“Your will surely die”. This was the gracious, but foreboding warning God had given Adam in the garden paradise where He and Adam lived together in perfect fellowship, a warning that Adam would share with his wife and helpmate Eve who would subsequently join them (Genesis 2:21-25). It was a warning of the penalty they would suffer if they chose to disobey God’s one commandment, to not eat of the fruit of the one tree in the middle of the garden, identified in Genesis 2:15-17 as “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” And most certainly God, in love, would have explained the full ramifications of what it meant to die, which was essentially that they would be cut off from the glorious life with God for which they were created, forfeiting all that God had freely given them for their happiness in Him (Genesis 1:26-28) (1 Timothy 6:17).
The context of this warning is God’s divine right as creator to command mankind in fulfilling the purpose for which we were created, which we are told in Isaiah 43:7 was for His glory; that in creating man in His image and likeness, the infinite perfections of His eternal being would be known, displayed, proclaimed and enjoyed by all of creation as well as God Himself. By His design, we would image the beauty and excellency of His being in our physical bodies, His perfect wisdom, knowledge and understanding in our minds, and His righteous nature and holy affections in our hearts, with the ability to communicate and act on related thoughts and emotions (Genesis 1:26) (Psalm 8:4-9).
We would live in an intimate relationship with God, loving and being loved by Him and one another, enjoying and being enjoyed by Him and one another, ruling under His fatherly authority over a glorious world of nature in perfect peace and harmony, experiencing the innumerable manifestations of His infinite love, in what the Bible refers to as Shalom (Genesis 1:27-28) Matthew 22:34-40 (Psalm 16:11) (1 John 4:16) (Hebrews 11:8). The term Shalom is a Hebrew word which is translated “peace” and refers to the perfect order and harmony of the original creation and the wholeness, completeness of man in the image of God, living in loving relationship with God and one another. (Numbers 25:12).
This Shalom however was conditional. It was conditioned from the beginning on faith, our faith in the greatness, the goodness and the infinite love of God – being fully persuaded in both our mind and heart that this good and gracious God, who created us and gifted us everything within His glorious creation to rule over and freely enjoy, was fully inclined, fully committed and fully able to make us exceedingly, abundantly and eternally happy in Him (Genesis 1:27-28) (Hebrews 11:1-6) (Psalm 119:68).
This faith would be displayed in man’s personal, perfect, perpetual and glad obedience to God’s will and authority as our creator as expressed in His law and commandments, given to maintain His perfect order and design for human flourishing and our individual happiness as His beloved children (Romans 16:25-27) (Matthew 5:48).
Our willingness to do so would be tested. The devil, a rebellious angel, referred to in Genesis 3:1 as the “serpent” (Revelation 12:9) is allowed by God to test their faith, their willing obedience to His one command regarding the fruit of that one tree.
Tragically, they fail the test. And they do so despite being graciously endowed with God’s righteous nature and character, despite living in a state of Shalom, with the freedom to direct and enjoy all of creation as they please, and despite the clear and emphatic warning of death for disobedience, which in the original Hebrew is translated “dying you shall surely die”.
The serpent/devil, through deception and innuendo, is able to pull off the most costly scam in human history. He convinces them that God, in prohibiting them from eating of this one tree is not good, that He cannot be trusted, and that He does not truly love them as He is restricting them from the one thing that will allow them to know true and lasting happiness, namely, the fruit of that tree.
He emphatically states that God’s promise of death for disobedience is an empty threat, made to keep them from eating of the forbidden fruit, wherein doing so they will immediately become like God, able to determine for themselves “good and evil”, having the freedom and ability to do whatever they want, whenever they want, however they want, accountable to no one, just like God. (Genesis 3:1-5).
And they foolishly, pridefully and tragically believe him. Adam, whom God established as the federal representative of mankind, and who with his wife Eve would be the progenitors of the human race, high handedly disobey God’s one law (Romans 5:12).
This one act thus represents an untenable lack of faith in God’s love, a rejection of God’s rule over and purpose for their life, and stark opposition to God’s gracious order and design for human flourishing and our individual happiness in Him, all of what the Bible refers to as sin (Romans 14:23) (1 John 3:4). And the just and certain penalty for their disobedience – death (dying you will surely die) is justly and swiftly carried out, though not in its fullness and not without hope (Ezekiel 18:4) (Micah 7:7).
Immediately upon this one act of defiance by Adam and Eve, Shalom is gravely disrupted, a disruption extending to all of creation. We see first the immediate corruption of the image of God in the bodies of the man and women, a corruption that will ultimately end in physical death (“dust to dust”), subject to all of death’s precursors (Genesis 3:7) (Genesis 3:19). Shame, guilt and fear takes hold of their hearts and they immediately become estranged from God and one another (Genesis 3:8-13). Both man and nature come under a curse, in which the wonderous and joyful harmony between man and nature and man and man that God intended when He affirmed all creation as being very good, no longer would be the norm (Genesis 1:31) (Genesis 3:16-18).
They are “driven out”, of Eden, cut off from the glorious face to face presence of God they enjoyed, exiled into a wilderness world wherein sin and misery, sorrow and death would become the norm. They would now have to labor in a difficult and hostile environment to earn a living (Genesis 3:23-24), while awaiting the day they would return to the dust (Genesis 3:18-19).
Truth be told, our holy and righteous God would have been perfectly just in totally ending His relationship with mankind upon this one act of disobedience, which was essentially an act of “cosmic treason” against the creator and sovereign ruler of the universe, joining the devil and his horde of rebel angels in their previous rebellion (Revelation 12:7-8). They thus could have been immediately thrown “into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels”, whose word and promise they believed over God’s (Matthew 25:41) (Genesis 3:4). This everlasting fire is referred to in the Bible as the “second death”, which is to be eternally cut off from the relationship with God for which we were created, forever the objects of His wrath, which would now justly be their ultimate destiny (Revelation 21:8).
Thankfully, this was not God’s ultimate plan for the display of His glory in relationship with mankind (Isaiah 43:7). While creation was a glorious and necessary means of initially revealing His glory, particularly the glory of His grace, God’s eternal plan was one of redemption, of rescuing, reconciling and restoring this now condemned, sin corrupted humanity and sin cursed earth to a state of eternal, uninterrupted Shalom (Revelation 21:1-4).
Throughout the implementation and fulfillment of this plan, God would reveal aspects of His infinite goodness, wisdom and power, of the riches of His mercy and the abundance of His grace, such that those who are the beneficiaries of this plan will be fully and forever persuaded of God’s love, that He is fully inclined, fully committed, and fully able to make them exceedingly, abundantly happy in Him, throughout the ages to come (Isaiah 44:23) (Exodus 34:5-6) (Ephesians 2:4-7) .
And the implementation of this gracious plan of redemption begins here, in the midst of the sorrow, grief and pain of judgement (Genesis 3:20-21) (Genesis 3:15). And it is this initial implementation of God’s redemptive plan and how that plan will progress that I hope to begin to look at in my next post.
Grace and Peace ×