful but ontologically impaired, born with a diminished moral capacity and a fractured spiritual identity.

The problem is not that Scripture takes sin lightly. It does not. The problem is that Scripture never says the image of God was damaged. It never explicitly teaches humanity has sin at birth or even that humans are somehow damaged by the Fall and so they must sin. Instead, it simply and repeatedly insists that all do sin.

This distinction matters more than we often realize. What we believe about the image of God shapes how we understand judgment, grace, responsibility, repentance, sanctification, and even the humanity of Christ. If the image itself was broken, then moral responsibility becomes difficult to explain and Christ’s genuine temptation becomes hard to defend. If the image endures, however, then sin can be taken with full seriousness without collapsing into despair about human nature.

Scripture, I propose, teaches universal sin without teaching a broken image.

The Image of God as Calling, Not Condition

Genesis introduces the image of God not as a moral achievement or spiritual upgrade, but as a calling. Humanity is created “in the image of God” and immediately entrusted with responsibility, vocation, and relational address (Gen 1:26–28). The image is not defined by moral performance but by who humans are before they ever act rightly or wrongly.

This matters because Scripture continues to speak of the image of God after the Fall without qualification. After violence has spread across the earth, God grounds the prohibition of murder in the enduring reality that humans are made in His image (Gen 9:6). The psalmist celebrates humanity’s crowned dignity and delegated authority with no hint of ontological damage (Ps 8:4–6). James warns believers not to curse others precisely because they are made in God’s likeness (Jas 3:9).

These texts do not describe a damaged image barely hanging on. They assume the image remains intact as the basis for dignity, accountability, and moral restraint.

The simplest explanation is also the most faithful to the text: the image of God names humanity’s enduring capacity and vocation to live in holy relationship with God. Sin contradicts that vocation, but it does not erase the capacity itself.

Adam as Exemplar, Not Genetic Infection

Much confusion enters when Adam is treated as an ontological gateway who transmits guilt or corruption to all his descendants. Scripture does not require this move.

Adam’s story reveals something about humanity rather than changing humanity’s nature. He shows us what free creatures do when trust in God is replaced by grasping autonomy. His failure is tragic, but it is exemplary, not biological. He is the first sinner, not the metaphysical cause of everyone else’s sin.

Paul’s argument in Romans 5 supports this reading. Adam and Christ are presented as representative figures whose actions inaugurate historical realities (Rom 5:12–19). Adam introduces sin and death into human history; Christ introduces obedience and life. Yet Paul never says guilt is inherited by all, nor that Christ’s gift is automatically applied to all. Both are participatory—both act as gateways through which people may choose to enter.

Augustine’s Greek was poor (he himself admits this in Confessions) and so he misunderstood the passage in Romans and thereby helped create the myth that sin infects everyone because of Adam rather than because people freely of their own will choose to sin. The Apostle Paul clearly states that death spreads because all sin: “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned” (Rom 5:12, NASB, see it in full context below).

If Adam’s guilt were transmitted automatically while Christ’s righteousness must be freely received, the parallel would collapse. But if Adam reveals what humanity does, and Christ reveals what humanity can be, the symmetry holds. Adam shows us humanity turned away from God; Christ shows us humanity faithfully aligned with God.

This in no way downplays the significance of Adam’s sin. By sinning, Adam introduces societal sin. People now from birth are impacted by sin and taught by example to sin. Sin naturally encourages counter-sin, possibly through the concepts of justice and vengeance. A desire for self-protection may explain at least some of the impulse for selfish action.

Why Everyone Sins Without Being Born Broken

Scripture is unsparing in its assessment: all sin (Rom 3:23). The question is why.

The Bible consistently locates the universality of sin not in damaged creation, but in a disordered world. From Genesis onward, sin spreads socially, historically, and relationally. Violence, rivalry, and deception become normal patterns of life (Gen 4–6). The psalms lament a world where injustice is learned and practiced, not inherited as a defect (Ps 14:1–3).

Paul traces human corruption to distorted worship and imitation. Humanity exchanges truth for falsehood, and God “hands them over” to the consequences of those choices (Rom 1:18–32). Sin becomes entrenched because it is reinforced, modeled, and normalized—not because the image of God has been damaged.

This explains how sin can be universal without being compulsory. Sin is inevitable in practice but not necessary in principle. Humans are born into a world where trust in God is costly, communion is diminished, and disobedience is learned early. Yet Scripture never treats sin as coerced. Judgment presupposes genuine agency.

Christ and the Integrity of Temptation

Everything comes into focus when Christ enters the picture.

Hebrews insists Jesus was “tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin” (Heb 4:15). That statement cannot be taken lightly. Temptation only matters if obedience is genuinely possible. If humanity is born morally incapacitated, then Christ must either be exempt from true humanity or exempt from true temptation. Neither option works.

Christ does not succeed because He possesses a different kind of humanity. He succeeds because He lives faithful humanity within the same conditions of finitude, vulnerability, and pressure that mark human life after Adam. His obedience is not effortless; it is trusting. His victory is not metaphysical; it is relational. Christ didn’t only die for us; He lived for us—showing us, in flesh and blood, the perfect life we’re meant to imitate. He didn’t merely come to pay the penalty for our failures; He came to display the perfection we’re invited to pursue.

This is precisely why Christ can reveal humanity rather than replace it. He shows us not what humans would do if repaired, but what humans can do when fully aligned with God. Redemption, therefore, is not the repair of a broken image but the restoration of humanity to its original calling through participation in Christ’s faithful life (Rom 8:29; 2 Cor 3:18).

What About the “Proof Texts”?

Several passages are often cited as evidence of inherited corruption, but none require that conclusion. Psalm 51:5 is a poetic confession emphasizing the depth of David’s guilt, not a metaphysical claim about conception. He is clearly using hyperbole in the midst of his despair, as he says he only sinned against God (verse 4) but he also sinned against others, and he says God broke his bones (verse 8) which must be what his anguish felt like but that did not happen literally.

As we have mentioned, Romans 5 emphasizes historical consequence and representative action, not biological transmission. The concluding point is easy to misunderstand as it states: “For as through the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous” (Romans 5:19). Note the “For as…even so” construction—in the same way that Adam brought sin Jesus brings righteousness. Adam was the gateway of sin, Christ the gateway to freedom from sin. Neither gateway is coercive—we choose where we walk. Note also that it is not “all” who sin or are saved but “the many.” Jesus Christ was made just like us, but without sin—He was the great exception to Adam’s example. Now we can be made like Him, but we must participate in Him to be made righteous. If not all are automatically righteous because of Christ, then not all are automatically sinful because of Adam.

Ephesians 2:3 describes a way of life shaped by habituated disobedience, not a corrupted created essence. Romans 7 uses the term “the flesh” but it simply means one’s own sin, not some inherited defect. Paul is describing a person who relies upon their own righteousness rather than faith for salvation. This is Paul describing the defeated person (not himself) who relies upon works instead of faith for righteousness. Greek uses first person (“I”) to explain exemplars whereas in English we would say “one does that which one did not wish to do.”

This is made abundantly clear simply by reading further. Paul doesn’t conclude we are flawed by nature or that our human nature changes at salvation but rather he says we are freed--set free from our sin (our inability to follow the law) by faith in Jesus Christ and the infusion of God’s love. Not being “under the law” does not mean the law is abolished but rather that we are now “above” it in the sense that we not only do right by God and others but we want to do right out of a heart of love. Love sums up the law and the prophets.

Many other passages have been erroneously cited to back a sinful condition before an individual sins, but they pretty much all are speaking about the individual’s sin and its  consequences. They do not presuppose a defected image or inherited guilt at birth. Indeed, Ezekiel explicitly denies inherited guilt (Ezek 18:20), and John frames judgment around response to light, not inherited condition (John 3:19–21). Scripture is consistent: sin is universal, serious, and accountable—but it is enacted, not inherited as an ontological defect.

Why This Matters

If the image of God was damaged, responsibility becomes fragile and grace becomes compensatory. But if the image endures, then judgment makes sense and grace becomes restorative rather than corrective. This in no way erases the idea that God is the initiator of grace—it is gracious that God even creates us, and Jesus said His grace and invitation would radiate to all from the cross when He declared: "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself" (Jn. 12:32 NAS).

God does not make people with defects, and it would not be fair to judge the child for the father’s sin. Every human chooses anew to forsake the loving Creator, to go astray, each their own way, in sin. Every person is guilty before a holy God. God may justly condemn us because we are responsible for our own sin.

But that is not the end of the story. God decided He would rather die than live without us. He became incarnated in Jesus and paid the full penalty of death for every sin that ever was or ever will be. He may offer true salvation to all because He paid restitution for all.

When we repent we are forgiven, and then we begin to grow in sanctification as we image the Holy God. All people are made in God’s image, all have the capacity for holiness, but only the sons and daughters of God who follow Christ begin to activate that image and gloriously begin to resemble their Father in Heaven.

This recovery of truth allows Christ to be seen not only as the one who dies for humanity, but as the one who lived for us and revealed what humanity was intended to be. God did not fix broken humanity; He restored true humanity in Christ. He calls us not to a life of perpetual sin and forgiveness because we are inherently flawed, but to become a new creation in Christ (2 Cor 5:17). Our new self is not foreign nor imposed but involves surrendering to God so that we might become what we were always created to be. We are no longer slaves to sin, we are slaves to righteousness because we love (Rom. 6:19). God was never interested in making broken creatures and then repairing them by force. Instead, God lovingly seeks willing children who freely return home.