How did the knowledge of good and evil make man like God (Genesis 3:22)?

Philosophy or fear of philosophers has misled very many to conceive that the utterance here received was a taunt on man's groundless pretension and an exposure of Satan's cheat. But scripture is plain, and the truth important. Opposition assumes to it what is false, that unfallen man already knew good and evil. He was innocent and upright, but is never said then to be righteous or holy. Nor could he be so called; for both suppose knowledge of good and evil, which he as yet had not and only got through transgression. In truth such a knowledge would have been useless in, not to say, incompatible with, an unfallen nature and world, where he had only good to enjoy in thankfulness to God, avoiding but one tree because God forbade it. There was not, as afterwards, a moral government as to good and evil, which man could discern intrinsically apart from an outward law. And that special law under which man innocent was placed consisted solely in not eating of a tree which was prohibited, not because the fruit was in itself evil, but simply as a test of subjection to God. It was a question of death by disobedience. Disobedient, he lost paradise as well as life; but he acquired the knowledge of good and evil with that of his own guilt. Their eyes were opened, as we saw; they knew that they were naked, and were ashamed. "The man is become as one of us, knowing good and evil." Sense of responsibility he had; but now, when fallen, he could distinguish things as good and evil in themselves. He had along with guilt the moral sense to pronounce this wrong and that right; he had conscience, sad but most useful monitor ever present when man was fallen from God.

By the fall man got the knowledge of good and evil, that is, the intrinsic perception of right and wrong apart from prescription; or as Jehovah Elohim said (Gen. 3:22), "Behold, the man is become as one of us to know good and evil!" In Adam fresh from God's hand the knowledge of good and evil would have been a defect, a moral inconsistency, and therefore an impossibility. Before the fall he had conscience solely in the sense of responsibility to obey, not at all in the way of accusing or else excusing self. Only when he sinned, and thus lost his innocence, did he gain the moral power of knowing good and evil of himself, hence forth his sad, painful, but most useful monitor. Before that, he was naturally enjoying divine goodness in its creative effects, under the test, not of resisting things intrinsically evil, but of a single restriction from God which made eating the forbidden fruit wrong: a state wholly different from ours. The fall changed for evil the whole ground of standing. Propitiation with life in Christ is a still deeper and higher change for good, even though in fact the old man yet abides and is altogether evil in itself. Christianity is no mere restoration of man, but eternal life in Christ and eternal redemption.

In his original estate man was created in God's image, but he had not the knowledge of good and evil. This he acquired by the fall. After this he could estimate and know things himself as good or evil; whilst innocent this could not be. A holy being might and does so know, i.e., a being who, while knowing, has an intrinsic nature that repels the evil and cleaves to the good. But this was not Adam's state, but simply made upright, with absence and ignorance of evil. When fallen he acquired the internal capacity of knowing right from wrong, apart from a law to inform or forbid; and in this respect became like God at the very time when he lost God and intercourse with Him as an innocent creature. We thus learn the compatibility of these two things, which in fact were true of man — a fall from the relationship of innocence, in which he was originally set with God, and a rise in moral capacity, which, without faith, entails immense misery, but which is of the utmost value when one is brought to God by our Lord Jesus.

Verse 22 bears further witness to the truth of the Trinity, the Lord God speaking of Himself as "Us." Since, as He says, the man had become "like one of Us" in knowing good and evil, He was concerned that the man might eat of the tree of life and live forever in the condition he had chosen for himself. For now he knew good and evil (and only in this way being like God), yet, unlike God, he had the inclination to choose the evil rather than the good. How tragic it would be to live forever in such a condition!

Verse 22 bears further witness to the truth of the Trinity, the Lord God speaking of Himself as “Us.” Since, as He says, the man had become “like one of Us” in knowing good and evil, He was concerned that the man might eat of the tree of life and live forever in the condition he had chosen for himself. For now he knew good and evil (and only in this way being like God), yet, unlike God, he had the inclination to choose the evil rather than the good. How tragic it would be to live forever in such a condition!

This is borne witness to in what is told us about the immediate effect of the fall upon man. He then acquired what he had not before, "the knowledge of good and evil;" and it is well if we weigh the importance of this word, so that we may understand it. For it does not speak of a knowledge of good and a knowledge of evil, as though these were two distinct subjects of knowledge with which man then became acquainted, or even two separate departments of knowledge, or as though man had previously known what good was in itself, or what evil was in itself, and now had become practically acquainted with that which he already knew theoretically. It speaks of good and evil as so bound up in one apprehension, that, though it were the knowledge of two opposing principles which was acquired, yet it was but one perception, the perception of them as opposed to one another; both principles were of necessity included in one idea with which man became acquainted at that moment. For "the knowledge of good and evil" is the perception of it in itself without a law, or its being imposed. God does know, doubtless, good and evil according to the perfection of His own nature. But it is a condition of His nature to discern it; it was not of Adam's before his fall. He was innocent; he enjoyed God's goodness unsuspectingly, and did nothing else. There was no occasion to discern, nor capacity to do so. In the fall he acquired this capacity. He could now say, This is good, and that evil; but he was under sin. So that in this knowledge of good and evil we have a "capacity to discern right and wrong — a real moral condition of mind, but which is not subject to forms of thought, because it is not a question of thought. It is in the nature of relationship, and may in us be misled by thought."

*"What Satan gave as a promise to man, God pronounced to be true, but man had it by disobedience. He knew evil in guilt, he knew it in disobedience, he knew it in the admitted power of sin over his soul, he knew it as a creature over whom it had power, he knew it by and with a bad conscience. God knows good and evil, but He knows it by the infinite and intrinsic possession of good, and Himself being good, and therefore knows evil as that which is infinitely repudiated by Him; and in this therefore His holiness is infinitely seen. This knowledge of good and evil may be darkened in its judgment, because a false rule or guide may be introduced. God may give up to a reprobate mind, or Satan introduce a law of darkness, having power to deceive or blend, which is not God's, and which may be made its estimate of right; but the knowledge of good and evil is inherent in fallen human nature. Man unfallen was innocent, he knew not evil, but only beneficent good. Fallen man knows evil, with a conscience subject to judgment and hating God."

As to Conscience and the Fall, it is, in one point of view, the result of the Fall. Man is set in an anomalous state, they are "as gods," "as one of us," in one sense; they have the knowledge of good and evil, but with this immense difference - God knows good and evil, but is as Supreme over it all; man, as a sinner, knows good and evil, but as a creature, in owning it, is subject to evil, he knows good and evil by being subject to it, by having sinned. God, moreover, the source of all good, knows all evil as something without, not of, Himself; man, the receiver of all good, knows it as in himself, subject to it in himself.

Here, too, we have the manner of it — "through the knowledge of him that hath called us by glory and virtue." It is not merely certain things around us. When the various animals came before him, Adam knew and gave the appropriate name for each animal that was put under his dominion. He discerned their nature, and assigned to them designations, according to the wisdom with which God endowed him. But our privilege is to know Him who has called us. It is the knowledge of God Himself, and of God Himself, not merely as a Creator, but as the God of all grace. "Through the knowledge of him that hath called us by glory and virtue." What did Adam know then about these things? There was not even a question of a "call" of God in Adam's case at that time. There could not be the call of a man unfallen. Calling does not apply to an innocent, but necessarily to a fallen, creature; because calling means that God speaks to take that creature out of the condition in which he then is, and put him into a better. Adam was to magnify God by honouring Him where he was, and by enjoying what was given around him, not by seeking something unseen or greater, and that was why Adam, seeking in disobedience to be greater, lost everything he had so bountifully. Listening to Eve, and really to the devil, he sought to be as God; but in this vain search after becoming as God, he became a sinner. In a certain sense he did become as God, namely, as knowing good and evil; but this is what the creature, as such, could not bear. Only God can have in Himself the knowledge of good and evil, without leaving the good and falling under the power of the evil. If the creature, left to itself, have the knowledge of good and evil, the result is that the evil overpowers and carries him away: he gives up the good, and falls a prey to the evil. The intuitive knowledge of good and evil, apart from law, was what Adam gained by sin. This is not lost to the Christian.

Let us now inquire how far Adam and Eve realised the serpent's promised advantage. This inquiry will lead us to a deeply important point in connection with the fall of man. The Lord God had so ordered it, that in and by the fall, man should get, what previously, he had not, and that was, a conscience, a knowledge of both good and evil. This, man, evidently, could not have had before. He could not have known ought about evil, inasmuch as evil was not there to be known. He was in a state of innocence, which is a state of ignorance of evil. Man got a conscience in, and by, fall; and we find that the very first effect of conscience was to make him a coward. Satan had utterly deceived the woman. He had said, "your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil! But he had left out a material part of the truth, that they should know good, without the power to do it; and that they should know evil, without the power to avoid it. Their very attempt to elevate themselves in the scale of moral existence, involved the lose of true elevation. They became degraded, powerless, Satan-enslaved, conscience-smitten, terrified, creatures. "The eyes of them both were opened," no doubt; but alas! to what a sight! It was only to discover their own nakedness. They opened their eyes upon their own condition, which was "wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked." "They knew that they were naked" — sad fruit of the tree of knowledge! It was not any fresh knowledge of divine excellence they had attained, no fresh beam of divine light from the pure and eternal fountain thereof — alas! no; the very earliest result of their disobedient effort after knowledge, was the discovery, that they were naked.