Did man continue in that estate wherein God at first created him?
Our first parents being left to the freedom of their own will, through the temptation of Satan, transgressed the commandment of God in eating the forbidden fruit; and thereby fell from the estate of innocence wherein they were created.
There is perhaps no more widely broadcast sin than that of Adam and Eve. It being recorded here for all their progeny to know, to understand and to live out its consequential curse. If we think ourselves better than they, had we been given the opportunity to not rebel, we find ourselves to be entertaining the same delusion as they. Failing to trust their God but instead preferring themselves in their quest to be wise apart from God they believed a lie and so would have you.
“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 desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings. 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.”
Genesis 3:6–8
The failure was not Eve’s alone.
“Adam did not guard the Garden but allowed entrance to a foul snake that brought sin, chaos and disorder into the sanctuary and into Adam and Eve’s lives. He allowed the Serpent to ‘rule over’ him rather than ‘ruling over’ it and casting it out of the Garden. Rather than extending the divine presence of the garden sanctuary, Adam and Eve were expelled from it. Consequently, Adam and Eve disobey God’s mandate in Genesis 1:28.”
– G. K. Beale – The Temple and the Church’s Mission.
This fall, a deception and a failure to guard against the garden intrusion had big and immediate consequences. The omniscient God asks both Adam and Eve about their nakedness.
“Then the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?” He said, “I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself.” And He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat? The man said, “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate.” The omniscient God again asks, not for His benefit but to unfold the implications of their newly opened eyes, “…Lord God said to the woman, ‘What is this you have done?’ And the woman said, ‘The serpent deceived me, and I ate.’”
(Genesis 3)
As we consider this fall and its many implications we must continually remind ourselves that it is not a defect of our first parents, attributable to God. Calvin commends the Manichee’s in this respect for finding agreement with scripture which states,
“Behold, I have found only this, that God made men upright, but they have sought out many devices.”
(Ecclesiastes 7)
“But the only good ground which the Manichee’s have, viz., that it were impious to ascribe the creation of anything bad to a good God, militates in no degree against the orthodox faith, since it is not admitted that there is anything naturally bad throughout the universe; the depravity and wickedness whether of man or of the devil, and the sins thence resulting, being not from nature, but from the corruption of nature; nor, at first, did anything whatever exist that did not exhibit some manifestation of the divine wisdom and justice.”
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, chapter 14
The error and fall of mankind in Adam and Eve proved horrific, only to be made worse, when we neglect the simplicity and purity of the remedy of Christ in our place. Some in the Corinthian church were in danger of promoting their preference for a redemption not of grace but of works. Paul appeals, “But I am afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.” (2 Corinthians 11:3)
In this appeal we are reminded that we are never far from this horrible day and fall in the garden. We hear the echo of deception quite clearly. If we listen carefully to the word of the Spirit, He will faithfully deliver us to Christ, in whom is the only access back into the garden and to that tree we once neglected. That tree of life which has been given and delivered in Christ. To neglect the promise by faith and instead, “boast in the law is thus so fatal because it passes by the real character of Israel’s privilege, no longer relies on the grace of God himself and on the electing character of his covenant but on man’s own activity, so as to fix all hope and trust in it. …It is the natural impulse of every man, against which even the Christian must continue to be warned (Gal. 6:4; Rom. 11:17ff.)” Herman Ridderbos, Paul: An outline of his Theology.
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