The Fall of Mankind

                               Genesis 3

Satan fell to earth. God had destroyed Lucifer with fire and had exiled his negative spirit to earth. God had recovered all of the goodness He had put into Lucifer, and so Satan became totally evil. He sought a body to inhabit because devils hate the complete emptiness of disembodiment. They can only obtain filthy desires and pleasures by inhabiting a body. Satan found a creature called a serpent, and he entered into it. Ezekiel 28:17-19.

God had created man in His own image with a spirit, soul, and body. God put into man a limited amount of His goodness and love. God also provided a paradise for them. Genesis 1:27; Genesis 2:7-8.

Eve possessed a large portion of the innocence of God. She also possessed some of God's desire to create good systems. Satan saw these good elements in Eve's character as weaknesses that he could exploit. Satan lied to Eve about God's command, and then he promised her a better system for herself if she would disobey God. Eve fell for the Devil's subtle trick, and she ate the forbidden fruit. Genesis 3:1-6. Satan deceived Eve, but Adam was not deceived. I Timothy 2:14. Adam knew fully well that the penalty for disobeying was death, but he disobeyed anyway.

Three aspects of Adam's disobedience exist within mankind to this day. The first was that Adam knowingly and deliberately disobeyed God. Adam willfully violated God's love for him and his love for God. By this sin, Adam displayed disloyalty and rebellion. His sin in this respect was like Lucifer's. Numbers 15:30-31. Adam severed his fellowship with God. This condition became death for Adam and Eve and all mankind. Romans 5:12. Sin causes death, and death causes sin. It is a vicious cycle.

The second aspect of Adam's sin was his weakness. Adam became afraid that he would lose his love-making affections with his wife. Adam forgot to ask God what to do about this problem. Numbers 15:27-28. God can forgive weakness but never rebellion.

Mark 3:28-29; Hebrews 10:26-27.

The third aspect of Adam's sin was his deliberate self-sacrifice. Adam loved Eve and feared that she would be forever separated from him. He desired to be with her, to love and protect her. He willingly took sin and death upon himself in order to be with his wife. In this respect, he was like Jesus our Savior. But Adam's self-sacrifice failed because of the impurity of his sin, but Jesus' self-sacrifice succeeded because of His purity and His power to overcome sin and death and save mankind. I Corinthians 15:45.

Genesis 3:6-13 records the beginning of mankind's self-awareness and fractured intelligence. Adam and Eve possessed intelligence before they sinned, but it was wholly innocent, like God's. Their self-awareness took the form of the antithesis of good and evil within them. They became aware that their nakedness signified their new-found lust and greed, and this knowledge made them ashamed. They instinctively knew that in the future they would be compelled to create both good and destructive systems. Thus, the history of the human race began.

God found Adam and Eve and called them out of their hiding place and talked with them as He had done before in the cool of the day. In this way, God demonstrated to them that He still loved them and desired fellowship with them. God's action also revealed that He retained complete confidence in Himself that He could handle their lost condition and rescue them from it. Genesis 3:9-13.

Genesis 3:14-19 records that God cursed only two things, the serpent and the ground. God did not curse mankind. In verse 15, God promised mankind that He would send them a Savior to rescue them. The serpent would injure the Savior, but the Savior would completely defeat the serpent. God's actions and attitude demonstrated that His intentions were to rescue His beloved mankind from the serpent and the sin that sought to ruin them completely. God punished man with physical labor and the woman with childbearing labor, but He did not curse them. God cursed the ground because He would put hell into it and send lost sinners there to be cleansed by fire. But even this fire would be a part of the Savior's salvation. God means to rid Himself of whatever He curses, but whatever He loves, He cannot fail to save. God could never allow Himself to lose whatever He loves. Such an event would violate His very nature. "God is Love." Ecclesiastes 3:14; Psalm 36:6; Luke 20:38; Luke 3:6; Revelation 21:5; Romans 11:29.

The three aspects of man's sin prophesied the future of the human race. Eve was like a child misled by an adult. In this sense, she became the victim of the Devil, and by extension, so did the whole human race. On the other hand, she knew the commandment of God but disobeyed anyway. Even children must remember and obey their parents commands. To this extent, she became responsible for her sin, and so God punished her with labor in childbearing.

Adam's sin was much worse than Eve's because it reflected some of the Devil's attitude of deliberate rebellion toward God. Adam demonstrated selfishness, pride, and a desire to be rid of God. To this extent, part of him became demonic and totally evil and so did the whole human race. God cursed the demonic, and so this part of humanity must be consigned to the lake of fire forever. Revelation 21:8.

But Adam also displayed some desire to be obedient within his disobedience. In this respect, sin adhered to Adam's goodness. This condition also passed on to the whole human race. We often invent systems that are partly good and partly bad, and we find it impossible to separate the two. Goodness and evil reside in the heart of man. Adam wanted to be with Eve in order to obey God's command to replenish the earth, but he also desired to satisfy his lust for her. For this reason, every time a husband and wife make love, love and lust are both present. Man has found it impossible to free himself from this condition, but God can. Most of the human race never relies on God to free them from this condition, and so God must consign them to the cleansing fires of hell. Luke 16:23; Luke 18:26-27.

The third part of Adam's sin was not sin at all. It was wholly good. Adam knew that he would greatly suffer if he fell into sin, but he did it anyway. Adam loved his wife, and he wanted to be with her in her fallen condition so that he could comfort her and protect her as much as possible. This was love displayed in self-sacrifice. Adam's love failed because he had become too weakened by selfish sin to be able to overcome the Devil and his own sin. This condition has also passed on to the human race because people will sometimes sacrifice themselves to save their families, friends, or even sometimes total strangers. Men and women sometimes lay down their lives in war to protect their country from an evil enemy. Yet, man has found himself far too weak to be able to defeat evil or separate it from his being. Not so with God. He has all power to defeat evil. For this reason, God promised mankind that He would send a sinless Savior with all needed power to take on Himself all of the evils of Satan and the sinful world on a cruel cross and completely crush the serpent's head. Christ would also prove His victory by rising from sin and death to give life to humanity forever. Those who repent of their sins because they hate them and believe that Christ alone; through His death, burial, and resurrection, possesses the power to save them, will receive from God a "born again" salvation while still in their flesh in the world. God will cleanse them of all their sins through the shed blood of Christ, freely give them the eternal life of Christ Himself, recreate their souls and spirits, and a home with Him in heaven forever. John 3:16; John 5:24; John 3:3; Genesis 3:15; II Corinthians 5;17-18; I Peter 4:8; John 17:24.