Romans 8:20

“For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it...”

The world that we see today is not as God created it. God did not create nature to be ‘red in tooth and claw’. He did not create the world to have the extremes of weather and temperature that we see today (in fact, there was no rain until the flood because of the presence of the ‘firmament’, Gen. 2:5-6). He did not create anything that would harm another animal, be it carnivorous animals, biting insects, or bacteria and viruses. But this is not as we see the world today. We can still marvel at God’s creative power, but we see it in a ruined state. We see the creation in what the Bible here calls ‘frustration’. It is not serving the purpose for which God created it.
We know that Adam’s sin went far beyond his own fall, for God said to him, “Cursed is the ground because of you” (Gen. 3:17). The creation didn’t have a say in the matter. Man had been given dominion over the earth, and just as a whole nation suffers when its leader goes astray, so too the whole creation suffered when Adam handed that dominion over to Satan by giving in to him. Now, it is not beyond God’s power that He could have intervened at that point. But what would that have gained? Adam would still have been guilty of sin, and although God could recreate the earth, He could not simply brush aside Adam’s sin. He was obliged by His holiness to destroy him. Instead, God’s redemptive plan began: the Messiah was promised to come and be substituted for man’s sin (Gen. 3:15). So the fallen creation also serves to remind us of our own fallen state, until that glorious day when all things are made new.