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Commentary on "A Garment of Innocence"
Day 4: Tuesday, April 12, 2011 - The Test
Overview
Today's lesson describes "the test" God gave Adam and Eve: the prohibition against eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It refers to this command against eating from this tree as "the probationary test". Furthermore, the lesson refers the reader to Genesis 3:1-4 and asks "what unfortunate truth did [Satan] mix in with all his lies?"
The lesson ends by summarizing that God wanted to protect Adam and Eve from the knowledge of evil. Like a parent wants to protect his or her child, "how much more so, then, did God want to protect Adam and Ever from evil, from the knowledge of the one thing that would cause them to lose their garments of light and to know shame, suffering, and death?" The concluding thought question asks how we can learn to identify very subtle manifestations of evil and protect ourselves from them.
Observations
Ellen White makes a great deal out of the pre-fall period being a period of probation, saying if the couple had not failed in that test, the tree of life would not have been removed from the garden and laying the groundwork for the investigative judgment theology and the concept that humanity is on probation pending the completion of the supposed investigative judgment. The Bible does not present the story as a probationary period or a time of testing. It describes merely the story of the first human beings and their failure to believe God in the face of confusion. Instead of believing God's word to them, Eve chose to rationalize and discuss what it meant.
Adam and Eve did not sin because of Satan, unlike most of us were taught. Satan was not responsible for their sin. They sinned because they simply did not act on the clear word of God. They acted outside of faith in Him, relying instead on their own perceptions and rationalizations.
Just as Lucifer is responsible for his original sin, Adam and Eve are responsible for theirs. Satan is never blamed for their sin, and they were not on probation. They, like all creation, were subject to God's commands, and they chose to disregard His clear instructions.
The discussion about "freedom" and morality also goes beyond the biblical account. Adam and Eve were created subject to the sovereign Lord God. They were not "free" apart from His eternal sovereignty. Their freedom is under His sovereign control.
God is in eternity, not time. He is the Creator, and His sovereignty is not apart from human free will. Adventism claims that humans are not free if God knows the future, if His sovereign control stands over human free will. If God is not sovereign over human free will, however, He is not truly sovereign.
The Bible declares that God is sovereign, and we must believe that He is.
Genesis 3:1-4
The lesson asks what "unfortunate truth" Satan told Eve in Genesis 3:1-4. The only statement (not question) that Satan makes in this passage is in verse 4:
But the serpent said to the woman, "You shall not surely die."
This statement was not the truth, and certainly it was not an "unfortunate" truth. Adventism teaches that Adam and Eve began to die the day they ate. They did not die, but they began their long, slow process of gradual decay.
This position is wrong on two counts. First, God stated unequivocally that they would die the day they ate of that fruit. Either God told the truth, or He told a "white lie". God, however, cannot lie:
Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the sake of the faith of God's elect and their knowledge of the truth, which accords with godliness and in hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began...
To suggest that God fudged the truth by saying Adam and Eve would die on the day they ate the fruit is to blaspheme Him and disbelieve Scripture. God cannot lie, and if He said they would die that day, they did.
How, then, are we to understand what happened to them?
The truth is that Adventism cannot support the reality of Adam and Eve's death--their spiritual death. Adventism says humans have no immaterial spirit that can know God and which continues to exist after the body dies. The Bible, however, says humans do have spirits that are not merely breath.
John 4:24 says,
God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.
Jesus told Nicodemus that in order to see the kingdom of heaven, he had to be born again, born of the Spirit. John 3:5-6:
Jesus answered, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit."
Adam and Eve did die that day; their spirits died. That spiritual death is what resulted in shame, hiding, and disconnection from God. They became the walking dead. They died, and Adam's legacy to all of us is that same spiritual death. It is this spiritual death that lies behind Jesus' otherwise enigmatic statement:
And Jesus said to him, "Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead" (Matt. 8:22).
Ephesians 2:1-3 further says,
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience--among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
God did not lie or speak in dramatic metaphor. He told Adam and Eve the truth; Satan told absolutely no truth to Eve. He blatantly lied to her when he said she would not die if she ate the fruit.
Because of our original sin into which we are born, we have absolutely no ability to protect ourselves from evil, subtle or otherwise. Only by being born again through belief in the Lord Jesus, His shed blood and resurrection, and our subsequent indwelling by the Holy Spirit do we cease to be slaves of sin and gain a new identity as children of God (Rom. 8:15). When we are born again we are counted righteous and are sanctified, set apart for God's service. Because of Jesus' blood, we are eternally secure and credited with the alien-to-us righteousness of Jesus.
Our only hope of resisting sin is to born again, made alive in Jesus. When that happens, God Himself is making our spirits alive, and we can lean on Him and defer our desires and dreams to His will. We can give our moments of temptation to Him. If we are not born again, this resistance of sin cannot happen.
Summary
- Adam and Ever were not on probation; this is not a biblical concept.
- Human free will is subject to God's sovereignty; it is not an equal and sovereign reality on its own.
- Satan did not tell Eve any truth. If he did, God lied.
- God cannot lie. Adam and Eve did die the day they ate the fruit.
- Their shame and hiding were evidence of their disconnection from the life of God.
- We cannot resist sin apart from being born of the Spirit.
- We have immaterial spirits that are born dead but can know God.
- When we accept the Lord Jesus and His sacrifice for our sin, we are born again and receive His power to resist sin.
Copyright 2011 BibleStudiesForAdventists.com. All rights reserved. Revised April 6, 2011. This website is published by Life Assurance Ministries, Glendale, Arizona, USA, the publisher of Proclamation! Magazine. Contact email: BibleStudiesForAdventists@gmail.com.
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