The World and the Word

           The Difference between Sin and Evil

God decided to test His Love in order to remove from all of His creations all doubt about the Almighty Power of His Love. God created two special, intelligent humans, gave them both a soul and spirit, put them into a blissful garden, and allowed them to choose to disobey Him by eating the forbidden fruit or to obey Him by eating of the tree of life. God already knew that because of their free will that He had given them and their inherent doubt, they would choose to disobey Him. Genesis 2:15-17. God had to allow a fall to prove that His Love can cleanse all sin and doubt and evil from all of His creations. Romans 11:36; Proverbs 10:12. Had God allowed doubt to remain, then evil would have also remained forever.

Eve listened to the lies of the Devil and sinned against God by eating the forbidden fruit. Eve chose to sin because of the influence of evil from the outside, but as soon as she became weakened, the Devil became able to inject spiritual death into her inner being. Venomous snakes are symbolic of this power of the Devil. Genesis 2:17; Genesis 3:14. Since Eve had been created in the image of God, then part of her motivation for eating the forbidden fruit formed a good system. The desire to learn and become wiser happens to be a good system, not a false one. Genesis 3:6. But the Devil's injection of evil into her being caused God's good image within her being to become subject to the danger of eternal, spiritual death and separation from God forever. The Devil counted on the evil within her becoming so powerful that it would eventually completely ruin and annul God's good image within her to the extent that she would be lost from God's Love forever, and in this way, the Devil could prove that God's Love can fail. Job 1:11; Job 2:4-5. The Devil would have succeeded if God's Love had not sent His Son to save the entire human race. Genesis 3:15.

But the Devil's plan could not be completed until Adam sinned. I Timothy 2:14. When Eve presented the forbidden fruit to Adam, he panicked and became confused which caused him to forget to call on God for help. Adam did not think or pray. If he had, then he would have realized, as humans now do, that when a totally innocent person, like a child and like Eve, does something wrong because they were misled by a knowledgeable adult, then the child cannot be blamed. If Adam had only prayed, then God would have come to their rescue, absolved Eve of all blame and banished the Devil from having any more influence over humans. Adam was also innocent, but God could blame him because God had put the knowledge of his disobedience into him so that he knew exactly what he was doing. I Timothy 2:14. If Adam had only called on God to save Eve, then God would have instructed Adam and Eve to eat of the tree of life, gain everlasting life and a natural transition from mortal bodies to spiritual bodies with a rapture to heaven after having lived over 900 years in a blissful garden on the earth. Psalm 116:15; Matthew 18:3; Matthew 19:14.

When Eve presented the forbidden fruit to Adam, she sinned in a deliberate and cruel way because of the influence of evil within her. She knew that she had become ruined, and she selfishly desired to ruin Adam as well. But she also sinned because of weakness. She became afraid that she would be left alone if Adam did not sin and fall to her level. Every sin contains an element of weakness but also an element of deliberate evil. Jesus recognized the evil nature of sin by what He said in John 8:28, but He also recognized the weakness in sin by what He said in Luke 23:34. Since all sin and evil nailed Jesus to the cross, then could the Father have failed to answer Jesus' prayer in Luke 23:34?

When Adam forgot to pray and ate the forbidden fruit, then the Devil injected spiritual death into him as he had done to Eve. But there was some good and some evil in his decision. He sacrificed his own innocence and good standing with God to fall to Eve's level so that he could protect her and comfort her. Romans 5:14. His loving sacrifice symbolized Christ's sacrifice. But he also deliberately and selfishly sinned when he fell to Eve's level because he became afraid that he would lose his physical love with her. I Timothy 2:14.