GENESIS 3
Read Genesis 3:1-24
In the previous chapter we saw how the relationship between God and mankind should be. The man and the woman were living alongside God in the Garden of Eden in perfect harmony, the ideal state, as God intended. It soon fell apart when we see sin coming into the world,
The agent of sin is the serpent who is later identified as Satan (2 Corinthians 11:3, Revelation 20:2). We are told in Verse 1 that the serpent was crafty and this is seen when he sows the seeds of doubt and confusion in Eve. He started by saying, ‘Did God really say, “You must not eat from any tree in the garden”?’ This was an outright lie, which Eve spotted and denied and said that it was only from that one particular tree that they could not eat the fruit. But then, in her doubt she went on to say that God said ‘you must not touch it or you will die’. God did not say anything about not touching – that was her own addition.
That is the subtlety of the enemy; sowing doubt into the minds of believers and this is an ever-present danger these days as well. People who oppose Christianity will often say, as the serpent did, ‘Did God really say that?’ If we don’t know our Bible well, we may start to have doubts and, like Eve, add our own interpretation to the words of Scripture.
The serpent convinced Eve to eat the fruit and she encouraged Adam to eat it as well and so the first sin, disobedience to God, happened. There was only one prohibition in the Garden of Eden, and Adam and Eve were tempted into disobeying God and breaking it. The results of their sin were loss of innocence (at the end of Chapter 2 they were naked and felt no shame, now they were naked and felt shame (vv 10-11), loss of personal responsibility and, ultimately, judgement upon them.
When confronted by God we see an exercise in blame shifting. Adam said it was the fault of the women you put here with me, blaming God as well as Eve. Eve blamed the serpent for deceiving her into disobeying God’s explicit instructions. It is always someone else’s fault – and nothing changes. That is the mantra of our own society, ‘It’s not my fault’.
Following sin comes judgement. The serpent is condemned to a lowly form of life and enmity with mankind. The woman is condemned to pain in childbirth. The man is condemned to hard work in order to survive. These judgements were to affect future generations; a reminder to us that sin has consequences and those consequences aren’t limited to only the sinners themselves. Another consequence is that Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden; they lost that close fellowship with God. God did not completely abandon them; he clothed them before sending them out. Sin leads to separation from God, but God does not abandon his people. There is always the hope of restitution and reconciliation, and we see that in all its fullness in Jesus Christ.