Commentaries:
The nature God created in man was originally not just "good" but "very good." It was not corrupt.
When they were created, Adam and his wife Eve had pure minds. Certainly, as fleshly beings, they had physical drives that tend to pull in a selfish direction—drives to feed themselves, protect themselves, etc. They were innocent, however, in their pursuit to satisfy these drives. While in this state, God gave them a couple of very specific commands: to tend and keep the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2:15), but not to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil upon pain of death (verse 17).
Their idyllic, innocent life ended with the temptation of Eve by the cunning serpent (Genesis 3:1-5), who was God's—and now humanity's—great adversary, Satan the Devil, in disguise (Revelation 12:9). God reveals the Devil's origin in Isaiah 14:12-15 and Ezekiel 28:12-17: He was created as a marvelous and powerful angel, a cherub who covered God's throne with his wings, yet whose ambition and pride "corrupted his wisdom" and led him to attempt to attack God's throne and usurp His authority over all creation. As mighty as this archangel was, no mere creature can defeat God, so the Almighty cast this now-fallen angel down to earth in ruin, along with one-third of his fellows whom he had persuaded to his cause (Revelation 12:4). It was this being, speaking through a serpent, who was "in Eden, the garden of God" (Ezekiel 28:13), intent on corrupting God's newest creatures before they could even begin following God's way of life.
The serpent immediately sowed doubt and confusion in Eve's mind by questioning God's command. As she fumbled through her reply, he accused God of deceit, saying, "You will not surely die" (Genesis 3:4) if she ate the forbidden fruit. Then he threw his ace, as it were, contradicting God, urging her that just the opposite would happen: ". . . in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil" (verse 5).
Satan played the oldest trick in the book, stroking her vanity to desire to be equal with God through disobedience, and she ate the fruit. Though not deceived (I Timothy 2:14), Adam weakly followed his wife's lead into sin. In this moment, carnal human nature—what all human beings now possess—was created.
Human nature generally follows the course it took with Eve, as explained in Genesis 3:7: The fruit of the forbidden tree looked good, she desired to eat it, and she saw how it could benefit her, so she partook of it despite God's command. The apostle John calls this "the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life" in I John 2:16, commenting that it is "not of the Father but is of the world." The apostle Paul reminds us of sin's penalty: "The wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23), just as God had warned them.
The deed was done; they could not "unbite" the fruit. They had chosen to follow the lies of Satan rather than the commands of God, and the course of this world was set. God sent them out of Eden, blocking their way back should they ever desire to return to take of the Tree of Life and live eternally in sin (Genesis 3:22-24). Because of their rebellion, God let humanity go its own way, as Paul explains in Romans 1:28: "And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting."
Now all of humanity, except for those few whom God calls to redeem (John 6:44), are open to the selfish and rebellious attitudes of Satan the Devil,
the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others." (Ephesians 2:2-3)
Because human beings have a spirit, they can "tune in" to the spirit broadcast by the Adversary, and without the resistance that only God's Holy Spirit can offer, all fall under its influence without exception. As they continue to listen to it as they grow up, it becomes their nature, a miniature copy of Satan's.
However, if we have been called, accepted Jesus Christ as Savior, and pledged ourselves to Him for His use through baptism, Paul writes, "Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God" (I Corinthians 2:12). Redemption through Christ is the only cure for corrupt human nature, and even then it takes a lifetime to learn to resist the pulls of that nature and instead do God's will (Galatians 5:16-25; James 4:7-10). It can be done, for Jesus Himself said, "With God all things are possible" (Matthew 19:26).
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
How Human Nature Came to Be
Mother Eve, when she observed the fruit of the forbidden Tree of Knowledge, became convinced that it looked desirable to the eye, having an outwardly pleasing form, but she soon found out that the inner core contained death. By looking at surface appearances only, the entire human race has fallen for deceit, duplicity, and slickness ever since.
By contrast, goodness or genuineness does not reside on the outside, but deep within the core. Whether we are looking at fruit, automobiles, computers, or people, we must concern ourselves more with the subdermal, what is under the hood, rather than the outward appearance.
Sometimes we use "sincere" as a synonym for "goodness" or "genuineness." Sincere has an interesting etymology. Two Latin words, sin, meaning "without," and cerus, meaning "wax," make up the composite term. It seems that in ancient times, when a marble column or a statue began to show cracks, the fissures would be masked with resin, pitch, or a type of wax. The artisan intended to deceive by concealing the cracks. Sincere, however, means "having nothing to hide"—what you see is what you get. Insincere suggests that someone is concealing a flaw, making something appear to have quality when it, in truth, is defective.
In its raw, natural state, the inner core of mankind is rotten and detestable, "deceitful above all things" (Jeremiah 17:9). God realized that the human heart would have an inclination toward evil, even though human lips would outwardly proclaim its goodness (Deuteronomy 5:29-30). The Almighty thus designed human beings so that character development would proceed from the inside out. In Hebrews 8:10 and 10:16 (a quotation from Jeremiah 31:33), God reveals the process through which the wickedness of carnal human beings may become transformed into the wholesome goodness of godly character: "I will put my laws in their minds and write it on their hearts."
We cannot expect goodness to emerge any other way than from the inside out. In scientific terms, we could say that the genotype—the inherent, genetic constitution of a thing—always determines the phenotype—its visible properties. Jesus Christ suggests this in Matthew 7:18, "A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit." James makes a similar comment, "Can a fig tree, my brethren, bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs?" (James 3:12).
Motivational expert Stephen Covey states the same principle in aphorisms: "You can't have the fruits without the roots," and "You can't change the fruit without changing the roots." The process of conversion begins on the inside and works outward, beginning with a regeneration by God's Holy Spirit (Ephesians 1:13-14), which automatically resets our genotypes to begin displacing our innate carnality with godly character.
In The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Covey identifies two warring paradigms that now compete for our society's hearts and minds: the personality ethic versus the character ethic. Public figures from the President to the city commissioner have attempted to discard the character ethic, replacing it with the personality ethic. In this context, character no longer matters, as charm and personality can win the support of the gullible masses. We have now experienced a whole generation of "press box politicians" who, having no ethical core or genuine convictions, rely totally on opinion polls, buzz words, or current trends for leadership direction, pandering to the basest of human instincts.
Contrasting the results of the personality ethic with the character ethic, Covey warns, "If our words and our actions come from superficial human relations techniques (the personality ethic) rather than from our core (the character ethic), others will sense that duplicity." In other words, an individual relying only on personality, even if he is trying to express goodness, will be seen for a fraud.
He illustrates the dichotomy between the character ethic and the personality ethic by using an analogy of a baseball as compared to a basketball. A baseball, representing the character ethic, has a firm core, a hard-rubber center that we can compare to God's law. Around this foundational nucleus, layer upon layer of string (representing instruction) is wrapped over time. The horsehide cover compares to the personality, which is firmly stitched to the teaching and the essential core by God's Spirit.
Conversely, a basketball stands for the personality ethic. While it may have a handsome leather cover, nothing supports it but air. Lacking a core, it is inflated, vain, and ostentatious.
Without God's Spirit, the heart of man is hostile to God and His law (Romans 8:7). As we saw earlier, Jeremiah opts for a godly heart transplant, a procedure that Ezekiel also describes:
I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh. Then they will follow My decrees and be careful to keep My laws. They will be My people and I will be their God. (Ezekiel 11:19-20, NIV)
He considers this principle so important that he repeats it in Ezekiel 36:26-27. True goodness can neither be faked nor externally attached to impress another. Without a change in the roots, we cannot hope to see a change in the fruit, yet with God's Spirit placed at our core, the spiritual fruit of goodness (Galatians 5:22) will emanate from within.
David F. Maas
Good to the Core
Clearly, Eve, like Adam, was instructed and warned. In that regard, both were without excuse. Eve adds the prohibition against touching the fruit, and the context shows she admired its beauty, which is not a sin in itself but reveals her intensifying desire for it even before the serpent makes its sales pitch. The problem became much more critical because she listened to the serpent, apparently making no effort to flee the potentially sinful situation. As the Bible reports, she was clearly deceived, but she was thinking right along with the satanic sales pitch, as the desire to eat and be wise grew within her. All these pressures were edging the pair closer to choosing to sin. In doing so, they reaped the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, experiencing the pains of suffering and death.
Adam was guilty of idolatry and of deliberate sin. God directly curses Adam in Genesis 3:17, charging him, “Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, 'You shall not eat of it,' . . . .” He then lists a series of consequences, which would make life more difficult for him. These, of course, affected Eve as well.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Ecclesiastes and Christian Living (Part Fourteen): A Summary
One of the most prominent aspects of mankind's first sin is that in one sense, nothing spectacular happened at all. Lightning did not flash, and thunder did not crash and reverberate through the sky. There was no great earthquake; no huge crevasse opened at their feet and threaten to swallow them. We can take a lesson from this too: Most sins occur beyond the sight and hearing of others, and most people take pains to hide them.
Taking pains to hide one's sins suggests that if no one sees them, a person can get away with them, and nobody is the wiser. Even with this first sin, time seemed to move on as though nothing happened—despite being one of the most momentous events in mankind's history, affecting everybody born since!
Our first parents' sins are the first indication that no sin is done in a vacuum, that a sin can be committed that affects nobody else. In Scripture, sin is typified by leavening. No one must induce leaven to do what God created it to do. Like yeast, sin spreads and infects others.
This process also sets a pattern for God's reaction to sins that we commit. There is almost never any outward indication that one sins. Notice that God called out to them in the cool of the day, suggesting the passage of some time since the sin occurred. It was certainly after they had time to dress themselves in fig leaves. Perhaps God called out to them in late afternoon or early evening.
God certainly did not arrive on the scene in a terrifying manner—with fire, hailstorm, and thunder. Apparently, He was calmly walking. But notice that the Bible indicates that Adam and Eve reacted in terror of meeting with Him. The knowledge of their sin against their wonderful Creator filled them with great anxiety, to say the least. The sins were working internally, creating stresses in anticipation of His reaction. They knew enough about His character to know they had done wrong, and despite knowing they could not hide from Him, they nonetheless still attempted to do it.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Leadership and Covenants (Part Seven)
God's claim on mankind is illustrated by His dealing with Adam and Eve and their response. Biblical Christianity, the true way of life of the Father and Son, has a claim on humanity's attention and loyalty because humans are Their creation and the clear aim of Their concerns from beginning to end in Scripture. In fact, Their message is aimed directly at mankind, indicating that the Father and Son do not hide from humanity.
However, most people ignore Scripture's truths in terms of practical application in daily life. Even the Redeemer's Sermon on the Mount, though admired by many as wonderful advice, is not obeyed but ignored. How do we know this is true? Within His sermon, Jesus states that God has not done away with His law (Matthew 5:17-19), but people ignore His words, doing what satisfies the demands of their desires. Instead, humans follow the pattern established by their original parents. At the beginning, Adam and Eve took of the Forbidden Tree despite God's warning, and most human beings have followed their examples.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Why Hebrews Was Written (Part Ten): Christianity's Claims
In verse 4, Satan slyly convinces Eve that God has lied to them by withholding from them the ability to become "like God, knowing good and evil." God was being unfair, he argues, keeping them from their potential. The passage suggests that, after hearing this, Eve did not hesitate one bit in making her decision. She took the bait without even flinching and ignorantly promoted the interests of Satan by giving the forbidden fruit to her husband. In effect, she signed on to advance Satan's objective—to derail God's plan to create mankind in His spiritual image.
Satan's tack has been the same ever since, even though he must realize that, due to Christ's death and resurrection, he will ultimately lose (Revelation 20:10). While he still has time, he will try to make as many people as he can fail to reach their incredible human potential. He will do whatever is in his power—whatever God allows him to do—to convince them that his way is superior to God's.
For those that have been called by God in this lifetime, we have far more at stake here. If Satan can succeed in deceiving us to advocate for him more and more, he greatly increases our chances of being subject to the second death, the eternal death in the Lake of Fire (Revelation 20:14-15).
Peter warns us of the dangers that Satan poses to God's people: "Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour" (I Peter 5:8). According to the Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament, "sober" (Greek nepho) is a verb found in the New Testament only in the figurative sense, implying "sober watchfulness." In addition, "vigilant" (Greek gregoreuo) means "to keep awake, i.e., watch (literally or figuratively)."
Combining "sober" and "vigilant" paints an interesting word-picture for us. When a person is heavily intoxicated, he wants nothing more than to sleep it off, so it is impossible for the sleeping drunkard to be vigilant about anything. The message for us is that we must be attentive to our physical and spiritual condition so that we do not become spiritually intoxicated. This type of person is exactly the kind whom Satan seeks. If we enter this state, then we make ourselves a prime target to be devoured by the "roaring lion."
Staff
Should a Christian Play Devil's Advocate?
Worldliness has been described as the love of beauty without a corresponding love of righteousness. This is correct, and comes right out of the “original sin” story that is told in Genesis 3:6.
Eve saw that the fruit was good for food, pleasant to the eyes, and something to be desired. These three references concern the appeal of beauty. Unfortunately, as the record clearly shows, Adam and Eve did not love righteousness. Also contained in this sin are inferences of the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life (I John 2:15-17).
The love of beauty and the pulls of temptation are inextricably entwined. People do not ordinarily desire ugly things. We have been made by Almighty God to love beauty and to seek it out even though no one's notion of beauty is exactly the same.
Beauty is being used in a very broad sense, simply as a term for things that are appealing and have the power to create desire within us. Thus, we desire things we deem beautiful, but the problem is that we do not have a corresponding love of righteousness, like Adam and Eve. We will break the laws of God in order to have what we consider beautiful. Sometimes people commit vicious evils to have what they find appealing and beautiful at the time.
Beauty is what is delightful to the senses, gratifying, and evokes admiration and excitement within a person. Therein lies its danger, and it does not matter what one finds delight in.
The result of having a love of beauty without a corresponding love of righteousness is, rather than dressing and keeping as we are commanded to do in Genesis 2, that we use and abuse. Unfortunately, much of this abuse is to our own body.
Adam and Eve were kicked out of the Garden of Eden, the most beautiful spot on earth, because they did not love righteousness. This is a seriously simple, powerful lesson! The beauty was there to behold, even the beauty of the forbidden fruit, luring them. Did God put it there to tempt them into sin? No! He put it there for them to admire and bring glory to the Creator God in their rightful use of it. Instead, they abused their privilege because they did not love righteousness, and the beauty was taken away from them.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Laodiceanism
The first humans failed their test of faith. They trusted what they "saw" rather than believing what God said—His words—and became the first example of man choosing to walk by sight rather than by faith. Humanity has followed this example ever since, proving that Adam and Eve's faithlessness was not an aberration but a trait of every human heart, including ours.
What were the consequences of this sin, this act of faithlessness? The answer is in Genesis 3:24: "So He drove out the man; and He placed cherubim at the east of the garden of Eden, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life."
Adam and Eve's sin of faithlessness destroyed the close relationship they had with God. Because they did not trust Him, their lack of faith put a barrier between themselves and God. The broken trust, faithlessness, ruined that relationship just as it does in our human relationships.
Adam and Eve chose to follow the faithless Satan rather than the faithful God. Satan persuaded them to focus on what they could see rather than what God said. The strategy was so successful that Satan has consistently used it on humanity.
Satan is the prime example of faithlessness. Satan believes God exists, but his is a dead faith because it does not lead to right action. James 2:19-20, from the New Living Translation, forcefully points out the futility and foolishness of Satan's faith: "Do you still think it's enough just to believe that there is one God? Well, even the demons believe this, and they tremble in terror! Fool! When will you ever learn that faith that does not result in good deeds is useless?"
Pat Higgins
Faith—What Is It?
Other Forerunner Commentary entries containing Genesis 3:6:
Amos 3:13-14
