DEATH REIGNS
By
Lawrence O. Richards
We meet the specter early, in Genesis 2 . In order to give man freedom to be a responsible moral being, God placed a certain tree in the center of the Garden and commanded man not to eat. With the command came warning of the consequences: “When you eat of it you will surely die” (v. 17).
This opportunity to eat was no trap, or even a test. Given the intention of God that man should be in His own image, that tree was a necessity! There is no moral dimension to the existence of a robot; it can only respond to the program imposed by its maker. Robots have no capacity to value, no ability to choose between good and bad, or good and better. To be truly like God, man must have the freedom to make moral choices and the opportunity to choose, however great the risk such freedom may involve.
Daily Adam and Eve may have passed that tree, gladly obeying a God they knew and trusted. Until finally a third being stepped in.
With Genesis 3 there comes a shattering of the idyllic picture of man in Eden. With a sudden jolt the harmony of original Creation is torn with discord; a wild cacophony of sounds among which we can hear notes of anger, jealousy, pride, disobedience, murder, and the accompanying inner agonies of pain and shame and guilt. God’s creation of man as a person stands as the source of good in us; now we face the source of evil.
Genesis 3 describes the Fall; Genesis 4 is included to help us realize the consequences of the Fall and the implications of the spiritual death that grips humanity.
Yet even this dark message is brightened by the promise contained in God’s continued love, and in history’s first sacrifice.
SIN.
There are three primary words for “sin” in the Hebrew language. Each of them implies the existence of a standard of righteousness established by God. One of the three, hata’, means to “miss the mark,” or to “fall short of the divine standard.” Pesa’ is usually rendered by “rebellion” or “transgression,” and indicates revolt against the standard. ‘Awon, translated by “iniquity” or “guilt,” is a “twisting of the standard or deviation from it.” Psalm 51 is the Old Testament’s greatest statement on the nature of sin, and uses all three of these Hebrew words to express David’s great prayer of confession of his own failures.
Scripture portrays a host of living, intelligent beings with individuality and personality called angels: “messengers.” Some of these rebelled against God, and it is from this cosmic rebellion that evil has its origin, and from this source that the demons we read of in both Testaments have come.
At the top of the hierarchy of the rebellious angels is Satan. One interpretation equates Satan with the Lucifer of Isaiah 14:12 (kjv), whose rebellion is so graphically portrayed:
I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly…. I will make myself like the Most High.
Isaiah 14:13-14
This rebellion against established order brought divine judgment and Lucifer, with a great number of angelic beings who followed him, was judged in a titanic fall. Lucifer’s name was changed to Satan, and from his arrogance was born an unending hatred of God.
It was this being, this great adversary of God and His people, who came in the dawning of the world in the guise of a serpent, to tempt Eve.
The temptation (Gen. 3:1-7). It is fascinating to note the strategies of the tempter. First he isolated Eve from Adam. He gave the pair no opportunity to strengthen each other in a resolve to choose the good (cf. Heb. 10:24-25 ). Then he cast doubt on God’s motives. Did God possibly have a selfish motive for the restriction? (Gen. 3:4 ) Satan went on to contradict God. God had warned of death; Satan cried, “That’s a lie!” Now two opposing views stood in sharp contrast, and a choice had to be made.
Satan also focused Eve’s attention on desirable ends, a common device of what has been called “situation ethics.” Never mind the fact that the means to an end involves disobedience to God. Act only on examination of the supposed results.
Satan also proposed a mixed good as the end: “You will become like Him, for your eyes will be opened—you will be able to distinguish good from evil!” (v. 5 , tlb) How could becoming more like God be wrong?
Finally, Satan relied on the appeal of the senses. The fruit was “lovely and fresh looking” (v. 6 , tlb). How could anything that looked and smelled so pleasant be bad?
Led along by the tempter, Eve made her choice. She rejected trust in God and confidence in His wisdom and, as Satan himself had before her, Eve determined to follow her own will and reject God’s. Then she offered the fruit to Adam, and he too ate.
After Adam and Eve had made their choice and had eaten the forbidden fruit, they suddenly realized what they had done. They did know good and evil! But, unlike God, their knowledge came from a personal experience of the wrong. With wide open eyes they looked at each other and, for the first time, looked away in shame.
Death. When God set that single tree to stand as a testimony to man’s freedom, He warned, “When you eat of it you will surely die” (2:17). That day had now come. Now death began its reign.
It is important to realize that much more than the end of physical life is involved in the biblical concept of death. Death in Scripture involves not only a return of the body to dust, but also a terrible distortion of the divine order. Death involves a warping of the human personality, a twisting of relationships, and alienation from God and from God’s ways. Ephesians describes men’s state apart from Christ as “dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit [Satan] who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts” (Eph. 2:1-3 ). Romans portrays the universal reign of death and sin, and insists, “There is no one righteous, not even one” (Rom. 3:10 , cf. vv. 9-18 ).
The implications of the first man’s sin are traced in Bible passages like Romans 5:12-21 . Adam had been created in God’s image. Then came the choice and, with it, death. The human personality was warped and marred. The image of God, dimmed and twisted now, did remain. But man was ruled by death and all that death implies. What heritage had Adam to pass on to humanity? Only what he was. He fathered a son in his image: a son who, like Adam, had worth and value because of his correspondence to the Divine, but who, like Adam, lived in chains. “Therefore just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned” (v. 12 ). The history of humankind is the dark record of the rule of death, and stands as a grim testimony to the truth of God. What God warned Adam would happen, did happen. And what God says to us today, in warning or in invitation, will just as certainly prove true.
While Genesis 3 and 4 are among the most poignant chapters in the Bible, they do not leave us without hope. We find hope in God’s action as He clothes the naked pair in animal skins, the first intimation that for redemption, blood must be shed. That first blood speaks of sacrifice, and sacrifice speaks of Christ.
We find hope in God’s action in seeking out the sinning pair. Sin will distort our idea of God, erecting a grim barrier that we are unwilling to approach. But God came into the Garden seeking Adam, just as later Jesus came into the world to seek and to save those who were lost.
We find hope in the promise of God that an Offspring of the woman would destroy the serpent. Here too we see a glimmering prospect of the Incarnation, and the Saviour’s victory over death.
We also find hope as we trace through Scripture some of the theological concepts introduced in chapters 3 and 4. In fact, these chapters stand almost unmatched as seedbeds for basic truths about ourselves in God’s universe—a universe we too have shaped, through sin.
Sin. One of the themes introduced here is human sin. The concept will continue to be developed through the revelation of the Old Testament and the New. Many different words will be used to describe the perverse twist that sin has introduced into human experience.
One set of Bible words portrays sin as missing the mark, as “falling short.”
Another set of Bible words portrays sin as willful action, the conscious choosing of known wrongs. Here we find words like transgress, trespass, go astray, and rebellion. Both ideas are seen here in Genesis 3 . Adam and Eve fell short of God’s requirements. They did so by obeying rationalized desire rather than obeying the command of God.
And so Genesis 3 and 4 sum up the human predicament. And with it, they sum up mankind’s dilemma. Sin not only blinds us and leaves the good beyond our grasp, but sin also twists our will, moving us to desire and to choose what we know is wrong. Lost in impotence, men do not even desire to be truly free!
