Did you ever wonder what sin Adam and Eve committed that was so egregious that it resulted in humanity’s separation from God? If you thought it was about some kind of fruit, you are way off target. The idea of some type of fruit, an apple, comes from Genesis and human imagination.
(Genesis 2:17)1NIV New International Version Translations – “but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; for in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die.”
One way to interpret Genesis is along the lines of a metaphor, a figure of speech in which a word or phrase that ordinarily designates one thing is used to designate another, thus making an implicit comparison. We then might conclude that there was a specific command that God had given Adam and Eve and that breaking that command would lead to death. At the time of the “Fruit Incident,” Adam and Eve were living without the threat of death. Here, we see the destructive power of “free will” in humanity. Our first couple were willing to give up everything—paradise—for the knowledge their Creator possessed. The tree of knowledge of good and evil represented a boundary set by God. Whether this was a test of obedience and trust, we will not know for sure until we reach eternity ourselves. But by eating the “fruit of the tree,” Adam and Eve disobeyed God’s command and chose to obtain the “knowledge of good and evil for themselves.” We know the end of that story: sin and death came into the world.
The first negative impact of sin was to make people ashamed of their nakedness. They covered themselves with fig leaves. This is the sin of becoming self-centered and focused on themselves. That specific sin is still alive and well today. When they became focused on themselves, their souls were no longer in communion with their God. Adam and Eve’s temporal physical bodies now had control. And what was God’s response to their separation? God reacted immediately to reinstate Adam and Eve’s connection to Him. To leave them disconnected was to abandon His creation to evil (the Serpent). God then made the first sacrifices in history to cover their nakedness and bring them into fellowship with Him again.
(Genesis 3:21) – “The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. And the Lord God said, ‘The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.’ So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.”
It is worth a moment to pause here and notice that there were more beings than God existing at that time. God used the phrase “The man has now become like one of us.” We must also assume that evil also existed before creation. In God’s original plan, He had intended to create a world protecting it from evil. Eternal life existed before the creation of humankind! God’s plan for us was an eternal world without sin, a paradise. In (Genesis 2), we are told that there were two named trees in the Garden of Eden, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life. When Adam and Eve ate fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, this was a sin against God, since He had commanded them not to do so. After this, God indicates that they will not be allowed to eat again from the Tree of Life since doing so would allow them to live forever. Adam and Eve had been eating from the Tree of Life, enjoying the benefits of eternal life. The Tree of Life appears in both the opening and closing chapters of the Bible (Genesis 2-3 and Revelation 22). The Tree of Life is a symbol of God’s life-giving presence and the fullness of eternal life now available only through our redemption by Jesus Christ.
In traditional Christian teaching, original sin is the result of Adam and Eve’s disobedience to God when they ate a forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. They were separating from God, which brought dissatisfaction and guilt into their lives. We tend to try to explain away all sin, genocide, war, cruelty, exploitation, and abuse by assigning blame to Adam and Eve. But not so fast! Since sin entered our paradise, humanity has gone all out to take advantage of the world’s sin. The question should be how to get out of this quandary.
Sin is not a misfortune; it is a crime against God. Sinners do not deserve pity and compassion; they freely choose to sin. God is not responsible for humanity’s sins. If we stand around and blame God, we are building a wall between us and God. To give those who are unsaved excuses contradicts the Bible. Humanity is without excuse! Since the moment that God covered the naked Adam and Eve, He has been actively working to bring humanity permanently back into fellowship with Him. God has also been working to remove the barrier of sin that was created so long ago.
(Genesis 3:15) – “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush[b] your head, and you will strike his heel.”
God passes an immediate sentence, and the punishment begins right where the sin began, with the serpent. Satan, too, is sentenced to be degraded and accursed by God. Satan will be detested by all mankind. Note that the plan to destroy Satan through a Redeemer is signified by the crushing of the serpent’s head. God then makes Adam and Eve a gracious promise to deliver them from the power of Satan. By their faith in God, our first parents were justified and saved by faith. The Redeemer is to come in flesh, an incarnation, as the seed of a woman.
(Hebrews 2:11-14) – “Both the one who makes people holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters. He says, ‘I will declare your name to my brothers and sisters; in the assembly, I will sing your praises.’ And again, ‘I will put my trust in him.’ And again he says, ‘Here am I, and the children God has given me.’ Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil”
And what did God require of humanity? It would be God’s first commandment, “You shall have no other gods before me.” If you want to understand the Bible, if you want to know why God kept sending prophets over and over to tell the people to worship only Him, and if you want to know where Jesus came from, then just look at the story of Adam and Eve. Jesus was in eternity with God long before the Universe was created. When Adam and Eve exposed our world to sin, God had His plan sitting right next to Him. Jesus would come and die on the cross, not unlike the sacrifice of animals for their skins to cover Adam and Eve. The result is that we have been reconciled to God and forgiven for our sinfulness. The fall of humanity and its consequences, as well as the redemption and reconciliation of all things, lie at the heart of the Gospel’s message (Colossians 1:20; Romans 8:21). Because of humanity’s disobedience toward God, death and suffering entered the world. But it is through this same suffering, death, and Resurrection of Christ that we can gain salvation. We do not need to worry about being condemned to live forever in a fallen world. The curse that accompanied sin in Genesis 3 will be reversed and removed, as death, sorrow, crying, and pain will no longer exist (Revelation 21:4; Revelation 22:3). We will eat from the Tree of Life!
Contemplations
- Stories like Adam and Eve are always difficult to understand. We are programmed by our world to always look for proof. What would you conclude from the story of the “fall?”
- Ideas to Explore: Salvation by faith, not works, requires us to accept God’s Word at its metaphoric values. All of Scripture, therefore, is useful for teaching.
- There is an amazing amount of consistency in Scripture. What goes through your mind when you find it?
- Ideas to Explore: It increases your faith. It makes you want to read and learn more about God’s Word. It makes you feel blessed to be a child of God.
- How does the metaphor of the two trees help you understand the Scriptures?
- Ideas to Explore: Easy to relate to the story. Can be explained to others much easier. Children can learn about God much more easily.
- Would you consider Christ’s crucifixion on a wooden cross (a tree) a metaphor for the Tree of Life?
- Ideas to Explore: It is Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection that reinstate our access to eternal life.
- What thoughts do you have about the fact that eternity existed before our world and will exist afterward? Eternity is forever!
- Ideas to Explore: As humans, we typically cannot understand things like omnipresence and eternity. Does this force us to focus on faith? Isn’t that what saves?
- 1NIV New International Version Translations