God placed two specific trees in the Garden – the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (Gen. 2:8-9).  (Notice that it is not called the Tree of Death, although God said they would surely die if they ate from it.)

God gives Adam and Eve a command not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil or they will surely die. In doing so He conveys to them His sovereignty as the Creator by setting boundaries they cannot cross as being the created; and His authority over them by laying down a rule and the consequence for breaking it (Gen. 2:16-17).

This gives the serpent the opportunity to tempt them to disobey God by appealing to the potential in them to act out of character of godliness. Since God does not tempt, who knows how long it would have taken for this self-righteous characteristic to have come to the surface, such as jealousy or discontentment with being in Paradise or having an issue with the authority of God. (Gen. 3:1; Ja. 1:13).

The serpent tempts them with the enticement to be like God by appealing to their pride, the lust of the eyes and the lust of the flesh (Gen. 3:5-6). To give way to these desires is to say you do not trust in God’s goodness and think you can enjoy life better if you could do it your way without depending on Him.  This is to be in rebellion towards God by desiring to live self-sufficiently.   Separation from God, who is the source of life, would naturally result in death, both physical and spiritual.  To live under this fallen condition would leave one with an unending quest for self-fulfillment, which causes many things to our disadvantage such as disunity and inequality. No matter how good your intentions are for whatever the circumstance or situation may be, you will always find yourself up against opposition.

If you search your heart you can see what a challenge it is to have the characteristics of love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (these life-producing traits are known as the fruit of the Spirit which comes as the result of being fully dependent on God by receiving the power of the Holy Spirit who is the giver of life. (Gal. 5:22)).

(Notice that the serpent has to deceive them by twisting God’s Word to get them to fall into sin.) Being tricked and deceived, Adam and Eve fell for his temptation and thereby sinned against God, immediately feeling shame and fearing God with a new experience of having a guilty conscience (Gen. 3:7-10). Their eyes were opened to see life through the lens of the newly fallen natural realm. This would create an occasion of experiencing guilt because being made in God’s image, they would intuitively be sensitive to ungodliness. They could now experience conviction, that they have fallen into sin and realize how evil (anti-God) it is because they can immediately see the contrast of this fallen nature with the righteous way of life they had witnessed in the character of God before the fall.

This is known as the “Original Sin.”  As a result, we are by nature children of wrath (Eph. 2:3). All of humanity is deserving of God’s wrath because of this one tragic false move of Adam and Eve to disobey God by being tempted and having pride aroused in them to “be like God.” (Gen. 3:5).

God has allowed us to be tested, and we learn the hard way that we are not divine, but merely human; that God is the Creator of all things and we are the created, and therefore subject to Him and dependent on Him in all things (Eccl. 3:18; Jer. 17:10).

Adam is referred to as the “First Adam” (man) (1 Cor. 15:45), who has become the head of the whole physical human race. He desired self-exaltation through disobedience and we have all inherited his sinful nature (Rom. 5:12-19). How can it be any other way?  A spiritually dead person cannot pass down to their descendants what they do not have – Spiritual life. “And Adam lived one hundred and thirty years, and begot a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth.”(Gen. 5:3); “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive.” (1 Cor. 15:22).

We have all become separated from God, in need of a Savior (Rom. 3:23); for now that we have obtained an evil, fallen nature, we are all in the inherited condition of death, spiritually dead to God and in the process of dying physically (Eph. 2:2, 5). A spiritually dead person can’t rescue another spiritually dead person.  Only Jesus is qualified to remove the wrath of God for us in our place because He is alive and sinless (1 Jn. 3:5; 2 Cor. 5:21; 1 Pet. 1:18-19), which are qualities only God possesses. By giving His life for us, He paid off our debt to God (1 Cor. 6:20) that we could not pay because of our fallen nature. His life was given over to death, taking our place in the punishment we deserved.

Jesus is referred to as the “Last Adam,” the head of the Spiritual human race. He was exalted by God through being humble and obedient. Because of His selfless act of salvation, we can now receive justification and become righteous before God and be filled with the Holy Spirit by having faith that God has provided atonement and the forgiveness of sin through His Son Jesus Christ, who was sinless.

Satan is the temporary ruler of the world, the prince of the power of the air, and claims in Lk. 4:6 when he is tempting Jesus, “All this authority I will give You, and their glory; for this has been delivered to me, and I give it to whomever I wish.” This may have been delivered to him at the time Adam sinned, it doesn’t say, so we can only assume.  Although he has power, he is not greater than God and must be submissive to Him.

In our fallen nature, we are now subject to death and moral depravity.  We now have become our own “gods,” having self-will, being self-ruling, living according to our own limited understanding in our each individual way rather than all being unified by depending on the revelation and wisdom of God.

And to make things worse, Satan, our new ruler, is constantly influencing us, tempting us, lying to us, and accusing us before God; doing everything he can to keep us from desiring God or convincing us that we are not worthy of His forgiveness. 

He is very successful in doing this. The power and deception of the flesh is so great (2 Cor. 4:4) that it requires, originally, the sacrificial love of Christ when He laid down His life for our sake (the desire to have the innocent Son of God be tortured and put to death exposed the sinful fallen nature of man); and thereafter by the sacrificial love of Christians, who in like manner are willing to fearlessly die for His name sake. By doing this they are a living testimony of the truth of God’s word, to help those who are still blinded of their fallen nature to understand the sinful condition they are in by seeing the desire and provision of God to save them from death and into a restored relationship with Him.  We are so fallen, so blinded of the ways of God that Jesus, on the cross had to say “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do” (Lk. 23:34).

The flesh is so extremely opposed to the Spirit (Gal. 5:16-19). For natural man to believe in something non-physical, something they can’t see or prove, is foolishness to them. But thank God, He is merciful and has the power to open the “Spiritual eyes” of those who desire to love and worship Him and forsake and repent of their trial period of being self-sufficient with a rebellious nature towards His authority. 

Even though the fallen nature has blinded us, and made us dull to the true nature of God (Jn 1:10-13), He did something that ultimately testifies of His existence by demonstrating to the world the essence of His nature, which is unthinkable to natural man, in that He displayed unconditional, selfless love by sacrificing His own life through His Son Jesus in exchange for our life which was subject to God’s wrath.  When Jesus died on the cross, our sins were judged and destroyed, making it possible to become sanctified before God. And because He was sinless, not only could He atone for our sins which resulted in forgiveness, He was able to be resurrected from the grave, conquering death! (Heb. 2:14-15). So if His death represents our death, we no longer have to fear death, He died for us.  We die physically, but spiritually we live on in the spiritual Kingdom of God if we choose to believe and accept that He did this for us.  Because He now lives, His life becomes our life if we invite Him in. We now walk by faith and not by sight (2 Cor 5:7).

For Christians, there is no longer the fear of death of the physical body (Mat. 10:28; 2 Cor. 5:1; Philip. 3:20-21) which has been decaying since the moment they were born.  They will fearlessly lose their life, even in persecution because they have faith that real life is a spiritually restored relationship with our eternal Father God. (Our physical bodies will be restored as they were meant to be when the Lord returns, see 2 Cor. 5:1-7; 1 Cor. 15:52; Phil. 3:20-21.)

“When He had called the people to Himself, with His disciples also, He said to them, ‘Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. ³⁵ For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it. ³⁶ For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? ³⁷ Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? ³⁸ For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him the Son of Man also will be ashamed when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels’” (Mk. 8:34-38).

In the same way the Lord separated the darkness from light in the creation account in Genesis, He came as the Light of the World to separate us from our darkened fallen nature. “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. ⁵ And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.” (Jn. 1:4-5); “That was the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world. ¹⁰ He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. ¹¹ He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. ¹² But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: ¹³ who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (Jn. 1:9-13).

After Christ died, was resurrected and ascended into heaven, He promised to send the Holy Spirit (Jn. 14:16-17), also known as the Counselor, Comforter and Helper, to enable us to walk in the power needed to be the Lord’s witnesses to the ends of the earth.  We become baptized in the Holy Spirit when we repent of our sins and receive Christ as our Lord and Savior.

The Lord desires that all would come to the knowledge of God and be saved. When that final moment comes when there will no longer be opportunity to choose between life and death, blessing or the curse, we who are saved will come into the glory of full restoration in God’s kingdom, worshiping Him forever as being worthy of all glory honor and power; and Satan and his followers will be cast forever in the Eternal Lake of Fire, never to bother us again (Rev. 20:10).

As you read through the Bible, you will constantly see the theme of good vs. evil, God and the devil; war in the heavenlies for the souls of men; knowing what is right according to God’s standards from what is wrong according to the fallen nature of the human race that needs to understand their need of redemption through the shed blood of Jesus Christ.

Notes

1. The “Word” is God’s ultimate knowledge revealed in written form or audibly spoken. In this instance where Jesus identified Himself as the Word, the ultimate knowledge of God is revealed in the person of Jesus.  He displayed this to us when He became incarnate and physically walked the earth.  He is the full representation of God in all of His wisdom and knowledge and power.