March 8, 2007

• Musings on the Fall of Man

  From John MacArthur's "The Battle for the Beginning"

  "Has God indeed said...?" That is the first question in Scripture. Before this, there were only answers; no dilemmas. The gist of temptation is to cast doubt on God's Word and to subject it to human judgment.  Satan twisted and misrepresented the Word of God. God's emphasis had been on freedom to eat from all the trees except one. Satan's question turned the emphasis around and stressed the negative, implying that God was restrictive. Satan focused Eve's attention on the prohibition.

  Eve had never known fear or encountered danger of any kind. She had no reason to be suspicious. She herself was innocent, having never before encountered "the wiles of the devil." Satan portrayed God as narrow, strict, uncharitable, restrictive, evil and untruthful - as if He wanted to limit human freedom and deprive Adam and Eve of enjoyment and pleasure.  Satan slyly insinuates that he is more devoted to Eve's well - being than God is. He implies that he is for freedom while God is restrictive. The fact that God gave Adam and Eve everything else to eat is set aside as negligible. He casts suspicion on God's goodness.

  Eve was unaware of Satan's strategies, so she replies naively - defending God to some degree: "We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden" Genesis 3:2. Evidently she did not know that this was God's foe. Scripture says she was "deceived" 2 Corinthians 11:3 1 Timothy 2:14). Satan beguiled her by taking advantage of her innocence.

  She knew God. She knew God's character as good - and only good. She had experienced nothing but abundant blessing and unrestrained generosity from His hand. She was surrounded by all of creation, which abundantly displayed God's good will. She also had a clear, unambiguous command from God, a gracious restriction for her own good. She should have found out more about her tempter before she yielded to his enticements. Above all, she should have made a strong and emphatic disavowal of the suspicion that God had withheld some goodness from her and her husband.

  Instead, her reply was only a partial refutation of the reptile's allegations. She said, "We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, 'You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.'" (vv. 2 - 3). She omitted the word all when she said, "We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden" - suggesting that she was already beginning to lose sight of the vast goodness of God.  She added something to the words of the command, claiming God had said, "nor shall you touch it, lest you die." Apparently beginning to feel the restriction was harsh, she added to the harshness of it.

  Her heart had already set its course. She was not defending God and His goodness. She was not affirming His glorious majesty and holy perfection. She ignored the fact that God's desire was only for her good. She did not take offense at the serpent's insult against God's character. She was already starting to believe Satan rather than God.

  Satan suggests that he knows more than God. His next statement contradicts the Word of God and impugns the motives of God: "You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil" (vv. 4・). This bold denial stated definitely what Satan had merely implied before. Now he openly slanders not only the goodness of God, but also God's truthfulness. God's majesty had been insulted; His goodness had been maligned; His trustworthiness had been defamed. And Eve had not responded in faith.

  "God is a liar," he says. "He has deceived you, taken your freedom, and restricted your joy." Satan's lie is still the same today: "You can be free. Do whatever you want. It is your life. There are no divine laws; no absolute authority; and above all, no judgment. You will not surely die."

  Eve was faced with a clear choice. She could either believe God or believe the devil. That is the same choice that has confronted humanity ever since. Who is telling the truth? God or Satan? Does God want to place undue restrictions on you? Does He want to cramp your freedom and minimize your joy? If God is like that, Satan implies, He doesn't love you. He is not to be trusted. The lie is the same today.

  Satan was suggesting to Eve that the only reason God could be so restrictive, forbidding them to eat from that tree, was because there was a flaw in His character. His love must be defective. He wanted to keep them from being all they could be, lest they rival His greatness.

  And thus what Satan pretended to offer them was precisely what he himself tried to obtain but could not: "you will be like God." (v.5).

  Satan knew God tolerates no rivals. (Isaiah 42:8). God yields His rightful place to no one. That is what makes Him God. His glory outshines the glory of all others. He has no equals and therefore all who pretend equality with Him or seek recognition as His equal, He must reject. That is because He is holy, not because He is selfish. Satan, however, implied that this was some kind of petty jealousy on God's part, as if God must keep Adam and Eve from becoming all they could be lest they become a threat to the Almighty. The suggestion is absurd, but for Eve it was an intoxicating thought.

  The reptile's false promise ("you will be like God") is the seed of all false religion. Numerous cults, ranging from Buddhism to Mormonism, are based on the same lie. It is a twisting of the truth. God wants us to be like Him, in the sense that we share His communicable attributes - holiness, love, mercy, truthfulness, and other expressions of His righteousness. But what Satan tried to do - and what he tempted Eve to try doing - was to intrude into a realm that belongs to God alone and usurp His power, His sovereignty, and His right to be worshiped. And those things are forbidden to any creature.

  Notice how Satan characterized equality with God: "you will be like God, knowing good and evil" (v.5). It was a dangerous half - truth. If they ate the fruit, they would indeed know evil, but not as God knows it. They would know it experientially. What Satan held out to them as the highroad to fulfillment and truth was in reality a back alley to destruction. "There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." (Proverbs 14:12).

  James 1:13・5 says, "God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full - grown, brings forth death." That process was already underway in Eve.

  Sin in the mind goes to work in the emotions. That incites the will, which yields the act.

  Eve saw three features of the forbidden fruit that seduced her. First, "the tree was good for food."  Eve was seduced by her physical appetite. This was not a legitimate hunger. There was plenty of food in the garden if Eve had been hungry. It was an illicit appetite. It was a fleshly lust provoked by a selfish discontent and a distrust in God - as if He were keeping something good from her.

  Second, she saw "that it was pleasant to the eyes." This seduction appealed to her emotional appetite. The fruit excited her sense of beauty and other passions. Not that there wasn't plenty of other attractive fruit in the garden. But Eve was focused on this fruit, because Satan had planted the idea in her mind that it represented something good that God was keeping from her. As covetousness grew in her heart, the forbidden fruit looked better and better.

  Third, she saw "a tree desirable to make one wise." This was an appeal to her intellectual appetite. Incipient pride caused her to fancy the "wisdom" that would come with knowing good and evil. She desired that knowledge and was tempted by the false promise that it would make her like God.  When sin penetrates the mind, emotions, and will, it will always be manifest in sinful actions.

  Genesis 3:6 says, "she took of its fruit and ate." It was a simple act with a massive impact. Emboldened by her own misdeed - perhaps relieved by the fact that she had not been instantly struck dead, "She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate."

  Adam appears, from where we are not told, and discovering that his wife had already disobeyed the Lord's command, he partook with her. There is no record of how Adam was enticed to do this. Maybe Eve related the words of the serpent to him. She may have also enticed him with a recounting of how pleasurable the forbidden fruit was. (Scripture acknowledges that there is pleasure in sin for a season. In any case, Adam doesn't appear to have needed much convincing.  Adam and Eve could never have known the impact of their sin. Perhaps Satan had some grasp of it, and he reveled in it. Certainly God knew, and yet He allowed it so that He could display His glory in destroying evil.

  Now that Adam and Eve knew evil by personal experience, their minds were open to a whole new way of thinking. They were susceptible to evil thoughts. They were drawn by evil desires. They no longer desired fellowship with God as they had before. And above all, they were conscious of their own guilt.

  The serpent had promised them enlightenment.  "Your eyes will be opened" (Genesis 3:5). What they actually received was a hideously twisted caricature of enlightenment. It was eye - opening only in a negative sense. It opened their eyes to the meaning of guilt, but it made them want to hide their eyes in shame. And in reality, it brought them into a state of spiritual blindness from which they could never recover without a divinely wrought miracle of regeneration.

  Their knowledge of evil was real, too, but it was nothing like God's. A healthy oncologist "knows" cancer, and with an expertise and objectivity that surpasses his patients' experiential knowledge. But the person who is dying of cancer also "knows" cancer in an intimate way, but in a way that is also destructive. Adam and Eve now had a knowledge of evil that was like the terminal cancer patient's knowledge of carcinoma. It was not the kind of enlightenment Satan had led Eve to believe she would obtain. She and Adam did not become like God, but the opposite.

  Sin instantly destroyed their innocence. They felt it strongly. They suddenly were self - conscious about their guilt. They felt exposed. This manifests itself in shame about their nakedness. Even the holy gift of their physical relationship was polluted with a sense of shame. Gone was the purity of it. Now present were wicked and impure thoughts they had never known before.

  Here are my two cents, for whatever they are worth.

  "The nature of human reason indicates that a person is necessarily in control of their own actions. No actions are performed without making observations, forming concepts, making predictions, and then choosing a course of action to bring about some desired end."

  God was the good Creator and Adam was the good creation, as was Eve.  Perhaps part of the problem was that the creations decided that they wanted to redefine reality in their own terms or to create an alternate realitiy that they mistakenly imagined would be an improvement on the perfection that they had already been given.  Rather than drawing near to the creator and asking Him to define reality, they were drawn away by what they thought would be a more desirable alternate reality. 

  They formed concepts.  They redefined God, who had already given them all things, as stingy and oppressive.  They redefined the poisoned undesirable as satisfying and desirable.  They redefined their existence apart from the Creator.  They redefined themselves as creators and determiners of good and evil.  They redefined themselves as gods.

  It was not about the menu.  It was about obedience.  It is easy to obey when you can see the logic in the command and agree with it.  But to choose to obey when one does not understand the reason is true obedience.  To choose to obey simply out of love for the giver of the command is a true act of love.

  We may in our present fallen state envision Adam and Eve behaving as ignorant children might behave in a candy store.  But different from fallen man, Adam had the power to choose to do good.  Fallen man has lost this power.  God did not make mindless robots.  He created the most intelligent beings possible in His own image and even gave them the power to  choose to love him freely.  Love that is not free is not love.  This was the reason that the power of choice was given, to choose to express love to another, and this power was never to be exercised for anything else.  Free choice without love becomes perversion, that is, using a thing for something other than the purpose for which it was designed. 

  Adam was given the power of choice for the purpose of glorifying and expressing love to his Creator, yet he chose instead to use that power to love and elevate himself and in so doing expressed contempt for the Creator.  The course of action that he chose to was to doubt and rebell against the Creator.  He had been created to fill the earth with God's glory, but he began to define his purpose apart from God. 

  I am sure that it was not a sudden choice.  Adam and Eve must have spent some time mulling over the contract that existed between the Creator and the created beings.   They must have thought about the possibility of doing what was forbidden, since God had not really forbidden them to think about it.  And, since God had not actually forbidden them to look at it they must have spent so much time hanging around the forbidden tree that they talked themselves into thinking that it was attractive.  They must have become obsessed with the idea of what could be if they struck out on their own through disobedience, rather than be possessed by a loving creator who had already given them everything.  (It is just as Jesus said, doing something in your heart is the same as actually doing it.  A & E would have been better off occupying their minds with how to become closer to the creator than how to get away.)

  They could have learned so much more about good and evil had they chosen good.  Choosing good would have meant to choose the Creator and the continuing eternal life that He wanted to endow.  Choosing evil was to choose death, and a dead thing cannot bring itself back to life.  They had never experienced the death of anything, and had not a clue as to what it was all about.  Why didn't they ask God about this?  Adam and Eve made incorrect predictions about the outcome of their actions based on a lack of knowledge. 

  I will continue thinking about this.

  I asked Pastor Nishida his thoughts on the matter, and he put it thusly.  It was as if God had told Adam and Eve that they could get a free Coke or whatever from any vending machine in the country, except for the vending machine in front of Maruzen book store at Tokyo Station.  Now does that sound so terribly stingy and restrictive?  I would add the following.  How about if God told them to avoid that vending machine because the drinks were poisoned?

  Does it make an sense for me to complain because God is telling me to avoid something that will cause my death?  Does it make any sense for me to make a special trip to Maruzen and hang around in front of that vending machine?  Does it make any sense to imagine how wise I will become having experienced the effects of the poison?  Does it make any sense to waste time obsessing over the forbidden drinks rather than concentrating on the wonderful creative tasks that God would have me be doing?

   I am in the process of exploring:

  The Fall of Man
  
  J. Gresham Machen
  

  (condensed just a bit by me)
  
  

  Machen (1881-1937) was Professor of New Testament, first at Princeton Theological Seminary, and afterwards at Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia. Excerpts from The Christian View of Man (1937).
  
  "And the Lord God," says the Bible, "commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die" (Genesis 2:16-17).

  Adam was given no reason for this command, and that fact is perhaps significant. Eating of the tree was not in itself obviously wrong.  It was a sheer test of obedience. Would man obey God's commands knowing simply that they were God's commands, knowing that because He gave them they had some quite sufficient reason and were holy and just and good?
  
  The serpent said to the woman, "Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?" (Genesis 3:1)
  
  The woman is asked to eye the things that God has forbidden as though they were desirable things. It is hinted that the commands are hard commands; it is hinted that possibly they might even have involved the prohibition to eat of any of the trees of the garden.
  
  The woman is asked to envisage God's command as a barrier which it would be desirable to surmount. Is there no loophole? Has God really commanded this and that? Did He really mean to prohibit the eating of the trees of the garden?
  
  "And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die" (Genesis 3:2-3).
  
  Then at last there comes a direct attack upon the truthfulness of God. "Thou shalt surely die," said God: "Ye shall not surely die," said the tempter. At last the battle is directly joined. God, said the tempter, has lied, and He has lied for the purpose of keeping something good from man. "Ye shall not surely die," said the tempter: "for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil" (Genesis 3:4-5).
  
  At that point the question arises in our minds what the element of truth was in those words of the tempter. Those words were a lie, but the truly devilish lies are those that contain an element of truth, or, rather, they are those lies that twist the truth so that the resulting lie looks as though it itself were true.
  
  Certainly it was true that by eating the forbidden fruit Adam attained a knowledge that he did not possess before. That seems to be indicated in verse 22 of the same chapter of the Book of Genesis, where we read: "And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil" (Genesis 3:22). Yes, it does seem to have been true that when he ate of the forbidden fruit man came to know something that he had not known before.
  
  He had not known sin before; now he knew it. He had known only good before; now he knew good and evil. But what a curse that new knowledge was, and what an immense loss of knowledge as well as loss of everything else that new knowledge brought in its train! He now knew good and evil; but, alas, he knew good now only in memory, so far as his own experience was concerned; and the evil that he knew he knew to his eternal loss. Innocence, in other words, was gone.
  
  What would have been the advance which resistance to that first temptation would have brought to Adam and Eve? It would have meant that the possibility of sinning would have been over. (Not quite sure I follow this point - was the choice to eat or not to eat to be a once for all choice, or was it to have been a continuing choice?) The probation would successfully have been sustained; man would have entered into a blessedness from which all jeopardy would have been removed.
  
  The advance which a successful resistance to the temptation would have brought would also have been an advance in knowledge. That tree was called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Well, there is perhaps a real sense in which it would have been to man a tree of the knowledge of good and evil even if he had not eaten of the fruit of it. If he had resisted the temptation to eat of the fruit of that tree, he would have come to know evil in addition to the knowledge that he already had of good. He would not have known it because he had fallen into it in his own life, but he would have known it because in his resistance to it he would have put it sharply in contrast with good and would deliberately have rejected it. A state of innocence, in other words, where good was practiced without any conflict with evil, would have given place to a state of assured goodness which evil would have been shown to have no power to disturb.
  
  Such was the blessed state into which God was asking man to come. It was a state which included what I think we can call a knowledge of good and evil. Certainly it was a state in which the difference between good and evil would have been clearly discerned. There was a right way and a wrong way of seeking to attain discernment. The right way was the way of resistance to evil; the wrong way was the way of yielding to it.
  
  Do you know how that lie can best be shown to be the lie that it is? Well, my friends, I think it is by the example of Jesus Christ. Do you despise innocence? Do you think that it is weak and childish not to have personal experience of evil? Do you think that if you do not obtain such experience of evil you must forever be a child?
  
  If you have any such feeling, I just bid you contemplate Jesus of Nazareth. Does He make upon you any impression of immaturity or childishness? Was He lacking in some experience that is necessary to the highest manhood? Can you patronize Him as though He were but a child, whereas you with your boasted experience of evil are a full-grown man?
  
  If that is the way you think of Jesus, even unbelievers, if they are at all thoughtful, will correct you. No, Jesus makes upon all thoughtful persons the impression of complete maturity and tremendous strength. With unblinking eyes He contemplates the evil of the human heart. "He knew what was in man" (John 2:25), says the Gospel according to John. Yet He never had those experiences of sin which fools think to be necessary if innocence is to be transcended and the highest manhood to be attained. From His spotless purity and His all-conquering strength, that ancient lie that experience of evil is necessary if man is to attain the highest good recoils naked and ashamed.
  
  That was the lie that the tempter brought to Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. Man was told to seek discernment in Satan's way and not in God's. Had man resisted the temptation what heights of knowledge and strength would have been his! But he yielded, and what was the result? He sought to attain knowledge, and lost the knowledge of good; he sought to attain power, and lost his own soul; he sought to become as God, and when God came to him in the garden he hid himself in shameful fear.
  
  It is a sad story indeed. But it is the beginning and not the end of the Bible. The first chapters of the Bible tell us of the sin of man. The guilt of that sin has rested upon every single one of us, its guilt and its terrible results; but that is not the last word of the Bible. The Bible tells us not only of man's sin; it also tells us of something greater still; it tells us of the grace of the offended God.
  

  • 01:52
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