'The sin of Adam and Eve'

Death, spiritual and physical, is the direct and certain result of the breaking of God’s laws.

The Lord God said to Adam:

. . . Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. (Genesis 2:16,17)

Eve and Adam ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They knowingly and deliberately broke the commandment of God, Eve having been encouraged to do so by the serpent and Adam following the leadership of his wife.

The consequences that have flowed from that one act of disobedience have been so horrible that every creature in Heaven and on the earth ought to have learned the lesson for eternity: "the wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23).

In the day that Eve ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil she died in spirit, in soul, and in body. The Presence of Christ is life. The absence of Christ is death. The Presence of Christ left Eve. She continued to breathe, to eat, to think, to speak, to walk about. These activities are not life. Christ Himself is Life. Apart from Him there is no life, no light, whereby people may live.

In the day that Adam ate of the tree he also died in spirit, in soul, and in body. Adam’s body did not cease to function until many hundreds of years later. Adam’s body was dead because of sin just as our body is dead because of sin.

Thousands of years of history reveal to us that the death of Adam and Eve, their loss of the Presence of Christ, their impoverishment and anguish, their assignment to backbreaking toil, were only the beginning of the sorrows of mankind. Each of the billions of persons who has been born since that time has come into the world as a slave to sin and a victim of the consequences of sin.

All of mankind is under the dominion of sin and as a result under the dominion of death. Also, the remainder of the animal kingdom, and the vegetable and mineral domains as well, are all under the "bondage of corruption" (Romans 8:21). The authority and power of sin are total and there is little that any human being can do about it except to turn to the Lord Jesus.

This incredible anguish has occurred because of a single disobedience to God Almighty. Let each of us have the lesson engraved on our personality so that we never can forget it.

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was not the only tree that the Lord God made to grow out of Eden’s ground. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden (Genesis 2:9). The trees of Eden were "pleasant to the sight and good for food."

Two of the trees, the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, were not the kind of trees one usually finds in an orchard in that the type of fruit they bore affected the personality and not just the digestive system. It is tragic that Adam and Eve did not eat of the rest of the trees and leave the prohibited fruit alone. The good we should do we do not do, and the evil we should not do—that is what we do (from Romans 7:19).

It was the Lord God, not the adversary, who caused the tree of the knowledge of good and evil to grow out of the ground in the midst of Eden. God wanted that tree there and He had in mind to use it along with the other trees to bring about the full growth and development of His offspring, Adam and Eve.

Adam and Eve were children. They were in the image of God, but only in the sense that a human baby is in the image of its parents. It takes a long time for one of God’s "babies" to grow up in His household and to begin to look and act like an adult.

In order for Adam and Eve to grow up and become a son and daughter of God they had to eat a proper diet, just as all children have to do if they are to be healthy and grow normally. Part of that diet consisted of the fruit of the tree of life and part consisted of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, or those two trees would not have been "good for food" (Genesis 2:9). (One wonders what other kinds of trees grew in Eden!)

As an infant grows older his diet changes. The food that is nourishing at one age is not adequate at another. God had every intention of having Adam and Eve eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil because apart from such knowledge they were not in His image (Genesis 3:22).

God’s timing in our lives is important, and food that is good for us when presented at the right moment is not good for us if it is eaten ahead of schedule.

God knew that the eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil would produce shame and would separate His children from Himself. Also, God will not accept willful disobedience on the part of His children even if they do blame someone else for their disobedience.

The fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is the wisdom of judgment. It is the ability to discern what is good and what is evil. Such discernment is an important ability of a son of God. Being able to discern good and evil is a sign of maturity.

But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. (Hebrews 5:14)

Adam and Eve were naked, and to be naked is shameful (although this is the state in which God placed them in the garden). Where there is no law there is no consciousness of sin or shame. The knowledge of good and evil comes to us through God’s law.

The Lord Jesus Christ Himself is the personification of the highest working of God’s law. The law of God gives us knowledge of the good and holy and of the evil and unholy. Such knowledge makes sin exceedingly sinful.

Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin. (Romans 3:20)

(For until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law. (Romans 5:13)

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