Or, Man's Fall into the Estate of Misery
Scripture: Genesis 3:1-7
Date: June 7, 2015
Speaker: Sean Higgins
Genesis 3 introduces us to the loss of peace on earth and the beginning of ill will among men. Once we walk through this wardrobe door we enter an entirely other country where it is always wicked and never sinless, and there is no return. The rest of the book of Genesis, the rest of the Bible, and the rest of human history bear the scars of Adam and Eve’s disobedience.
At the start of Genesis 3 the curtain opens on Scene 1 (verses 1-7). In the first part of verse 1 we are introduced to The Adversary, the serpent, who was more crafty than any other beast of the field. Even though Moses doesn’t state it explicitly, the rest of Scripture attributes the serpent’s work to Satan, a liar from the beginning and the father of lies. Where he came from, and even more importantly, how he came to be the enemy of God and man, is not answered here. He enters Eden and casts doubts in Eve’s mind by questioning God’s Word.
The Temptation begins in the second part of verse 1 (and the Conversation continues through verse 5) when the serpent said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden?‘” He intentionally misrepresents the one and only prohibition God gave in order to exaggerate God’s restrictiveness. The Temptation/Conversation starts with the Serpent’s Question.
The Woman’s Response is not that convincing. She said to the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’ Eve sort-of, kind-of corrects the serpent, but already seems to be looking into the pot he’s stirring. She doesn’t express her thankfulness, but rather belittles her privileges. She jumps into to the deep end of the complaint pool by putting words in God’s mouth. It is a half-hearted defense.
She alters God’s word in her response, subtracting from it three times and adding to it once. That always leads to trouble. God had said, “You may surely (or freely) eat of every tree of the garden,” and Eve left out both accents of God’s generosity. Then she minimized the penalty. God had said, “for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” and she said only “lest you die.” She also added a part to God’s prohibition, claiming that God said not only that “You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree” but also, “neither shall you touch it.”
The serpent has her right where he wants her.
The wall was leaning and all the serpent had to do was nudge it to crush the woman. The serpent shifts from asking to asserting and moves in for the kill.
But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
You will surely not die. This is a direct, bold-faced denial, undoubtedly couched in comforting terms. The serpent was persuading her to distrust God’s word and to do so because of God’s character: [F]or God knows…you will be like God. He blatantly accused God of being harsh, repressive, and forbidding, because He is selfish. And not only will disobedience to God’s command not bring negative consequences, it will actually bring positive benefits. The serpent tells the woman to take something God created her not to have.
The serpent attacks the motivation and honesty of God, making God seem not only nervous and restrictive, but now also insecure of His position. God “knew all along” what would happen if they ate. It is as if God deceived the man an woman with threats in order to keep something good from them.
Being human is good, being God is better. Why should He have the upper hand? What is He keeping us from? It’s ironic that the “father of lies” (John 8:44) contends that God is the liar.
A sense of entitlement traps Eve, like, “Yeah, I should have that,” and so she takes the fruit.
Here’s a quick summary of the temptation.
The serpent’s temptation started by subtlety:
The serpent’s temptation evolved by flagrantly:
Here is the first disobedience, the soil of disaster, the original sin.
So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. (verse 6)
The serpent already had her ear, as evidenced by the fact that she didn’t run or resist him. She kept looking at the forbidden: when the woman saw. We’re sometimes told there is “no harm in looking.” That’s not always true.
Eve didn’t eat the fruit because she was in need or hungry. Every other fruit in the garden was hers for the taking. She ate because she thought it would bring her pleasure.
Many see a parallel between the three descriptions in Genesis 3:6 and “all that is in the world” as listed 1 John 2:16.
Note especially the third description, the tree was to be desired to make one wise. How did she know this? No one else had experienced it. There was no empirical data to support the claim. Eve believed someone. The only evidence she had that the tree would make her wise came from the serpent’s statements. She believed the serpent, not God.
After she ate, she also gave some to her husband who was with her. She was off on her own. I think the sense is she gave that he might eat with her; that he might join with her in the act. The “with her” was less about Adam’s proximity or place, but about his participation. Eve ate because she was deceived. Adam ate deliberately.
”She saw…she took…she ate.” (Instead of Veni. Vidi. Vici. it is Vedit. Tulit. Comedit.) One verse and done. The final part of the verse sounds like this in Hebrew: wattiqqah mippiryo wattokal wattitten gam-leisah immah wayyokal. One commentator said that such “extremely difficult pronunciation…forces a merciless concentration on each word” (Hamilton). It’s a Hebrew tongue twister that describes the result of the serpents forked tongue that led to a fork in the road of human history. This mess will never be unscrambled, ever.
The limited grasp of the mind of man is not adequate to take in the length and breadth and fearful extent of the evil which has thus been entailed upon the human family—an evil running parallel with the present life and reaching forward into an unmeasured eternity! (Bush, 77)
The fruit Adam and Eve ate is never named. Though some speculate it was an apple, that’s likely due to the similar sound in Latin between malus, “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” and malum, “apple.”
And how is it that we hear nothing from Adam except that he was with her, and he ate?
Talk about a letdown, a rip-off, a disappointing end to a fantastic and impressive promise from the serpent.
Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. (verse 7)
The serpent was right in all three things he promised…sort of.
All of the serpent’s lies came true, ish. It was, however, undoubtedly not what Eve bargained for.
The first result was humiliation and shame, but not confession and repentance. Here is the first clothing, note that the purpose of the clothing was to cover (not decorate or accentuate).
Why didn’t Eve die immediately? Why didn’t they both die immediately when Adam ate, as God promised in Genesis 2:17? These are questions we’ll continue to fill out as we go through the story.
Last Lord’s Day I asked a lot of questions (Tim Ratzlaff counted 21 of them in my notes). Maybe the biggest question was: why would God even create a tree and forbid them to eat its fruit that could be a temptation? Why would He allow the serpent to entice the woman at all? If God knew what Adam and Eve would choose, and the drastic consequences of their disobedience, why go through with it? If God is a loving God, why create Satan, why allow or create or ordain evil?
The conservative bread-and-butter explanation behind the Why? is usually something such as, “For there to be virtue, there must be the possibility of vice.” Men must be able to choose. True “love requires volition.” “[I]f God were not allowing choice, then you wouldn’t have evil, but you would also not have love.” We are not automatons, and theologians assert that this gives God greater glory.
There are two severe, biblical problems with that answer: first, man showed no virtue with his choosing ability, and second, man’s love for God, even at its best, is no great demonstration of love.
It sounds sensible to say that there can be no virtue where there is no, at least possibility of, vice. Let’s grant that proposition for the sake of argument.1 God created the first man, Adam, placed him in a paradisiacal garden, and prohibited him from only one thing: “of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat” (Genesis 2:17).
As the story goes, Satan lures Eve through a serpent, she bites, and gave to her husband and he ate. So with his great ability to choose, man chose to disobey. It’s worse than that, actually.
So the question is, where is this great virtue that man was to display with his free choice?
God showed patience with Adam and pursued him rather than push him away. Though He does punish the man, God also makes preparations to redeem him. God does not wait for us to cry out to Him, because we won’t. Even Adam, pre-fall and pre-sin nature, failed to show any virtuous choosing. The answer to “Why [did God] create that choice?” cannot be to show something noble about man.
You might hear someone say, “If God were not allowing choice, then you wouldn’t have evil, but you also would not have love.” I think I agree with those words, but not with that meaning.
I think what most people mean is that robots, if they could “love,” would love because they were programmed to do so, not because they wanted to. If love is going to mean something, it has to mean something to the one loving. Robots carry out a task; they don’t care. Who wants affection-less, android love?
But let’s say that Adam didn’t eat from the fruit of the tree, that he recognized his sweet deal: a gorgeous, God-given, perfect partner, the opportunity to steward and rule the planet, a fantastic home, daily, face-to-face fellowship with his Maker, and only one restriction. What level of love would Adam demonstrate by loving the One who gave him all that?
Isn’t that the gist of Satan’s accusations against Job to God? “Of course he’ll love You! You’ve given him everything he could ever want!” (Job 1:9-11) It is no surprise when men love those who love them (Matthew 5:43-48). Besides, why wouldn’t Adam—or we—naturally love the infinitely lovely?2
The Genesis 3 story is indeed about love. God writes Satan and evil into the script for the sake of love.3 But it is not love from man, it is love for man that is the climax. The fall is all about love. However, here’s the point:
God is not glorious because forgiven rebels love Him. He is glorious because He loves and forgives rebels.
That’s what Paul wrote in Romans.
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:6-8, Read the whole chapter and see how Paul parallels Adam and Christ.)
Full demonstration of God’s holy love and the riches of His glorious grace are the reason He endures vessels of wrath. His love is the infinitely eminent love, proven by His initiating sacrifice.
If Satan and evil and vice exist so that man has choice and can choose virtue and love, then that plan failed miserably. Man chose—and we by nature keep choosing—sin. Even if we had chosen obedience, our love for the most worthy-to-be-loved Being in the universe would be no awe-inspiring thing.
The answer to “Why [did God] create that choice?” cannot be to show off something about man’s love. What is amazing and glorious and worth singing about for eternity is amazing love that bled for Adam’s helpless, unlovely, rebellious race. Rather than trying to defend God by asserting man’s ability for virtue and love, we should settle our feet in the stirrups of a God-centered worldview that enables us to ride through life hating sin and Satan, yet never wavering in confidence, and even celebration, that God is in control over the rough terrain.
Though Jesus was tempted in every way as we are, He was not capable of sin. In His case, impeccability does not diminish His virtue, it accentuates it. ↩
I’m totally channeling Edwards’ The End for Which God Created the World here. Please read that. ↩
Though, Satan is fully culpable for his actions as God’s curse on him demonstrates (Genesis 3:14-15). The same principle applies to Pharaoh (Romans 9:14-23) and Judas (Matthew 26:34). ↩