We have seen in our study of verse 6 that the fall of man was brought
about by Satan’s subtlety in getting Eve to gain a good end by a bad means.
The danger of allowing the end to justify the means is a real danger all of us
need to be aware of, for none are immune to the virus of this danger. We can
throw it off time after time when it concerns a goal we are not greatly
interested in, or committed to, but when it comes to a goal we feel is essential,
then we face a real test. Edmund Cooke warns us against pride by writing,
So you tell yourself you are pretty fine clay
To have tricked temptation and turned it away,
But wait my friend, for a different day;
Wait till you want to want to
In other words, as someone else has said, “It is easy to resist where none
invade.” It is no victory to stand where there is no pressure to fall. This is
why Jesus had to get His human nature in a weakened condition so He could
really feel the pressure of Satan’s temptation. Had Jesus faced the temptation
to turn a stone into bread when He was in perfect condition and fully fed, it
would have been a farce. He had to be in a condition where He really wanted
what the tempter offered in order to make it a true victory. The test is only
real when you deeply desire that which you resist because you desire even
more to obey God’s will.
This is the test that Eve failed, and then Adam followed. The first sin of
man, like the first sin in the life of most everyone, was very simple and not
sensational. The original sin seems so trivial that even though wrong it would
seem that the consequences would be equally trivial. The fruits of this evil,
however, were great and affected the whole world from that moment on. We
need to learn from this that the trivial can be tragic. We do not need to
commit horrible crimes or diabolical sins to wined up in deep debt. Paul
Dunbar wrote,
This is the debt I pay, just for one riotous day.
Years of regret and grief; sorrow without relief.
Slight was the thing I bought; small was the debt I thought.
Poor was the loan at best….
God! But the interest!
It is the interest that spoils the loan of the pleasure of sin. Could we only
count the cost before hand, we would hesitate to invest our life in such a costly
venture of disobedience to God. All of us are still paying on the interest of
Adam and Eve’s costly experiment in disobedience. Had not Christ entered
history to pay off the principle all men would be in unrelieved debt forever.
Thank God that through Christ we can pray forgive us our debts. Even so we
must still eat the fruit of evil acts and experience the bitter consequences, even
though forgiven. It is of value to study the consequences of the first sin so as to
be aware how great a matter a little fire can kindle. We need this awareness
lest we, like our first parents, allow the trivial to be the door through which
great evil enters our lives.
Notice how brief and simple is the record of the first sin. She took of its
fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband and he ate. It is almost as
if it was an incidental remark, and yet it began the history of all evil in the
world. This shows us that it may not be the sin itself but the consequences of it
that are so tragic. Sin itself may be a trivial matter of thoughtlessness of
which one is hardly conscience, and yet the consequences can be terrible. A
mother can tell her child not to pick up a firecracker, but as he watches it, and
it seems to be harmless, he goes to pick it up and it goes off. It was a trivial act
of disobedience, and yet he loses a finger or an eye. The consequences can be
all out of proportion in relationship to the evilness of the act.
It is the fruit of evil that is so burdensome. Sin itself can be so appealing
because people do not look beyond it to the consequences. Eve could say one
less piece of fruit in the garden won’t hurt anyone, and she was right, but it
was still an act of disobedience. It is man’s shortsightedness that enables the
tempter to be so successful. One has to look at the long run to see the folly of
sin, for the immediate picture, which leaves out the consequences, can appear
almost innocent and inviting. It is the soft and friendly whisper to grasp a
present value that led Eve into tragic consequences, and this is still Satan’s
method today.
In the castle of Chillan on Lake Geneva there is an old dungeon with a well
shaft in it called the way of liberty. When it was being used a prisoner whom
the authority did not want to live was put into this dark dungeon with the well
shaft. The jailor upon locking the door would whisper in a friendly voice,
“Take 3 steps to liberty.” The prisoner thinking this was the council of a
friend would begin to move about in hope in finding a way out. He would soon
find it by falling down the open shaft which, unfortunately, led to sharp spikes
protruding from the sides. His mutilated body would be washed out to sea.
He was free, but dead. This is the kind of subtlety employed by the tempter.
He suggests steps to take to gain a recognized value, but fails to point out the
tragic consequences of taking those steps. His way of liberty leads to death.
If Satan can keep us blind to the fruits of evil he will be able to persuade
us to go ahead and eat the forbidden fruit. We must learn to be stubbornly
persistent in our obedience to God regardless of the apparent values that are
offered by following a different voice. Thomas Hood wrote,
When Eve upon the first of men
The apple pressed with specious cant,
O, what a thousand pities then
That Adam was not Adamant.
It is when the appeal is so seemingly innocent, and even profitable, that we
need to be adamant, which means hard and unbreakable in our determination
to obey God. Adam was far from adamant. According to the brief record he
responded in disobedience with less persuasion than Eve. He appears to jump
on the bandwagon just to please Eve. Eve is usually blamed for the fall, but
this is not fair. The New Testament does recognize that she was deceived and
not Adam, but Adam holds the greatest responsibility for the fall. Paul says,
“As in Adam all die so in Christ shall all be made alive.” It was by one man
that sin entered into the world, and Adam was that man.
The fall of Eve was but a means of Satan to get Adam to sin, for he was the
head and the one responsible to maintain the will of God. It was his fall that
was most disastrous. It is useless to speculate as to what would have
happened had Adam resisted and not sinned, but the implication seems to be
that if Adam had not sinned Satan’s victory over Eve would not have been
sufficient to bring man to ruin. Adam as the head of the race had to fall
himself, and Eve was but a means to that end. Just as Mary was a means by
which the Second Adam entered human flesh, but only he alone, as the new
head of the race, could gain back what Adam lost. Women played great roles
in both scenes, but they are second to the roles of the two Adams.
The point of all this is that the Bible does not hold Eve more guilty than
Adam for the fall of man, and so we ought not to do so either. The ancient
Greeks supposed that man began wifeless in a state of ignorance, but innocent
and happy. Prometheus stole fire from heaven and taught men to use it.
Jupiter was so angry at this that he ordered Vulcan to form a woman of clay,
and he ordered the gods to bestow on her every grace and beauty, but to fill
her heart with vanity and cunning. The woman was called Pandora, and she
was given to man to marry, and from that moment disease and evil began on
the earth. We see elements of the true tradition passed down from the
beginning, but we see that it becomes perverted. Woman is seen as a curse on
man, but the Bible represents her as a blessing of God, but used by Satan to
bring about a curse.
The whole picture as we see it in the Bible compels us to reject as irrelevant
the conflict of the sexes as to who is most to blame for the evil in the world.
Both are to blame, and it is only escapism to try and throw off guilt by each
accusing the other. The fact that this conflict does exist shows us one of the
consequences of sin. The battle of the sexes is often just for fun, but it is also
one of the great sources of sorrow in the world, and all of it is the fruit of the
first sin. Bulwer-Lytton wrote,
Preach as we will, in this wrong world of ours
Man’s fate and women’s are contending powers;
Each strives to dupe the other in the game,
Guilt to the victor-to the vanquished shame.
In other words, neither can win the conflict, and their attempt to do so
only adds to the folly of our sinful world. God made the two sexes to
compliment one another, and not to conflict with one another. It is of interest
to note, however, that not all women haters are men. Queen Christina of
Sweden once said, “I love men, not because they are men, but because they are
not women.” Madam de Stael said, “I am glad that I am not a man, as I
should be obliged to marry a woman.” Possibly they had some legitimate
reasons for disgust with the feminine sex, but as Christians our attitude must
be consistent with the biblical balance, which holds both sexes equality guilty
for the evil in our world. All of us share in the bitter fruits of evil because all
of us make our contribution of seed to the field of disobedience. In Christ we
escape the eternal consequences of sin, but still we must endure the temporal
consequences. Even these, however, can be eliminated if we can only learn by
our study of the mistakes of the past to listen to no other voice but the voice of
God. We escape the bitter fruit of evil by eating consistently the sweet fruit of obedience.
