Genesis 3--The Fall of Man, The Curse, and the Good News of the Gospel

​Genesis 3 English Standard Version (ESV)
LISTEN:  https://www.biblegateway.com/audio/mclean/esv/Gen.3

The Fall

3 Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.

He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” 2 And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, 3 but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” 4 But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. 7 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.

8 And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” 10 And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” 11 He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” 12 The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” 13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

14 The Lord God said to the serpent,

“Because you have done this,
    cursed are you above all livestock
    and above all beasts of the field;
on your belly you shall go,
    and dust you shall eat
    all the days of your life.
15 I will put enmity between you and the woman,
    and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
    and you shall bruise his heel.”

16 To the woman he said,

“I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing;
    in pain you shall bring forth children.
Your desire shall be contrary to your husband,
    but he shall rule over you.”

17 And to Adam he said,

“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife
    and have eaten of the tree
of which I commanded you,
    ‘You shall not eat of it,’
cursed is the ground because of you;
    in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
18 thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
    and you shall eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your face
    you shall eat bread,
till you return to the ground,
    for out of it you were taken;
for you are dust,
    and to dust you shall return.”

20 The man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living. 21 And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.

22 Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” 23 therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. 24 He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.

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Today is Good Friday in the year 2020.  Right now, the world is in the midst of a global pandemic from a virus known as "the novel coronavirus" or COVID-19.  Today we are experience both the consequences of the sin that was committed in this passage as we are surrounded by disease and death and we are celebrating the hope in given in this passage that God would not leave man without salvation from their state they are in.  I'll make sure to point out this particular blessing that comes in the midst of The Curse when we get to it.

This is the first time we encounter Lucifer in the Bible--he also goes by other names such as "the devil," "the evil one," "the tempter," "the accuser of the brethren," "our adversary," and "the enemy," but he's also metaphorically described here and other places as a snake, serpent, or even a dragon (dragons seem to be somehow connected to snakes/serpents in the Bible, specifically in prophetic literature).  For now, I will call him "Satan" or "the devil" as those terms are probably most familiar to most of my readers.  We come into some questions here as to where the boundaries between the physical and spiritual realms are here, and this passage doesn't give us good answers on the identity or origin story of Satan, as, again, this is not his story, but the story of Adam (and Eve).  It is enough at this point to know that he exists by this point in the story, he is a created being, and in this story, and we are told here that serpent that he took the form of was the craftiest of creatures that God had created.

I'll address one of the big questions here.  Does this mean that animals in the Garden could think on a higher level and could form and express arguments and could speak with Adam and Eve?  We'll see in this story that neither Adam nor Eve balked at the fact that the serpent was talking with them.  We again don't really know, but we do see other places in the Bible where angels, specifically demons, possess animals (when the demons possessing the man known as Legion ask Jesus to cast them into the nearby herd of pigs) and we also do see that there are places in the Bible where animals do talk like in the example of Balaam's donkey  (we'll get there in the book of Numbers).  As we said already though, this is not the story of Satan, but that of Adam and Eve, so let's return to the main story.

​Satan, as he often does, takes the Word of God and twists it with an element of doubt.  Here we see Satan trying to make the words (were they the actual words), the veracity of God's Word ("you shall not surely die"), the goodness of God (that God was trying to withhold something good from them), and the reliability of God's Word (believe in what you can see that's right in front of you).  Satan is us to these same tactics today, and has become much improved at them over the years.  Ultimately, Satan was successful in offering a temptation that sounded good enough and reasonable enough to Eve and Eve gave into what she could see instead of what God had said.  Let's not lay all the blame on Eve here though as God makes Adam ultimately responsible here because God had given His Word to Adam and it was Adam's job to teach and protect Eve, but instead he simply stood there and let Eve engage in conversation with the serpent and did not stop her when she went for the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and he chose to eat the fruit with her.

In some ways they got exactly what they wanted--their eyes were opened and they knew the difference between good and evil, but they also knew other things that they had never known such as shame and nakedness.  They immediately tried to make their own solution to their problem by sewing fig leaves together for themselves and they now knew fear--fear of God and they hid from Him because they were embarrassed and afraid of their broken state.  They knew at that moment that something had been done that they could not undo, and the one person that could help them was the one person that they wanted to avoid.  Yet, God in His great mercy came down and called out for them.  He didn't need to do that.  He knew exactly what they had done and knew exactly where they were.  He could have killed them on the spot as that is what He told them were the consequences of eating of the fruit from the forbidden tree.  He also knew the entire story--not only because He saw it happen, but because He knows the choices we will make before we make and chooses to love us anyways.

God begins questioning Adam and Eve in a way that only His grace can, not to punish them, but to show His great love and to reveal to Adam and Eve the lies that they had been exposed to and believed.  God returned to the place He had always been--the place of fellowship that they now did not desire.  He called out to them and they said that when they heard them they realized they were naked and afraid and they hid.

God then turns this into another question, "Who told you that you were naked?"  And without even waiting for an answer to that question He asks, "Did you eat of the tree that I commanded you not to eat?"  We see here that again the grace of God convicts us of our sin and our belief in the lies that we have been told by Satan.  But Adam and Even in their fallen state (and like us) put up more barriers and preferred to deflect and dodge and play the "blame game."

First, Adam blames Even and ultimately God.  "The woman that you gave me....."  It's like if Adam is trying to say "God does this model come with a warranty, because I think you gave me a defective product?"  Sorry, Adam, but the defect is with you here.  That is not to say that Eve did not sin (maybe even first), but it was not until Adam made a volitional choice to ignore the word of God and join in her sin that the curse was brought.  Eve very well could have been ignorant of the law and held innocent.  However, I don't think that's that case here because God immediately turns to Eve and asks her, "What is this you have done?"  There is an implication here that she should have known better and did, though we get some indication from her conversation with the serpent that God's words were not passed along perfectly to her--Adam seemed to have added an additional rule telling her to not even touch the tree.  If you don't touch it, you can't eat of it.  While we should be careful to not add to the Word of God, setting up extra protections in areas where we know we face temptation isn't such an awful idea sometimes.

Eve then replies that the serpent deceived her and tricked her--again, seeming to blame God for making the serpent and putting it in the Garden, possibly even blaming Him for giving it the ability to speak and for making it so crafty.  Isn't this just like us?  "The devil made me do it."  That was a lie then and is a lie today.  We'll learn later in the Bible that no man is tempted except that he is drawn away by his own lusts.  Satan is a keen observer and just knows what you love and already want and is good at being that voice in your head to work along with your flesh to say "Go ahead and do because you and I both know you really want to."  Temptation wouldn't work if it wasn't enticing because we already wanted and desired it.  If you want to trap an animal, you have to use the right kind of bait and lure.  Satan may provide the hook, but the desire for us to go after the lure and the bait is our own fault and we have no one else to blame--not even God.  The "It's not my fault because God made me this way" argument doesn't work either.  We see that God made Adam and Eve perfect here, but simply gave them the ability to make choices because you don't have real love and relationship without being able to choose to love someone.  Remember that God made us in His image and He gave us much of His nature, including having a will and ability to make choices.  The ability to choose is not in itself bad because God has the ability and always makes good choices, bu tit is what we do with that ability that is good or bad.  Satan used his free will to glorify himself and try to take the place of God and when he fell from heaven he has used his cunning and power to try to make as many others fall with him as possible, especially since he knows that God loves man and an attack on mankind is an attack on God and His kingdom.

Notice God doesn't ask the serpent (Satan) any questions.  It is also interesting to me here that God seems to curse the physical serpent and not just Satan.  God cursed snakes and made them the lowest and most cursed of all the land animals.  They of course serve a purpose, but it's no wonder that most everyone seems to hate snakes.  It would seem from this curse that perhaps the serpent did not originally crawl on its belly (there is some speculation that it had legs before this)--we really don't know, but we do know that this is part of the curse that it would forever slither along the ground and eat dust.

Now comes the interesting part--the protoevangelium.  This is the first time we see anything resembling the gospel in the Bible as God promises that the offspring of Satan (the kingdom of darkness) is going to be at odds with mankind and that there would be one called here "the seed of the woman" (this does not make sense biologically as "seed" is normally what the male contribution is called, but in the context of the virgin birth it makes sense) will crush the head of the snake--we're celebrating that today on Good Friday and will fully celebrate on Resurrection Sunday.  We are told in the process that the serpent will bite the heel of this person and that is God's foreshadowing of the pain and suffering inflicted at the cross.  While small, snake bites can be very painful and very deadly, and this may have given Satan some kind of hope that in some small way he could win....remember that Satan is not omniscient, so he can't understand this prophecy and more than Adam or Eve could at this point, so Satan stores it away and is continually on the lookout for this promised Messiah whose purpose it was to destroy him.  Satan will try to strike first many times in the Bible to see if he can't kill or disqualify all mankind (especially men) from fulfilling this prophecy.

God then turns His attention to Eve and promises that childbirth would be extremely painful, so this thing that women desire most to be mothers and to have children and nurture them will be full pain.  He also promised that this event would have long-lasting impacts on the relationship between man and wife and because there was role-reversal here in the Garden where Eve was allowed to take the lead, this would be her desire and the desire of all women moving forward and she would no longer be happy submitting to the order of things the way God made them where the husband was to provide for and protect his wife and they were work together to accomplish God's mission.  Instead they will often be at odds with one another both desiring to be in charge and wanting things done their way.  It will be a "battle of the sexes," and this too is a result of sin and is not the way that God had originally created things when He called them "very good."

Finally, God turns to Adam--the person He asked his first question to and the person He would give His last statement to.  Adam was called out by God for listening to the voice of other people when He had heard the voice of God and should have known to obey it.  Are we that different?  Then God said that the thing that Adam most identified with and got pleasure from--his work--would become extremely difficult.  It seems that to this point the ground had been extremely cooperative and fertile and that produced great results without great difficulty, but now the very earth that Adam had been formed from would fight against him and would be hard and need to be cultivated and would sprout weeds and thorns and thistles that would grow up among the crops he was trying to plant and every time he had to pull a week or got stuck by a thorn, he would remember the curse that had been brought about by his sin.  God then pronounces His final judgment that even for all the work that Adam will do, his ultimate end will be death and to return to the dust of the earth that he came from, but probably even more painful than any of these curses was that man was forever cut off from the Garden--the place where he and God had an intimate relationship here in this physical realm where God walked and talked with man.  Little did they know that God would return in the form a man thousands of years later and a different kind of battle would be fought in a different garden where Jesus would say, "Not my will, but your will be done" and where there would be a different type of "tree" where the promised Messiah would die and hang on that tree to pay the sin debt of all mankind.  "He that knew no sin became sin for us so that in Him we might become the righteousness of Christ."

While this easily could have been the end of the story and God could have rightfully wiped out Adam and Even there in the Garden, God decided to give grace and mercy, but His wrath and justice were not forgotten, they would be satisfied when that wrath was poured out on Jesus.  Those who chose to not have their wrath poured out on Christ will chose to experience the wrath of God for all eternity as sin leads not only to physical death but death in our communion with God and makes us enemies of God.

​Romans 5:6-11 English Standard Version (ESV)6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die-- 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. 10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. 11 More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.