Perhaps you are familiar with Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories. These stories are fanciful tales, for example, of how a camel got its hump or a Leopard got its spots. Genesis 3 is no Just So Story.
When we left the man and the woman in chapter two, they were living in a world of delight. Everything about them was good. They delighted in God, the creation, and each other. Chapter three begins with the abrupt introduction of a new character—the serpent. The plot suddenly thickens and twists into a story that sets the plot line for the rest of the Bible. This is the story of the Fall into sin, which anticipates God restoring the blessing through establishing a covenant people. Thus we have the storyline of the Bible: creation, fall, redemption, consummation.
We have never lived in a world like Eden. We understand little of it. We have never experienced human life like Adam and Eve experienced it. Our best glimpse of unfallen humanity is the life of Jesus. He shows us what it means to exercise dominion over the created order. He did this, of course, in the context of a fallen world. Realizing the huge difference between humanity and the world before and after the fall aids us to see the devastating nature of sin and our need of redemption.
In thinking about the devastation nature of sin and our need of redemption notice, first, sin is the problem of every human and its ultimate aim is to be God.
Chapter 3 opens with rebellion already in the Kingdom. The serpent is an unusual creature. We are told two things about him. First, he is crafty. This word is found elsewhere only in Job (2x) and Proverbs (8x). It can be used in a good or bad sense. In a good sense, it is sometimes translated prudent. Perhaps the serpent was created prudent in a good sense but rebelled and twisted prudence into craftiness in inciting greater rebellion. Jesus said the devil was a murderer from the beginning…he is a liar and the father of lies (Jn 8:44).
Second, the LORD God made the serpent. There is no dualism here. God is contested by no equal and opposite power. We know from the NT that the serpent is the devil. Revelation 12:9 says, And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. God created him, and God sovereignly rules over him and all things. This is a mystery. God is good. He does no evil, yet evil is in the world.
Because God is sovereign and omniscient, knowing all possible worlds that could exist but creating this one, is He not responsible for evil and human sin? As we will see in this text, He is blamed for it. John Frame illustrates the point this way:
God’s relationship to evil and human sin is like that of Shakespeare to Macbeth, murderer of Duncan. Shakespeare and Macbeth are responsible for Duncan’s death at different levels of reality. We would not normally say Shakespeare killed Duncan. Shakespeare wrote murder into his play. The murder took place in the world of the play, not the real world of the author. Macbeth did it, not Shakespeare. We sense the rightness of justice against Macbeth for his crime, but we would think it unjust if Shakespeare were put to death for killing Duncan. [Consequently,] we have no problem reconciling Shakespeare’s benevolence with his omnipotence over the world of drama. [In fact] we have reason to praise Shakespeare for raising up this character, Macbeth, to show us the consequences of our sin.”
Evil and sin did not catch God by surprise. He does not make plans as he goes along. His decrees are from eternity. In this text, we see the plan begin to unfold. God will gather a covenant people through whom He will ultimately crush the serpent’s head. (Piper, Spectacular Sins, 58)
The first conversation in the Bible is a about God. The snake and the woman discuss the Word and goodness of God. Is God’s word reasonable, and is God really good?
In a tone of shock the snake calls God’s word into question with extreme negative exaggeration (1b). It is as if the serpent is saying, “It is shocking and harsh that God would make all of this not let you have any of it.” Throughout Genesis 2 and 3, the writer uses LORD God to refer to God, except for the conversation between the snake and the woman. It is as if the snake wants to communicate that God created the world but is not interested in it. He is aloof, removed, and unconcerned.
The woman answers the snake employing the snakes own style of argumentation. She exaggerates the command and makes it much harsher than God had commanded. We have to look to 2:16-17 to see what God actually said.
Two things here about the Word of God. First, we think we can keep ourselves further from sin by strengthening the command. If we go a bit further than God went, we can really get to holiness. This always brings the reverse. Second, to add to the word is as bad as taking away from it. To add to God’s Word or to take away from it is to take away God’s authority (Ligon Duncan, The Fall 1, online sermon FPC, Jackson, MS).
With the authority of God’s Word in question, the snake outright denies the validity of the God’s word. Not, you will surely die (4). The snake charges that the reason for the harshness and untruthfulness of God’s Word is because God is withholding good from the man and the woman (5). God is deliberately trying to keep them from being like him. In what sense can you tell someone created in the image of God that they will be like God? Satan says, If you want to be like God, disobey. If they eat, they will know what God knows. They can be more than God has made them to be; they can be gods.
It is hard to read Genesis 1 and 2 and think that God withheld anything good from the man and woman. 7 times in the creation story God has called what he has made for man good (1:4, 10, 12, 18, 25, 3; 2:18). He made man a helper because being alone was not good. The Bible rightly says, No good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly (Ps 84:11).
The snake lied. He is the father of lies, and here is His first child. He twisted the truth into a lie. A lie is some version of the truth. The only reason deception sounds reasonable is because it rides in on twisted truth. True, they ate and they did become like God knowing good and evil. God himself says so (22). The issue is they knew evil in a different way than God. Back to our Shakespeare/Macbeth illustration. Shakespeare knew evil as an author. Macbeth knew evil as an evildoer. God knows evil from the perspective of omniscience. We know evil from the perspective of an evildoer.
At this point the story, it is as if the spotlight focuses on the woman and the man. Then in rapid fire the Fall is expressed in a series of verbs: she saw, she took, she ate, she gave, he ate.
Here is the overturning of the entire created order. In Genesis 2, we have God, the man and the woman, and the animals. God is sovereign, the man is subordinate authority, the woman is submissive, and the animals are under their dominion (Frame, ST, 852). Now the snake is the authority, the woman submits to him, the man submits to the woman, and all set in judgment on God. The woman assumes the divine prerogative by determining herself what is good. This evil was ultimately an assault on God.
Do you see how deadly this is? The words translated delight and desire are used in the 10th commandment to warn of covetousness (Deut 5:21). Paul said, Covetousness is idolatry (Col. 3:5). God had given them in every tree of the garden what Eve saw the forbidden tree to be (2:9). God is the only one in the position to say what good is and what evil is. If this is the prerogative of humans, we are sure to never agree. Evil becomes good and good evil.
This the anatomy of every sin: some physical appeal, some spiritual, emotional, aesthetic appeal, and some personal, experiential appeal. This was Satan’s same approach to Christ, the second Adam, in his temptations. John identified these as the “desires of the flesh, desires of the eyes, and the pride of life” (I Jn 2:16).
What was this godlike enlightenment they were sure to experience? They knew they were naked, and they tried ineffectually but rightly to cover themselves. It is not that they didn’t know they were naked before the fall. They simply had nothing to hide. They could afford to be totally open in 2:25. How would you men like for someone, anyone, to know everything you think? We have things to hide. They have come to know evil, and they have become evildoers.
They realize their guilt before God, that they are now under the judgment of God, and they seek to cover themselves. Their covering testifies to their guilt and the impossibility undoing what they have done. Their effort to be like God by asserting autonomy plunged not only them but all humanity into sin.
Adam and Eve came to sin from the background of no knowledge of evil. They were good and good was all they knew. We come to evil with a background of evil. We have inherited Adam’s sin and guilt. God imputes or counts Adam’s transgression to us. Sin has tainted every area of life. Paul argues this in Romans 5:12, Sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.
Some want to argue that the doctrine of inherited sin is not fair. We are guilty because God says we are. Our protests against truth does not change truth. Even those who would rail against this doctrine will have to admit that they have sinned a plenty on their own. It would be wrong to assume that we would not have sinned if we would have been in Adam’s place. If you reject the truth that one trespass led to condemnation for all men, you will also have to reject the truth that one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men (Rom. 5:18). Sin is every man’s problem.
God called Adam and Eve to confess their sin, giving no opportunity to the snake to admit his rebellion. We might ask, Where is death? I thought God said they would die? We learn from this text that death is much broader than we at first thought. We will see it in several forms as we go along. Here is the first view of it. Sin separates us from God and each other.
This text shows how sin marred relationships and caused separation. Adam and Eve heard God in the garden and hid. They are hiding from each other with leaves and from God in the trees. Sin separates us from God and then from each other.
God questions the man and the woman to call them to the confession of their sin. First, God calls to Adam, Where are you? That is a clarifying question. The serpent had used the second person plural pronoun, which means he had addressed the man and the woman in vv1-5.
Where was he then? He bears the greater responsibility because he abdicated his role as vice-regent, keeper, and guard of the garden. His punishment will be related to the abdication of his role (17). At first, he tried to pass the blame for his sin to God and secondarily to Eve. Eve was blind-sided by sin. She was deceived. Adam walked into to sin in full knowledge of the command of God. Both sinned, but Adam had the greater responsibility.
This text does not cast Adam in a better light than Eve. It does not mean that women are more gullible than men, more easily deceived. It means that Adam somehow failed in washing her with the word. Her being deceived is on him. It is better to be tricked into sin than to walk in with your eyes wide open.
At the end of all excuses, both confessed, And I ate. Those are huge words. They cancel every excuse.
Where are you today? Are you to the end of your excuses? Because at the end of them, you will have to confess your sin. For example, people often say regarding same-sex attraction, I was born this way. The adulterer, the murderer, and any other sinner could use the same argument. We think we can define sinful behavior biologically (genetic), others think psychologically (my personal experiences have impacted me), others think sociologically (the influence of the social structures around me). Each of these sounds reasonable, but none is adequate. Sin is more than what we do. We are living beings; we are whole; sin has impacted us in every area of being and experience. The sinful area that you feed will master you. Something powerful happens in the soul when you put away all excuses and simply say to God, It is sin. I sinned. I did it.
In this section of text, God doles out the consequences of sin. Yet, in mercy, God mitigates the consequences of our sin to work out His gracious purpose in us. This text shows how God will restore His fallen creature to a state of blessing. He does this by judging the snake, the woman, and the man, following the order of transgression. God judges this inverted order in creation.
The judgments described are such a part of human life that we consider them normal and don’t think of them as odd and/or the consequences of inherited sin. As fallen humans, God has put these things in our lives for our good. He is teaching us to hope in Him not this world. Paul said in Romans 8, For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope…and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies (8:20, 23). The pain and hardship and futility of this life teach us the folly of autonomy and of our dependence on God. We are such people that without these hardships of life, we would never trust God.
The snake is cursed. He is as cursed as he is crafty. He is judged without remedy. The idea of eating dust signifies the humiliation of judgment. In Isaiah’s description of the new heavens and new earth, the serpent still eats dust. The wolf and the lamb will graze together, and the lion will eat straw like and ox; and dust will be the serpent’s food. They will do no evil or harm in all my holy mountain (Isa 65:25). Forever, the dirt eating serpent will remind us of the folly of obeying a snake, thinking it will make us like God.
Genesis 3:15 is the John 3:16 of the OT. War is declared. Hostility is put between the offspring of the woman and the offspring of the snake. This is not referring to near universal fear humans have of snakes. The remainder of the biblical story presents us with the story of the two seeds. This story is immediately played out in Cain and Able. Although having the same parents, Cain was of the seed of the serpent and was cursed. Able was the seed of the woman. The hostility is seen in Cain’s murder of Able.
The seed of the woman leads to one man who will not face off with the seed of the serpent but the serpent himself (15b). The seed of the woman will crush the head of the serpent but suffer a crushed heel in the battle. I love that opening scene in the movie The Passion of the Christ where in the garden praying in agony and sweating blood, Jesus stomps the head of the serpent!
In consequence for sin the areas of the man and woman’s lives that were blessings in chapters 1 and 2 are now fraught with difficulty. The point is God will bless His people, but they will recognize their dependence on His grace to know blessing.
Take the woman. She will experience pain and frustration in her distinctive roles: motherhood and marriage. First, motherhood (16a). Don’t miss the connection between verses 15 and 16. Through the painful process of birthing and raising children, God would bring the ultimate seed into the world. What a twist! God would not bring the Savior into the world through the seed of the man, but through the woman. No one agonizes over children like their mothers. Is this theme not played out in Scripture until you hear the Savior say, Woman, behold your Son!? Adam heard this with the hearing of faith and names his wife Eve (20). This agony of childbearing and raising children is to teach us our need of a Savior. This is at least partly why Paul said women are saved through childbearing, and so are all of us (1 Tim. 2:15).
Second, marriage (16b). The blessing of marriage in chapter 2, turns into the battle of the sexes. The only other verse that uses the words desire and rule together is in Genesis 4:7. That verse helps us understand this one. Sin wanted to master Cain, but he must master sin. You remember the Fall scene. Adam was knowing but passive. Eve was leading but deceived. Marriage will become a struggle for dominance. It will take redemption in Christ to save marriage, where a redeemed man will love his wife, and a redeemed wife will respect her husband. The reason it is so hard for many Christian couples to get headship and submission right is not because we don’t understand, it is simply because we don’t agree. You can have Genesis 3:16 for a home, or you can have Ephesians 5.
Adam will also learn his dependence on God’s grace for blessing. He too faces the consequences of his sin in his distinctive role as a man. He was to work and keep the garden. Because he abdicated his role as guardian of the garden and his wife, the ground is cursed. Now simply to eat will be labor intensive. This will be the case for him until he dies.
Again death enters the picture. It will come physically but only at the end of labor filled life. Adam will learn his dependence on God for his food. The consequences of sin teach us our need of salvation.
God displays his mercy through judgment to believing sinners.
Adam believed the promise of God that salvation would come through the seed of the woman and tangibly demonstrates his faith by naming his wife Eve or Life.
There is no thought here that all Adam and Eve need do is remove their leaves and get over their shame. There is no going back to Eden. There is only going forward to the new heavens and new earth. People down play the seriousness of sin. We have heard all the ways this is done. It is a mystery to me how people can live in this world filled with violence, pestilence, tragedy, and injustice, knowing the darkness of their own souls and, yet, assert that sin in inconsequential. This is fig leaves. They will never do. You don’t put a band-aide on your head if you have a brain tumor.
We would have to completely ignore the rest of the story of the Bible to miss where this leads. Here is the first use of the verb made since God rested from all of His labor. Now, He is at work, the work of redemption. Understand there is no way for you to save yourself. Salvation only comes at the price of a life and not just any life. The Son of God became a man, lived a perfect life, died in the place of sinners, and rose from the dead to give the forgiveness of sins to all who repent and believe. Where Adam failed, Jesus conquered. He not only crushed the head of our enemy, He lived a perfect life for us, He died for our sin, and He conquered death for us. He delivers us from the devil, our sin, the wrath of God, and the penalty of sin, death.
Sinners cannot save themselves. A fallen man would reason, if I eat of the tree of life all is well. In another view of death, God exiles man from the garden and guards the way to the tree of life with cherubim and a flaming sword. To approach the tree of life would have brought immediate death, just like approaching the tabernacle brought death. Man who autonomously brought death into the world would not through autonomy live. You cannot approach God on your own terms. He calls you to repent of your sin and place your faith in the Son of God.
As we come to the Lord’s Table, we are reminded of how large a theme eating is in Genesis 1-3. Eating was part of the blessing in chapter 1 and 2. Eating was the temptation of chapter 3. Eating was also impacted by the consequences of sin. There is a connection between eating in Genesis and this meal. Derek Kidner said, So simple and act; so hard its undoing. God [the Son] will taste poverty and death before take and eat become verbs of salvation. A way has been opened to the tree of life. Jesus said, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you (Jn 6:53).