What the Bible says about
(From Forerunner Commentary)

Genesis 3:2-6 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 Related Topics: Adam and Eve Chose to Sin | Consequences of sin | Ecclesiastes and Christian Living | Ecclesiastes and Christian Living Summary | Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil

Genesis 4:17-22 This passage records the foundation of humanity's development of a more complex system of community living, including that of agriculture, art, and technology. God surely intended more complex human communal systems to arise, but since these are descendants of Cain, Scripture indicates that they were not working alongside God to produce these developments. Their planning and building are deliberately undertaken apart from God. The fruit of such development produced the evil society before the Flood. John W. Ritenbaugh Ecclesiastes and Christian Living (Part Fourteen): A Summary Related Topics: Descendants of Cain | Ecclesiastes and Christian Living | Ecclesiastes and Christian Living Summary | Evil Society Before the Flood

Ecclesiastes 7:29 The word “only” is inserted in his conclusion to draw attention to its importance. Righteous living is truly rare, and it has been so from the beginning, from Adam and Eve until now. After this qualification, Solomon immediately asserts that God did not create human beings to sin but to live righteous lives. He is implying that we should stop blaming God for all of mankind's troubles—that we get ourselves into this mess we call life. God made us upright, but we all have deliberately chosen to sin. Undoubtedly, he is reflecting on the early chapters of Genesis, where a clear pattern of deliberate, willful sin appears. Genesis 1:31 states God's evaluation of His creation: “Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good.” Will we challenge God's judgment of what He had just created? Adam and Eve had already been created at this point, and God judged what He had made as “very good.” They were not flawed by sin, and God had not placed in them a mechanism to sin deliberately. They had not been created to live fractured, sinful lives but upright, righteous lives. In terms of sin, whatever became part of them occurred after this point. He did not entrap them. However, they were capable of sinning because God created them with minds able to learn, discern, and make choices between options. Sinning was something they opted to do. Genesis 6:5 suggests an interesting connection between the overwhelming sinfulness of the days of Noah and Solomon's conclusion in Ecclesiastes 7:29: “Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” The intriguing relationship is between the word “schemes,” “inventions,” or “devices,” depending on what translation is used in Ecclesiastes 7:29, and the word “intent” in Genesis 6:5. While not the same word, both derive from the same root, indicating thinking and/or planning. In both contexts, the thinking is being done with evil intent. That is, the ones doing the devising are deliberately planning evil. John W. Ritenbaugh Ecclesiastes and Christian Living (Part Fourteen): A Summary Related Topics: Blaming God | Blaming God for Our Problems | Deliberately Sinning | Ecclesiastes and Christian Living | Ecclesiastes and Christian Living Summary | Man's "Schemes" | Patter of Deliberate Willful Sin

 

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