Why did Adam and Eve sin?

Satan begins then by producing distrust in God, and so stirring man's will into activity in lust and disobedience. Never does the enemy lead one to think of the goodness of God nor of man's obedience. The woman knew right well that she ought not to eat of the tree, and that mischief must be the result; yet she ate, and gave to her husband with her, and he did eat (v. 1-6). Thus sin is the self-will that sprang from the unbelief which doubted God. By this means Satan made a breach; he persuaded Eve that God kept something for Himself, for fear that His creature should be too happy and too blessed. But Eve was wrong in listening to Satan; she ought not for a moment to have attended to the voice which insinuated distrust in God.

God has warned man of the consequences of sin, as Adam, "in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die." But Satan, who seeks always to deny the righteousness of God, says to the woman, "ye shall not surely die; for God doth know that in the day that ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." Nor was this altogether untrue. The fall has rendered man much more intelligent relatively to good and evil. But Satan hid from man that he should be separated from God and have a bad conscience. "And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig-leaves together, and made themselves aprons" (v. 7). They acquired a knowledge that shewed them their nakedness, which they strove to conceal from the eyes of themselves and each other. All that is brought near us appears to us more important and greater than what is still far off. The forbidden tree being near Eve, and the judgment of God being distant, she took of the fruit, and ate.

Remark too how complete was the fall and separation from God. God had fully blessed; Satan suggests that God keeps back the best gift out of envy, lest man should be like Him. Man trusts Satan for kindness rather than God, whom he judges according to Satan's lie. He believes Satan instead of God, when he tells him he should not die, as God said he should, and casts off the God who had blessed him, to gratify his lusts. Not trusting God, he uses his own will to seek happiness by, as a surer way, as men do now.

When Satan talked Eve into believing that God was withholding something good from her, she began to distrust God. He had told Adam that if they ate the forbidden fruit they would die (Gen. 2:17). But Eve looked at the forbidden tree and decided that it was "good for food, pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise" (Gen. 3:6). She relied on her own judgment instead of yielding to God's. What unhappiness she plunged herself into!

56 Now in this is included every principle in which God could be dishonoured by man in the position in which Adam then stood. And how did he act? When he saw (or she saw, which is the same for our purpose) "that the tree was good for food, and pleasant to the eyes, and to be desired to make one wise," he did eat it, in positive and known disobedience to God's command; he acted on the present enjoyment, without any regard to consequences; and the world has ever since acted precisely on the same principles, and precisely on the same grounds: are they condemned?

The woman could have been protected from her serious fall if she had referred the matter to her husband, who had been given the place of headship. Because she ignored this she was deceived into deliberate disobedience to God. She saw the tree was good for food: it appealed to her taste. It was pleasant to the eyes: it appealed to her sight. It was desirable to make one wise: it appealed to her pride (See 1 John 2:16). She therefore trusted her own inclinations and ignored the word of God (v. 6). Before consulting her husband she ate the fruit of the tree. Then she gave some to her husband, who also ate of it. She was deceived, but he knew better: he sinned knowing well he was wrong (1 Tim. 2:14). Perhaps sympathy for his wife also prompted him. It is useless to ask what might have happened if he refused to eat after she had eaten: we do not know, for both of them were guilty of disobedience. Their eyes were opened to become ashamed of their nakedness (v. 7). Thus the work of conscience is to expose us to ourselves. By Adam's fall he acquired a conscience, and all mankind has inherited this. Every culture in the world, whether high or low has since been afflicted by a guilt complex, and cannot escape it by any other means than the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

Far otherwise was it as yet with our first parents. "And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat" (vers. 11, 12). What glaring disrespect and ingratitude to God! What utter lack of affection and compassionate care for his wife, whom he ought to have led and shielded if he could from evil, instead of following her into it! What unworthy and impudent reflection on Him Who gave the woman as a helpmeet for his good, not as an excuse for disobeying God! To hear Him was his first and known duty, even before she was made. Both the man and the woman knew the prohibition of the LORD God; both were fully aware of the penalty of disobeying; and both consciously rebelled, though separately, she quite deceived, he not so yet persuaded by her, preferring the creature to the Creator Who had set them blessed in responsibility to Himself.

It is hard to conceive aught lower, and withal more insolent, than the answer of the man:- "The woman whom Thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat." On the surface the words might be true; morally they were false, unworthy, and irreverent, yea blasphemous. Adam was so debased by sin as to seek to excuse himself by the woman's fault, and even to throw the blame on the LORD God; the woman only pleaded the serpent's craft. Neither felt or confessed personal wrong any more than disloyalty to God. The excuses only proved their guilt, and could not but be their conviction. Thus Adam was condemned expressly because he hearkened to his wife's voice (ver. 17); and enmity was put between the serpent and the woman, who had sorrow multiplied instead of the pleasure she sought.

Here was the root of all evil. She judged for herself. Independence means rejecting God and accepting Satan, though she, like her husband and future children, thought of nothing less. Selfwill blinds the eyes to God and things as they are, and sees nothing but the fairness and advantage of what it seeks; in truth it is abandoning God's service for Satan's slavery. Verily, verily, said our Lord to the Jews, whosoever commits (or rather practises) sin is slave of sin; and the slave abides not in the house for ever; the son abides for ever. If the Son therefore make you free, ye shall be free indeed. Abiding in His word is the grand test. There only is the truth known, which makes free even a slave. On the other hand the devil was. a murderer from the beginning and stands not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. He is a liar, and the father of it as we see here; and this not only by direct opposition to God's word, but by a partial and cunning misuse of it which wholly misleads those that parley and listen when he pleads for disobedience. He that is of God hears God's words. This Christ pre-eminently did, but not our first parent. She saw, reasoned, and was conquered. What she knew well, what she had repeated to the serpent, faded from before her mind. She acted from herself, under the instigation of the devil, and boldly rebelled against Jehovah Elohim. "She took of the fruit and ate." What a contrast with Him Who did nothing from Himself but as His Father taught Him! He spoke the words of light and truth and love; and He that sent Him was with Him; He left Christ not alone, for He was ever doing the things that please Him.

But the mischief alas! did not end there. She "gave also to her husband with her, and he ate." Mankind was now fallen. Cleverly had Satan planned his temptation. He addressed himself to the weaker vessel, and deceived her as we have seen. He left it to the woman to draw the man into her error; and we are told by authority beyond appeal, by the apostle Paul, that "Adam was not deceived." This is characteristic. The woman was deceived, not the man. So says the Holy Spirit in the Epistle. We perhaps might have failed so to infer from the ancient record, but feel none the less assured that the difference is true and important, as appears from the application of it to Timothy. The man without being deceived was entangled by his affection, and shared her transgression to universal ruin. Affection is an excellent bond and a great support when it works in God's order. But here all was out of course. The woman acted first in weak but known opposition to the divine word, and also, as compared with her husband, was not subject to him as became her. He followed, instead of directing her, in too bold disobedience, and so must share the punishment she had incurred. God was not in his thoughts. Satan triumphed for the while, always doomed to defeat in the end.

How then did he approach Adam? Through Eve, the weaker vessel. It was but a question, as if surprised, at most an insinuation. "Is it so that Elohim has said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden"? If He made and pronounced all very good, why keep back any? Is this love? Did Elohim really say this? Are you not mistaken? Distrust of God and His goodness was his first effort. And it will be noticed that he carefully withholds the title of divine relationship, Jehovah Elohim, vers. 1, 5, and ensnares Eve into fatal forgetfulness of it, ver. 3, in a section which everywhere else carefully maintains it: phraseology consistent with moral purpose, not at all so with an Elohist scribe, a Jehovist, a junior Elohist, a redactor, or any of the other fancied actors in the rationalistic farce. Scripture tells things simply as they were with the calm and simplicity of divine truth.

1892 145 The procedure of the enemy 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 Jehovah Elohim. Why then parley a moment more 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. She was deceived. Her obvious and urgent duty was to repulse the malicious overture with indignation.

Genesis 3. It was by subtlety, not by force, that man was overcome. No force could have overcome him, had not he himself departed, as he was induced by deception to do, from God. How important to examine God's whole word, seeing that it is so near the close of scripture as Revelation 12 that we have an explicit declaration as to who "the serpent" is of whom we here read so near the beginning of the inspired record! How evident, from the mode of the enemy's attack, that faith is the root and spring of all obedience in the creature, even in innocence, as well as that which receives the Saviour and His great salvation when man has fallen! No wonder that such stress is laid on it as the fundamental principle of the Christian's life, walk, endurance, and victory. Perfect confidence in God's goodness would have assured our first parents, though they knew nothing of the reason for the prohibition, that it must be, and was, for their good and happiness. They would then have repelled the base insinuation against God's goodness, implied rather than expressed in the artful question, "Yea, hath God said?" etc. How much more was contained in such an inquiry than appears on the surface!

Looking back over the past six thousand years of human history, three special occasions may be clearly marked when men were called upon, in the most pointed manner, to choose between God and Satan. On each occasion they made "the wretched choice." Turn first to Gen. 3. There we have Adam and his wife in the garden, surrounded by everything that was calculated to fill their hearts with joy and gladness. They had every inducement to remain loyal to their God. One simple condition was laid upon them as a test of their obedience — of the fruit of the tree which was in the midst of the garden they were not to eat. The consequence of rebellion was clearly stated: "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." Presently the tempter came along, and, after a short parley with the woman, he boldly said: "Ye shall not surely die." This language made the position perfectly plain. It was a question of "whom will you believe" — God or Satan? Alas, for the decision! Our first parents decided to credit the tempter rather than the Creator, with all the dire results of which the world is full to this hour. Ever since that day in Eden infidelity has been inherent in the human heart; man would prefer to believe anyone rather than his God.