The God of the Old Testament — Part 10: Paradise Lost
By Mark L. Carlton
We move now to the first judgment of God recorded in the Bible, the expulsion of the human race, which at the time consisted of just two human beings, from paradise.
I anticipate that some readers might want to argue with me about the historicity of the events recorded in the first four chapters of the Book of Genesis, so let me clearly state my position. I realize that many modern scholars see the first and second chapters of Genesis as two separate accounts of creation. But as I said in a previous message, I believe that the teaching of Christ ought to be definitive for a person who calls him or herself a Christian, and it just so happens that Jesus based a major teaching, His teaching on marriage, on these chapters.
As I examine Jesus’ teaching marriage I notice two things. First, He treated the first and second chapters of Genesis as historical. Second, He did not treat these two chapters as two separate accounts of creation but two complimentary accounts of the same event. Given, then, that the one Christians refer to as the Lord treated the text this way, it seems to me that we who call ourselves Christians should do the same; unless we’ve decided that Jesus was also wrong when He said, “a disciple is not above his teacher or a servant above his Lord.” Since I consider myself a disciple of His I defer to my Master.
I also note that when Adam is referred to in the apostolic literature he is treated as an historical character and that the historicity of the fall lies at the heart of the Christian doctrine of salvation. It is the reason we need a Savior.
Without the fall it would be possible for the Christian to agree with the Humanist Manifesto; ”No deity will save us, we must save ourselves.” Without the fall we could join hands with Michael Jackson and the others who recorded, “We Are the World,” and sing, “There’s a choice we’re making, we’re saving our own lives.” But because we believe in the fall we sound a discordant note.
Instead of saying, “There’s a choice we’re making; we’re saving our own lives,” we sing, “Amazing Grace, how sweet that sound, that saved a wretch like me;” and contradicting the seminal document of secular humanism, we declare: “If we are to be saved some Deity must do it because we cannot save ourselves.”
But for the purposes of this message I am not going to be arguing for the historicity of the book of Genesis. Instead I am going to assume the same thing that the skeptic assumes; that the creation story in Genesis is nothing more than a legend or a myth. As a legend it would be or contain the memory of some event lost in the primordial past. As a myth, it is a religious story told to communicate some truth about the human condition. The reason I am comfortable treating the early chapters of Genesis in this way is that I think I can make the same point whether we consider the story of the garden and the fall true history, a legend or a myth. It seems to me that whatever we consider the story of be the point remains the same; we live in an imperfect world as a result of human sin.
This is the same message I referred to in my last message (Part 9), when I stated that there is something in us — some archetype, some collective consciousness, some innate or intuitive sense that we all share in common — that tells us the imperfection of the world is somehow our fault. Genesis 2-3, whether taken as history, legend or a myth, asserts that this is indeed the case.
I am frequently asked, “If God knows all things then He knew Adam and Eve would sin, so why did He put the tree in the Garden of Eden?” As is often the case when people ask questions like this, the unspoken assumptions underlying the question is more interesting than the question. In this case the assumptions are two: (1) God did something wrong in creating a universe with the potential for evil, and (2) whatever God is doing in time and space is all about us…or it should be.
As to the first assumption, asserts that God did something wrong when He created a universe with the potential for evil, in order to make this judgment we would need to know everything that God intends to do in time and space, and since know so little about the universe or the mind of God, I don’t think we are able to say whether or not creating a universe with the potential for evil was a good or a bad thing.
As to the second assumption; if what God is doing in time and space is all about us then I suppose it can be argued that God could or should have done better by us. However, from the little we do know about the working of God in time and space, it appears that what He is doing is not all about us. This being the case, we need to be open to the possibility that what God intends to do requires a universe with the possibility of evil, creatures with the ability to chose between the two and the opportunity for them to do so. What I am saying is that we Christians do not not say that we live in the best of all possible worlds. What we do say is that we live in the right world for God to accomplish his purposes in time space history.
Now let us go back to Genesis and the story of the fall of humankind and take a look at exactly what it teaches us. The story introduces us to a man and woman created innocent, not virtuous, but with the opportunity to move from innocence to virtue. The garden in which they find themselves is a perfect setting for this. In the garden the maximum was allowed and the minimum was forbidden. In fact, only one thing was forbidden, eating the fruit tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
If it were up to us, I suppose we would prefer a world in which there was innocence without virtue; a world in which everything is allowed. But God apparently desired that we graduate from innocence to virtue and that they do this by submitting themselves in faith to the moral will of God as it was known to them. At that time it was very simple. It still is. It consists of believing what God has said and obeying. In the case of the couple in the garden, they were called to believe just one thing, that God was telling them the truth about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden. On the basis of this revelation they were given just one command: do not eat the fruit of that tree. Finally, they were are warned of the consequence of disobedience; death. Genesis tells us that the first humans failed this test and that as a result sin and death then entered the world.
It is often said that they did not die when they ate the fruit. I will be posting an audio sermon I preached on this very subject, but suffice it to say for now that they did die the day they disobeyed God and ate the fruit. But death is defined in Genesis not by physical death, but by the things that happened to Adam, Eve, and the world on the day they ate the fruit. Death includes such things as guilt, shame, fear, pain and finally physical death (from dust you were taken from dust you will return). All of these things were part of the first act of divine judgment described in the Bible. But for our purposes perhaps the two most painful aspects of the death that entered the world through the fall are the race’s separation from its creator and the loss of paradise.
The story of Genesis tells us that the world we now live in is broken. It tells us that the first couple was broken too. And in chapter four and five it tells us that the death that impacted the first couple was passed on to their posterity. We see it first in Cain and we see it in godly Abel as he becomes the first man to experience physical death. Then in the genealogies we read of its effects over and over again as we read that this or that person was born, had a notable son or daughter, and died, and their sons and daughters died, and their sons and daughters died. Paul says it so well, “In Adam all died.” And so death become the sad end of every human story. There are no happy endings in the broken world. So the first judgment of God turned this world into the Green Mile, a death row where all of us await our turn to follow Adam in returning to the dust.
But there is also a message of hope. Death Row this world may be, and the world we live in is indeed broken by sin, but God’s grace has mitigated its brokenness by filling it with many good things. Like the world, we are broken too, but God has mitigated our brokenness as well, so that even our fallen natures are held in check by something theologians call common grace. As a result, there is enough good left in this world that we would be content to live here on the Green Mile forever were it not for the world’s damnable brokenness.
We are often distressed by the brokenness of this world. Yet we are often delighted as we enjoy remnants of what was, and of what may be again. Thus, the world we live in is more than just death row, it is also the vestibule of eternity, in which we are presented with samples of eternity. In the brokenness of the word we have a taste of that separation from God which we refer to as Hell. In the good things we enjoy we have a foretaste of eternity with God, Heaven.
But this world is more than death row and the vestibule of eternity, it is also a testing ground. Here we will all face our own encounters with the serpent, and we will make our choices. The choices we make as we walk the path of life will have a great deal to do with the quality of our journey, and the Bible indicates it will ultimately determine our eternity.
So these are the consequences of the first sin. These are the results of the fall. Some will protest that it is not fair that we suffer as a result of Adam and Eve’s sin. Undoubtedly, this is true. That is the problem with sin; it is unfair by its very nature. No wonder God hates it.
Perhaps God could have chosen some other judgment. Perhaps He could have sentenced Adam and Eve to physical death the very day they sinned. But he chose another judgment instead. That is his right as the Creator. So God determined that the human race would continue. In doing this He was accepted the fact that a broken race in a broken world would result in all sorts of horrors. So why would he do it? Words like grace and mercy come to mind.
