Genesis 3:1–7

Notice that when the enemy attacks our first parents, the account leaves him in mysterious obscurity. Yet no believer, no serious mind, can doubt that under the form of a serpent, Satan was at work to deceive and destroy... The last book of the New Testament answers the first book of the Old Testament with striking force. It names him from first to last as "that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan" — the slanderer and the adversary.

This chapter introduces the serpent as more cunning than all other beasts. Satan's use of the serpent as his mouthpiece shows that this was so. The woman had probably never heard any other animal speak. When the serpent spoke to her, she should have been doubly on her guard... God has never allowed Satan to appear to mankind as he is in his own person, except in his temptation of the Lord Jesus.

Notice, the first thing introduced here is the craftiness of Satan. When Eve replied to it, it was not flagrant, open sin and wickedness. He does not say, "I am the devil come to deceive you." He points to how pleasant the thing is right now.

It opens mildly. Planting a doubt overthrows convictions better than a flat denial does. The mind is then left to draw its own conclusions... The woman's reply makes it clear. Her mind had caught the drift of his words, and her heart, sadly, had taken in the implied question about God's goodness.

It was by craft, not by force, that man was overcome... The way the enemy attacked makes one thing clear. Faith is the root and spring of all obedience in the creature, even in innocence. Faith is also what receives the Saviour and His great salvation once man has fallen... Our first parents knew nothing of the reason for the ban. Perfect confidence in God's goodness would have assured them that it must be, and was, for their good and happiness... How much more that question held than appears on the surface! It carries his pretended concern for their enjoyment. It hints that God, if He really said this, must be an enemy of their happiness, grudging them so small a pleasure.

The right way to meet Satan's questions and suggestions is to treat them as his, and to repel them by the word. To let them near the heart, even for a moment, is to lose the only power by which to answer them. To admit the question, "Did God actually say?" when I know that God has spoken is outright unbelief. The very fact that I admit it proves I am completely unable to meet it.

His first move was to throw doubt on the Word of God. God had revealed very little so far, but on one point He had spoken clearly and decisively. The serpent questioned that revelation. He twisted God's words as he questioned them, to make his hint of doubt more believable. What is more, he addressed himself not to the man, who was primarily responsible, but to the woman. Of the two links in the human chain she was the weaker, and the adversary struck just there.

The enemy's approach was indeed subtle. It was to awaken distrust of God in Eve's heart. Could it be good to refuse man the fruit of any tree in the garden? Distrust of God opens the door to every sin. Eve ought at once to have turned away. She knew the goodness of the LORD God. Why then talk a moment longer with one who questioned it? To allow it was to sit in judgment on Him, to doubt His love, to accept the serpent as a better friend.

If you do not want temptation to defeat you, do not argue with Satan. When Eve began to argue the case with the serpent, he was too strong for her. The devil reasoned her right out of Paradise. If you enter into a discussion with him, you give him half the victory.

But Eve's first reply has two sad features. First, it was not made up of God's own words. Second, the two she left out were the ones that show the tempter's suggestion had already begun to take effect. Her answer shows that her thoughts of God's generosity are already smaller and poorer than His own words. The thin edge of the wedge was already inserted. All the rest, sadly, was easy.

Here we see a soul that has lost its balance. It wavers, and flounders all the more as it tries to regain it. What tree had God put into "the midst" of the garden? According to the inspired account, it was the tree of life. Prohibition — was that at the very heart of paradise? Did everything there radiate, so to speak, from the threat of death? Sadly, slight as the matter may seem, it tells us where the woman's soul is. For how easily with us does one forbidden thing blot out of our view a thousand blessings!

Had she held fast the sense of her responsibility to obey, she would have resented the question rather than answered it. And her answer lets us see that Satan's evil intent did not fail of its effect. She adds to the prohibition, and takes from the penalty. The LORD had not said a word about touching the forbidden fruit. But He had threatened death, in the most certain terms, on the day they ate it. Exaggerating truth is no more the truth than reducing it; either weakens it, and both are Satan's work.

Simple rest in the infinite goodness of God would have kept Eve safe from all this reasoning. She should have said to the serpent, "I have the fullest confidence in God's goodness. So I think it impossible that He could withhold any real good from me. If that fruit were good for me, I would surely have it. But God has forbidden it, and that proves I would be no better off by eating it — I would be much worse off. I am convinced of God's love, and I am convinced of God's truth. And I believe you are an evil one, come to draw my heart away from the fountain of goodness and truth. Get behind me, Satan." This would have been a noble reply. But it was not given.

Notice how plain it is that she has already fallen. She has let in the question about God's ways seeming strange. At once her eyes fasten on the forbidden thing until she can see little else. God had set the tree of life in the midst of the garden, and without any prohibition. For the woman now it is the forbidden tree that occupies that place. Instead of life, she puts death — or what was identified with death for her — as the central thing. The "garden of delight" has faded from her eyes.

Either to add to God's word or to take from it proves very clearly that His word is not living in my heart or governing my conscience... The Lord Jesus, in His conflict with Satan, applied the word accurately, because He lived on it and valued it more than His necessary food. He could not misquote or misapply the word, nor could He be indifferent about it. Not so Eve. She added to what God had said. His command was simple enough: "You shall not eat of it." To this Eve adds her own words, "neither shall you touch it." These were Eve's words, and not God's.

A mere touch, as she put it to herself, was death. Why, then, had He put it before them only to forbid it? What was He guarding from them with such jealous care? Must it not be something He valued highly?

She first adds to the prohibition, then she weakens the penalty. Instead of "you shall surely die," it is for her only "lest" — for fear — "you die." There is no real certainty that death would be the result. So the question of God's love becomes a question of His truth as well. I do not want on the throne a being I cannot trust; that is where the tampering with His word comes from. The heart deceives the head. If I do not want a thing to be true, I soon learn to question whether it is.

Even as to the threat, the solemn words, "in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die," have shrunk on Eve's lips to "lest you die." Her heart is set on a forbidden pleasure. The threatened punishment is the only barrier left, and she sees even that through a shrinking lens. How easily Satan can silence every remaining fear with the bold contradiction of God's word: "You will not surely die!"

She adds to the prohibition and takes from the penalty. The Lord had not said a word about touching the forbidden fruit, but had threatened death in the most certain terms in the day of eating it. Exaggeration of truth is no more the truth than reduction of it; either weakens it, and both are Satan's work. By the truth we are sanctified, and His word is truth.

So we ought to guard the exact words of God the Holy Spirit. We must not add to His words, as Eve added "neither shall you touch it" to the prohibition. The apostles, too, thought that John was not to die. But "Jesus did not say to him that he was not to die, but, 'If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?'" Read the warnings against this snare (Proverbs 30:5-6; Revelation 22:18-19).

She first adds to the prohibition, then she weakens the penalty. Instead of "you shall surely die," for her it is only "lest you die." There is no real certainty that death would be the result. So the question of God's love becomes a question of His truth as well. I do not want on the throne a being I cannot trust; that is where the tampering with His word comes from. The heart deceives the head. If I do not want it to be true, I soon learn to question whether it is so.

The serpent now takes a bold step and dares to call God a liar. This soon follows, once the heart starts to distrust His love. "You will not surely die." "Fear nothing of the sort. On the contrary, keeping away from the fruit of that tree means giving up hopes that are rightly yours. God does not want you to know good and evil as He does. He wants you to stay children and slaves. Do not fear death. Claim your independence." So the serpent attacked God's truth and His majesty alike.

Men do not know how deep Satan's deceit goes. His plan is not to put forward at once a broad, plain falsehood that carries the lie on its face. Not so; he puts it forward under the guise of truth, in the form of truth, and in some sense mixed up with the truth. This is how he deceived Adam… He says, "You will not surely die!" That was an obvious untruth. But he adds, "You will be like God, knowing good and evil." This we know was in part the real truth. At once we hear God saying, "The man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil." So the lie came partly in the form of truth. But he kept back entirely the truth man most needed to know: what would follow from taking his advice. He did not tell him it would end in death.

Men say in their hearts that sin will not bring the consequences God has said it will — "the wages of sin is death." No man could go on if he believed God's word instead of Satan's. Man's happiness rests on faith in Satan's lie… So all the devil can do is hide the consequences of sin. He could only keep men going by keeping that truth out of their sight: "You shall surely die." Terror of it would not change their hearts. But if they truly believed it, they would not have one happy day here.

The serpent approached Eve, as we all know, and challenged God's word about this. He said plainly, "You will not surely die." But the word of God stood anyway, and so it must always be. "Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned."

The serpent found in Eden a scene of purity and happiness. He entered it intending to corrupt and ruin it. "He was a murderer from the beginning." And the deadly weapon he used was a lie… He got what he wanted. Through his lie he ruined the creature whom God had just made and blessed. But now, in contrast to all this, the Son of God had begun His work. He came and found a scene nothing like Eden. Misery and death because of sin filled it… But He had come to save. And the instrument of His ministry was the truth: "He who sent me is true, and I declare to the world what I have heard from him."

Notice how the serpent tried to shake Eve's confidence in God's truth. He wanted to bring her under the power of unbelieving "reason." He did it by shaking her confidence in God's love. He made what God had said look as if it did not come from love. In other words: "There is a real advantage tied to eating that fruit, and God is trying to deprive you of it. Why then should you believe God's testimony? You cannot trust someone who clearly does not love you — for if He loved you, why would He forbid you a real privilege?"

God has lost His character in the heart of man. All man's confidence in God is gone, and man believes Satan, the liar and chief deceiver. Now the devil can say whatever he likes, because he has the confidence of the heart instead of God… He began by hinting that God knew the fruit would make her happy but grudged to give it. Then he questioned God's truthfulness. Now he adds, "you shall be as gods." He tempts man to take up the privileges of God Himself.

The serpent's words to Eve set out this other ideal: "You shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." Remember, too, that the Hebrew word Elohim, translated "gods" here, is the same word translated "God" elsewhere in these chapters. That makes it bolder and more blasphemous still.

If Satan said, "You shall be as gods (Elohim)," One far above all created beings repeated, "The man has become as one of us, knowing good and evil." But oh, what a store of evils and ruin came in with that act of disobedience! It was built on a truth the devil used. He used that truth out of place. He hid what went with it when man acted on it. That was the foundation of the ruin that came upon the world.

The Lord God had arranged it so that in and through the fall man would gain what he did not have before: a conscience, a knowledge of both good and evil. The very first effect of that conscience was to make him a coward. Satan had completely deceived the woman. He had said, "your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." But he left out a vital part of the truth. They would know good without the power to do it. They would know evil without the power to avoid it. By trying to lift themselves higher in the moral scale, they lost true elevation. They became degraded, powerless, enslaved by Satan, struck by conscience, terrified creatures. "The eyes of them both were opened," no doubt — but to what a sight! Only to discover their own nakedness.

The deceiver baited the first man with the words "You shall be as God." Independence and self-importance have been natural to the human family since that fateful day. These evil traits have not only dishonoured and insulted the Creator. They have also plunged people into continual sorrow. The history of the world has been an endless struggle over who should be greatest.

The tempter drew our first parents to grasp at something far above them — at becoming as gods, as Genesis 3:5 shows. That place was not for them, and their grasping at it was sheer robbery. But there was nothing of that with our Lord. In His case equality with God was not something to be grasped at. It was His to start with, for He was God. He could not be higher than He was. Before Him lay only the choice of staying as and where He was, or of coming down in humiliation.

What a contradiction to the One who judged not "by what his eyes see," nor decided disputes "by what his ears hear"! And what an answer to the unbelief that prefers "sight," or what men call "demonstration," to faith in God's word. She saw through the medium Satan had put in front of her, and what she saw was neither more nor less than three enormous lies. God had said, by forbidding the tree, that it was not good for food: she saw that it was. Had God kept His place in her heart, she could not have found pleasure for her eyes in what He had forbidden. But she saw "that it was a delight to the eyes."

"And when the woman saw that the tree was good" — she was seeing through the devil's eyes now. "That the tree was good for food" — there the lust of the flesh was doing its work. "And that it was a delight to the eyes" — there the lust of the eyes comes out. "And that the tree was to be desired to make one wise" — there the pride of life shows itself.

Eve, by going on listening to the tempter's words, more and more lost the authority of God's word, which at first she knew clearly and felt to be supreme… Eve, when tempted, was at length drawn away by lust, by the desire to have what God forbade, and was enticed. She used her eyes against the word, and saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes. Emboldened by this she reflected that the tree was desirable to make wise. So desire, having conceived, gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is finished, brings forth death.

Here was the root of all evil. She judged for herself. Independence means rejecting God and accepting Satan. She never imagined that — and neither did her husband, or the children who came after them. Self-will blinds the eyes to God and to things as they are. It sees nothing but the beauty and advantage of what it wants. In truth it is leaving God's service for Satan's slavery.

And now she becomes the active instrument of sin, "and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate." The man was not deceived (1 Tim. 2:14); but all the more shame to him for following the woman (who was deceived), against the truth of God. Natural affection often becomes the means of drawing the heart away from God.

The ruin was complete. Distrust of God's love, unbelief of His truth, disregard of His glory in seizing it, brought in open self-will and transgression. And so it has been ever since, with ever increasing corruption. For Adam was head of the human race and involved his descendants in his own evil. He became a father only after he was a sinner.

The first man had yielded to the enemy's seduction through his wife. Would the second man stand? The first fell by eating the forbidden fruit. He had no excuse for what he did. In the Garden of Eden he had everything he could want… Luke presents the three temptations in a moral order. They match the temptations that seduced Eve, which Scripture describes as "the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life" (1 John 2:16)… He did resist, showing the most perfect obedience to the Word of God. Adam and Eve had the word for their day. Eve knew it, and quoted it; but they did not keep it. Had they done that, it would have kept them.

Their eyes were opened — but not in the way they had imagined. They had expected to see new things and feel new delights. Instead they saw what they had been happily unaware of until then: they were naked! Their innocence had needed no veil. Shame is one of sin's first fruits. So is the felt need for a covering — from each other and from themselves.

The Lord God had arranged it so that in and through the fall, man would get something he did not have before: a conscience, a knowledge of both good and evil… Satan had utterly deceived the woman. He had said, "your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." But he left out a vital part of the truth. They would know good without the power to do it. They would know evil without the power to avoid it.

God knows good and evil, but He is Supreme over it all. Man, as a sinner, knows good and evil too. But he is a creature, and in owning that knowledge he is subject to evil. He knows good and evil by being subject to it, by having sinned. God is also the source of all good, and He knows all evil as something outside Himself, not part of Himself. Man is the receiver of all good, and he knows evil as something in himself, and he is subject to it in himself.

Sin had an instant effect on our first parents: "the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths," or girdles. There was the sense of shame as well as of guilt, and they sought to hide it from themselves and from each other.

As soon as sin entered the world, Adam and his wife tried to hide their nakedness from the eyes of their Creator. It did not work… An apron made from fig leaves must have been patchwork indeed! This is the first mention of the fig leaf in the Bible. Later it becomes a symbol of man's good works (so called), the outward profession of religion. Yet when Adam wore his fig leaf apron and found himself in the presence of God, he was the first to condemn it and treat it as if it did not exist.

Leaves speak of profession without fruit, and they last only a short time… A man may gather the best and brightest leaves of human worth and righteousness. He may stitch them together with clever workmanship — religious, social, moral, intellectual. But it all leaves him naked when the living God draws near. No covering that man has devised can give a moment's boldness in the presence of a holy God.

This is the difference between true Christianity and human religiousness. Christianity rests on a man being clothed. Religion rests on his being naked. What religion has for its goal, Christianity has for its starting post. A true Christian does everything because he is clothed — perfectly clothed. A merely religious person does everything so that he may be clothed.

How different is their clothing now! Before, they wore an "apron" with not one stitch of God's in it, and the whole thing was poor human effort. Now each one wears a "coat" with not one stitch of man's in it, for the Lord God made the fitting garment and gave it to them. What grace! … Adam's need then was no greater than yours is right now. And God is as willing to clothe you now as He was to clothe Adam and Eve.