Genesis 3

Chapter 3. The Beginning of SinGen_3:1-19The Bible does not reveal to us the origin of sin absolutely, but only its introduction to our own world and race through the temptation and fall of man.

Section I: The Introduction of Sin

Section I—The Introduction of SinThrough the Serpent

1. It came through the serpent. How it had come to him we do not absolutely know, but that he was an already fallen creature is certain. The literal serpent was but the instrument of a spiritual personality who is more fully referred to in subsequent Scriptures. “That ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray” (Revelation 12:9). We know that he had been an unfallen angel at one time, and that with multitudes of others he had voluntarily left his estate of righteousness and obedience and been banished from heaven by the judgment of God. In the 28th chapter of Ezekiel there is a sublime description of the anointed cherub who had walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire, and was perfect in his comeliness until the day that iniquity was found in him. And of him it is said: “You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone adorned you” (Ezekiel 28:13). “You were the model of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty” (Ezekiel 28:12). “You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created till wickedness was found in you” (Ezekiel 28:15). Although this is a direct reference to the prince of Tyre, yet it carries the mind irresistibly back to a higher personality and must be the description of this fallen son of light. The serpent was not only the appropriate instrument but the expressive type of his subtlety and guile. His congenial employment is to tempt and to destroy. And his assault upon Adam and Eve is a sample of all his subsequent attacks, both on the children of men and on the Son of Man Himself. His first approach was in the form of a question, or rather, an admission, and then a question which seemed to contradict it. “Really,” is his plausible assent to all that God said, and “Did God say?” (Genesis 3:1) his devilish denial of it, in the manner least likely to be suspected. His appeal first to the woman’s lower nature, then to her aesthetic taste, and finally to her higher spiritual aspirations is manifest in the three stages so definitely described: She “saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food,” “pleasant to the eye” and “desirable for gaining wisdom” (Genesis 3:6). It was the same method of attack which he adopted with Christ in the wilderness, appealing first to His hunger, then to His ambition, and then endeavoring to excite Him to religious presumption. John calls this threefold process “the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes, and the boasting of what he has and does” (1 John 3:16). Through the Woman
2. Sin entered through the woman. Satan did not approach Adam at first, but concentrated his forces upon the weaker nature. And often since has he used her simplicity and openness of being as the vantage ground and standpoint from which to attack and destroy man as well. The first sin was not conscious and willful, but the result of deception, and woman has often since been thus betrayed. We are to remember that the most disastrous evils may be incurred without deliberate intent of evil. Through Unbelief
3. Sin entered through unbelief. Eve’s first error was to listen to the devil’s question about God’s Word. “Did God say?” (Genesis 3:1) is always the beginning of sin. Let us take heed lest there be in us “a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God” (Hebrews 3:12). We begin by doubting God’s Word about sin, and then by doubting His Word about salvation. It was because sin entered through unbelief that salvation must come through faith. Eve’s unbelief was not the deliberate denial of God’s Word, but a shadow of suspicion about the kindness of His Word. In the light of the devil’s question it seemed a little hard, and her answer made it a little harder still. And then the tempter dared to deny it openly and challenge her to disobey it. “You will not surely die” (Genesis 3:4). The doubt of divine retribution was one of the earliest forms of human sin, and it is the form which today rationalism is trying its best to inculcate into the Church of God. Again the serpent is whispering to the Church, “You will not surely die” (Genesis 3:4). Let us believe all God’s words, whether spoken in warning or in promise. God’s promises are always easily trusted when we fully believe and receive His commands. Through Disobedience
4. Sin entered through disobedience. This immediately followed unbelief, and ever does. The moment we question the exact meaning and absolute authority of any of God’s words, the door is open for sin and disobedience. The essence of obedience is that it be uncompromising and unquestioning. The very secret of the highest obedience lies in the fact that it is often blind, and without even understanding all the reasons for it. The very fact that the thing she disobeyed seemed in itself so trifling made it a more perfect test of real principle; just as Abraham’s obedience to the command he could not understand was the most perfect test of the principle of his absolute obedience. These two words “unbelief” and “disobedience” are the pillars that stand at the gates of ruin, and their two opposites introduce us to the pathway of life. Adam’s Willful Acts 5. Sin having thus entered through Satan and through Eve, and having taken form in unbelief and disobedience, advances next to the stage of willfulness. Eve’s sin was the result of deception, but Adam’s sin was voluntary and deliberate. The apostle distinctly declares that Adam was not deceived, but being tempted by his fallen wife he yielded consciously; perhaps from many a lovely and plausible consideration of love to her and partnership with her in her fall, but in any case, with a full knowledge of the character and consequences of his action.

Section II: The Effects of Sin

Section II—The Effects of SinThe Temptress

1. The first effect upon Eve was to make her the temptress of Adam. We cannot sin without immediately becoming influences for sin in the lives of others. Unconsciously often there will fall from us a reflection of our own spirit and the shadow of our own curse. The Sense of Sin
2. The second effect of sin in this suggestive picture was their consciousness of it. Quick as the reflection of the shadow on the ground is the blight of sin upon the guilty soul. It carries its own witness and leaves its own record. They were ashamed. And “they realized they were naked” (Genesis 3:7). Separation
3. Separation from God is the immediate result and the loss of confidence and fellowship, so that they hid themselves from His presence among the trees of the garden. Our hearts are alienated from the love of God the moment we disobey Him. The whole human family is born under this condemnation and must first be reconciled to God before there can be peace and fellowship. Self-Righteousness
4. Self-righteousness next appears in the attempt to cover their shame and hide their guilt under the fig leaves which they sewed together. These stand for all the devices of man’s attempts to justify or save himself, whether by false religions, sincere moralities or specious pretexts and excuses. Selfishness
5. Selfishness and the loss of mutual love at once appear. Adam begins to blame his wife, and she excuses her sin by the temptation of another. The cruelty and harshness of Adam’s answer show the sad and utter depth to which he had fallen from his former height of love and nobility. “The woman you put here with me,” as though God were as much to blame as the woman, “she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it” (Genesis 3:12). Judgment
6. The divine judgment swiftly follows. God is not hasty or severe, but gives the guilty ones the fullest opportunity for vindication. “Where are you?” (Genesis 3:9). “What is this you have done?” (Genesis 3:13). “Have you eaten from the tree, that I commanded you not to eat from?” (Genesis 3:11). There is no charge. There is no anger, but calm and forbearing patience and justice, and a seeming unwillingness even to believe in the reality of their sin. The judgment which follows begins with the serpent and henceforth makes the battle of the ages not a conflict between God and man, but between God and Satan. And that judgment is yet to be fulfilled in the complete bruising of the serpent’s head and his expulsion forever to the bottomless abyss. The more gracious unfolding of mercy for man in the sentence upon Satan will come more appropriately under the next chapter. But here let us not fail to observe and realize that the battle of humanity begins with the picture of Satan as a conquered foe. Next the sentence follows on the woman. It consigns her to a lot of suffering subjection. She had followed a false ambition and sought a forbidden exaltation “that she should be like God” (Genesis 3:5), and so she is subjected to a place of subordination. And a large part of the lesson of her life is to die to her own pride and will. Her very affections are made to her the instruments and occasions of deeper suffering, and the joys and hopes of her life and destiny are all linked with the keenest pain. Woman has ever since been the suffering partner in the human family, and man’s inhumanity has made the curse more bitter and hard than God designed. On the man the sentence which comes in due time is one of toil and conflict with the stubborn earth, and ultimately of mortality, back of which there lies the shadow of a deeper and a darker death. On the race all this involved the further penalty of expulsion from Eden and from happiness; and an inheritance of death in its threefold meaning—temporal, spiritual and eternal.

Section III: Subsequent Developments of Sin in the Book of Genesis

Section III—Subsequent Developments of Sin in the Book of GenesisGen_4:3-11; Genesis 6:5-7; Genesis 7:21; Genesis 9:4-9; Genesis 13:13; Genesis 18:20-21; Genesis 25:34; Genesis 37:28; Genesis 42:21-22The tree of evil soon grew into larger proportions and bore its multiplied and bitter fruit. Cain The story of Cain unfolds the fearful progression of evil. Beginning with unbelief and rejection of the blood of the sacrifice, it leads in rapid sequence to hate, murder, separation from God, devotion to worldliness, selfishness, earthy pleasure and all the dark train of issues suggested in the closing picture of the fourth chapter of Genesis. The Antediluvians Next the antediluvians appear upon the stage as illustrations of the virulence and malignity of the poison that has entered the blood of humanity. In a few generations they have desolated the earth with corruption and violence, and only their extinction by the flood can deliver the earth from its intolerable and hideous load of depravity. Babel and the Nations The race starts anew on the other side of the deluge, and soon the elements of sin have developed again in the pride of Babel, the despotism of Nimrod and the early empires of Assyria and Babylon, with their subsequent story of cruelty, ambition and enormous wickedness. Sodom and Gomorrah Yet again the story is repeated on a smaller scale but in darker colors in the sins of Sodom, Gomorrah and the cities of the plain, where lust so quickly matures to sin, and sin so terribly brings forth death and judgment, and the fairest scene of earth is made the very gate of hell, and a sample even of the judgment of eternal fire. The Patriarchal Families And yet once more the very families of the patriarchs pass before us with the same vision of sin and its workings and consequences. We see it in the selfishness of Lot. We see it in the earthliness of Esau. We see it in the cruelty of Jacob’s sons, and all the subsequent workings of Providence and conscience in their future lives. So that the book of Genesis really unfolds in almost every possible phase, the nature, malignity and development of evil, and the virulence of that fatal poison to which one simple act of doubt and disobedience opened the veins of our lost humanity.