Smoodock's Blog

My thoughts go back at this time to Eden, when man seemed perfectly comfortable living in two worlds—the creation over which God made him lord and the spiritual when he presumably walked with God “in the cool of the day”. Enoch is said to have walked (same Hebrew word) with God (Genesis 5:22), and the implication of the Voice of God searching for Adam “in the cool of the day” (cp. Genesis 3:8) suggest normal, perhaps daily, fellowship[1]

It seems that, at least at one time in the past, man was able to see God, but what would seeing God suggest? I believe it would suggest holiness, because the Scriptures tell us to be holy, because God is holy (Leviticus 11:44; 19:2). Peter tells us the same thing in his epistle (1Peter 1:15-16). Therefore, if we are to walk with God, we must be as he is (Amos 3:3; cp. Matthew 5:48), because without holiness no one can see God (Hebrews 12:14).

What happened that mankind no longer walks with or sees God and can we know for certain what occurred in the distant past in the place that Scripture refers to as Eden? Probably we cannot know the exact circumstances, but I believe the Scriptures do point to clues that suggest activity that lead up to man’s rebellion against his Creator. These clues may give us a general idea about what occurred.

The first clue I see is in Genesis 2:18 when God said: “It is not good for man to be alone…” Earlier, when God looked upon all he had done, he said: “Behold, it is very good!” (Genesis 1:31). The question is: how did very good suddenly become not good? Something was going on here that isn’t quite clear, but we’ll come back to this.

The next Scripture for consideration might be Genesis 3:3. Eve says two things here that just cannot be reconciled with what we know is true about what God had done and said. First, she claimed that the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was in the midst or in the center of the garden. According to Genesis 2:9 God put the Tree of Life in the center of the garden. The Tree of Knowledge was placed in the garden, but the Scriptures do not claim it was placed in the center of the garden. There can be only one center, and the Tree of Life was placed there to emphasize that Adam was to center his life around this “Tree” which symbolized the righteousness of God (cp. Psalm 1:1-6). Yet, it seems Eve and Adam had centered their lives around this forbidden tree, for she considered it to be the center of Eden.

Secondly, we see in the same verse that Eve thought that she would die even if she touched the tree. This is not what the Lord had told Adam. God told Adam, if he **ate** of the fruit of this tree, he would die. What can we make of this? First of all, we know God wouldn’t have centered man’s life around the very thing he didn’t want the man to do. He centered his life around Life not death. Therefore, Adam lied to Eve. He lied about what he was doing—making the wrong tree the center of his life, and he lied about what God had said. One could argue that Adam was setting Eve up for the fall. Once she found out that she could touch the tree without dying, everything she thought the Lord had said and done was brought into question. False assumptions about God and false doctrine about what God requires are very powerful spiritual strongholds of evil. In such a condition, one needs God to open our eyes to what is really true, because once we begin to believe a lie, we actually consider our darkness to be light. We don’t know any better, and we cannot undo the evil ourselves. We need God to shed his Light upon these things for truth to become visible for us once more.

What about God saying it wasn’t good for man to be alone? I’ve written a blog on this subject and can be found HERE. However, the long-story-short is that Adam was not expressing or imaging the multifaceted Being of God. God created mankind to be his image and that image is portrayed in the male / female capacity. This is not to say God is a sexual Being; he is not. However, The male and female—their total natures, including their differences between each other—express the image of God, and this can be seen by observing God in the act of creation throughout Genesis chapter one.

But, back to seeing God, this initial ability of man was lost in our rebellion against God. Sin by itself is like a mistake and can be forgiven, even overlooked in hope that one would learn to behave better on his own. We do this with our own children. We don’t correct every mistake they make, but, after they are instructed, we make them aware of what good behavior is by living out that behavior before them. Nevertheless, rebellion is something more than sin. It cannot be simply forgiven, because it has independence in view and needs redemption or reconciliation. Simple forgiveness is not an option, because rebellion is not just missing the mark (the meaning of the word sin). By its very nature, it has in view severance of the relationship—divorce, if you will. On cannot simply forgive divorce and expect by doing so that the relationship would be repaired. The fall of man, or his rebellion against God, means he and God no longer agreed and could no longer walk together (Amos 3:3).

God is holy, and when we became unholy, we could no longer see him (Hebrews 12:14). We could no longer see his point of view or approve of his way for us. In short we accepted all his blessings and accounted them as the fruit of our own labor. Thus, we told God “Depart from us, because we have no desire to learn of your ways. Who is the Almighty that we should serve him, and what profit is there in praying to you!” (Job 21:14-15). Rebellion, like a divorce, has independence in view, not reconciliation. Nevertheless, God has not changed his mind about us. We changed our minds about God, but God is not like we are (Isaiah 55:9). Therefore there is redemption or reconciliation in his presence, and I can say: “I know my Redeemer lives and in the latter days, when this body is destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God!” (Job 19:25-26). Praise God!