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“You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of [the fruit of the tree] your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (vv. 4–5).
Having considered some key truths of biblical anthropology, or the doctrine of humanity, we now begin a study of hamartiology—the doctrine of sin. There is no better place to begin than when sin first made its mark on human beings. Scripture tells us in today’s passage how human beings fell into sin.
The narrative is well known. Perhaps the first thing to note is that Adam and Eve were not the very first to sin against God. That dishonor belongs to Satan, who appeared to our first parents in the garden of Eden under the guise of the serpent. He could not have tempted them to sin as he did unless his fall preceded theirs. As we noted in our look at the devil a few weeks back, Scripture does not tell us much about how he became wicked, how a creature who must have been very good originally, like the rest of creation, decided to sin. For that matter, it does not tell us exactly how Adam and Eve came to believe that breaking God’s law was a good choice for them. It just tells us that they did come to that conclusion.
Regarding God’s sovereignty over the fall, we must affirm that their sin “God was pleased, according to his wise and holy counsel, to permit, having purposed to order it to his own glory” (Westminster Confession of Faith 6.1). The Lord decreed their sin, for He works out all things according to His will (Eph. 1:11), and He did so for His ultimate glory, but He did not force Adam and Eve to choose the fruit. There is mystery here, but Adam and Eve were guilty because they willingly partook of the forbidden fruit.
Finally, eating that forbidden fruit would have drastic consequences for humanity, including being cast out of the blessed presence of God (see Gen. 3:22–24). But why was eating a piece of fruit so bad? Dr. R.C. Sproul addresses this in his book Truths We Confess: “When the serpent asked about God’s restrictions, his unspoken seductive hint was this: God might as well have said that you can eat from none of the trees because, by restricting you at all, He has taken away your freedom. God has imposed His will on you and taken away your dignity. The serpent’s seduction, then, was his pretense of autonomy.” Eating the fruit was not simply about eating the fruit but about their trying to become independent of their Creator, about seeking to become laws unto themselves. They were seeking to become “like God” in a way inappropriate for creatures (see Gen. 3:4–5).
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
The primal sin of humanity was the desire and attempt to take God’s place as Lord of our lives. That same attempt to usurp the throne of our Creator is what lies behind every sin committed thereafter. Each of our sins is really our trying to take God’s place as Lord over us. Let us remember that and ask God to use that knowledge to help us resist wickedness.