Glorious and Depraved (12): The Fall of Mankind (Part Two)

God does not come into the garden in human form until after Adam and Eve have finished succumbing to temptation and disobey. Allowing the tempter to tempt them to violate the only stated law of the garden was a test. Would they trust and obey God? They would not. Now God must confront them.

⁸ Then the man and his wife heard the sound of Yahweh Elohim walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid themselves from Yahweh Elohim among the trees of the garden. ⁹ But Yahweh Elohim summoned the man, “Where are you?”

¹⁰ He said, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”

¹¹ And He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”

¹² The man said, “The woman you gave me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”

¹³ Then Yahweh Elohim said to the woman, “What have you done?”

The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” (Genesis 3:8-13)

The profound sense of shame that Adam and Eve feel when they are aware that God is coming moves them to hide. Shame springs from fear that someone will see some aspect of me that they find inadequate or blameworthy, and results in an attempt to divert attention.  Adam and Eve had no shame when vitally connected to God, because they had all adequacy and worth in union with Him, but not now. They are also afraid of God. When God asks what they have done and whether they have disobeyed, Adam seeks to shift the blame to God and to his wife. The woman does the same thing, shifting blame to the serpent. They have already tried covering up their sin and shame, and focusing on their nakedness as the reason they are afraid is a form of minimizing their transgression.

They have not died physically, the separation of their souls from their non-functioning bodies. They have died spiritually; their souls have been separated from God’s life-giving relationship. They have surely died. And were they then to die physically, they would be dead eternally, separated from God forever. And they will now, at some point, die physically, the tree of life withheld from them (Genesis 3:22). Death is the penalty of sin (Romans 5:12-14; 6:23).

The marriage relationship of the man and the woman has been threatened with Adam’s seeking to cast the fault for his disobedience on Eve. He has chosen his own security over hers. She has found him untrustworthy, willing to throw her under the bus to save his own skin. They don’t feel safe to be intimate with one another because of their own selfishness. Sin has entered their once idyllic world. Heaven on earth has become hell on earth.

And there are consequences for their rebellion.