Understanding the Bible - Part 2

​The Fall
 
        Everything changes in the second chapter of our story.  God’s perfect plan for his creation is fundamentally altered by the rebellious actions of his human creations.  Once you have read Genesis 3:1 through 3:24 you are ready to consider the three questions:

1.  What does it reveal about God?

• God is just.  Justice is a system of laws, enforcement of those laws, and administration of punishment when laws are broken.  God created the law that forbade eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.  He enforced that law and administered the punishment for violating that law by banishing Adam and Eve from Eden.
• God is merciful.  God could have just hit the reset button, destroyed Adam and Eve and tried again with new humans.  Instead, he banished them and altered the rules of his creation to serve as the consequences for their action.  He transformed Eve from the instigator of creation’s ruin to the instrument of its redemption by declaring that from her seed would come one who would bruise the head of the serpent.  The words of God in Genesis 3:15 are the first prophecy of the coming of the savior Jesus Christ.  Note that God refers to Eve’s seed, not Adam’s.  This foreshadows the virgin birth, in which Mary serves as the human component of Jesus’s DNA and God provides the male genetic component.  In the very same chapter where humans rebel against God and turn his perfect world into a Fallen one, God reveals his plan for restoration.
• God is fully committed to free will.  Not only did God put the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the garden to serve as a test of free will, but he also allowed Satan to enter the garden in the form of the serpent to advocate a point of view that was against God’s will.  The presence of an advocate for an opposing view made the reality of free will complete.  No one can read this chapter and honestly claim that God is an unjust tyrant.
• God is a Trinity of beings.  This is alluded to in Genesis 3:22 where he uses the word “us”.  There are three members of the Trinity: God the Father, God the Son (Jesus), and God the Holy Spirit.  This concept will be explored further as the story progresses.

 
2.  What does it reveal about us?

• We have a desire to make our own rules.  At the heart of Adam and Eve’s disobedience was a desire to make their own rules, to satisfy their own judgment as to what is good and evil.  The serpent caused Eve to question God’s judgment.  First he lied and told Eve that she would not die if she ate the Forbidden Fruit.  Next, he mischaracterized God’s intentions by framing God as jealously protecting his unique knowledge as opposed to God’s true intention of protecting humans from the consequences of knowing and experiencing evil.  The impression one gets is that prior to that encounter, Eve had never dared get close enough to the tree to even look at the fruit.  One imagines she had in her mind an image of the fruit as being foul-looking and inedible.  But when she gets closer and sees the fruit, she confuses her own misconception as a deception on God’s part and this reinforces the serpent’s misleading argument and encourages her to take the next fatal step of eating the fruit.        

     This is an important lesson for us today as we grapple with modern cultural issues.  We must not forego God’s clearly stated laws and instead follow a path the “feels” right to us.  If your personal judgment of what is right conflicts with God’s, you are wrong - plain and simple.  There is no nuance to it.  It is simply you repeating the exact same pattern that started with Eve.  It is rebellion against God, and rebellion against God always ends in pain, suffering, and death.  This not because God is cruel, but instead because God knows what is ultimately true.  He has seen the end of every path we might choose to take.  That is why has given us laws that lead us down only good paths.  When we act in defiance of God’s laws, we are marching down a path that leads to a place that will ultimately end in pain and suffering.

• We choose to separate ourselves from God.  Adam and Eve immediately hid themselves from God after their act of disobedience.  The shame of our sins causes us to pull away from God.
• We are to blame for the Fallen World we live in.  While Adam and Eve started the tragic chain of events, the truth is anyone of us would have eventually eaten from the Forbidden Tree if we were in their place, because like them, we have a desire to make our own rules.  We also perpetuate the fallen nature of this world through our own sins that bring harm to us and to others.  Rather than shaking our fist at God for not solving all the world’s problems, we should instead reflect upon our own culpability.

   
3. What does it reveal about God’s relationship with us?

• God continues to love us despite our disobedience.  God did not destroy Adam and Eve.  He sought them out as they hid from him.  While he had harsh words for them and enforced the consequences for their actions, he did not utterly forsake them.  He made clothing for them to protect them from their own sense of shame and the harsh elements of the fallen world they would be entering.
• God’s ultimate plan is to bring reconciliation and restoration.  The foundation of this plan is found in his words in Genesis 3:15, which as mentioned earlier is a prophecy of salvation through Jesus.
• God instituted death as a form of mercy.  Without death, Adam, Eve, and all the generations of their offspring would be forced to live forever in a Fallen World filled with all manner of suffering, and more importantly, the separation from God that their continued sins would bring.

 
Key passage:
 
                “So the Lord God said to the serpent: ‘Because you have done this, you are cursed more than all cattle, and more than every beast of the field: On your belly you shall go, and you shall eat dust all the days of your life, and I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.” – Genesis 3:14-15
 
         As mentioned before, this is God revealing the method by which he will undo the evil Satan helped to unleash in Eden.  The bruising of the heel is a reference to the suffering Jesus will endure to fulfill the act of salvation.  The bruising of the head is a reference to the total victory Jesus will achieve over evil.  And so this chapter advances the main theme of the story: humans need a savior and God will provide a savior.

Other Notable Points

• Upon eating the Forbidden Fruit, a fundamental change occurred in the biology of Adam and Eve.  All the biological drives necessary for survival in the Fallen World were activated.  This is how pain entered the world, because pain is what enables us to know when we are injured and serves as a warning to prevent further injury.
• Eve’s actions fundamentally changed the relationship between men and women.  The original plan was for males and females to be equal partners who would join in relationship with each other to be one cohesive unit.  But because Eve rebelled first and then convinced Adam to do so, the role of the wife became to serve the husband.  This is another place where we must note that this was not part of God’s original plan, but a modification he made as a consequence of human rebellion.  It is also God’s way of placing ultimate accountability on Adam and all men who would follow him.  Adam blamed his wife Eve for causing him to rebel.  Never again would he or any man be able to make that excuse.
• In this chapter we see the start of Satan’s war against humans.  Satan despises the human race and seeks to completely destroy it.  One imagines he took God’s command literally and expected God to immediately destroy Adam and Eve once they ate the Forbidden Fruit.  He was no doubt disappointed when God merely expelled them from the Garden and bestowed upon them a future death due to their new mortality, but not before they would reproduce and ensure a continued human presence on earth.  God of course, has full knowledge of Satan’s scheme and predicts what will become Satan’s continued efforts to destroy the human race (Gen. 3:15).  This is why God has laws against murder and homosexuality.  Such actions play into Satan’s goal of eliminating humans, whether through acts of violence or sexual confusion that reduce human reproduction.  Our current society’s embracing of homosexuality and the gender confusion that leads some to destroy their reproductive organs has Satanic fingerprints all over it, as does the pro-abortion movement.

Final Thoughts

• God was so committed to the concept of free will that he allowed Satan to enter Eden to advocate for disobedience to God’s will.
• Humans have a desire to make their own rules and “be as God”.
• God is just and enforces consequences when his rules are broken.
• God is merciful.
• Despite our rebellious nature, God still loves us and put in place a plan for reconciliation and restoration (salvation through Jesus).