I hate this topic! What happened? Life in the Garden was so good. God’s glory was there. And there was order, community, and purposeful work. God had provided all that human beings needed, including freedom and the opportunity to mature. It was all so good: the kingdom of right relationships—the kingdom of righteousness.

But we are a long way from Eden, aren’t we? We live in a world full of pain, destruction, hatred, and self-centered cruelty. We see it—not just "out there", but "in here" as well. What went wrong?

• Did humanity get confused? 
• Have we just forgotten who we are supposed to be and need to be reminded? 
• Do we just need more education? 
• Do we need to get our personalities "integrated"? 
• Is it that we are basically good, but it is the culture and institutions which have corrupted us? 
• Is it that we are still evolving and can’t be expected to be any better yet? 
• Is it that the whole material universe was somehow substandard to begin with and that we will never really be able to work it out in this material world?

These are all possible explanations, but none provide the biblical answer to what’s wrong on planet earth. So how did God’s Genesis 1 evaluation that all creation and humanity was "very good", change by Genesis 6 to one of the saddest evaluations in the Bible? "And the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart." 

Let’s go back to the garden for a few minutes and walk with our first parents.

Humanity was created from the dust of the ground. We are very much a part of the fabric of the physical world. But God also created us to be in his image. We are "only a little lower than the angels" says the Psalmist. We were created to bear God’s family resemblance, but to do so firmly as a part of the material world.

In the center of the garden were two trees which were apparently designed to help these new beings, who were so full of energy, creativity, love, freedom, willfulness, intelligence and wonder to learn basic patterns of shalom. It’s one thing to name the things in my world, but quite another to understand what they mean. So God began to teach them.

The tree of life was somehow there to say that in this universe there is a big difference between life and not life. There are wonders everywhere, but life is something different. There is growth, internal patterned change, and most importantly interdependentconnections between living things. We call these relationships. We need other living things to survive. God is the source of all life—and the sustainer of all life.

I’m not sure how the tree of life taught this lesson, except that everywhere that it is mentioned in the Bible it is associated with the sustaining of life forever (cf. Gen. 3.22).

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was also in the middle of the garden. It was about limits and about love.

1. What did it teach about limits?


God gave a number of commands to our first parents, but only one prohibition. "You may freely eat of every tree of the garden, but of this tree you shall not eat, for in the day you eat it you shall die." One "no" in a garden of "yes’s". Why? Is this a cruel act of entrapment on God’s part? Not at all. The tree was to teach them not just about what sustains life, but about who they were and where they came from.

Two great limits were (and are) important to learn:

The first is that we are human. We are not God. God was saying, "Remember I am God, and you are not. I am the Creator, you are the creation. We’re a lot alike because I created you to resemble me in many ways. But life is only going to work if you first and always understand that you have limits—and I’m limitless." God can decide to limit himself (and sometimes does)—but we have limits built in by virtue of our createdness.

The second limits is that we are intentionally incomplete. Even in this perfect world of shalom, God says, remember that incompleteness and hunger is the way you were created. It’s OK not to have everything. It’s OK to have hungers. It’s OK not to feel perfect. It’s at the very point of our incompleteness and our yearning that we usually recognize our need for God. What do you yearn for? What tree do you think will satisfy that hunger?

The tree of life was a place where our first parents had to recognize that they lacked something, namely, the knowledge of good and evil. At that point of incompleteness God’s question was "Will you trust me?"

2. What did it teach about love?

The anatomy of temptation

The voice of temptation in the garden turned out to be a serpent. It was through this serpent that the inevitable questions about life were confronted. Is this the devil in disguise? Maybe, but that’s not what the text says. What is stated here is only that this was a creature created by God and that it was "crafty"—"cunning". The Hebrew root word [????]?consists of the same letters used in the previous verse to describe the man and woman as "naked". It is used here as a word play or pun. The point is that the serpent was more like them than any of the wild creatures. But also that it was the master of sly subtlety.

We don’t know why the conversation is directed toward the woman, since verse 6 suggests that the man may have been right there with her. Maybe it was a sort of quiz to make sure that she had learned everything that had been told to the man before she arrived on the scene. 

The first question was simple enough: "Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?"

It is an innocent enough sounding question. But what the serpent interjects into this scene is doubt. Now be very clear that doubt is NOT sin. It is not a characteristic which was inappropriate to the garden. Doubt is the inclination to ask the next question. Everyone whose faith is alive and growing will go through doubt. Specifically what the serpent called into question was whether the woman thought that God’s character and God’s word were consistent. That is a very subtle and very effective way to get at God’s people. Just get them to believe that if they would only look at God’s character a little more closely they would realize that he couldn’t possibly have really said … whatever. God is so loving, after all. Certainly he doesn’t want me to be incomplete. Or struggling. Certainly he wouldn’t want me to have any unfulfilled yearnings, or worse yet, pain. Certainly he wouldn’t ask me to sacrifice something that I really want for the sake of a commitment? Certainly he wouldn’t prohibit something as beautiful as the expression of our love sexually outside of marriage? Probably I didn’t hear his word correctly, or maybe I’ve misinterpreted it.

The woman is pretty good with this first question. Of course God didn’t say that they shouldn’t eat from any tree in the garden. But in explaining what God did say, their attention is now drawn toward the negative. This is clear by the way that she adds to God’s command the phrase, "nor shall you touch it". God actually didn’t say that part. 

The emphasis here has shifted to the "don’ts" of life and the couple begins to lose sight of the "do’s". They had the whole garden from which to eat. And you have to wonder whether in the back of their minds there was a little question about whether this wasn’t just a bit unfair of God to make this tree off limits. "We can’t even touch it!" 

It’s easy to move from wondering if we really are interpreting God’s word right, to feeling resentful about how negative and limiting it is. Then we are set up to begin to obsess on the very areas of life to which God has said "no", rather than to live with great thankfulness about the areas where God has said "yes". 

The serpent’s next comment is not a question, but a statement which contradicts God and calls his goodness and integrity into question. "You will not die," it said. "God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil". God is only protecting himself. He really doesn’t want the best for you.

That argument finally worked. It was at this point that the woman began to trust her own perceptions and her own desires above God’s word. That is always the fundamental question. Who are we going to trust? What’s the most reliable authority for living?

The tree was designed by God to focus eventually on that very question. God with this tree said to humanity, "You are free, but you are limited. You are creature. I am God. I am your Creator. I love you. I provide for you. But you’ve got to trust me. Will you do that?"

We face these questions every day. Are we going to take steps toward God or away from him? Are we going to trust him, or ourselves? 

The woman "saw that the tree was good for food, that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise." All of that was true. But God had said, "Don’t eat." And instead she reasoned, "God doesn’t really understand us. He really doesn’t know our needs. He’s just trying to protect himself. This is what we need to be complete."

So she took the fruit and ate it. And gave some to her husband with whom she was one. And Scripture says that their "eyes were opened". They saw good and evil all right, but they were on the wrong side of the ledger.

Sin is fundamentally claiming the place of God. When we claim the place of God, a great chasm opens between us and God. We’ve turned our back on him. "You’re not what we need! We need this fruit."

The result is shame and guilt, which are symptoms of spiritual death. Shame is the opposite of glory. It is disgrace, humiliation, embarrassment and loss of dignity. Try to be God, and the radiance of life which comes from reflecting God’s glory goes out. Shame is our sense of being wrong. Guilt is our agony over doing wrong. We may still look alive, but shame and guilt are symptoms that we are separated from God’s glory.

Disobedience makes us want to hide. Adam and Eve now couldn’t stand the openness to one another or to God. They felt dirty, ashamed. They sewed fig leaves together to hide from each other. And they tried to get lost in the deepest forest away from God.

The amazing picture here is that God is the one who comes looking for them. The problem with sin is not that God can’t handle it, it’s that we can’t handle it. God always pursues us even when we don’t want him.

But the human reaction to sin is, first, to hide; second, to blame someone else; and third, to justify ourselves, pretending like we didn’t really have a choice or suggesting that it really isn’t that bad.

The unfolding consequences of sin

The fall is about a decision to disobey God and to try to be independent and self-sufficient. It is about trying to be complete without God. In trying to be complete in ourselves, we fractured the right relationships which God had created.

All the relationships in the garden were affected. The relationship between God and humanity was broken. People experienced fear and not love when they anticipated seeing God. There was now guilt for the wrongs they had done, and shame for who they had become. They hid from God and probably would have found it more convenient to deny that he was even there.

Humanity became confused and full of doubt and despair. They could no longer answer the simple questions, "Who am I? Why am I here? What am I worth?" Some of them not only destroyed others, but they physically destroyed themselves.

The relationship between human beings was broken. Their intimacy was distorted. They were afraid to let the other see intimately inside and they were afraid to love too much. Their sexuality which had been such an incredible gift of communication and procreation, now also became a source of frustration and hurt. They quit living as servants of one another, and began to demand their rights and grab at ways to control each other. They grew jealous, bitter, hateful, deceitful, greedy, covetous, selfish, discontent, vane, lazy, lustful, arrogant, and proud. They quickly learned to worship idols, to lie, to steal, to hurt, and to murder one another. They were experiencing the decay of spiritual death.

And the relationship between humanity and creation was broken, too. Death and decay came into the world. Instead of guarding the creation, humanity began to plunder and pollute it. In the tangle of relationships, what affects one eventually affects all.

Genesis 6.5-7: "The LORD saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. And the LORD was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the LORD said, "I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created-- people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them."

Sin is gravely serious. Karl Menninger, noted American psychiatrist, in Whatever Became of Sin? says: "For sin is an implicitly aggressive quality—a ruthlessness, a hurting, a breaking away from God and from the rest of humanity, a partial alienation, or act of rebellion. Sin has a willful, defiant or disloyal quality: someone is defiled or offended or hurt."

That "someone" is not just another person, but God himself. God is majestically righteous. God is pure, holy, and righteous. The biblical writers describe God as burning light and purity. (Exod. 33.20ff; Isa. 6.1ff.)

Closely related to God’s righteous holiness is his wrath. It is his reaction to evil—his revulsion to all that has disrupted his creation. God’s wrath is not about temper tantrums, but about what is simply right. You don’t really understand the God of the Bible unless you understand the depth of both wrath and grief that our sin has caused this righteous God.

Sin is also universal. It affects everyone and everything.

And sin is impossible to fix. "All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty together again."

So how do we cope with this human sin-infested existence?

Here in the West we try desperately to avoid the pain, the guilt, the shame of life. 

• We set up life with the one goal in mind, "I just want to be happy." And then we try to figure out what will bring happiness and how to control away the pain. Relationships, money, things, recognition, power, knowledge, safety, beauty, or whatever. The problem is that there never quite seems to be enough, and on top of it all we grow discontent. "Is this all there is?"
• What we can’t control, we avoid—or we medicate against it with our own addictions or compulsions which promise to make us feel better, but which never quite deliver. These can be almost anything: shopping, sex, food, sleep, work, entertainment, exercise, relationships, doing "good things"—the possibilities are limitless. It’s not that most of these things are inherently bad, it’s that we use them to avoid the pain and the deeper issues of life.
• What we can’t control or avoid, we minimize. Sometimes we do this by comparison with others, or by "positive thinking", or by the latest "self-improvement" course. All of this makes us feel like we’re making progress. 
• What we can’t control, avoid, or minimize, we justify. We blame others, or society in general, or God for our problems. We play the victim. It’s always someone else’s fault.
• "I didn’t know."
• "Everybody’s doing it."
• "And after all I’m a pretty good person usually. I certainly didn’t deserve this!"

Listen to this letter from a student which expresses the agony that many feel at some points in their lives, even as believers:

Do you recognize any of these?

• Idolatry—looking for meaning, security, identity everywhere but in God: job, house, friends, bank account, even theology.
• Gossip—playing the one up game to promote self by what you know.
• Inappropriate motivations, even in ministry: guilt, ambition, voyeurism, power.
• Vanity, self-centeredness, drive for recognition.
• Lying, exaggeration, deceit.
• Envy, jealousy, mean spirit, anger, hatred, unforgiving attitude, bitterness.
• Critical spirit, judgmentalism.
• Gluttony—feeding the vacuums of life with food, consumption of things, obsessions, and addictions.
• Vain ambition, arrogance, egotism, pride about my accomplishments or ways of doing things.
• Having no boundaries or wrong boundaries in my relationship to others.
• Sexual immorality—problems of the mind, of behavior, of habit.
• Hypocrisy.
• Laziness.

• Greed, permanent discontent, perfectionism.

Until we realize how dead we are—and how much we are fooling ourselves into thinking we’re OK—we cannot begin to appreciate what God has done for us.

Garrison Keillor has said: "I’ve heard a lot of sermons in the past ten years or so that made me want to get up and walk out. They’re secular, psychological, self-help sermons. Friendly, but of no use. They didn’t make you straighten up. They didn’t give you anything hard. … At some point and in some way, a sermon has to direct people toward the death of Christ and the campaign that God has waged over the centuries to get our attention."

We are coming to the cross—but not before we know where we’re coming from.

Dr. Stephen A. Hayner © 1998, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. All rights reserved.