Sin always leads to some form of punishment. This devotional reading looks at the results of the original sin – banishment from the Garden of Eden.
Nuggets
- Even though humankind was made in God’s image at creation, Adam and Eve became more like God in knowing the difference between good and evil.
- It is imperative that we have eaten of the fruit from the tree of life.
- There was a good reason to banish Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden – and not just for punishment reasons.
Adam and Eve had committed the original sin. They had stood by while they and Satan were given their punishment.
But God wasn’t done with handing out punishment. He had another big thing left – banishment from the Garden of Eden.
We could say this this punishment was only for them, as they were the only humans to have lived there. But because of that, everyone lost access to a face-to-face life with God.
I had intended to complete Genesis 3 in this post, but it went long. I had to cut it in an interesting place. The connections and application will be added to the completion of the verses in the next devotion.
Let's Put It into Context
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Devotions in the Celebrating Creation’s Story series
Paradise Lost
“Then the LORD God said, ‘Look, the human beings have become like us, knowing both good and evil. What if they reach out, take fruit from the tree of life, and eat it? Then they will live forever!’” (Gen. 3: 22 NLT)
Become like Us
Even though humankind was made in God’s image at creation, Adam and Eve became more like God in knowing the difference between good and evil.
Wait! What???
What happened to made in God’s image? “Then God said, ‘Let us make human beings in our image, to be like us …’” (Gen. 1: 26 NLT).
I take this to mean that the singular issue we are discussing here is we now possess knowledge of good from evil. We are still like God because we have the fundamental aspects of His character.
But then, this was part of the truth part that Satan told them when he was tempting Eve to sin. “‘You won’t die!’ the serpent replied to the woman. ‘God knows that your eyes will be opened as soon as you eat it, and you will be like God, knowing both good and evil’” (Gen. 3: 5 NLT emphasis added).
Satan is going to use scripture, tell us half-truths, not explain things fully, flat out lie – anything – to get us to sin against God. He will use whatever it take to make his story bright and shiny to attract us to the sin.
But let’s think about this a second. We become like God. Wouldn’t that be a good thing?
Well, yes, but not this way. The ends do not justify the means.
We aren’t to become like God and have His character any way we can. Our godliness is grown through the long process of sanctification.
Brown had an interesting nugget. He thought our in God’s image part was dormant prior to this point. It was awakened and grown through the disobedience.
Look what Brown said. He wrote,
“It was a step out, a step on for man in the unfolding of the latent powers and possibilities of his being as an embodied spirit; but it brought him within peril and under the hand of woes and evils, which have made his history one long wail, and his life one long night. Adam, the child of Eden, made in God’s image, could find the completeness of his life in Eden. … God made man in His own image,” is the original description of the constitution of man.”
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Adam and Eve tried to be gods — which, to a point, was possible — but fell on their face because that took them to the opposite of God. They were like God on the outside but not on the inside.
In finding out that it is the inside that is most important, Adam and Eve lost access to the Heavenly Father. Their selfish desires destroyed their relationship with Him.
Brown is right. On the surface, it looks like a growth. They became like God.
But they already were, so it really wasn’t a growth. Instead, the results of sin have weakened them.
- They are going to die now.
- They are going to have to navigate through chaos.
- Conflict will rear its nasty head.
- Confusion will occur.
I’m sure Satan left all that out of the marketing spiel — if he even knew it.
The problem is that Satan was promising them something that was never going to happen. We will never be divine like God. We won’t even become angels.
That is further evidence that the “… have become like us …” (Gen. 3: 22 NLT) only refers to gaining the knowledge of sin’s existence.
Fruit from the Tree of Life
It is imperative that we have eaten of the fruit from the tree of life.
We mostly talk about the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the Garden. There was another tree there – the tree of life.
When we were introduced to the tree of life’s existence in Genesis 2, we said its life-giving or life-sustaining properties focused on our spiritual conditions. If we hadn’t sinned, we would have had eternal spiritual life.
It would do us well to read again how Bonar clarified what that meant. He wrote, “Not that one eating of it could confer immortality; but the continuous use of it was intended for this. The link between soul and body was to be maintained by this tree. So long as he partook of this, that tie could not be broken.”
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What that means here is, if they would have eaten that, they would have lived forever in their sinful state. God didn’t want the choice to return to Him taken away.
I think this is part of the reason Bullock called it a figurative tree. It presents a state of unending happiness.
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But I think it was a literal tree. The eating-the-leaves-and-gaining-eternal-life may be figurative, as I see it. But the tree is real.
Think about what a tree is. It is a living, growing thing. It probably bears fruit.
According to Edwards, our faith begins a as a germ until it grows and produces fruit.
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Boston reminded us that it is not the tree itself that makes us immortal. That is God Himself.
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Again, it is God’s mercy to keep us from accessing the tree. “Good people pass away; the godly often die before their time. But no one seems to care or wonder why. No one seems to understand that God is protecting them from the evil to come” (Isa. 57: 1-2 NLT).
Banished from the Garden of Eden
“So the LORD God banished them from the Garden of Eden, and he sent Adam out to cultivate the ground from which he had been made” (Gen. 3: 23 NLT)
There was a good reason to banish Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden – and not just for punishment reasons.
Adam and Eve got kicked out of the Garden for their own good.
Oh, I am sure it didn’t feel like it at the time. We probably know these without being told.
- Their happiness was really nonexistent at the moment.
- Their purity and uprightness was gone.
- Their conscience was damaged.
- Access to God was lost.
I think we forget a very important component of our disobedience to God. We become His enemies when we sin.
So, yes. God had every right to banish Adam and Eve from the Garden.
Yes, Adam and Eve probably had guilty consciences. And you know — they should. It should not be a light thing when we disobey Sovereign God, our Creator.
We’ve gotten really blasé about sinning against God. We look for the boundaries of what is and isn’t sin, we look for levels, and we look to argue what is an isn’t sin.
Our looking is not true obedience.
White noted that Adam and Eve probably left the Garden thinking they couldn’t depend on God anymore for help. And in a way, God did set them loose to whatever life they wanted to have.
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But we have to go back to Genesis 3: 15. God had already promised His Messiah. He had already promised the best help that He could — a way to restore their relationships with Him.
We must never gloss over the fact that we choose whether to sin or not. We could just as easily choose to obey than disobey.
Parsons put it this way. He said, “Let no one for a moment suppose that man sins by decree; he is saved by decree, but he is not lost by decree.”
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We choose to disobey. We choose to obey.
True, we might have to realign our beliefs and actions to His Will. We might have to let go of some very important things — even people — in our lives.
Obeying God is worth whatever we need to give up in order to remain so.
Pastor Steve always tells us that the blessings are in the obedience. It says that in God’s Word.
- “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin” (Rom. 4: 7-8 ESV).
- “Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit (Ps. 32: 1-2 ESV).
We are obedient and blessed when we obey God’s laws and commandments. In other words, we gain salvation.
No, that doesn’t make it a works-based salvation. Only belief in Jesus gains us salvation.
- “Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it” (Eph. 2: 9 NLT).
- “There is salvation in no one else! God has given no other name under heaven by which we must be saved” (Ac. 4: 12 NLT).
- “You must not have any other god but me. You must not make for yourself an idol of any kind or an image of anything in the heavens or on the earth or in the sea” (Ex. 20: 3-4 NLT).
- “Jesus told him, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me’” (Jn. 14: 6 NLT).
Salvation is a change of nature when we choose to obey God.
Bullock described it this way. He wrote,
“The persons in the text have the right, because God has declared and promised in His Word, which can never be broken, that they who possess that character which manifests itself in aiming at a holy and constant obedience to His law, shall have the right, or more properly the privilege of eating of the tree of life, and of entering in hereafter through the gates into the city. To the [fulfillment] of this promise it is by no means necessary that obedience and right should be connected together as cause and effect.”
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Having a regenerated heart lets us eat from the tree of life. It shows we have the right character, the character of God. That character is shown through our obedience to God’s laws.
Bevan made a distinction between being banished from the Garden and guilt. Guilt is partially caused by the banishment, but it should be more so caused by committing the sin itself.
We shouldn’t feel guilty that we were caught. We should feel guilty because we disobeyed and committed the sin.
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Exell made a great point. Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden before they could feel they were entitled to be there.
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To my way of thinking, it wasn’t only that Adam and Eve should feel entitled to eat of the tree of life. Also included would have been their frustration at their lives being harder. It is human nature to think things should go back to the way they were — and ignore the circumstances that brought about the change in the first place.
Exell reminded us that God’s laws and commandments aren’t just about this life. They are preparing us for eternal life — where we will get to eat from the tree of life.
- “For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever!” (II Cor. 4: 17 NLT).
- “… On each side of the river grew a tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, with a fresh crop each month. The leaves were used for medicine to heal the nations” (Rev. 22: 2 NLT).
Think of it this way. Eden was about purity and devotion — most of all obedience.
Adam and Eve would no longer be happy there.
In other words, sin made that choice for them, too. They chose the impure and disobedient, so they chose against staying in the Garden of Eden.
We can’t forget that there was a vast world outside of the Garden of Eden. The problem was condemned and uncultivated.
Father God. You knew that the best for us would be to chose You as our Father. You allowed the original sin to happen. You banished them from the Garden of Eden for their — and our — best interests. Thank You, Lord. Amen.
What do you think?
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