The fall of humankind.
God made everything very good. Everything that humankind needed to enjoy eternity with God had been made. All were accessible to man. “God saw all that he had made – and it was very good!” Genesis 1:31, NET. God informed the first human beings that an evil force exists; it opposes God’s ways and is bent on conquering. Therefore, Adam knew why God commanded him not to eat the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Adam understood the consequences of disobedience. He knew what God meant by saying, You shall surely die. God informed the first human pair about evil and its goals. Knowing about evil is not evil knowledge nor a violation of the law. In like manner, knowing about righteousness does not make one righteous. The knowledge of evil, which comes from a decision to experience it, is evil and is a violation of the law. When the time came, humankind deliberately chose to experience evil, which brought grave consequences.
In due time, the evil force, Lucifer, approached humankind, in Adam, to tempt it. Lucifer understood humanity more than we could know, so he did not contact the first human being in a human form but as a serpent. What would have been the result had he come to them in human form? We do not know. Lucifer is the most intelligent created being. He employed an approach that offered the highest probability of success. “Now the serpent was more shrewd than any of the wild animals that the Lord God had made.” Genesis 3:1, NET. Lucifer, Satan, approached the woman first, not the man. Why? We could not know. However, Lucifer is the highest order of created intelligence, and he knows what will give him the best chance of deception. He is using the same tactics today. He wanted to engage the woman in a conversation, so he repeated God’s command but changed the order of words. The woman responded with an attempt to correct Satan, and that was all he needed. Through a serpent, Satan told the woman that humankind would not surely die but would get smarter; they would know good and evil by experience. Up to now, the first human pair knew good only.
Satan did not tell the woman that they would know more about the good and the evil. He knew how much Adam and Eve knew about evil. However, he wanted them to experience evil. Did the woman realize that knowing about evil is different from knowing evil? We could not know. God created human beings with the capability and desire to increase their knowledge. However, God wanted humankind to grow in knowing the good, not the evil. Satan understood that, so he appealed to the human desire to know more. He infused the doubt of whether humans are entirely in God’s image. Did they become like God, as Satan stated? “And the Lord God said, Now that the man has become like one of us, to know good and evil,” Genesis 3:22, NET. The woman did eat the forbidden fruit and, thus, became a sinner. Therefore, Adam had to make an intelligent, deliberate decision. What ensued as a result?
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