It’s hard to even imagine what a world without sin would look like. Since the fall of man, every aspect of life and of our world has been affected by sin. As we’ve studied creation, sin has loomed over the story of God’s good world. In today’s passage, we look at the downfall of man and the first sin. But it’s a passage which is also hopeful. While there are severe consequences, it is the first place in the Bible that tells us of the gospel and of a future offspring of the woman who will finally and forever crush the serpent.
Tag: original sin
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The First Gospel – Genesis 3
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Atonement after The Fall. Studying Genesis 3:21-24
The first sacrifice
After the fall of Adam and Eve, God had made them new garments from animal skins.
Genesis 3:21:
21 And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.
These are both an act of God’s grace and also a reminder of man’s guilt. Our innocence has been lost because of the fall.
This is the Bible’s first sacrifice as God covers Adam and Eve in animal skins. Sacrifices in the Bible point to the final and ultimate sacrifice when Jesus gave his life, and gave up his flesh so that all who believe in him could be forgiven.
Exiled from Eden
In one final act of divine judgment, Adam and Eve are cast out of Eden because of their sin.
22 Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” 23 therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. 24 He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.
This penalty is not arbitrary nor is it unfair.
The passage has God saying that man has become like one of us.
Trinity
There’s another hint to the Trinity in this verse.
Man was told that he’d be like God if he ate of the fruit of the tree. Here God says that man has become like one of us.
Who is us?
Some might take it similarly to Genesis 1 and suggest God is referring to himself in the plural. This overlooks the theology which develops in the Bible. Man has made himself like the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
And while Adam is now like them, in a sense, he will not be with them as he is removed from Eden.
Eden is the place where the tree of life is. God promised death for eating of the forbidden fruit. And so many must be expelled from the place where there is the tree of life and be placed outside the garden.
Returning to Eden
The rest of the Bible is the story of man getting back to Eden.
In the Bible’s closing chapter, an Edenic heaven is depicted in the new heaven, the new earth and the new Jerusalem. In both places, there is the presence of God where there is flowing water, the tree of life, angelic guards, that faces to the east.
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The Gospel according to Genesis. Studying Genesis 3:7-13
In Genesis 3, we see the fall of humanity into sin. What is also significant about the passage is that we see the initial reaction of Adam and Eve to their sin. They do what humanity has done countless times since that first sin: they try to cover up their own sins.
Man’s attempt to cover sin
In Genesis 1-2, we see the account of God’s good and orderly creation. Everything is great in those first two chapter of the Bible. In chapter 3, we see the fall. Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit. Sin is introduced into the world.
Lightning doesn’t immediately strike them dead.
The first reaction that we see to sin is not from God but from Adam and Eve.
Genesis 3:7-8 says:
7 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. 8 And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.
Adam and Eve try to hide.
They try to cover up their own sin. But man is unable to do so. We cannot hide from an all knowing God and we cannot cover our sins up.
The God who covers sin
In 2 Samuel 11, King David does something truly terrible. He has an affair with a married woman named Bathsheeba.
2 Samuel 11:2-4:
2 It happened, late one afternoon, when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king’s house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful. 3 And David sent and inquired about the woman. And one said, “Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?” 4 So David sent messengers and took her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. (underlines added)
It’s similar language to Eve in the garden before the fall.
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.
-Genesis 3:6
As Eve saw that the tree was good for good and it delighted her eyes, and she took the fruit; David saw Bathsheeba, that she was beautiful, and he took her.
Bathsheeba gets pregnant from this affair. Then David does something else truly terrible. He sends Bathsheeba’s husband to the front lines in battle for the purpose of having him killed.
In Psalm 51, we see David address this sin that he’s committed and he is devastated by what he has done. In my opinion, Psalm 51 is the strongest personal lament of sin found anywhere in the Bible.
But there’s one particular idea that I want to focus on from that Psalm.
8 Let me hear joy and gladness;
let the bones that you have broken rejoice.
9 Hide your face from my sins,
and blot out all my iniquities.
10 Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and renew a right spirit within me.
11 Cast me not away from your presence,
and take not your Holy Spirit from me.
12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
and uphold me with a willing spirit. –
-Psalm 51:8-12
In turning to the Lord, David asks God to hide your face from my sins.
Do you see the difference?
Adam and Eve try to hide themselves from God because of their sin. David asks God to hide his face from David’s sins.
A holy God and human sin
Genesis 3:9-11 says:
9 But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” 10 And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” 11 He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”
John Sailhamer points out that all of God’s responses to Adam and Eve come in the form of questions. The Lord does not respond by reigning down brimstone and fire. God is inviting Adam to confess what he has done.
God isn’t asking questions out of a lack of knowledge. God is all knowing.
It is through God’s questions that Adam convicts himself.
God asks Adam where he is and Adam explains that he was afraid because he was naked and he had hid himself. God asks Adam how he knew he was naked and asks Adam if he has eaten from the tree that God commanded him not to eat of.
This is the real heart of Adam’s shame. It’s not because it’s naked. Adam is ashamed because he has disobeyed God’s direct commandment.
But Adam responds with excuses, as does Eve.
Excuses
Genesis 3:12-13:
12 The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” 13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
The woman whom you gave to be with me.
Adam blames both Eve and God. He blames Eve for giving him the fruit, and he blames God for giving him Eve!
So often, we make excuses for our sins. We blame God, blame others, blame circumstances, blame family. Your sin is your fault and no one else’s. It is important that we recognize that. We commit our own sins. No one else does that. As Adam and Eve were guilty of their sin, we too are guilty of the sins we commit.
I believe that one of the ways we blame God when we sin is that we blame him for decreeing things are unholy that we want to do.
The place for shame
I worry that our society has tried to do away with shame. But sometimes we feel shame because we did something bad or are doing something bad. In that instance, shame can be a good thing because it can point us to another way to live.
Our society preaches an anti-gospel that lifts up the goodness of man, makes excuses, and encourages hedonism. We say that we shouldn’t be ashamed, and yet our society is miserable. Mental illness, anxiety and depression are through the roof. Drug use is through the roof.
We know that we’re messed up and friends and society wanting us to have a sin positivity doesn’t take that shame away.
Not all shame is bad.
Shame should drive us to repentance. It should drive us to the one who does atone for our sins, to the one who does forgive our sins. The Lord Jesus. He was without sin and died so that all who believe in him can have eternal life. Jesus invites us to come to him and to turn from our sin.
Sources used:
Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis, Chapters 1–17, The New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1990), 193–194.
John H. Sailhamer, “Genesis,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1990), 53–54.
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Eve and the Serpent. Studying Genesis 3:1-7
The doctrine of original sin is one that has confounded many throughout the centuries, but especially in recent decades. A talking snake talked Adam and Eve into sinning and that brought condemnation for all of humanity?
That is the teaching of the Bible and the event is picked up again and referenced in the New Testament as the event which brought sin into the world (cf. Romans 5:18-19; 1 Corinthians 15:20-21).
People question this event. Why would God care so much about people eating fruit of a specific tree? I’d ask why man felt so compelled to disobey? And even now, we continue to question the command!
In Genesis 3, we see a paradigm that so often plays itself out in the human heart in regards to our sin. Doubting God’s Word, Distorting God’s Word, rejecting God’s Word, doubting God’s goodness and choosing to disobey.
Doubting God’s Word
Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?”
-Genesis 3:1
This is how the serpent begins the discussion with Eve. At the beginning, he introduces doubt when he questions God’s word and asks Did God actually say ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?”
He is introducing the idea that God’s Word is subject to human judgment and opinion.
Distorting God’s Word
In response, Eve goes to far and ends up misquoting what God had said. Genesis 3:2-3 says:
2 And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, 3 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.’ ”
The problem is that in Genesis 2:16-17, the specific command is:
16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
So the Lord commanded not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Eve changes God’s Word by suggesting that they cannot eat or touch the fruit of this tree. There are other distortions in what Eve says, but for this post, we’ll mainly focus on her adding to what God has commanded.
Rejecting God’s Word
Genesis 3:4:
4 But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die.
The serpent flatly contradicts God’s Word and denies the weight of the consequences for disobedience. Again, we see how these issues with the scripture work their way into our own decisions. We doubt God’s Word, we twist it to make it say what we want it to say, we disregard it when it’s not what we like. The results this leads to are disastrous.
Doubting God’s goodness
The serpent continues to speak in verse 5:
For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
I love how Ken Mathews sums this up in his commentary of Genesis. In the serpent’s rejection of God’s word, he is implying “God is not good and gracious; he is selfish and deceptive, preventing the man and woman from achieving the same position as “Elohim””
False promises
After contradicting God, the serpent explains why the rejection of God’s command will actually be better than obedience. The rest of verse 5 records the serpent saying: your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
Once again, this plays into the heart of human sin. We doubt God’s goodness. When we sin against God’s commands, we are acting as though God is holding back something good from us or that we know better than God.
This way of thinking treats God as our adversary.
From temptation to sin
We see the response of Eve in Genesis 3:6:
6 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.
With her eyes, she sees the fruit of the tree is good. In eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Eve is seeking out wisdom independent
The serpent had distorted God’s Word but not everything he said was an outright lie. He deceived and tempted eve with half-truths. Indeed the eyes of Adam and Eve were opened. But they were open to recognize their nakedness. Eve thought that eating of the fruit of this tree would make her like god. John Sailhamer observed that instead, Adam and Eve realized they weren’t even like each other as shame and hiding were introduced.
In the process of this first sin, we see other issues of the human heart. We see the pride of thinking that she knows better than God. There is also covetousness of thinking that true fulfillment will come from something that Eve lacks. These elements in our decisions to sin and our commissions of sin have played themselves out time and again throughout history.
The end of verse 6 mentions that Eve gave some of the fruit to Adam. We’re not sure if he heard the exchange between eve and the serpent, and there’s no indication as to what his thought process was which led to the eating of the fruit of the tree.
Sin is introduced into the world.
Genesis 3:7 says:
7 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.
The serpent told half-truths. He had given the empty promise that Eve’s eyes would be opened upon eating the fruit. That part was true. For both Adam and Eve, their eyes were opened, and what they saw was their nakedness. The serpent told her she would be like God. This appealed to our desire for glorification. The serpent told Eve that she would have the knowledge of good and evil. That was true too, but what that knowledge brought was the knowledge that Adam and Eve were now evil.
Genesis 3 records nothing good coming of eating this fruit. It’s not depicted as some magical moment of bliss. Their eyes are opened. They have sinned. In their nakedness, they sew together fig leaves to cover themselves. It’s an attempt to hide from their sin. But they cannot hide from an all knowing God.
Sources:
K. A. Mathews, Genesis 1-11:26, vol. 1A, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1996), 236.
John H. Sailhamer, “Genesis,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1990), 52.
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The danger of bad Biblical teaching
Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.
-James 3:1Words matter.
We can use words to bless, words to harm, words to boast, words to give instruction, and words to deceive. Through words we can tell a person that we love them, or that we hate them. Through words we can compliment or tear a person down.
When the Prophet Isaiah had a heavenly vision of the throne room of God, and beheld the holiness of God, he said in Isaiah 6:5: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”
Words were part of the original sin. In the garden, the serpent, twisting God’s words: “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?”
God had never said that. He said they could eat of any tree except for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
“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” (Genesis 3:2-3).
Eve also gets it wrong. God had never said they couldn’t touch the tree. Twisting God’s words. Further provoked into sin by the devil In Genesis 3:4-5, “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.”
When Adam and Eve are confronted with their sin, they use words to blame in Genesis 3:12, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.”
Words matter.
In the first part of James 3, James zeroes in on teachers. He gives a warning to teachers that they will be judged with greater strictness. The reason why carries into verse 2 that we all sin in many ways, but one of the ways common to us all is that we stumble and sin in what we say.
There is danger in bad Biblical teaching. It can lead people astray. It can teach people falsities, because the God who is revealed in scripture is the eternal, immortal, wise God. He’s the King of the universe, the creator of all things, he spoke the universe into being.
There’s not a canvas where we are painting and where we can make something look however we want it to look.
God is God. He has revealed himself in his scripture, his nature, his holiness. And so sound teaching about God matters. Teaching truth about God matters. Understanding God -in terms of how he has revealed himself in the Bible – matters.
And not all churches do that. And not all teachers do that.
Not many should be teachers because teaching necessarily involves words. Teaching about God’s word, teaching about God’s gospel necessarily involves words and language, and in talking, it makes it easy to say things that are untrue.
We can’t be fast and loose with God’s gospel. We can’t make God who we want God to be if that’s not true about how God reveals himself in scripture.
Unbiblical teachings that resort more to our feelings than to truth.
Doesn’t God just want me to be happy? Not at the expense of sin!
Words matter. How we approach the word of God matters. Like the serpent in the garden, twisting the very words of God.
So it is true that there is a warning given to those who teach. And anyone who does teach from the word of God should question his motives, should be humble before God, and prayerful about the text. It should be taken seriously.
We should be careful in our approach to God’s word.
But regardless of if someone is a teacher or not, all of us should still use discernment in listening to what our teachers say. In listening to that which is in accordance with scripture. Of being fed by sound Biblical preaching. And that’s true here, and thats’ true if you ever move to a new community. And that’s true of any teacher who you might watch on tv or who you might podcast. We should be discerning with the Bible teachers we listen to.
Originally published August 2, 2018
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