coverings for themselves." Genesis 3:1-7
16 To
the woman he said,
“I
will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful labor you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.”
with painful labor you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.”
17 To
Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree
about which I commanded you,
‘You must not eat from it,’
‘You must not eat from it,’
“Cursed is
the ground because
of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.”
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.”
“Therefore, just as sin entered the
world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all
people, because all sinned— To be sure, sin was in the world before the
law was given, but sin is not charged against anyone’s account where there is
no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of
Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who
is a pattern of the one to come. But the gift is not like the trespass.
For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s
grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow
to the many! Nor can the gift of God be compared with the result of one
man’s sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the
gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. For if, by the
trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will
those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of
righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ!”
Romans 5:12-17 (NIV2011)
In
my opinion the three passages above and the quote by G.K. Chesterton contain
some of the most important information every one of us needs to know and to
believe in order to live well.
Whether
we take the trees literally or metaphorically, what we learn is huge.
When
we seek to live “above our pay grade” with the wisdom of the “tree of the
knowledge of good and evil,” a
wisdom that is too great for us, a wisdom which, when we seek to exercise apart
from God, will destroy us. In
fact it has. When Eve (and
Adam silently abdicating responsibility and passively doing what Eve did)
decided to “be like God”, that act was an exercise of pride, the choice of
acting independently from God. “Pride
cometh before the fall.” It did
and it still does.
In
Genesis 1:28 we learned that God blessed the first human beings with work.
They were blessed with image-bearing task of filling the earth with life
and with governing it. The
whole of life is described here. Family/marriage/relationships
and work. And it was and still is
ruined by pride. Genesis three
then describes the dissatisfaction wives will have with their husbands along
with the pain of motherhood. It
describes the joyless toil that work that will describe our work.
As
the apostle Paul reflects on the Genesis account of how the world went wrong
(think 8 billion people pridefully trying to “be like god” and it’s not a
stretch to see what’s wrong with the world), he traces all of our problems
back to the sin of Adam. Whether
your reading of Paul’s words see Adam as an historical person or see his
reference to Adam as a kind of archetype (a person in whom we see ourselves) or
both (my view), it is clear that he sees no hope for the mess that the world is
in without prideful people who choose to “be like God” admitting our pride,
admitting our need for God, only to discover that God, in his mercy and grace
has not only forgiven our pride, our sin, but He has come to dwell in prideful
“Adams and Eves” who humble themselves and daily live in a rhythm of the
humility of receiving forgiveness and the courage of forgiving others with the
forgiveness you have received.
For
more:
follow on Twitter @jefflampl
