God made our first parents holy and happy, but we are far from holy and happy. Where did it all fall apart? Is this a case of slow decline, or something more sudden?
Q: Did Adam and Eve stay holy and happy?
A: No. They sinned against God.
(Genesis 3:1–7; Ecclesiastes 7:29; Hosea 6:7)
The next several installments of our study will all focus on different aspects of the fall of man. Today in particular our focus is on the cause of the fall, the sin of our first parents. In Genesis 3:1-7 God shines the light of revelation on the sin of Adam & Eve. We must first back up for context to Genesis 2:16-17. Here, God commands Adam to eat of every tree of the garden except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Then when we look at Genesis 3:6 we see, “…she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.” The command of our God and King to his under-king was to refrain from eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Our first parents, given dominion over all the earth under God alone, rebelled against their Sovereign. They took of the only thing forbidden to them and ate it.
We in our sinful condition, always seeking to justify ourselves, want to answer back to God, “Well there must have been some deficiency in their makeup. Their rebellion isn’t their fault, it is a bug from the programmer.” Yet, the Scriptures will not let us off so easily. As the Preacher of Ecclesiastes points out, “See, this alone I found, that God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes” (Ecclesiastes 7:29). God made man upright. There is no escaping this reality, therefore no room to impugn the creator with the faults of the creation. Man has sought out many schemes. The first rebellion in the garden was sadly just that, the first. There would be, and there have been innumerable acts of rebellion since then. The fall of man is not severe punishment. We see that it isn’t severe when we recognize the magnitude of the rebellion against a holy God. We must also see that this rebellion is not an isolated incident, but rather the first in an ever-expanding web of sin.
Hosea makes it clear that this sin of Adam was a transgression of a covenant. Hosea says that Israel had been faithless to the covenant made with them, just as Adam had been faithless and transgressed the covenant made with him. This is important. We must understand that when Adam sinned against God’s law, he was not breaking some abstract set of rules outside of and separate from God. When Adam broke God’s command, he was sinning against God himself. Relationship is baked into covenant, so to transgress the covenant is to transgress the relationship between the parties of the covenant. In this case, the Creature transgressed the covenant with his Creator. Adam and Eve sinned, but not abstractly, they sinned against God. They broke covenant with him.
This first sin has many implications which we will look at over our next several studies. Perhaps, the most important for us to note today is that whatever lack we have in holiness and happiness is linked to sin against God. God is not a bad creator who just didn’t quite get it right. He is a good creator, who made a good creature. This creature, though made good, turned in rebellion against him. If we want to be angry with anyone in the situation for our sin and misery it would be Adam rather than God. Even that falls short though, because Adam and Eve may have sinned against God, but you would have done the same. You too would have taken the fruit from the only forbidden tree and eaten it. Do you doubt me? How have you kept the rest of the Law? Thank God for the second and better Adam who kept the covenant of God perfectly!
Yours in Christ,