Understanding the Gospel from the Fall (Genesis 3)

If we do not understand man's fallen condition (total depravity), we will not understand the glorious gospel of our salvation.

We may think we are basically good, but that bad circumstances and events cause us to be bad.

Or we may think that sinning makes us bad, not realizing that we are bad because we are sinners (Rom 3:9-11).

Otherwise, we make excuses for the sins of others, as well as our own.

Over the past week, Arnold Schwarzenegger confessed to have fathered a child with his house maid 14 years ago. Also, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the president of the IMF and a leading candidate to being the next French president, was charged with attempted rape of a hotel maid.

Why do such things happen? How could men who seem to have everything act in such brutish ways?

How did sin start?

This post does not attempt to explain every verse in its depth and wealth, but we can think of Gen 3:1-24 in 3 ways:

1. Satan (The Lie) (Why we sin)
2. Man (The Cover) (How we act)
3. God (The Solution) (What God does)
   

I. Why We Sin (Gen 3:1-5) (The Joke, the Lie, the Tree)

Satan does not primarily question the existence of God, or the power of God. Rather he questions the goodness of God. When any man questions the goodness of God, he WILL sin and seek his own goodness. He lives as though he is God and knows better than God, thus living in rebellion against God. Satan always says (cf Ps 84:11):

• God is not good.
• God is not enough.
• God doesn't want you to be happy/to have fun.
• God will never give you what you really want.
  
• You can't trust God.
  

We think that if we do not trust God, we'll sin by doing whatever we want and feel like doing. We do not realize that there is another way of sinning and not trusting God: We try our best to be good so that God and others "owe it to me" to bless me. So, when something bad or disappointing happens, we fall apart, because we think that our goodness/good works deserves blessing, not bad things.

When we listen to Satan, we respond in 1 of 2 ways. We joke about everything so that nothing is serious. Or we are serious about everything because of our own sense of self-importance. In the former, we are too proud to consider serious matters of life and death; so we joke about everything. In the latter, we are too proud to laugh at ourselves, because of our highly inflated view of ourselves.

Sin is not primarily doing bad things, but taking good things (trees) and making them god-like/idols. Probably 10% of what we do are bad, while 90% of what we do are good. Still, we’ll all go to hell without God’s intervention.

II. How We Act (Gen 3:6-13) Sin is not only doing bad things, but doing good things for wrong reasons.

Sin touches and affects every aspect of our life and reality. It leads to spiritual alienation (cut off from God) (Gen 3:8), psychological alienation (something deeply wrong with ourselves) (Gen 3:7), social alienation (not transparent with others; blaming others) (Gen 3:11-14).

Plato blamed the body. Freud blamed the mind. Rousseau blamed society. Fascists blamed the "bad people." Only the Bible comprehensively says that everything is good, but fallen.

Shame is "that sense of unease with yourself at the heart of your being." (David Atkinson, The Message of Genesis 1-11, 1990) We are no longer at ease with ourselves. We have a loss of identity, a desperate sense of anxiety and insecurity. We feel an urgent need to cover up. We feel the need to prove to others that I’m OK. Why? It’s because no one believes that he is OK.

Only God gives man his true sense of value, security, worth, fulfillment, satisfaction. So, when man sinned he lost his most precious treasure--God--along with everything that gives him a sense of being a man. Everything we do today is what the man did after they sinned. They "made coverings for themselves" (Gen 3:7). We "cover" ourselves often without even realizing it. We say (or think or do):

• You're wrong.
  
• I had a bad day.
• I didn't mean it.
• It's too hard.
• No one's perfect.
• I'm not lazy.
• I was tired.
  
• He provoked me.
• Everybody lies/lusts.
• Nobody's entirely honest.
  
• Defending ourselves.
• Accusing/blaming others.
• Comparing our strengths with the weaknesses of others.
  

All of man's excuses about himself is nothing but a cover up of his own deep inner deficiency, insecurity and unease. Basically, we insist, “I AM GOOD,” while our inner voice constantly screams at us saying, "You're no good." Therefore, we are always trying to prove ourselves to others.

Even as Christians, we "cover up" our sins by confessing sins generically and generally, while implicitly communicating to others that "I am a good Christian." Or "I'm blessed and rewarded by God because I am good." John Calvin said that even Christians “bury the disgrace of their vices under flimsy leaves till God, by his voice, strikes inwardly their consciences.”

We are always "reaching" (Gen 3:22) for something that will ultimately never satisfy us, or fulfill us. Still we "reach" as though we know what's best for us. Karl Barth said, "The root and origin of the sin is the arrogance in which man wants to be his own and his neighbor's judge."

III. What God Does (Gen 3:14-24)

• God searches for man (Gen 3:9). God knows where this would ultimately lead.
• God gave man chances to come clean (Gen 3:11,13).
• God promised to crush Satan's head at great cost to Himself (Gen 3:15).
• God shed an animal's blood to clothe man (Gen 3:21).
• God put a sword to guard the way to life (Gen 3:24).

God said to Adam in the garden, "Obey me about the tree, and you will live." God said to another in another garden (Gethsemane): "Obey me about the tree (Deut 21:23; Gal 3:13), and I will crush you to pieces (Acts 5:30)." Adam disobeyed God, and lost eternal life. Jesus obeyed God and lost his life. It's not fair. But in losing his life, Jesus restored to us the life that we lost. He took the punishment for our sins.

O all ye who pass by, behold and see;

man stole the fruit, but I must climb the tree;

The tree of life to all, but only me: 

Was ever grief like mine?

The Sacrifice, George Herbert (1593–1633), 17^th century mystical English poet

The cross became a tree of life for us because it became a tree of death for Jesus. That’s what George Herbert is saying.

Unless we know that we are OK with God, that God accepts us and loves us, we cannot but continually "prove" to others that we are OK, that we are good, that we are loving. Outside of the Cross (even as Christians), this is what we will always do all the days of our lives. Only in the Cross are we truly OK and accepted by God on the basis of what Christ has done (2 Cor 5:21).

(Many of the thoughts and ideas above were from 3 sermons on Genesis 3 by Tim Keller: Paradise Lost, Paradise Promised, East of Eden.)