Word of Salvation – Vol. 44 No.36 – September 1999
The Fall of Man (2)
Sermon by Rev MP Geluk
on Lord’s Day 3c (Heid.Cat. Q&A 7-8)
Scripture Reading: Genesis 3; 1Corinthians 15:45-58
Suggested Hymns: BoW 180; 176; 435; 392; 404; 525
Beloved Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ.
In a previous sermon we saw why it is very important to regard and defend Genesis 1-3 as being historical and not to see these chapters about the creation and the fall of man into sin as a myth or a fable, nor symbolic. We also looked at the difficult questions of how Satan could enter a perfect Paradise and how Adam and Eve could fall into sin, considering that they were created good.
We now move on from that and want to look at the consequences that came with Adam’s act of disobedience. This is described in Genesis 3. But we also see that God offers a way out.
1. The Results of the Fall Into Sin
The first thing that strikes us is that the eyes of both Adam and Eve were opened (cf.Gen.3:7). But to what were their eyes opened? What did they now see which they did not see before? Satan had promised, back in verse 5: “Your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” Is that what happened? Were they now like God? But God had already made Adam and Eve in His likeness. So they did not have to become that. What Satan did was to entice them with the idea that they would be equal to God, and that, of course, did not happen. He lied to them.
By obeying Satan, Adam and Eve were now much more unlike God than they had been. They now saw good and evil from the standpoint of sinners. They now saw everything from the low level of sin. They now knew themselves to be corrupt and polluted. They did not like what they saw. And they were filled with shame, for they covered their nakedness and hid from the Lord God. While they were still very good, carrying in them God’s likeness, their nakedness did not bother them. From the way Adam rejoiced when God gave him Eve, we can say that they were perfectly happy with each other and with God. Clothes were not necessary, there was nothing to hide and nothing to be ashamed about.
But having disobeyed God, Adam and Eve were not able to meet God face to face any more. They were no longer holy and pure as He is. Sin does that. It makes the human being ashamed of the wrong things done and that’s why we do them in secret. We don’t want others to see us when we knowingly do something we shouldn’t be doing. The more ashamed we are, the more we try and hide ourselves, or cover up those actions we know will embarrass us terribly if they were exposed.
As you know, the media loves to see people in public life, like politicians and royalty, squirm with acute embarrassment when they are exposed to wrongs they have done in secret. And we would squirm, too, if some terrible wrong we were hiding were to become known by our fellow Christians.
It is remarkable that the realisation of the nakedness of Adam and Eve is referred to three times. There is an emphasis on it. Adam and Eve first realised their nakedness when they sinned for the first time, so much so that they covered themselves and hid from God. Then when God came looking for them, Adam explained why he felt they had to hide from God. He said, “I was afraid because I was naked.” God responded to that and said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”
We may tend to associate nakedness with the exposure of the sexual parts of the body, regarding those parts as being our more intimate parts. And yes, it was those parts that Adam and Eve covered up with fig leaves, and later on God improved on that by providing them with garments of skin. But God pointed to Adam’s disobedience as the cause of him becoming conscious of his nakedness [3:11].
The disobedience of Adam and Eve was not sexual in its nature. It was a desire for fruit that was forbidden and of wanting to be as wise as God. So perhaps we should not understand the nakedness here as a specific shame for the sexual parts of the body, for after all, the whole human body of both male and female was created very good. The bodies of Adam and Eve after the fall into sin would not have been any different to what they were before the fall. The sexual side of Adam and Eve was very good because God made it that way and the Bible does not give any reason to say that after the fall the sexual side by itself had become evil.
No, the nakedness after the fall into sin points more to the whole being of Adam and Eve having become humiliated and shameful before God because of their sin of wanting to be as wise as God. And not only were they now very conscious of their relationship with God no longer being right, the openness and trusting intimacy between Adam and Eve was also badly affected. Adam begins to criticise his wife.
The immediate results of sin were then as follows: a painful awareness that their disobedience cost them their beautiful relationship with God. This in turn poisoned their relationship as husband and wife. Conscious of what they had done, they tried to hide their now impure selves from a pure God and began to distrust each other. All that opened their eyes to a knowing about good and evil that was very different to the knowledge they had of that before. They lost their purity and their holiness. They were no longer the innocent male and female. They now had needs, had become weak, and they had brought humiliation upon themselves. All that constituted their terrible new awareness of their nakedness. Their natures had changed and they could no longer stand open before God as they had done before. inwardly corrupted, they now outwardly had to wear clothes.
The garments of skin God provided for Adam and Eve involved the killing of animals. This may well be the first time that the Bible points to the need for a sacrifice for sin. In any case, the clothing provided for by God is really a protection of the human being. With human nature now being corrupt, there is lust in our heart. Clothes protect women from men. No clothes, or provocative clothes, greatly increases lust. We all know what unbridled lust can do. It can cause promiscuity and marital unfaithfulness. But not only do we see God’s wisdom in providing clothes in order to check sinful man’s roving eyes, but it also protects those people whose bodies are less beautiful and deformed with age from ridicule and sneers. The results of the fall into sin have made beautiful bodies become the object of lust in others, which can lead to sexual sins, and bodies not so beautiful the object of derision by others, which leads to hate and repulsion. In order to protect us from those sinful elements in human nature, God gave us clothes to wear.
That clothes are a sign of God’s protection for us, is also seen in the fact that we need them against excessive heat and cold. Paradise probably had a very steady temperature. After the fall the earth was cursed because of man’s sin and after the great flood, great climatic changes took place. Because of sin the world has become a place of extremes and clothes protect us from either burning or freezing. But God clothing man has of course a deeper meaning still. Clothes by themselves will do nothing to hide our nakedness before God. The real clothing we need before God is the righteousness of Christ. Only when He covers us with His purity can we stand before God and be holy.
We now want to say a bit more about the falling out between God and man and between people among themselves. Adam and Eve hid themselves from God after they sinned. How true that is of the whole human race. The Bible speaks of mankind being lost. No one seeks after God, no one is righteous (Rom.3:10ff). They don’t want to know God. They don’t want His rules for living. They have turned after false gods, or they ignore God altogether. Now that is hiding from God.
In 1997 man put a small tractor that looked like a toy on the planet Mars. It was an amazing feat of technology because it responded to instructions radioed from earth, and with on-board computer equipment took pictures and sent this back. But very unscientific were the interpretations of those analysing the messages and photos. They said that Mars might be able to tell us where life originated from and answer the question of how the universe began. But we know where life came from. We know how the universe began. God created all things and life came from Him. But unbelieving man hides from God. The testimony from the Bible is totally ignored. It’s as though God does not exist and as though there is no such thing as the Bible telling us what God has done. Now that, too, is hiding from God.
Then people confess to struggles with their sexual identity or blatantly turn upside down and back to front the created order of things. They have views of marriage, of child-parent relationships, views about killing the unborn, about suicide, as though there is no God who has had something to say about all of that. Now that is a hiding from God. It’s trying to escape from Him. The Bible teaches that sin causes alienation, it drives a barrier, a separation between God and man.
We see that with Adam and Eve hiding from God. It is a consequence of the fall that still goes on. When someone sins against God, and is aware of that in their conscience, and there is no desire yet for that relationship with God to be restored, then see how they hide themselves from God. They don’t pray anymore, they stop reading God’s Word, they can’t bring themselves to go to church, they start avoiding other Christians and they shut God and all that reminds them of Him out of their lives. It’s the same tragic thing as what Adam and Eve did. Sin does that. It makes you hide and become secretive.
But not only did the fall result in man becoming a stranger from God. It also causes estrangement between people, as it did between Adam and Eve. Adam blamed Eve and then blamed God for not giving him a very good woman. But God did give Adam a very good woman. Everything was very good. When God questioned Eve, she blamed the serpent. Blaming others for things that you were responsible for, is something we already see in children at a young age. Adults are no better, except they do it in more subtle and clever ways. Blame everything and anyone else but yourself, how often do we not see that sort of thing going on?
Genesis 3 does not say specifically that death came, even though that’s what God said would happen. When you eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, “you will surely die” [2:17]. Verse 19 does refer to death indirectly when God said that man will return to dust. But that helpful passage in Romans 5 says that death “entered through sin” [vs.12], and “death reigned from the time of Adam…” [vs.14].
Adam and Eve did not die physically straightaway, but they did eventually. However, they did die in another sense from the moment they sinned. Their natures changed. They became unholy and corrupt. At the end of chapter 3, when it has finished the account of the fall and its consequences, Adam and Eve are put out of the Garden of Eden. An angel with a flaming sword barred the way so that they could not reach the tree of life. Having to leave that place of beauty, where all things were very good, where God and man lived together in perfect harmony, where there was plenty of food, where there was no curse, no sweat, no crying, no toil, no pain, leaving all that behind was death. We call it spiritual death.
Physically Adam and Eve went on but they were thrown out of Paradise, as once Satan was thrown out of heaven. But different to the fallen angels, God did come with salvation to man and promised that the Christ would come.
It is right here that one of the most glaring mistakes in evolutionary teaching becomes evident. Evolution teaches that for millions of years there was death before man. Man, they say, is the result of a long line of primitive life gradually evolving into more complex forms of life and finally into man. You probably have all seen those picture spreads from left to right across a page depicting the evolution of man. On the far left you have some kind of animal, which then becomes an ape, first on all fours, then straightening up more and more, and finally on the right side of the page there is primitive man. Now before the supposed evolution of the primitive man, all of his many more primitive forms of life died. But what does the Bible say? Death came with sin and sin came with Adam. There was no death before sin. Not even in the animal world. Everything was alive and well until death came through sin.
Genesis 3 also speaks of the increased pain in childbearing. And working the ground in order to live from its produce will be accompanied with painful toil. Struggle, hardship, hard work and sweat will be our lot until we die physically. The Bible book Ecclesiastes describes our lot in life very well. Some parts of it are not very uplifting. But the author is only telling us the way it is. And he is only saying what God inspired him to write. But nearly every generation tells the next that things will improve. Every new government paints a better future than the previous government was able to manage. With every new election we will hear that working conditions will improve, there will be more justice, more work and less unemployment. But sooner or later the injustices come back, there are new forms of unfair work practices, and whilst some new jobs are created, existing jobs become obsolete. In the economic cycle of things there will always be toil, struggle and hardship, more for some than for others. It’s one the results of the fall.
In all this there is not much point in blaming our first parents Adam and Eve. People do that sometimes. They say, if only Adam had not sinned. Look what misery Adam put us into. That important passage in Romans 5 also says that all receive condemnation for the sin of Adam [vs.18], and through Adam’s disobedience many were made sinners [vs.19]. In Adam we all die [1Cor.15:21]. Adam represented all of humanity. He stood at the beginning of all people. Whatever way he turned would have consequences for everyone after him. In Adam we have all sinned, in Adam we are all guilty, in Adam we are all condemned, and in Adam we all die. That’s the way it is.
But thanks to God, the same principle is at work when the second Adam, Christ, succeeded where the first Adam failed. Christ’s perfect obedience and His life are passed on to all believers in the same way as Adam’s disobedience and death is passed on to all people. In Christ all believers are regarded by God as if they have never sinned and as if they have always been perfectly obedient. So, if we are happy with being in Christ and Him representing us, then we can’t very well object to being in Adam as well and him representing us. It’s the same principle that is at work. In fact, we need Christ, the Saviour, to undo our relationship of death and condemnation with the first Adam.
In this connection that fallen man has with Adam we should also realise that when Adam fell, he and Eve and everyone after him, lost their freewill to serve God. From the moment Adam and Eve fell into sin and were put out of the garden, it became impossible for them to make their way back to God. Not only was the way to the tree of life cut off, their now sinful hearts had lost that ability to freely love and obey God. Remember how God created them with that distinction – to be able to either obey or disobey God? We no longer have that ability. It was lost through the fall. Everyone is born with sin and corruption in their nature.
We are born with spiritual death in our hearts. And the spiritually dead do not have the will to come to the living Christ. But there is no need for humanity to despair. God Himself provided a way out. And that’s why we can speak of the grace of God. There is good news, too. It comes right after the fall into sin. Let’s in conclusion point to that.
2. God Provides the Way Out
Lord’s Day 3 deals with the biblical doctrine of sin and we looked at this teaching from the perspective of Genesis 3. But the Catechism is keen to point us to salvation and says in Q&A 8 that the Spirit of God can change that sinful inclination in the human heart. We said a moment ago that the spiritually dead cannot come to God. But we may add to that and say that God can make the spiritually dead become spiritually alive. It is the coming of God to sinful man in His grace. This, too, can be shown from Genesis 3.
Verse 8 has the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. The fall had already occurred and Adam and Eve heard the Lord God coming near as He walked to where they were hiding among the trees. It may well have been something that the Lord God had done every day since the creation of Adam and Eve.
How are we to understand this? Well, the Old Testament speaks a number of times about the Lord God coming in human form to speak with His people. God appeared like that to Abraham a number of times. It is God in the Person of Jesus Christ. We must not limit God’s coming in Christ only to when He was born in Bethlehem. For brief periods before that in Old Testament times Christ appeared in the flesh as the second Person of the Trinity to give special messages. Just after the fall He comes looking for Adam and Eve. And Adam and Eve did not appear too surprised to see God. Afraid..? Yes, because of what they had done, but not surprised. Possibly the Lord God had done that every day to have fellowship with man. But what grace there is in God coming to Adam and Eve after the fall! He could have kept Himself away from them, now that they had broken fellowship with Him. But no, God will not let evil triumph. Right here God reveals a wonderful love for sinners and He begins His rescue mission.
That marvellous grace continues when God questions Adam and then Eve as to what they had done. Of course God knew what had happened. But He seeks to get a confession of sin from fallen Adam. “Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?” A simple ‘yes’ would have done. When David was confronted with his adultery with Bathsheba and his murder of her husband Uriah, then he acknowledged, “I have sinned against the Lord” (2Sam.12:13). That was all Adam needed to do. A simple confession was all that God was seeking. But Adam did not give it and begins to blame his wife and even God. His sin made him devious and evasive.
Even then God did not stop being gracious and loving. After He dealt with the serpent, He announced that He will put enmity between the serpent and the woman and the offspring of each. It is really the announcement of a holy warfare between Satan and his evil spirits and those who follow God. Satan will cause damage, but the Christ to come will destroy Satan completely. That difference is pointed to in the heel and the head in verse 15. We have here the first promise of the coming Saviour.
And that is the way out. Our corrupt human nature came from our first parents and we all share in Adam’s guilt. It has left us with a nature inclined to sin and we are capable of every kind of evil. But the Lord God has come with His grace and in the fullness of time Christ was born. In Him sinners can be forgiven and share in His victory over death and sin. It happens when the Holy Spirit causes the sinful heart to be born again. In Adam all have died; in Christ all shall be made alive.
Amen.