The Fall (Genesis 3)

Have you thought about the following things: 1) Why does evil or sin exist?  2) Why does suffering or tragedy exist?  3)  Why does a person experience fear, guilt, shame, or depression?  4) Why does a person not want others to see his or her innermost heart?  Why does he or she hide his or his inner heart?  5)  If evil or sin exists, does the world have any hope?  Genesis Chapter 3 explains all these questions.  Therefore, unless one accepts the Bible teaching, he or she will never have any answers to these hard questions.

According to James Montgomery Boice, there have been only two answers to the problem of the existence of evil throughout history.  The first one is the eternity of evil.  That is, evil has existed from the beginning, just as good has existed from the beginning.  Therefore, all life is characterized by this mixture.  But according to Boice, this cannot be an answer at all; it is simply a denial of the problem.  The second one is known as reincarnation.  It is the idea that each of us has had a previous existence, and the existence before that, and another before that, and so on.  The evil we inherit in this life is due to what we have done in those previous incarnations.  But this answer does not ultimately answer to the question since it does not explain why evil existed in the previous existence, and the existence before that, and so on.

Only the Bible clearly tells us that when God created the universe, it was perfect.  But by Adam’s disobedience, sin entered into the world.  By our association with Adam, we were born as sinners.  Modern people may not like the idea that we were born as sinners.  But without accepting this truth, we will never answer all those questions and we will continuously try to solve our problems in our own ways.  It is like a patient denies the root of his or her infection but tries to cure its symptoms by superficial dressings.  As you see in today’s passage, there can be only hope when we accept what happened to mankind in Genesis 3.

Having said that, in a theological terminology, today’s event is called the Fall.  The term indicates that once the world had been perfect but it fell from the perfection.  Look at the last verse in Chapter 2: “The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.” (2:25)  The reason they felt no shame was because they had no cause of embarrassment when they stood naked before both God and themselves.  They had done nothing wrong and there was nothing about they could possibly be ashamed or embarrassed.  Their thoughts were pure, and their motives were transparent, and their affections were selfless.  There was nothing they wanted to hide.  It was the state of perfection.  No shame, no guilt, no fear, no desire of running away from God and each other.  There was a perfect relationship.

But look at Chapter 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’?” Suddenly we come upon a creature whose existence has not been hinted until now.  Who is he?  According to Revelation 12:9, the ancient serpent is called the devil or Satan.  Satan, disguised as a serpent, approached Eve and asked the question, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden?’”  It was the first question in the Bible.  In Chapter 2, God gave this command to Adam and Eve: “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.”  It was the expression of God’s generous offering.  He gave maximum freedom and dominion to them.  Even the only exception was for them, too.  It reminded them of that they were not God and that they were accountable to him. However, Satan intentionally altered the command of God by asking a question designed to get the woman to express the command in her own words.

 

What was the woman’s reply?  Look at verses 2-3. The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”  Her own rendition indicates that she knew the command very well.  But it had a slight difference, which becomes crucial.  She did not repeat the statement of God (“You will surely die”) but simply said, “or you will die.”  Seeing her carelessly omitting the word “surely”, Satan capitalized her oversight and told her that God was holding back something.  Look at verses 4-5: “You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”  He basically said to her, “Eve, it was never really God’s intention to put you to death.  He said this to discourage you from being like God, knowing good and evil.”

 

Here we learn Satan’s tactics in tempting men to rebel against God.  First, he trivializes God’s absolute word.  He minimizes the importance of God’s words.  The Bible says that when we disobey God, we bear the consequence of our disobedience.  But Satan plays down the seriousness of the consequence.  “You will be OK.  Nothing will happen to you.”  But as you see in this chapter, disobeying the command of God brought colossal consequences to Adam and Eve.  They lost the Paradise.  Death came to them.  However, Satan continuously plays down the importance of God’s every word.  If one understands every word of God has eternal consequence of life and death, he or she will have a serious attitude toward the word of God.  But, like Eve, we take the word of God not seriously.  We believe it but with a half-hearted attitude.  Then we are very vulnerable to Satan’s attack   Second, Satan always pictures that God prohibits something because God is not good and, thus, that he cannot be trusted.  He told Eve that God forbade Adam and Eve to eat the tree of the good and evil because he had an ulterior motive.  He is holding back something.  He is hiding something.  He does not want you to become like him.   In a sense, Satan’s statement was factual, but it was a complete misrepresentation of God’s intention for the prohibition.  The reason for the prohibition was not because God did not want men to become like him but because he knew that the prohibition was designed for their good.  Men have fallen into Satan’s tactic of misrepresentation of God’s goodness.  ‘He wants to take away your freedom.’  ‘He wants to enslave you.’  ‘He does not want you to be happy.’  ‘He is afraid of losing his control over you.’  During the sixties, the hippies questioned any kind of restraints.  They espoused free sex.  Of course, sex is a wonderful creation of God, but there is an appropriate time and regulation for such activity.  But Satan twists the prohibition as the impingement of human freedom and made men rebel against the limit set by God.  Third, Satan’s another tactic is to instigate man’s pride.   Look at verse 6: “When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.”  “You will be like God,” or “Gaining wisdom like God” was Satan’s powerful weapon in tempting men to rebel against God.  ‘Even God cannot dictate me.’  ‘I am the master of my life.’  ‘I am free from God.’  ‘It is I that calls the shot.’  Men have pursued this fantasy of unbounded freedom and power.  But are we really absolutely free?  We obey even our boss’s command, follow the laws of the nation, and keep the principles of nature.  How much more, then, we have to obey God.  But Satan always tempts us that we can be like God.  Pride is one of Satan’s best weapons.

When we see the consequences of Adam’s disobeying God’s command, we come to see that Satan blatantly lied and grossly misrepresented God.  Look at verse 7: “Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.”  In the past, even though they were naked, they felt no shame.  But now, they realized they were naked, so they covered them with fig leaves.  Why did they suddenly feel ashamed?  Before the fall, there was for them nothing to hide.  But now they had something to hide before God because of their sinful state.  They were aware of their exposed state and felt the need of covering their exposedness.  Look at verse 8.  “Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden.”  Even though the clothes of fig leaves were relatively successful in covering themselves, it was not inadequate to disguise their true selves before God. So they hid from God.

Whether one believes in God or not, he or she has inner secrets (we call skeletons in the closet) that no one, even your parents or spouse, wants to know about.  We try to hide our true self through many masks like fig leaves.  Some hide themselves through projecting false images about themselves.  Politicians and celebrities are experts about that.  Some hide themselves through even denying the existence of God or sin.  Even a boyfriend and a girlfriend, or a husband and a wife slowly open up their hearts, revealing their weaknesses and secrets.  Even so, they, too, do not fully reveal themselves. Another mask of hiding ourselves is living busily so that we may not think about ourselves.  We do this or that, watching TV, shopping, or going party.  We hate to be alone because that makes us think about ourselves.  So we want to hide ourselves in a busy lifestyle so that it may keep us from thinking.

But does our hiding really hide our true self from God?  Look at verses 9-11.  “But the LORD God called to the man, “Where are you?” He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.” And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?” God called them, “Adam, Eve, where are you?”  Of course, God asked this question not because he did not know where they were.  In verse 13, God also asked the woman, “What is this that you have done?”  Once again, God was asking this question not because he did not know what the woman had done.  God knew what had happened but he wanted them to acknowledge their sins and confess them to him.  But if you read verses 11-13, Adam blamed the woman and eventually God who created the woman.  And the woman blamed the devil.  They were no more a wonderful Adam and perfect Eve any more.  They turned into an ugly couple who shifted blame to each other.

The fact that God called Adam and the woman and that they had to respond to his call tells us that we cannot ultimately hide our sins from him. When my eldest son Tim had a rough relationship with me, he tried to cover his face with his hand.  But covering his face with his hand did not really cover himself.  Likewise, running away from God does not really solve our inner shame.  Or not thinking about our inner problem through busy living also does not remove our inner shame.  God calls us to come before him, “Where are you?”  He wants us not to hide ourselves but to acknowledge our sinful state and come back to him through the forgiveness he provided in Jesus Christ.  We may be running away from him.  But the day is coming when we cannot run away from him anymore and when we must stand before him.  Let us not run away from him but come to him as we are, believing his forgiveness.


If you look through this chapter, even though Satan was successful in tempting men, he did not achieve any goal.  He marred the Paradise but he could not frustrate God’s good plan.  Although evil seems to be strong, it cannot frustrate God’s plan.  Even in this tragedy, we can see the glimpse of hope of redemption and restoration because God’s plan cannot be frustrated.  That’s the power of God.  Even though we are sinners, that does not mean that we are totally hopeless.  Instead, in God, we have a great assurance of redemption and restoration.  Therefore, God calls us, “Where are you?”, not to condemn us, but to redeem us from our sin and restore our relationship with him.