Unlike Eve, Adam was not deceived at all. I Timothy 2:14. Adam deliberately disobeyed God when he ate of the forbidden fruit. Adam sinned partly because he was afraid of losing physical love with his wife. His was an act of total selfishness. He cared more about his own fleshly needs than he cared about protecting and comforting his wife. Adam allowed his love for his wife to fail. This had to be a cruel and deliberate sin. In addition, both of them allowed their love for and faith in God to fail.
But Adam also had a higher motive when he sinned. Adam also desired to provide love and protection for his wife in her fallen condition. He took her sin upon himself in order to provide this protection. In this act of selfless love, Adam portended the coming of Christ who, because of His Love for all mankind, would take the sin of all mankind upon Himself on a cruel cross in order to provide a level of salvation for all humanity, some by grace and all others by recreation. The difference was that once Adam sinned, he became trapped in spiritual death, but Christ, being God, held all power over spiritual death and because He led a sinless life as a human on earth, spiritual death could not hold him in its regions, and He rose from the regions of the dead victorious over sin and death for the sake of all humanity. Romans 5:14; Romans 5:17-21.
When Adam and Eve sewed fig leaves together to try to cover their shame for their sins and tried to hide from God, they portended the future attitude of all mankind who would use excessive pride to try to save themselves instead of trusting in God alone to save them from their fallen condition. Adam and Eve further displayed excessive pride when Adam tried to justify himself by blaming his wife, and Eve tried to blame the serpent. Every person must take full responsibility for their own sins even when to some extent those sins may not be their own fault. Fair or not, no one can put his own sins away from himself. Every person must stand in honest guilt before God so that God can cleanse and forgive his sins that belong to no one except that person. One may suffer unjustly from pain inflicted by another, but nevertheless, that pain belongs only to that person and that person alone must seek remedies from a doctor. Adam and Eve displayed their full acceptance of responsibility for their sins when they allowed God to clothe them with the skin of the animal that God had slain. God shed the blood of this animal as a prophecy of the coming Messiah who would sacrifice Himself for the salvation of all mankind. Genesis 3:21. Adam and Eve represented all of mankind. Genesis 3:20.
Adam and Eve's sins displayed many contradictions. But each contradiction indicates a higher truth. On the lowest level, Adam and Eve's sins demonstrated a demonic attitude of total rebellion against God, Eve when she gave the forbidden fruit to Adam and Adam when he willfully disobeyed God. On the higher level, the remorse and shame displayed by them emerged from the goodness and life that God had put into them. They were ashamed because their created image of God within them had become sullied by sin. Remorse and shame are good emotions. They demonstrate a desire to be clean again and right with God again. This desire revealed that they had sinned partly because of weakness. God meant for them to use their fleshly desires only in creative ways, but they misused these desires to try to gain more for themselves. Just as God has commanded His people to always forgive the weakness of others, so God must always forgive all of man's sins caused by weakness. Luke 23:34. But God not only forgives sins caused by weakness, He devised a plan to get rid of them entirely either by the blood and water that Jesus shed on the cross or by His consuming fire. I John 5:4-8; Leviticus 1:3-4; Matthew 3:11; Mark 9:49; I Corinthians 3:12-15; Hebrews 12:29; Revelation 20:5; Revelation 21:5.
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