Tag Archives: The Fall

Heaven

What Will It Mean for the Curse to Be Lifted?

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In the Book of Genesis we read that after Adam and Eve sinned against God, God pronounced a curse on them and all creation. “Cursed is the ground [earth] because of you” (Genesis 3: 17). Mankind would be subject to “painful toil” among “thorns and thistles.” After a difficult life, men and women would die, returning to the ground from which they were made.

Randy Alcorn, in his book Heaven, looks at the plan God set in motion to redeem his creation from the curse brought on by human sin. Regarding the connection between human sins and the earth, Alcorn writes,

Our welfare is inseparable from Earth’s welfare. Our destiny is inseparable from Earth’s destiny. That’s why the curse on mankind required that the earth be cursed and why the earth will also be resurrected when we are resurrected. The Curse will be reversed.

How did God deal with the curse? Through Christ.

As a result of the Curse, the first Adam could no longer eat from the tree of life, which presumably would have made him live forever in his sinful state (Genesis 3:22). Death, though a curse in itself, was also the only way out from under the Curse— and that only because God had come up with a way to defeat death and restore mankind’s relationship with him.

Christ came to remove the curse of sin and death (Romans 8:2). He is the second Adam, who will undo the damage wrought by the first Adam (1 Corinthians 15: 22, 45; Romans 5:15-19). In the Cross and the Resurrection, God made a way not only to restore his original design for mankind but also to expand it.

What will the New Earth, with the curse removed, look like?

In our resurrection bodies, we will again dwell on Earth— a New Earth— completely free of the Curse. Unencumbered by sin, human activity will lead naturally to a prosperous and magnificent culture. Under the Curse, human culture has not been eliminated, but it has been severely hampered by sin, death, and decay.

Before the Fall, food was readily available with minimal labor. Time was available to pursue thoughtful aesthetic ideas, to work for the sheer pleasure of it, to please and glorify God by developing skills and abilities.

But since the Fall, it’s been a sad tale for mankind.

[G]enerations have lived and died after spending most of their productive years eking out an existence in the pursuit of food, shelter, and protection against theft and war. Mankind has been distracted and debilitated by sickness and sin. Our cultural development has likewise been stunted and twisted, and sometimes misdirected— though not always.

Is everything that mankind has accomplished since the Fall sinful and evil? Has the Curse wiped out 100% of the goodness God introduced into his original creation?

Even though our depravity means we have no virtue that makes us worthy of our standing before God, we are nevertheless “made in God’s likeness” (James 3:9). Consequently, some things we do, even in our fallenness, such as painting, building, performing beautiful music, finding cures for diseases, and other cultural, scientific , commercial, and aesthetic pursuits, are good. The removal of the Curse means that people, culture, the earth, and the universe will again be as God intended.

Alcorn reminds us of the terrible price that Christ paid for removing the curse:

“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us” (Galatians 3: 13, ESV). God’s law shows us how far short we fall. But Jesus took on himself the curse of sin, satisfying God’s wrath. By taking the Curse upon himself and defeating it through his resurrection, Jesus guaranteed the lifting of the Curse from mankind and from the earth.

The removal of the Curse will be as thorough and sweeping as the redemptive work of Christ. In bringing us salvation, Christ has already undone some of the damage in our hearts, but in the end he will finally and completely restore his entire creation to what God originally intended (Romans 8:19-21). Christ will turn back the Curse and restore to humanity all that we lost in Eden, and he will give us much more besides.

Bible Interpretation, Books of the Bible, Sunday School

Commentary on Genesis 3 (The Fall)

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Post Author: Bill Pratt 

Genesis 3 describes the rebellion of Adam and Eve against God and the immediate consequences of that rebellion.  In verses 1-7, we see Eve being tempted by a serpent, which the author describes as crafty.  Later in the Bible, in the book of Revelation, this serpent is identified as Satan.  The serpent tells Eve that she can become like God, knowing good from evil, if she will only eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the tree that God forbade Adam and Eve to eat from.  The serpent also denies that Eve will die, as God warned.

In essence, Eve wants to gain wisdom that she thinks God is withholding from her.  She takes the fruit from the tree and then gives some to Adam, who also eats the fruit.  Instead of becoming like God in wisdom, disaster occurred.  Before eating the fruit, they were unashamed of their naked bodies, but after eating the fruit, they became ashamed and hid themselves from each other and God.

God had already given them every good thing they would ever need, but they instead desired to know good and evil apart from God.  They thought they could improve themselves by eating from the tree that God had forbidden.  They doubted God’s promise of the consequences of their disobedience, and they believed the serpent’s lies.

In verses 8-13, God confronts Adam and Eve with their disobedience.  Notice what has changed.  Before, Adam and Eve conversed with God openly in the garden, and now they are hiding from him, out of shame.  Their newly gained knowledge of good and evil has not made them more like God, it has distanced them from God.  Not only are they distanced from God, but Adam now blames Eve for giving him the fruit, and he even blames God for creating Eve in the first place.  What a difference!

In verses 14-19, God explains to Adam and Eve the consequences of their disobedience.  The serpent is cursed, but in this curse God promises that Eve’s offspring will battle with the serpent’s offspring, and one day Eve’s descendant will crush the serpent – a foreshadowing of Jesus’s victory over Satan on the cross.

There were also consequences for Eve and all women after her.  First, the joy of childbirth would now be mixed with extreme pain.  Second, the perfect marital relationship that Adam and Eve possessed would be corrupted.  As Eugene Peterson paraphrases God’s message to Eve, “You’ll want to please your husband, but he’ll lord it over you.”

There were also consequences for Adam.  Because of his disobedience, the ground would be cursed, which meant that he would have to work extremely hard to get any food out of the ground.  In the garden, food was provided by God, but now man would have to “sweat in the fields from dawn to dusk.”

Finally, in verses 20-24 God banishes Adam and Eve from the garden so that they cannot eat of the tree of life, and live forever.  In addition, they would also be cut off from God’s immediate presence they had enjoyed in the garden.  The one silver lining is that God did not destroy the garden, so we are left with hope that some day we will be able to re-enter it.

Evil, Pain, and Suffering, Free Will, Sin

Why Does a Good Creature Choose Evil?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Since the Fall, we know why people choose evil – we are all born with original sin that saturates our soul.  The Fall, however, does not explain why Adam and Eve, or even Satan, used their free will to choose evil, to reject God.

This question may never be answered this side of heaven with any certainty, but William Dembski offers some interesting thoughts about the subject in his latest book, The End of Christianity: Finding a Good God in an Evil World.  Here is Dembski’s stab at this persistent mystery:

Perhaps the best we can do is offer a psychological explanation: Precisely because a created will belongs to a creature, that creature, if sufficiently reflective, can reflect on its creaturehood and realize that it is not God.  Creaturehood implies constraints to which the Creator is not subject.  This may seem unfair (certainly it is not egalitarian).  The question then naturally arises, Has God the Creator denied to the creature some freedom that might benefit it?  Adam and Eve thought the answer to this question was yes (God, it seemed, had denied them the freedom to know good and evil).

As soon as the creature answers yes to this question, its will turns against God.  Once that happens, the will becomes evil.  Whereas previously evil was merely a possibility, now it has become a reality.  In short, the problem of evil starts when creatures think God is evil for “cramping their style.”  The impulse of our modern secular culture to cast off restraint wherever possible finds its root here.

Interesting thoughts.  The creature, in effect, thinks that God is holding out on him, that what God has offered is not as good as what it should be.  Out of humanity, only the man Jesus was ever content with what God gave him, which is why he is the model we are all to emulate.

Creation

Was There Death Before Adam?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt 

One of the most popular arguments from young earth creationists (YEC’s) that the “days” of Genesis must be 24-hour days is that if the “days” represent long periods of time (millions or billions of years), then there must have been animal death before the Fall of Adam and Eve.  According to YEC’s, there could not have been any death before the Fall.  Because of this, they argue that old earth creationists (OEC’s), who believe the earth is 4 1/2 billion years old, must be incorrect.  An old earth would necessitate animal death before Adam and Eve’s Fall.

For many years, I heard this argument and just assumed that there must be some passages in the Bible that plainly state that there was a complete absence of death before the Fall.  I never bothered to look for myself.  Then, a couple years ago, I decided to actually look up the verses that are cited to show that there was no death before the Fall.  The two most common are Rom. 5:12 and 1 Cor. 15:20-22.

“Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned” (Rom. 5:12)

“But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.  For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man.  For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive” (1 Cor. 15:20-22)

Now, if you just read these two passages without ever having been told what they mean, it seems to me that they are clearly speaking of human death, not death of animals.  In fact, if you read these verses in context with the surrounding verses, you can easily see that the text is speaking of human sin and human death.  I cannot imagine how someone can interpret these verses to be talking about general animal death.  Animals cannot sin and animals are not redeemed by Christ, but that is exactly what these passages are referring to.  If you don’t believe me, go read the passages in context.  See for yourself.

If YEC’s want to prove that there was no animal death (OEC’s agree there was no human death) before the Fall, then they need to point to some other passages in Scripture.  Rom. 5:12 and 1 Cor. 15:20-22 just do not make their case at all.