Genesis 3: The Fall into Sin

            Genesis 3 also deserves a more in-depth commentary than a single blog post can give it.  Genesis 1-2 are absolutely essential in introducing the main characters of the Bible—the God who is without beginning, who has life in Himself, and humanity, with whom He shares His life and whom He creates to be extensions of His gracious presence into His creation.  Genesis 3 sets up the essential conflict between these two characters, namely, humanity’s willful refusal to own and obey their Creator, their refusal to acknowledge themselves to be the creation.  What to do about humanity’s rebellion—that will be the question that drives God’s plans and purposes from Genesis 3 forward.  The story of the Bible—the story of God and man—is the story of God having to heal what Adam so casually broke.  I can’t emphasize this enough:  if you don’t get Genesis 1-3, the rest of the Bible won’t make any sense either.

            Let me just note some of the terrible consequences of Adam’s rebellion.

            First, Adam and the woman (she’s not named Eve until the end of the chapter) recognize their nakedness and cover it up.  This is not a newfound humility; this is a newfound and tragic sense of deception and hiding.  Previously they had had no shame, no self-consciousness.  It’s only in the aftermath of their sin that they consider parts of themselves as ‘unpresentable.’  I think that this is a significant commentary on the sinful condition of humanity.  We hide our motivations and our desires from ourselves and from those who are closest to us.  (I always think of that great Billy Joel song, “The Stranger,” words here:  http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/The-Stranger-lyrics-Billy-Joel/953DB3F466E12BCA48256870001B45F1; music here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnlvPoDU5LY, if you’re interested.)  This lack of transparency, this desire to shield ourselves from one another, this lack of trust—all of that is a consequence of Adam’s fall.

            Second, they hide themselves from God.  Now, there’s an act of self-deception!  God finds them right away: it’s the most one-sided game of hide-and-seek in history.  But the point here is that they tried to keep themselves separate from the God who had given them life and purpose—another terrible effect of sin.

            Third, they completely threw each other under the bus.  When confronted, the man owned nothing.  Instead, he blamed Eve.  “Not me!  Her!”  Here’s the root of what the hymnist called ‘our warring madness.’

            Fourth, the earth itself is caught up in Adam’s rebellion, “Cursed is the ground because of you.”

            This is a chapter filled with bad news.  In trying to assert their independence from God, Adam and Eve brought a terrible corruption into God’s beautifully designed and executed creation.  It is filled with the brokenness of human relationships and with the deadly consequences of a broken relationship with the Lord.

            The only good news is that there are glimmers of good news.  The first glimmer is that the Lord promises that this situation will not last forever, that the woman’s offspring will eventually crush the head of the enemy.  (That’s not just a glimmer, I suppose; that’s a full-blown promise.)  The other glimmer is the Lord’s uncommented, but significant, forbearance:  had you or I been in charge, we may have just started over, but our God chose the more difficult path of redemption, on which the rest of the story focuses.