The Fall into Sin

BD18-01

That’s why we say that the greatest virtue, the most important thing in the Christian life is the learning of Bible doctrine on a regular daily basis. This gives you God’s point of view. If you have not already had this experience, you will discover as you get into the Word, that your taste for resisting god will be less and less. The only way Satan ever gets you to go negative toward the will of God and toward of plan of God for your life is by an idea he places into your mind.

In order to get this woman, he had to put her on negative volition. He had to put some false notions, which we call human viewpoint today, into her mind. So he focuses her attention on the forbidden tree, and he does this by pretending to be surprised that God should not have permitted them to eat of all the trees of the garden, and that’s his approach. He actually says to her, “Is it a fact that God will not allow you to eat of all the trees of the garden?” The woman is apparently careless about doctrine.

So, if you’ll open your Bibles again to Genesis chapter 3, we’ll pick up the story at verse 2. The serpent is there, the scene is set, and the question has been asked. Now the question has been asked in order to raise a doubt in the woman’s mind. That’s the first step—just to get the first faint flicker of a doubt, and just to get her thinking over, “Maybe there is something here.”

Satan still works like this. You’ll often have Christians who come up to you and say, “What do you think about brother or sister so-and-so?” “What do you think about what so-and-so s thinking?” What do you think about what this person has said?” This will appeal, of course, to your pride because you’ll view yourself as someone very important with something to say.

So, this is what Satan is doing. He’s coming along and he’s punching a little doubt into this woman’s mentality. Verse 2 is her answer, “And the woman said unto the serpent, ‘We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden.’” This is a true statement. In it, she recognized that God had placed them into a perfect environment that provided for their every human need and for their personal pleasure. However, we will soon see that she will use her will to reject what God has provided. Many believers live in spite of God’s provision. Therefore, they’re out of phase with the provision and plan of God in their lives.

This woman makes a true statement, “God has provided us a perfect environment and we may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden.” She goes on in verse 3, “But of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ‘Ye shall not eat of it.’” That much is true. But you will notice that she adds something that God did not say. For she adds the words, “… neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.” This is the first tinge of negative volition beginning to rise within the soul of the woman. She has also done something else that you will notice in verse 3. She has picked up Satan’s name for God.

As we pointed out last week, Satan uses the name for God which is “Elohim.” God’s name, as Eve has known it, has been the name of “The LORD God,” or “Jehovah Elohim.” She didn’t’ know God by any other name. The term “Jehovah” represents “savior,” and the word “Elohim” represents God in his sovereignty. So this term represents the sovereign savior God that she knew. Specifically, she knew God in the person of the pre-incarnate Jesus Christ, who is the one who met them in the Garden as the creator and who taught them doctrine. She didn’t know God by any other name except “Jehovah Elohim.” Satan comes along and crosses off “Jehovah” and just says “Elohim,” because “Elohim” implies a supreme being, and Satan is in favor of people thinking a supreme being, because that’s how he wants them to think about him. He wants to be the Supreme Being. That’s how he wants to be like God.

So, she picks up a name that she is not acquainted with, relative to God, and again there’s another little faint flicker of doubt beginning to bear its bitter fruit in this woman’s mind—doubt against what God has taught, doubt against here teacher—the person of the Lord, and doubt against her own husband whose position is that God is right and we are obedient to his restrictions.

So, she says, “If you touch this tree,” and referring to God as nothing more than the Supreme Being, “you’ll die.” Now this is distorting the Word of God. She is suggesting that the tree is poisonous to the touch, but death is not in the property of the tree at all. Death is in the negative volition to the will of God, and the tree is just the testing point. It is simply some tree with some kind of fruit that was a testing point, no different from any other tree in the garden except that God says, “This one tree here in the middle of the garden you are not to eat of.”

There was only one sin that they could have committed in the Garden of Eden, and that was the sin of negative volition. That’s the only sin they could have done, to say, “No” to what God said to do or what not to do. So, consequently, here was the testing point.

But she reveals that she has responded to the surprise observation of Satan, with a certain doubt in her own mind toward God. She’s actually converting her doubt into a little bit of complaint. “Yes, God says we can’t eat of this tree. As a matter fact we can’t even touch it.” This was not true. Why would she distort the Word?

Well, this is what we do when we want to bolster some idea that we have of being treated unjustly. We feel we have an injustice to declare. We begin to bolster by distorting the facts a little bit in order to make our case appear a good deal stronger than it is. Mental attitude sins begin with doubts about what God has said and what God has done, and then they go to bitterness.

So, the seed has been planted. She’s doubting. She’s beginning to be bitter. She’s beginning to question God. We don’t know how long that tree has been there. We don’t know how long this honeymoon has lasted. She and Adam have enjoyed this perfect environment. They’ve had the whole garden to themselves. They’ve been in perfect fellowship with God. They have had every pleasure and every joy at their disposal. This tree has been there and she probably hasn’t paid much attention to it after Adam had explained her (after God had formed her) that “this is the tree we’re not to eat from.” She said, “OK” and she forgot about it. Now her attention is focused back on this tree.

Now notice the condition of the woman’s soul at this time. Something is beginning to happen. She has a soul. That’s her point of contact with her husband. She has a mentality. Up to now, her mind has been on divine viewpoint. There is in our minds self-awareness. We know who we are. Up to now, her mind has been occupied with Jehovah Elohim. Now her mind has moved to self. It is expressing itself particularly as self-pity. In a moment we shall see that her mind also expresses its preoccupation with self in pride. So, she is denying that God is blessing them and trying to keep them uninformed. Up to now, all that God has limited them to is doctrine. She begins to wonder if there isn’t really some really great knowledge out here that Satan promises her that she isn’t entering into.

How many young people have grown up within the climate of a Christian home, and began to pick up the idea that, “All I’ve had is doctrine, doctrine, doctrine, and Bible, Bible, Bible, I want to get out there. I listen to the world and here are all of these intelligent people.” And if you send your kid to a state school, you had better take some very protective action in behalf of that young adult you’re sending off to school, because that kid is going to be confronted with brilliant minds, disoriented to God’s viewpoint, so fouled up as reflected on the national scene today, and so distorted in their understanding of what life is all about. Your youngster is going to have a hard time unless he has plenty of doctrine to buckle that and to put it in the right perspective.

Obviously, Eve was not sufficiently strengthened in her response to the Word that she had been taught, that she could resist these little insipient suggestions of doubt. She felt that she was being held down, with all of the potential she had. That was Satan’s original idea—pride.

So, she’s fitting herself, because of God’s injustice. She’s proud of what she could be. She sees this tree that could give her so much information. It’s like some young person who says, “Look at the glamorous world out there that has so much to offer.” The Jews did the same thing. God used to be their king. They were his people. The day came when the nation said, “We want to be like the other nations. We want a human king. We don’t just want you, God, over us.”

There are Christians like that—Christians who have the wealth of the Garden of Eden in the Word of God. Then they attend some local assembly. Then somebody throws a doubt in their mind and they begin sniffing around in other churches, where perhaps there is something that they have missed. Almost inevitably they are swung away from a gold mine to a trash heap and to a desert. The same identical line of destruction that followed, and Adam with her, is what believers do today. So, they run around from one church to another, always thinking that something is better—something they’re going to miss out on, especially if it’s glamorous. Something glamorous comes to town, and zap, off they go, because here’s something very wonderful.

Somebody promises you, “Come to a breakfast.” “How about coming out to a luncheon we have for this little group and that little group, and we’ll give you a great inspiration. You’ll be up with people who are really moving with God. Oh, you’ll be so moved.” Pretty soon you’ve cooled off toward the realities of the Word of God. You go all the way to the extreme of talking in tongues and running around pretending that you’re a healer, and any number of other things. This is a bad thing when you start self-pity and you start being proud of yourself and you start looking away from God’s point of blessing into which He has led you, and you’re wondering if “maybe right over there is something I’m missing. I had better look into it.” You better be careful. That’s why you sit here with an old sin nature because our first mother followed that line.

She also has a conscience. This conscience is on absolute standards. Now she is rapidly moving away from God’s standards to human viewpoint standards. She has a will and it is obviously rapidly going negative toward God. She has an emotion, and she is now very excited over the anticipation of what she’s going to enter into in the way of knowledge and wisdom. This indicates that she no longer appreciates God. She feels so deeply about this matter. She just feels this is so right and so good that it’s going to be such a benefit to her and her husband. Oh, her husband is going to be so proud when he comes home. He throws his hat on the hook after rounding up the animals all day and figuring out what to name some of those creatures. He comes home and there’s Eve who’s going to have a great big surprise for him.

I want you to notice in Genesis 2:17 once more what the penalty of this eating is when she says, “… lest ye die” in verse three. Remember what the penalty was—if they ate of the tree: “In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shall surely die.”

Very briefly, we’ll remind you again that literally in the Hebrew it is, “… dying, thou shalt die.” The word “surely” is “dying.” It’s a Hebrew participle, and it means spiritual death. This is what Romans 6:23 refers to, “… for the wages of sin is death.” This is spiritual death. “Die” is future. This “shalt die” refers to physical death. That is when the soul leaves the body. Here are some Scriptures that indicate that when the body dies, it is the soul leaving the body: Job 27:8, Psalm 16:10, 2 Corinthians 5:8, and compare with that 2 Corinthians 5:1-4. It is the soul that leaves the body at the point of death.

Something happened that in the day that they ate they died. Obviously their souls did not leave their bodies, for their physical bodies continued to live. Adam died when he was 930 years old. But the thing that died instantly was their human spirit. Their point of fellowship therefore came to an immediate end.

Now this in the Hebrew, grammatically, is an intensive form connoting the certainty of death that they would face, and the certainty extending to two realms. Spiritual death was separation from fellowship with God. Why? Because their contact point with him was dead. Your contact point is the human spirit. Adam and Eve spiritually died instantly. The soul, centuries later, left the bodies.

If you’ll turn to Isaiah 53:9, we have a confirmation of this two-fold death that took place in the garden and was the two-fold death for which Jesus Christ died on the cross. For he too died in two ways. Isaiah 53:9 says, “And he made his grave (speaking of the Lord Jesus) with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, because he had done no violence, neither was there any deceit in his death.”

Notice the phrase “and with the rich in his death.” In your translation, it says, “death” singular, but the Hebrew again here is plural. Just like it says, “God breathed into man the breath of lives,” not just singular live but “the breath of lives.” What lives? Spiritual life and soul life. Here again Christ died two deaths upon the cross. The word is “bemothaw.” It is deaths, plural. Spiritual death occurred when the sins of humanity were poured upon Jesus Christ. He was separated from God. As Matthew 27:46 says, “He cried out with a loud screaming voice, ‘My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” He was addressing God the Holy Spirit and God the Father. God the Father and God the Holy Spirit left Christ on the cross during the three hours from 12:00 noon until 3:00 PM, when darkness descended upon Calvary’s hill. Evidently this was so that from the eyes of humanity, the humiliation of the Son of God, the sinless Son of God, bearing the sins of the world, the darkness would shield His humiliation from the eyes of sinful men standing around about.

So, from 12:00 noon to 3:00 PM darkness covered that scene as Jesus Christ experienced spiritual death, and the sins of the world were poured out on Him. During His time on the cross, He suffered excruciating physical pain such that no human being has ever had. The result was that every penalty for sin was borne by Him in his own body (1 Peter 2:24).

We are born spiritually dead because we have an old sin nature, and so we’re separated from God. That’s the principal of Romans 5:12, “By one man (Adam), sin (the old sin nature) entered, and death (spiritual death) came upon all of us.”

When His work was finished, Jesus Christ said so. Luke 23:46 says, “… and He died.” It only took him a few moments to die physically, but it took quite a while to experience spiritual death on that cross.

If you have a new edition of the Scofield Bible, you might be interested in noting that it has a note here. It observes the fact that this word is mistranslated. The Scofield notes are usually very very good. This one, I think, is rather weak. It says, “In the Hebrew, the word rendered ‘death’ is an intensive plural. It has been suggested that it speaks of the violence of Christ’s death, the very pain of which made it like a repeated death.” That is spiritualizing the Word, “… made it like a repeated death.” It was a repeated death. It was two deaths. It was spiritual and it was physical.

It’s very important that you understand that and get it clear because it fits Scripture and removes a lot of confusion of what Christ did upon the cross. You are dead spiritually. God says, “The wages of sin is death.” How are you going to die spiritually when you’re already physical dead? No way. Only Jesus Christ who was born without an old sin nature because He did not have a human father, was able to die spiritually for you.

So, in Genesis 3:4, there’s the picture. Here’s how the old sin nature is now about ready to come into the human race. In verse 4, “The serpent said unto the woman, ‘Ye shall not surely die.’” Notice what he is saying. He is taking the very words of God, “dying, thou shalt die,” and he adds a negative. He says, “… dying, ye shall not die.” That’s just the way it is in the Hebrew. He adds to the words of Jehovah Elohim. He says that spiritual death is not going to result from sin. He’s playing his characteristic role of a liar, as we’re told in John 8:44. He denies the Word of God, and he does it in various ways. Here with the woman, he’s doing it with an outright contradiction, saying, “No, that what God says is not so.”

He will do that with you. Or he distorts the Word by making it mean something else. He gives a false interpretation. Or he adds or subtracts or changes the text. He does that to the Word. Or one of his favorites is to ridicule and discount the Word—to discount its value and its authority. Did you ever have anybody tell you that you’re learning too much doctrine?

Some time ago we had an evangelistic effort here in the city (a couple of years ago). My number two son was involved in it. The leader on one occasion observed to him as they were driving along in the car to a meeting in Dallas. That leader suggested that you can learn too much doctrine, and when you do you get spiritual indigestion. Now he goes to one of the biggest churches here in Irving, and he listens to one of the biggest preachers, and this is what he has learned—to be careful not to get too much doctrine, or he’s going to get a stomach ache. And my son said (I’m glad to report), “I don’t think you get spiritual indigestion from getting too much doctrine. I think you get it from getting bad doctrine.” That will give you a stomach ache every time. That’s the truth.

Satan comes along and ridicules doctrine. I can tell you right now that if there’s anything he is implanting in your thinking is that it is not important to feed on the Word of God daily. “How many years have you gotten along without it? You’re not too bad, are you? You’ve got as good of clothes on as anybody else here. When you walk out into this parking lot, you’ll drive off in as good of a car as anybody else has here—maybe better. For your age, you’ve maintained a pretty good appearance in spite or yourself, better than a lot of people you see here. You’ve got a good bank account. What do you need to study the Word for? It makes you think you have to have doctrine every day. You’re getting along great, aren’t you?”

I’ll remind you again that the devil doesn’t bother with people who are functioning in a way that is not productive of divine good. If you want to get trouble in your life, dear friend, you just start getting phased into God, and you start getting operational in the world and start producing divine good. He’ll slap you physically. He’ll slap you financially. He’ll slap you with family troubles. He’ll slap you on every side that he can get to you. Only doctrine and walking in fellowship with God the Holy Spirit will protect you from those things, if you are functioning in the production of divine good. So, Satan is going to ridicule. It isn’t too much doctrine—it’s applying it more that we need.

In verse 5, Satan proceeds now, after contradicting God, to malign God. “For God doth know that in the day that ye eat thereof then your eyes shall be opened and ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil.” The natural consequences of denying the Word is to malign the author. When you attack the Bible, which 1 Corinthians 2:16 tells us is the mind of Christ, you are attacking the character of God. Today Satan maligns Jesus Christ by saying he’s merely a good man and not deity. Satan, in verse 5, still uses the term for Supreme Being, “Elohim.” He says that God is jealous of man, when Satan is really the jealous one, but he’s transferring his fault to God. People do this too. Satan knew from his own experience that negative volition didn’t make him like God. It brought judgment upon him. The earth that he moved into became a chaotic disaster zone. He wasn’t like God at all. He couldn’t keep anything running right.

So, Satan promises the woman that she will be like Elohim. At the end of verse 5, that should not be “gods,” as you may have it in our Authorized Version. This is exactly the same word that you‘ve had in verse 1, 3, and 5, “Elohim,” the Supreme Being God. So, it should be “God” again. He says you’ll be just like God. Now that’s a great promise—the capacity to know good and evil in the way that God knows good and evil. How does God know good? How does God know evil? Well, God is perfect righteousness, so He rejects anything that’s contrary to His character. That’s how He knows sin. He doesn’t know sin by experience. God produces divine good and He rejects everything that is not produced by Him, and that’s how He knows what good is.

Sins were judged at the cross. Your human good, as a Christian, will be judged as the Judgment Seat of Christ (Romans 14:10), or if you’re an unbeliever it will be judged at the Great White Throne (Revelation 20:11-12). Both sin and human come from the old sin nature, so God condemns both of them.

Here’s an interesting thing. The more human good you produce, the more guilt you have. All of these people running around exuding because they’re producing human good are producing judgment for themselves because God is going to judge whatever comes from the old sin nature. The greater the judgment, the greater the responsibility, and this suggest perhaps the greater the punishment.

At the point of salvation, you and I were placed into Jesus Christ, permanently for all of our sins. That’s positional truth. So, all our sins are paid for. Now what will you do beyond that? “You shall be as God; you shall know more.” We already have everything that God has available for us. We have everything that relative to good and sin that we need to know. If you think you’re going to have to go out to the world to find out how good Christianity is, and what maybe you’ve been missing, you’re mistaken. Yet, how many times have you sat in a church service and heard some preacher stand up and say, “I wonder how many people here will reaffirm your faith this morning. How many of you will rededicate yourselves to the Lord?” And some of you sitting right here have hoofed it down many an aisle rededicating yourselves. You’ve been called upon to raise your hand, with several options available, including to love your mother more. And you’ve walked the aisle for any number of things.

Some of you have been agonizing in your closet. I used to think this was the thing to do, when I was in college my first year. It was a dormitory and there were six guys in one room. I used to go in my closet and pray. I walked out one day when the fellow on the bed next to mine was just laying down to take a nap. Suddenly the door flung open and out I came, and he jumped three feet off the bed. He’s never been the same since. So, this agonizing in your closet can wreck people.

You think you’re going to contribute to something. You’re going to cry at the altar. When I first came to Berean Memorial Church, we used to have a bench down front with an army blanket over it that my predecessor called the altar. People used to come down to that altar and weep. The blanket was salty through and through. You could see it—white all over. It was a big kick, and people would finish the service and say, “Boy, couldn’t you feel the spirit moving here.” I was just a dumb seminary student, and I said, “Well, I felt something moving, but I don’t know what it was.”

There’s nothing you can do for spirituality or for salvation. These things are a travesty against the grace of God. Salvation is not dependent upon your living a good life. That comes hard to us. Satan’s idea is for us to be doctrinal morons and to get emotional in our thinking. Spirituality is not built upon emotional campfires. We have to watch ourselves because we do such extensive work with young people. It’s the easiest thing in the world to get around a campfire and hand every kid a stick, and say, “Throw it on and make a testimony for the Lord.” Pretty soon everybody’s glowing, but nobody’s going because they don’t have anything to go with.

How many times have you made stupid vows because some preacher moved you to get up and make some kind of a vow to God? How many of you have made public confession that you should not have made, or you’ve made promises to God, or you’re begging forgiveness, or you’re pleading the blood, or you’re mumbling prayers, or you’re deciding for discipleship, or any number of clichés that have been foisted upon the people of God? If you’re going to live on that kind of an emotional pitch of Christianity, and think with your emotions like that, and go for that kind of rot, then you’re going to have to have a preacher who’s going to have to jack you up emotionally.

Dr. Lewis Sperry Chafer used to tell us in the seminary, “Once you start that line, the dose will have to become bigger and bigger until you can’t get a hypodermic needle big enough to hold the shot, in order for you to go on with kind of emotional jag.” This is a travesty and an insult to the honor of God. You’re going to have to have some preacher to give you inspirational talks and devotional sermons to keep you cranked up to living your delusions. You’re going to cycle up and down in your emotions. You’ll have a spiritual hangover, with no stability, when you meet the pressures of life.

You’re going to be a prime prospect for the demonic activity of speaking in tongues and the healing fraud—the whole fraud of Pentecostalism. We’ll be getting into this more, but make no mistake that when you are dealing with tongues and healing, you are dealing with two things: either demon-indwelt people or demon-influenced people, who can be Christian or non-Christian. Demon-indwelt people can only be non-Christians. But you are dealing with either one, and when you deal with an organization that deals in tongues and practices speaking in the gibberish of tongues and practices the fraud of healing, I don’t care how much good that organization does, it is human good. You may like the human good, but don’t ever make the mistake to think that it has the blessing of God or that it has reward upon it. We have big organizations here in Dallas that are structured on the background tongues and healing that draw all kinds of people from all kinds of churches because they appear to be doing such good for humanity. But what they do on that background is human good. The same thing done on the background of the leading of the spirit of God would be divine good. But when tongues and healing are involved, you are dealing with demons.

Now the big churches and the big preachers don’t like this kind of expose’ talk. I guarantee that the average professional preacher is in a panic over the idea of not using emotional manipulation on his congregation. If he responded (correctly to God), he would have to get into his study and start cranking out some study. He would have to start doing the hardest thing on earth to try to come up with a discussion of the Bible in one service that gave people something substantial that they could go home and live with, and that their lives could be transformed by.

Sometimes we have people who complain that we put down other churches here at Berean. The reason they complain is because those other churches justify their dishonoring of the grace of God, and because they go for the emotional pitch. We’re not putting down churches. We’re just putting down what is dishonoring to the grace of God. If you are a doctrinally-oriented Christian, you’ll be the first to put it down too.

Let’s look at the victory that Satan has. The scene is set. The woman has been given doubt. She is now wondering about the integrity of God, and his justice. She has been promised great wisdom and great knowledge. In verse 6, “And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food.” She saw. She looks at the tree now with a different mental attitude. She sees it from Satan’s viewpoint. So she sees this as good for food. She’s beginning to think like a materialist, something more valuable than the will of God. This is a rationalization to justify sinning. There was plenty of food in the garden. Any time we want to sin, we rationalize by making our specific situation a different and idealistic one.

It was pleasant to the eyes. Her attention was now focused on the fruit. She was mulling over the option of sin. The more she thought of it, the better she liked the idea. She saw then that it was a tree to be desired to make one wise, for the purpose of wisdom equal to God’s. She had fully accepted the idea about God’s jealousy and injustice. She said, “You know that’s right. That tree would make me like God in my understanding, and He’s trying to keep me from it. She thought her eating would benefit her and her husband, so she lost all awareness of the difference between herself as a creature and God as God.

Now the issue is drawn. God says “Don’t,” but Satan says, “Do.” What is she going to do? Her mind has been very cleverly prepared. She is ready to assume the role of an aggressor in order to improve the situation of herself and her husband. She takes the whole future of the whole human race in her hands, upon her shoulders, instead of leaving it on her husband’s shoulders where it began. So it culminates in sin. She reaches out. She plucks the fruit. She bites into it, and her human spirit dies. Her fellowship with God is gone, and she is spiritually dead. Into her soul there comes an old sin nature now to dominate her.

Now her fallen condition is immediately evident. She sees it. I think the way she must have seen it, as we draw some deductions, some things that are implied here in Scripture, is that she had a certain covering. Verse 7 says that they knew that they were naked. This very statement implies that up to now she didn’t know that she was naked. As a matter of fact, Genesis 2:25 says, “And they were both naked (the man and his wife) and they were not ashamed.” They were not aware that they were naked. That’s why they were not ashamed. Apparently, they must have had some kind of covering. They must have something in the way of clothing up to this point—something that at the moment she ate she lost. Suddenly she stood there in stark unadulterated nakedness.

We may deduce that the covering that she had was something in the form of a light that reflected the glory of God. 1 John 1:5 tells us that God is light. Psalm 104:2 tells us that God clothes Himself in light. Genesis 1:27 tells us that man was made in the image of God. That means that he was made with a personality inwardly like God. Perhaps we can also deduce that he was mad in outward appearance of God in reflecting the glory of God, in wearing a clothing of light that covered him.

1 Timothy 6:16 says that God dwells in light. Romans 13:12 tells Christians to put on the armor of light. It seems from these Scriptures that we may conclude that she wore some kind of clothing, some kind of covering, and it was perhaps in the form of light—light that reflected the glory of God so that their condition was such that they were not ashamed as they moved about the garden. Now she is shocked by the consequences of her eating. The man comes home and right away he sees her as he’s never seen her before, for now he sees her without her clothing of light. Immediately he knows what has happened. He knows that she has violated the restriction of God.

Now he must choose, between Jesus Christ in the garden, and his wife out of the garden. It seems he doesn’t hesitate at all. She is his right woman. The attraction is so powerful that he goes with her. Satan doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t even come into the picture. He hands the fruit. The man reaches over, he takes it, and he eats it. Then the man loses his covering of light. He receives the old sin nature, and he dies spiritually.

This is why the man is responsible for the old sin nature, and for spiritual death. 1 Timothy 2:9-15 deals with women having an inner beauty of the soul. Verse 13 says the man was created first in order to establish the chain of command or authority in the marriage. God is man’s head, and the man is the woman’s head. Verse 14 then says that “Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.” It points out a discretion between the sin of the man and the sin of the woman. The man knew he was sinning. He knew doctrine. He understood what had happened to Eve. He deliberately, knowingly, sinned. But the woman was tricked by Satan. She thought that this would improve her lot with her husband. So, she wanted to do something that ended up transgressing the will and Word of God.

They were both sinners, they were both guilty, they both died spiritually, and they both received an old sin nature. But his was deliberate and hers was not. Consequently, we have the observation that she was deceived, which means planting false ideas into the mind—anti-God concepts, which doctrine could have protected her from.

Verse 15 says, “Notwithstanding, she shall be saved in child-bearing.” This means that in spite of being deceived into sin, she will be saved because she will bear a child who is a savior. Romans 5:12 tells us that this old sin nature came through the man, and that it is the man who is responsible for the old sin nature, and through whom we receive the old sin nature, by procreation from our fathers. “Wherefore it was by one man (Adam) sinned, the old sin nature entered into the world, and death by the old sin nature, so spiritual death passed upon all men for all have sinned.” It entered by one man because he deliberately sinned. That’s why Jesus Christ had to be born without an old sin nature so that He would be qualified spiritually to die for the sins of the world.

The solution for Adam and Eve for their condition now was something that only God could provide. But notice what they did. Genesis 3:7 says, “The eyes of both of them were opened. They knew that they were naked. (Their covering of light was gone.) So, they sewed fig leaves together. This was legalism—the first human works to approach God. The word sewed simply means put together. They probably wove the stems together, and they made themselves aprons or, specifically, loin cloths.

Now the solution for their sin was something they should have gone to God for, but they didn’t. Why didn’t they go to God and say, “God, look what we’ve done?” The reason they couldn’t go to God now was because they had no way of thinking toward God. Their human spirits were dead. They had a mentality in their soul, but their mentality could only approach using rationalism and human reasoning. You can’t get to God that way. Or they could approach using empiricism, and they couldn’t get to God that way. So, they were completely closed out from God. So, they made themselves loincloths of fig leaves.

The answer had to be what we have in Genesis 5:6, where Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness. God’s solution to Adam and Eve was symbolized by the animals that God killed and substituted in place of their human good that they had created for themselves. Satan is in control of humanity now. All the earth is his. He’s pushing for human good, in keeping with his ambition to be like God. He was inspiring them to make this arrangement apart from God because this represented their first step in getting people related to each other in a life pattern that ignores God.

This is what socialism does. Socialism is the idea that man can create an environment as perfect as God once produced. And that men can relate themselves in such a way, in spite of their old sin nature, that they will live in peace. And here you have the first act of socialism right here in the Garden of Eden where the man and the woman say that they will relate themselves to one another first by fig leaf loin cloths. And in time, Satan would promote internationalism which would contribute to his goal of being the Supreme Being whose will dominates all others.

Here was a tree they were not to eat of. If they ate of this tree, they would experience spiritual death first and then physical death. There’s another tree in the Bible in 1 Peter 2:24 that we invite you to eat of this morning if you are not a believer. 1 Peter 2:24 tells us concerning this tree of Jesus Christ who His own self bore our sins in His own body on the tree, “That we being dead to sins should live unto righteousness by whose stripes we were healed.”

You may eat of this tree which is the tree of Calvary, the cross upon which Christ died. You may eat of that by faith, by accepting the fact that He died and removed all the barrier between you and God. Your simple acceptance and you confidence in your faith to receive Him as your personal savior means eternal life. All you have to do is step across the line now represented by the Lord Jesus Christ. If you do not, you will someday come before God, and the only thing you’ll have to offer is your human good, and it comes from your old sin nature, and you’ll be utterly condemned.

Dr. John E. Danish

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