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Hi! 'Kirby D. P'
It seems to me that a good approach to the Biblical narrative of the Fall is to try and keep everything as human as possible. In other words, while reading, we should be asking ourselves: what would I have done in his or her situation; how would I have felt if this or that had happened to me. Not wishing to appear irreverent, I occasionally use this approach when I'm especially earnest to understand God's motives and actions. So, let's use it for this instance too regarding the the so-called probationary command not to eat of the fruit of that one tree in Eden.
I've frequently heard some accusingly say, "After all, God planted that tree there" ... putting the blame for Adam's disobedience on God, After all, God could just as easily have refrained from planting it, couldn't He?
We also have those Christians who are immersed in orthodox theology claiming that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was planted by God because He wanted to see whether newly created man was going to be obedient to Him or not! These seem to have forgotten that the Lord Jesus taught us to pray, "Lead us not into temptation". Nevertheless, there remain many who wrongly claim that God supposedly placed an enticing lure right before the inexperienced Adam and Eve as something of a test / temptation.
This makes me think of those suspicious people who secret a few coins here and there in the house just prior the arrival of the new housemaid. To find out if the maid was honest, you see! To put it mildly, I've always felt a lack of appreciation of this kind of behavior ... to put it mildly. I've also heard that some parents do the same thing with their children ... presuming to 'teach' them. But speaking as an earthly father, I expect good parents to have removed as far as possible any danger or temptation from the lives of their children.
The question we earthly parents must be daring enough to ask ourselves is: "Am I a better father than God?" ... I hardly expect so. Or could God's standards of parental conduct differ from mine, simply because He is the sovereign God? Again, I hardly expect so.
But if God did not plant that tree to put Adam and Eve to the test, why did He plant it?
The answer is that, rather than a probation and a test, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was a parable on the part of God which taught Adam and Eve the realities of the invisible heavenly world.
Eden had two trees, the Tree of Life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In the same way, the spiritual world had two realms; one which identified with the plan and purpose of God, (life), and the other identifying itself with the rebellion of Satan, (death).
Since the tree was not intended for probation and testing. the logical conclusion is that the threat of death as a result of eating its fruit was not meant as punishment but as a warning of the consequences.
Allow me explain by way of this illustration: I once lived above the 60th Parallel and it was not uncommon that the aboriginal parents would place a wood stove in the center of their one room cabins. When the stove was red hot, they would warn their child, "Do you see this stove that is so beautiful and red? You must not touch it, for when you do you'll burn yourself badly".
You can see the parallels: these parents did not put that stove in the room to test the child but simply because the reality of the season required it. If the child touched the stove and burned itself, the burning was no infliction of punishment but the inevitable consequence of the touching. So it was, when Adam and Eve lived in Eden, Satan had already rebelled in heaven and God arranged things in Eden in such a way that man had more than sufficient information and forewarning.
Not surprisingly, I've repeatedly stated my opinion in this Forum that God is only and perfectly good. God does not think in terms of testing, commandments, sin and punishment but only along lines of life, light, salvation and love. Is the light worried by the threat of darkness? Is light no more than the absence of darkness? In no way! Light can penetrate and conquer darkness, but who can shine a beam of darkness into a well-lit room? Light, so to speak, does not even know what darkness is, nor does life know the nature of death. "God is light and in Him is no darkness at all". (1John 1:5). Such is the true character and attributes of our heavenly father!
Let's now attempt to understand the situation in which Eve found herself in when the serpent told her his story:
In 1Timothy 2:14 it says: "And Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor". When we read carefully, this as a matter of fact was her defense when God called her to account.
Unfortunately, some Orthodox ideologues teach that, before Eve took the fruit, sin had already done its terrible work in her heart by causing her to desire to be like God. However, if this were the case with Eve, how could she say she was deceived? Simply because the serpent somehow suggested this desire to her? In that case she could have known better.
No, the deceit was much mere subtle and deadly than this.
When God created man He said He created him in his image and after his likeness. It is God's purpose that man should be a partner of God, worthy of his love. No doubt, God discussed this purpose with Adam. (to the extent the spiritual development of Adam permitted). Adam, in turn told Eve about it. In the garden of Eden, with its two special trees among the many others, they had a living story-book of God's purpose and intents for them.
We can assume therefore that Adam and Eve had a general and joyful expectation of 'being like God' at some stage in the future. In Eve, who had heard the story second-hand, this probably created a feeling that it could occur almost any time ... much the same as her belief that Cain was the man promised her by God after the Fall; Coincidentally, much the same in fact as many people nowadays expect the Lord's return 'at any time'.
The Adversary deceived Eve in the highest and most cherished aspiration she had: to be like God. Most likely, this is what caught her off guard; she failed to see through the subtle lie. After all, the fruit looked as if it might do what the serpent said it would. So, she took and ate. Eve wanted to give God a hand in reaching the high purpose. She sinned, not because she wanted the wrong thing but because she was tricked into choosing the wrong way. She never doubted what she did was right, so subtle was the deceit.
Instead of listening to the serpent, she should have gone to Adam and asked his advise, which he would have given her if he had been able; or they could have asked God to explain the matter. All this did not happen because Eve was 'honestly' deceived: she did not realize what she was doing.
Indeed, God never said her plea of deceit was invalid. He accepted it and immediately showed her a way to forgiveness and 'being like God': the way of the 'woman's seed'.
Eve's sin was a forgivable sin because it was the result of subtle deceit, not of wilful rebellion on her part. Although her desire was God's desire, her way was not God's way. Now the purpose could only be reached via Calvary, where the Second Adam was to fulfill the purpose of God without falling into subtle temptation. "Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor".
Adam was not deceived! Adam knew what he did. But before judging and condemning him, let us try to understand his position.
At this point, I'm taking the liberty of putting myself in Adam's place; I'm quite aware how far away this is from the routine theological theories concerning the event.
Let us assume (as I think we can) that Adam was not there when Eve took the fruit and ate. Let's presume he was sitting in the shade of the Tree of Life after completing some cultivating task in the garden. His wife had wandered off among the trees, and Adam is thinking of her: a gift of God, bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh; the woman he loves with a deep and tender affection. Wouldn't he gladly give everything he had for her? After a few minutes he sees her walking towards him from among the trees, her face shining with joy, a woman almost too beautiful to behold. Adam rises and approaches her. In her hand she has a beautiful fruit.,"Look Adam, I brought a fruit for you. This fruit will make us like God, as He promised you!". Adam took one look at the fruit, and he knew! Here, I'll end my little story, to ask you to stand in Adam's place.
What would you have done? There is the woman you love, your wife, the one with whom you share your most intimate life and thoughts. Unknowingly she has done something fatal, something irrevocable, and yours is the choice what to do. Would you have said: "Well, I'm sorry Eve, now you have gone and done something I won't have anything to do with. You better see for yourself how you manage to find your way out of this one?" Adam's love, his loyalty to his wife, caused him to take the fruit and eat. He could not leave her in her predicament; he had to share it with her, for otherwise he would lose her. Adam knew what he did was wrong, but his human love for the woman God gave him prevented him from considering a different course.
When he had eaten, Adam looked at Eve again, and at himself. "Come, Eve" he may have said, putting his arm around her shoulder, "Come with me".
From a figtree he took a bunch of leaves and strung them together. "Here, cover yourself", he said. She knew what he meant, for she, too, now understood what had happened. "Come with me among the shrubs", Adam said, "and let us wait for whatever is going to happen".
I put it to you that Adam sinned because he loved his wife so much, knowing full well what he did, In fact isn't that what he told God, and didn't God accept his defense'? "The woman whom Thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the fruit, and I ate". Adam's sin was a human sin of human loyalty, and therefore forgivable, even though it would take the death of the woman's seed to undo the results of his transgression.
Adam failed in that he did not run to God when he saw the terrible situation which Eve had put herself and him in. He should have asked God for a solution. But with the limited knowledge he had at the time of his Father in heaven, he decided to join Eve in her sin. Isn't there a typically human nobility about this act? Wilful, you may say. Yes, and noble too. A forgivable sin. Adam failed because he could not see how even God could come up with a plan which would save both Eve and himself, and still enable them to reach God's purpose of being like Him.
In New Testament terms, it could be said that Adam "served the creature rather than the Creator", (Rom 1:25), and this was his downfall and that of the race which would spring from him and the woman he loved. When God had told them the full consequences of their sin, Adam "called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living". And the Lord God, in a gesture of loving care and comforting foreshadowing of forgiveness "made for Adam and his wife garments of skins, and clothed them".
A few words must to be said about Genesis 3:12-13 where Adam and Eve explain to God how their sin came about. These words of Adam and Eve have almost universally been interpreted as attempts to put the blame on Eve and even on God in Adam's case, and on the serpent in Eve Is case. This is a false view of the situation. In a minimum of words the Bible records here the defense or the explanation Adam and Eve put forward to God. Especially Adam's words are revealing: "The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the fruit of the tree, and I ate".
"Look, God", we can almost hear Adam say, "She is your gift to me; you took her out of me, and I love her. When she gave me the fruit she had already eaten of herself, what could I do but eat? How could I have done otherwise?"
There is no suggestion whatsoever in the Bible that God did not accept their defense. It seems to me that the words of Genesis 3:16-19 can be read as an acceptance of their plea, and at the same time of course as a detailed statement of the consequences of their sinful acts.
In one word, the consequence of their sin was: curse. Though he listened to the voice of his wife, Adam did not lose his position to her but to the one who was the instigator of her sin: Satan. Through his sin Adam, who was intended to be the head of God's creation, became the slave of Satan and his demons, who from that very moment onward began to wield their destructive authority over him, his wife, and the earth they lived in.
Was God being vindictive when He closed the way to the Tree of Life for Adam and Eve? After his gesture of forgiveness, wasn't it harsh of Him to drive them out of Eden? It was not.
The original way for Adam and Eve to attain the purpose, via the Tree of Life, had now become impossible. For Adam and Eve it would have been cruel torture if they had had to live 'for ever', (Gen 3:22). The way of the Tree of Life in the direct sense of Eden had to be closed, and the way of the second Adam took its place.
I hope that I've been of some help with explaining that the human story of sin and sickness, suffering and death is not the story of the punishment for sin inflicted by God on Adam and his descendants. It's the story of the consequences of leaving God and ending up in the sphere of influence of the Evil One. If we speak of the 'chastisement that made us whole', (which was upon Jesus), we do not see God as an angry Father who chastises, nor even as the just Judge who punishes .... but only as the loving Father who went all the way to save His children.
Our Lord Jesus is the Second Adam, the firstborn of a New Creation. A descendant of Adam, He is much more than just that! Because His entire existence started with a new act of creation by God when He sent the angel to Mary. By the power of the Word borne by Gabriel, Mary became the mother of Him, "Who would be great, and would be called the Son of the Most High".
Jesus, too, received from God a wife, a spiritual wife: the church. He, too, found Himself in the position of Adam, in that His 'wife' had committed sin. Yet here He proved to be greater than Adam, for He listened to the voice of God, even when that voice called Him to Calvary. Adam could not believe that God might have a solution for the predicament he found his wife in; Jesus was the embodiment of the love of God, and He opened the new and living way back to the throne of grace. The 'Lamb that was slain before the foundation of the world' was the true second Adam, a Man who did not deem it below Himself to become the firstborn among many brethren.
Thus the Lord Jesus, as the true second Adam, received from God his wife, not flesh of His flesh, but spirit of His spirit. Without this wife, the church, the Lord would not be complete. In her He found a true and worthy object for His love. Yet, although He received her from the hand of God, He had to win her with His own blood, His own life. The first Adam received his wife from God, and lost her and himself to the control of Satan by listening to her voice instead of to God. Jesus first listened to God, first did God's will, and then called His wife and drew her with cords of divine love.
Because of his faithfulness to God and His love for His wife the earth, the whole of creation will be blessed for Jesus' sake. "For you shall go out in joy, and be led forth in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress; instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle; and it shall be to the Lord for a memorial, for an everlasting sign which shall not be cut off",(Is 55:12-13).
