The God Who Is There Deals With Rebels
The God Who Is There Deals With Rebels
All of human accountability and responsibility before God is grounded in the first instance in creation. He made us, and we owe him. If we do not recognize this simple truth, then, according to the Bible, that blindness is itself a mark of how alienated from him we are.
God Does Not Wipe Out Rebels
Genesis 2:17b But you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will certainly die.” God issues a prohibition.
Genesis 2:17 sets the stage for the events in Genesis three. Genesis three is absolutely essential to any fair
understanding of the whole Bible.
Genesis 3:1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”
The Deceitful First Rebellion Genesis 3:1–6
In Genesis three we are introduced to the serpent. According to the last book of the Bible, Satan himself stands behind this serpent in some sense (Revelation 12).
His smooth talk aligns him with another description of Satan where we are told that he masquerades as an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14). We are also told that he was made by God, Satan is not God’s equal. Satan is a dependent created being.
He was crowned with more prudence than all the other creatures, but in his rebelling the prudence became craftiness; the very same virtue that in the beginning was such a strength became twisted into a vice.
The serpent approaches the woman and avoids offering her a straight denial or a direct temptation. He expresses just the right amount of skepticism, and smuggles in the assumption that we have the ability, even the right, to stand in judgment of what God has said.
Then the devil offers exaggeration. Did God really say, the woman corrects His exaggeration, and then she adds her own exaggeration. you must not touch it, or you will die.
God had not said anything about not touching it. Satan told here she would not die, and here is the first overt contradiction of God. The first doctrine to be denied, according to the Bible, is the doctrine of judgment. If you can get rid of Judgment, then rebellion has no adverse consequences, and so you are free to do anything.
The Woman Chooses to Disobeys God
Genesis 3:6b She took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also to her husband with her; and he did eat.
God knows good and evil because He knows everything, but the woman is going to learn about evil
by personal experience.
The woman will learn about good and evil by becoming evil. Instead of delighting in the wisdom of her Maker, she is pronouncing independently, her own choices as to what is good and evil.
She is becoming “like God,” claiming the sort of independence that belongs only to God.
This rebellion is tragic because it is God’s image-bearer standing over against God. God is dethroned so that man can be his own god, in short, it is the first idolatry.
The Initial Consequences Resulting From The First Rebellion
Genesis 2:17b in the day that you eat thereof you shall surely die.
There is death and this should not be surprising. If God is the Creator and gives life, then if you detach yourself from this God, if you defy this God, what is there but death? If you pronounce your own good and evil and decide you want to be a god yourself, you detach yourself from God who gives life, then there is only death.
After they sin, they now have something to hide, so they try to cover themselves, but you cannot hide moral shame with fig leaves. This is also a way of saying that there is no way back to Eden. You cannot undo the loss of innocence.
This sin results not only in a broken relationship with God but in broken human relationships too. Adam & Eve both blame someone else. One of the things that commonly occurs in the wake of defying God is this: we deny that we have any responsibility for any wrong we do.
If you or I defy God, we cannot undo the defiance. It cannot be undone, we can only cover ourselves in shame. There is no way back to innocence, the Bible says there is only one way to correct this, not going back, but going forward, to the cross where Jesus death restores the broken relationship between God and fallen man.