What was the transgression of Adam and Eve? What did they do that God had forbidden?
Q: What was the sin of our first parents?
A: Eating the forbidden fruit.
(Genesis 2:16-17, 3:6)
The first of our passages today, Genesis 2:16-17, lays out the command of God to Adam and Eve. Having created the world and everything in it, God took Adam and placed “him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.” Man had a job to do, he was a gardener. God not only gave him a work to do, but he also provided for man’s needs as well. God told Adam that he, and by extension his wife & descendants, could eat of every tree of the garden. What a wonderful, abundant, and gracious provision.
Before moving on, let that sink in for a moment. We don’t know the extent of the variety of fruits & vegetables at creation, but stingy is not a word that could be applied to God in his gift to men. He would have been gracious to have even given one or perhaps two. Half of the trees would have been amazing. Instead, God gave all of them. All except one that is. How quickly we focus on the one that God did not give rather than the abundance that God did give. God withheld this one, saying “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.” One tree in all of creation that is out of bounds. Every tree but one that could be eaten under the smile of God. Only one that would require defiance to consume, and death along with it.
Spurning God’s goodness and valuing the fruit of the one forbidden tree in all of creation over God and all his gifts, our first parents took the fruit of that one tree and ate it (Genesis 3:6). The fruit was not poisonous. Unlike what Eve told the serpent, death did not come in touching the fruit. God’s command was not simply good advice to save them from the inherent badness of the fruit. Rather, it was a moral choice that stood in distinction to every tree that God had given, especially the tree of life.
Together these trees stood in the garden, testifying to God’s provision, and Man’s submission to God as creator and king. So long as they lived in submission to his command, they would have life. However, rebellion leading to an experiential knowledge of evil, would lead to death. Our first parents chose death. Our next study will delve into the why of the sin, but for today it is sufficient to see and believe that eating the forbidden fruit was truly the sin of our first parents. It does not stand as a metaphor for some other sin. Given the command of God not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the chose to eat it anyway.
This is common to us today. For the vast majority of our sin, it is not that we are ignorant of God’s command, but rather that we simply choose to do what God forbids. If ever you have doubted the need for the Cross, ponder that truth for a moment. Sin is so often the knowing defiance of God. If ever you have doubted the astounding graciousness of God in redeeming anyone at all, consider for a moment that he is not a kindly third party coming in to rescue us from the one we have defied. He is the one into whose face we spit by our defiance, and it is He who extends mercy and grace to save. Without his mercy and grace in the person of the Lord Jesus, we would all surely die.
Yours in Christ,