Many folks wonder, why didn’t Adam die, when he ate the forbidden fruit (Genesis 3:6), as was told him by the Lord (Genesis 2:16-17). Actually, at least in my opinion, the question is illogical. Why would Adam need to physically die after eating the forbidden fruit? Why would God make such a judgment in the first place? If Adam had to physically die, if he ate the forbidden fruit, for all intents and purposes, that would end the human experiment. Would God then have to create humanity again? If so, would this mean that he didn’t do such a good job in creating the first Adam, and he hoped he would do a better job the second time? Wouldn’t this mean that God didn’t really understand what very good means (cp. Genesis 1:31)? Moreover, what would this say about God’s integrity in taking responsibility for what he does, assumed from Genesis 1:1?
Think about that for a moment. If God had to slay Adam for eating the forbidden fruit, this would call into question the Lord’s omniscience. Does he really know everything that is possible to know? How could such a wise Being, able to create such a vast and wonderful universe, make such a blunder in creating mankind with the freedom to do good or evil. Couldn’t he have predicted that it was possible for man to choose unwisely? Yet, this is the picture many folks have about our Creator God, and many critics try to use this understanding to show God lied in Genesis 2:17. So, what does the text really say?
The text has God saying “you shall surely die” (muth; H4191) and uses the Hebrew word twice “…muth muth” to say “surely die.” In Genesis 3:3 the woman uses the same word (muth; H4191) but only once. In Genesis 3:4 the tempter uses the phrase exactly as the Lord uses it in Genesis 2:17, but denying that she would surely die (muth muth; H4191). So, how should we understand this?
Paul, and remember he was a Jew, so we should be able to understand how the Jews of Paul’s day understood the Genesis account of Adam’s rebellion through Paul’s logic. He tells us in Romans 5:12,
“Wherefore, by one man sin (rebellion) entered the world, and death by sin (rebellion); and so death passed upon all men, for all have sinned (rebelled).”
In his epistle to the Romans, Paul is mostly concerned with a particular sin, vis-à-vis the sin of rebellion. He mentions sin (singular) 45 times in 37 verses, while he uses the plural, sins, only four times in four verses. To sin is to simply miss the mark, but to rebel is to seek independence, and it is independence from God or rebellion that is in view in partaking of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Moreover, according to Romans 5:12, death entered the human race due to rebellion or partaking of the forbidden fruit. However, the forbidden fruit is not a simple sinful act, because Adam lied to the woman by saying, if she touched the tree she would die. If Adam had been lying prior to the time, when he ate the forbidden fruit, then the simple act of missing the mark (sinning/lying) could not have been done by partaking of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.
In a previous study I mentioned that, when God created Adam, Adam did not have a physical body. He was soul and spirit (Genesis 2:7) but not body, soul and spirit (cp. 1Thessalonians 5:23). Later, Paul would write to the Corinthians, saying, “if our earthly house (our body) …were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house made without hands, eternal in the heavens” (2Corinthians 5:1), so if we are clothed with this heavenly house (eternal body) we won’t be found naked (2Corinthians 5:3). But, when Adam ate the forbidden fruit, he realized he was naked (Genesis 3:7), vis-à-vis he didn’t have a physical body. Therefore, by comparing Genesis 3 with Paul’s interpretation of rebellion and his understanding of spirit, soul and body (physical and spiritual), we can understand that Adam wasn’t merely surprised at being nude, but he was startled at being naked, not having a body (Genesis 3:7), which the Lord corrected in Genesis 3:21.
So, what does it mean that, if Adam ate the forbidden fruit “you shall surely die” (Genesis 2:17)? It appears that Adam, being spirit and soul (Genesis 2:7) was given a choice to live off the fruit of one of two trees in Eden. He would live forever with God, walking with him and learning from him, if he decided to live off the fruit of the Tree of Life, which upon doing, he would have been given a spiritual, eternal body (cp. 2Corinthians 5:1). However, if he should choose to live off the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, the forbidden tree, which cut God out of his life, then he would be given a body of death, vis-à-vis a physical, corruptible body, in the very day he would eat from it, and he would surely die (Genesis 2:17; cp. 3:3-4).
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