Scottie, our firstborn son, was a precious bundle of love that Stephanie and I (Sean) cherished from day one. We did nothing but shower him with love and devotion. Even from his first movements in his mother’s womb he was part of our family. When little Scottie joined our family we did everything we could to nurture him with love and model before him a giving and trusting relationship.
Yet despite all our loving efforts and with no influence from the outside culture, one day Scottie grabbed a toy from me and declared authoritatively, “Mine.” Rather than enjoying a giving relationship with his father he declared his independence to be in charge of the toy exclusively. I wasn’t surprised or appalled by his actions—in fact I chuckled inside. Knowing human nature, I had been expecting that at some point my son would exhibit self-centeredness.
If you have been around children very long, you too can testify that a child without any training has an independent streak that is “me-centered.” From infancy there appears to be a struggle for control to get what we want when we want it. In one form or another this independent drive to be in charge lies behind every struggle for power, every prejudice, every conflict, and every abuse of relationship since the dawn of time. Why is this? Humans were created in the image of a triune God whose Persons are in harmonious relationship with one another. Yet how can the human race fashioned in the likeness of this perfect God be so self-centered from birth? The answer is found in the beginning, when sin originally entered the world.
Imagine spending a day with the first man and the first woman in perfect relationship with God. At sunrise Adam and Eve awaken refreshed and cheerful, without a trace of morning grumpiness. They hug and kiss each other, then march off to work in the garden. Though they apply themselves diligently to every task, they never tire. In fact they seem to find immense joy in tending and shaping their property and nourishing and guiding the creatures that fawn on them. When they grow hungry they pause and eat from the abundant food growing all about them. They quench their thirst from crystal streams. As evening approaches they leave their work, plunge into a clear lake and swim about for half an hour, then dry off by chasing through the cool woods unblighted by stickers or poison ivy. Reaching the blossom-covered bower that is their home, they sit drinking fresh juice from a coconut shell as they eagerly await the highlight of their day.
“Is he coming yet?” Eve asks, looking down the path through the forest.
“I don’t hear him,” Adam replies. “It may be a little early.”
They sip and talk of plans for a grove of trees near the waterfall to the east. After a few minutes, Eve looks again toward the woods, her eyes bright with anticipation.
“I still don’t see him,” she says.
“Listen,” replies Adam. “I think I hear something.”
They both keep still and listen, and in moments the familiar, soft sound of movement through the grass is unmistakable.
“Oh, he’s coming!” Eve cannot contain her excitement. She bounds joyfully up the path as Adam closes the distance behind her. They run to God like children to a father returning home at the end of a workday. And until sundown, the happy pair walks the paths of the garden and chats with their Creator as their souls within them burn with ecstatic joy.
While the details of this scene are fictional, it is a true picture of how Adam and Eve must have loved God and responded to him. They looked forward to his presence with all the anticipation of a lover. God loved them and delighted in them. Man and woman loved God and each other. The two had joined the Godhead’s circle of relationship, and together they experienced its indescribable goodness. They felt the joy of freely giving of themselves to one another. They experienced the security of being accepted without conditions. They felt valued by the all-sufficient God who wanted to spend time with them. The praise and appreciation God must have given them for their excellent tending of the garden made them feel significant. And the affection and gratitude they all offered one another was expressive of a devoted relationship of love.
This perfect circle of loving relationship was God’s ultimate intention for all humanity from creation forward. He intended Adam and Eve and all their descendants to be ecstatically happy in a loving relationship with him and each other forever. And in Eden, it all worked perfectly.1
Obviously, somewhere along the way something went wrong. This world we live in is hardly the Garden of Eden. Far from delighting in God, many people today feel quite the opposite toward him. Some see God as something like a strict judge watching their every move with a stern, disapproving eye. Some find the idea of God so farfetched that they don’t even believe he exists. And even if he does exist, they think he is remote and uncaring—somewhere off in his distant heaven, leaving us to struggle alone with problems that don’t seem to have handles in a world filled with every kind of evil. Many people actually want God to remain distant. In fact, this is one common motivation for atheism. Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World, explained that he and his atheist friends desired a world without the meaning God could give it because such a world gave them “liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom.”2
Sociologist Christian Smith found in his research that most teenagers in the U.S. believe that “God is something like a combination Divine Butler and Cosmic Therapist: he is always on call, takes care of any problem that arises, professionally helps his people to feel better about themselves, and does not become too personally involved in the process.”3 Such views of God, which are so common today, are almost infinitely removed from the way Adam and Eve saw him in Genesis. They saw God as a being who loved them dearly, and they exulted in their close and intimate relationship with him. How did we humans move from intimacy with God in a perfect world to alienation from him in today’s messed-up world?
Freedom to Trust
There is no hint in Scripture that continuing a perfect relationship between humans and God would be automatic. The relationship was based on an authentic love that was to be expressed freely and voluntarily. Therefore the close relationship involved a choice and was to bear the fruit of trust. Of course, God was all-powerful and could have created humans with no choice capacity at all. He could have manipulated their every move and made them conform to his every wish. But had he done this, the humans would not have been created in his own image. God is free to choose, and he gave humans that same capacity. Adam and Eve exercised that capacity to choose by joining God’s circle of relationship to freely and voluntarily express their love to him and one another. God’s relationship was devoid of any self-serving power plays, or desires to control another person, or ambitions of independence. It was a relationship that was other-focused. It was a relationship that chose to look for the best in the other and freely gave of oneself to please the other. When a person knows another and has voluntarily chosen to love him or her this way, it engenders an intimate and trusting relationship.
God is passionate about us loving him and jealous if we turn away from him because he knows loving him is the only way for us to truly find joy and completeness.
So, in the pristine perfection of the Garden, God offered Adam and Eve a tangible way of expressing their unselfish love and trust in him. He gave them a command not to eat of a certain fruit. And so there it was; they had a choice to make, a voluntary choice to believe God was acting unselfishly and had their best interest at heart, or that he was selfishly keeping something good from them. In this simple choice Adam and Eve were being asked to demonstrate they trusted that God was good and that he would not selfishly withhold things from them. To choose otherwise would be to destroy the loving relationship established between God and humans. And to sever that relationship meant becoming unplugged from the only true source of love and life itself. That, of course, would result in a disastrous outcome.
So there was a risk within God’s masterly plan to create humans in his relational image and likeness. The risk was that they could choose to reject such a relationship. Authentic love cannot be forced. God knew this, as well as the consequences if they rejected him. That is why the very hint of his created humans trying to satisfy their needs outside of him would produce jealousy. His first commandment says, “Do not worship any other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God” (Exodus 34:14 NIV). The New Living Translation renders “a jealous God” as “a God who is passionate about his relationship with you.”
God’s jealousy is far from being selfish. He wanted Adam and Eve and all their descendants to worship him and him exclusively—but not because his pride is hurt if they don’t or because he can’t stand rejection. Rather, he is passionate about us loving him and jealous if we turn away from him because he knows loving him is the only way for us to truly find joy and completeness.
God is love, joy, peace, goodness, and everything needed to bring pure happiness and joy. “Whatever is good and perfect,” James declares, “comes to us from God” (James 1:17). So when God told Adam and Eve to avoid that fruit, he was actually attempting to lead them to unselfish, other-focused living in relationship with him. That kind of relationship would bring great pleasure to him and deep happiness to them.
But as we all know, Adam and Eve chose another course. Satan, the enemy of God, entered the Garden of Eden and convinced the humans to make a choice that ruined God’s intended relationship with humans and inflicted on the world untold agony and devastation. “Toward evening they heard the LORD God walking about in the garden, so they hid themselves among the trees. The LORD God called to Adam, ‘Where are you?’ He replied, ‘I heard you, so I hid. I was afraid because I was naked’” (Genesis 3:8-10). Just a day before, Adam and Eve couldn’t contain their excitement over the arrival of their Creator. On this particular evening, however, their reaction was altogether different. Fear had driven a wedge between humans and God, which is why they hid from him in shame. This fear and hiding was the result of their self-centered act, which is what we call sin. But Adam and Eve’s disobedience involved more than simply eating from a “do not take” tree. It involved rejecting God as the source of what is right and true. That rebellion against God brought death to the relationship. Both the man and the woman were sent out of the Garden of Eden (see Genesis 3:23-24).
Their act resulted in more tragedy than just Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden. The consequences were dreadful and devastating, affecting the planet itself. Every plant and animal and every human born since that day became subject to pain, disease, decay, sorrow, and death (see Romans 8:20-22).
The entrance of sin drove life from the world. By sinning, Adam and Eve disrupted their relational connection to a perfect and holy God—who is life itself and from whom all life comes (see John 1:4; 5:26). Gone were their shared moments of intimacy and joy with their Father God. Gone were the thrills of laughter they enjoyed together. Gone was their close relationship.
Their sin brought into the world not only the living death of separation from God, but sin’s fallout brought hunger, disease, hatred, and heartache that would end in their physical death and eternal separation from God. Sin and death reigned over the whole human race from that moment forward. Scripture states, “When Adam sinned, sin entered the entire human race. Adam’s sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned” (Romans 5:12).
Think of the worst that can happen. What is the greatest tragedy of life? What saps all the joy out of living? The answer is death. In death there is no hope, there is no physical existence, there is no joy of any kind. Death is humanity’s greatest curse, for it is the absence of the God of all life and goodness.
“The wages of sin,” Scripture states, “is death” (Romans 6:23). And there is nothing we humans can do in and of ourselves to reverse the payoff of sin. The apostle Paul said we are “utterly helpless” (Romans 5:6).
The general population of the U.S. believes that “good people go to heaven when they die.”4 They believe that if you and I improve ourselves over time, our good deeds will outweigh our bad ones, tipping the balance in our favor and earning entrance into heaven. The thinking is that God will grade us on the curve and let us again live with him in a perfect heaven and earth.
What this belief fails to take into account is the complete truth about death. Death is more than what happens when you stop breathing and they bury you. Even as we humans breathe and walk about on the face of the planet, we are already dead spiritually. Dead people have no ability to save themselves, good works, or no good works. They have no ability to do anything—they are dead! Doing good works no more means we’re spiritually alive than the rigor mortis spasms of a corpse means it’s physically alive. Scripture tells us plainly, “Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done” (Ephesians 2:9). Strict adherence to God’s law won’t even help. “The law of Moses could not save us,” Paul said, “because of our sinful nature” (Romans 8:3). There is absolutely nothing we can do on our own to solve our sin problem because we are all dead spiritually and will soon be dead physically.
The boundary of trust that God drew was crossed with the first humans. His command that displayed human obedience was violated. The self-centered choice of Adam and Eve brought death and a helpless dilemma for the entire human race.
To summarize what we’ve said up to now:
We believe the truth that God created humans in his image to relate to him lovingly, but that relationship was destroyed because of original sin. Sin was passed to the entire human race, and consequently all are born spiritually dead and utterly helpless to gain favor with God.
As a result of sin and death the universe is in a state of entropy—moving from order to disorder. Everything is dying, and no amount of human ingenuity or technology or medical advances can permanently reverse the inevitable doom of us all. That is, nothing apart from a miraculous intervention by God.
There are, however, those who would say that humans are born naturally good. And in time the evolutionary process will work out and the best and strongest of human nature will survive. To some, the problems of humans have a natural explanation with natural solutions. Yet Scripture paints another story, a story that records the fact that human sin has consequences. This is the subject of the next chapter.