Eve – The Curse of the Fall

In my previous blog I stated that Adam and Eve were asked to doubt God’s goodness for them, and impose their understanding and interpretation on God’s actions in His commandments.  It seems to me that since that day, all of mankind has struggled with this, instead of seeing God’s law as a blessing and protection for us, we seek to either try to justify why we should not obey it, or we simply ignore it and try to live our lives outside of His law.  But rather than going into a philosophical discussion of the law, I want to look specifically at what God said is the consequences of the act of rebellion.  In this case, I will look at both man and woman’s response to God’s presence.  They hid!  They were afraid to meet their loving creator because they now had their “eyes opened” (v. 7).  When confronted by God “Where are you?” Adam responds with “I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself.”  Are we not still trying to hide from an omniscient God?  In our sinful state we flee His presence, whether we try to ignore Him or pretend He doesn’t exist, does not matter, whatever the means, sinful man does not want to meet God, just as Adam and Eve hid.  Then when confronted with his sin “Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”  What does Adam say, “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate.”  Not only is Adam shifting blame to his wife, but ultimately he is shifting the blame to God Himself.  Is he not saying, “If you had just left me alone in the garden I would not have disobeyed you?”  And of course, Eve shifts the blame to the serpent as well.  The fact is neither would accept their responsibility for their sin, at this point they try to use argument to get out of the trouble they are in.  Ever since, has mankind not tried to place the blame on some other source?  The fact is, until we accept that it is our own sin that separates us from God, we cannot be forgiven for the sin we bear as humans as well as the sin we commit in our sinful nature.

It is interesting that even before God announces the specifics of the curse, man was already showing a guilty conscience that wanted to pass the blame to someone else and not accept his own responsibility.  God does hold the serpent responsible, but He also levees the blame to man and woman as well.  In fact, all of creation would be suffering because of the sinfulness of man (see Romans 8:19-25).  God pronounces that there will be a continual struggle between man and Satan when He declares “enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed”.  There are two classes of people today, those that are the seed of Satan (unbelievers) and The seed of woman (Christians).  And there is a struggle between the two.  But the promise given with the curse is that woman’s seed (Jesus Christ) will be victorious, “He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel.”  Jesus accomplished this with His death and resurrection on the behalf of His people.  Jesus would be the second Adam who would accomplish what the first Adam could not, redeeming His people from their sin.

Specifically to woman, she is to suffer in bringing her children into the world through childbirth, and she will seek to usurp her husband’s headship.  As women who have born children, we know the pain of childbirth, but there is also the joy despite the pain, the joy of a new life, and new hope.  We no longer look at each new born as the potential Messiah as Eve did, but there is the hope and promise that this new life will become a soldier for Christ and be used of God in the building of His kingdom.

The consequences of man’s sin marked all of mankind with total depravity and total inability.  Total depravity means that all aspects of man are affected by his sin nature. Man is not “basically good.” NO, he is “basically evil.”  Man in his natural self is unwilling and unable to subject himself to the law of God.  He is dead in his sin and unable to do anything about it.  The total inability is that man cannot save himself, he is in need of a savior outside of himself.  Sinful man does not seek God; he looks only to himself for his standard.  As such, he can do nothing to reconcile himself to God.  There is no fellowship with God; instead fallen man faces the anger of a just and righteous God.  The sinfulness of man was a result of his disobedience and rejection of God as the authority of life.  All humanity carries this stain and suffers as a result, but God did not leave us in our sinfulness.  As mentioned, even in the curse, the promise is given.  There will come a seed from woman that crushed the head of the serpent’s seed.  This occurred when Jesus Christ became man to suffer and die for His people.  Whereas Adam could not keep God’s holy law, Jesus did in His life.  And then as the second Adam, He gave His own life to pay the penalty that God demands for sin.  It is through the blood of Jesus that the confessing sinner’s nature is made alive and reconciled to a just and righteous God.  It is nothing we can do (after all we are dead), it has all been done for us. 

Are you still struggling with where God has placed you in your life?  Do you question His good will for you?  Do you find yourself asking “why are you doing this to me, God?”  Then I encourage you to repent of these sinful thoughts.  God has a plan and we each have a place in that plan.  We may want to change the circumstances we find ourselves in, we may wish we could go back do something over in our life, but we need to remember that when we make choices, we will have to live with those choices.  Don’t you think Adam and Eve would have liked to go back and make a different choice?  But in God’s perfect plan they did what they did and all have to live with that choice.  But praise God, He has a more perfect plan in His son, Jesus Christ. If you know Jesus as your Savior, then please rest in the knowledge that He will keep you in His loving care. If you don’t know Christ as your Savior, I beg you to kneel before Him and confess your sins.  Turn your life to serving Him and seek to be reconciled with God. 

This entry was posted on 12. May 2011 at 18:02 and is filed under Eve. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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