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God had warned Adam about eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil – “In the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Gen 2:17b). The emphasis of the text is obviously the certainty of death if disobedient – “in dying you shall die” or another way of saying it, “You will die.” Now stop right there for a moment and reflect upon that verb “die.” How could death have any meaning to Adam having never seen it in action? Sin by choice had not brought death into the world yet (cf. Rom 5:12). But this doesn’t rule out the possibility that Adam knew and comprehended the meaning of death. He was given a high degree of intelligence that was unhindered by sin as we are (cf. Gn 2:19).
If Adam didn’t understand intellectually about death, God’s prohibition to him would have been meaningless; he not only understood the warning (as suggested by the punishment); but he was going to experience it with his eyes wide open; it would prove to be the worst decision ever made by a man other than going out into eternity without Christ, but it also projects a warning to us of failing to heed God's Word! Commands are not options to disobey, and disobedience is not without its consequences. God means what He says, and says what He means (cf. Gal 6:7).
If Adam didn’t understand intellectually about death, God’s prohibition to him would have been meaningless; he not only understood the warning (as suggested by the punishment); but he was going to experience it with his eyes wide open; it would prove to be the worst decision ever made by a man other than going out into eternity without Christ, but it also projects a warning to us of failing to heed God's Word! Commands are not options to disobey, and disobedience is not without its consequences. God means what He says, and says what He means (cf. Gal 6:7).
So let’s replace the verb die with its
biblical meaning – to separate, to give
us some insight into Adam’s perception of the consequence of disobedience. “In
the day that you eat of it you shall surely separate.” I’m not suggesting at all that we ditch the word “die” or trade out the word death for separate or separation. But what
else could death mean to Adam but separation as it does everywhere else in
Scripture? But prior to the fall, he was united with God. It is hard to
understand the unbroken fellowship God and Adam shared; there was no interference in the relationship by sin. It was like something we have yet to experience but only in glory.
Adam was fixing to trade it all in for a land of separation.
Apparently, God, who is all-knowing,
used language Adam understood, “Adam, the day you eat this fruit, you will die
or separate.” Such a word as “die” seems so incongruous within the idyllic setting
of Eden, but Adam understood that disobedience would cause him to be separated
from God, but there is no way of knowing if Adam was
cognizant of the extent of this separation; how could he? How do we comprehend
such a thing as a believer sinning against God? It is impossible to measure the
consequences; they can outlive us.
Do we really
understand and comprehend how far the ripple travels when we are disobedient to
the Lord? How could Adam know he would be ejected and banned from Eden, live in a hostile
world, live by the sweat of his brow, or his wife would suffer in childbirth,
or that his firstborn would kill his brother? Or the ripple effect of his
disobedience would plunge the universe into an unrecoverable tailspin where every animate and inanimate thing would be impacted by the devastating dynamics from his
transgression of that one and only prohibition (cf. 2 Pet 3:10, 12). You may even question how could
such a simple act of eating some forbidden fruit have such a negative impact on
all of creation? You’ll have to ask God that or just take Him at His Word. In
Adam all die (1 Cor 15:21, 22); not one part of creation has ever escaped the
collateral damage caused by the Fall of Man. Suffering permeated all of creation with lethal darkness of death, decay, and destruction (Rom 8:20-22).
Lest we are quick to judge God as too harsh, unjust, or unfair because the punishment seems out of proportion to the crime of eating some forbidden fruit, keep this in mind. Adam knew what he was doing having been warned (1 Tim 2:14); God has always been holy, just, and righteous in His dealings with mankind given His immutable nature. Let me offer something that seems out of proportion on the flip side of this; it took the death of Christ to address the violation of eating the fruit (Mt 20:28; Jn 3:16; Rom 5:8; Gal 1:4; 1 Pet 3:18; Rev 1:5)! Admit it; it sounds ridiculous, “A man rebelled against his God and ate some forbidden fruit, and the world winds up in a basket headed for hell?” Compare the world's point of view (1 Cor 1:18; 2:14; 2 Cor 4:4), not to mention the accusations that this man's God was unloving!
Everything that took place in the Garden was literal, and Adam literally unleashed death on the world by violating the command not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Sometimes whenever I pondered on the world's thoughts that this is more a fairy tale than fact, I get it, but they are blind to the truth. They may easily dismiss it as ludicrous and accuse us of being stupid to believe in it, but it is to the cross I go for perspective. This is no joke; it's very real. I will take God's Word over the critics that this is all simply figurative language, steeped in symbolism, soaked in myth.
Do you want to hear
the craziest thing in all of this? It is found in John’s Gospel, “…men loved
darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil” (Jn 3:19)!
The very
thing that is blinding, binding, and condemning the lost is the very thing they
love, the things resulting from the love of unbelief (2 Cor 4:4). Such love
for darkness will ultimately lead to the great undoing, an irreparable separation
from God forever, numbering literally into the billions…. How could Adam ever
have imagined how far the ripple of separation would go and continuing as we
speak, “… in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die [separate]” (Gn
2:17).
Of all trees to eat from but one, it was a death-blow-blunder of mind-blowing proportions in what was going through Adam’s mind
listening to Eve going on over the fruit at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil on that fateful day of his choosing (1 Tim 2:14). As sons of
Adam, there is something I want for us who are John 5:24 people to consider
with all of this as a backdrop when we decide on any given day to rebel against
God. In the day that you and I decide to eat of the fruit of going out of His
will for our lives, we shall surely be separated from God; God will surely separate Himself from having
fellowship with us This has absolutely nothing to do with experiencing loss of
salvation (Rom 8:39; Eph 4:30).
Are we so certain
or confident that we know how far those ripples from disobedience travel? Do we
claim to know more than Adam? When we
willfully sin we are at best presumptuous, arrogant, and ungrateful for what
God has done for us! All sin is primarily against God (Psa 51:4). We don’t sin
against God and ever get away with it (Ezek 18:4). The Holy Spirit lives within
the heart of the redeemed (Rom 8:9, 11; 1 Cor 3:16; 2 Cor 6:16; Gal 4:6; 1 Jn
2:27) for one thing, and secondly, God’s attribute of omniscience, all-knowing
(Psa 139:4; Heb 4:13), cannot be denied.
Listen, whenever we
sin it reveals that we have a love problem (Jn 14:15). It is a clear violation
of the first and second commands (Mk 12:30, 31). Fellowship with God is
fractured by disobedience. Willful disobedience or failing to agree with God
about our sin (1 Jn 1:9) has serious ramifications. Are we so arrogant we think
we can toy with sin in our life with immunity or no accountability? Of course, we’re adults; we know what we are doing. Maybe, we need to reread the above.
We will never lose
the peace with God whenever we rebel
because the war with God was over when we were saved by grace through faith
(Eph 2:8-9); we are no longer enemies of God but children of God (Rom 5:10; Col 1:21)! Whenever sin
is in the camp, the peace of God is immediately gone at the moment of
separation. Read King David’s description of what it is like when the peace of
God is lost due to personal sin (Psa 32:3, 4, 5).
That interval
between the break of fellowship (Psa 66:18) and confession (1 Jn 1:9) is the
period I think of as the land of separation for believers. Now, this has nothing to do with being separated from the
heathens, but being separated from God because of ungodliness. So we don’t want
to associate this place with any kind of positive sanctification. It is all negative
and wrong, being set aside for ungodliness. God being thrice-holy we can see
why He breaks off the fellowship when we sin. This is the country where all the
out-of- God’s- will- behaviors reside for believers. Oh, you will never read of
it in Scripture so you can immediately dismiss it as simply imaginary, but it
exists alright. It’s a place where we have all spent some time there between
sinning and confessing; I’m just giving you a more descriptive name for being out of fellowship with God.
When you first go
there, you are taken aback by the intense awareness of a conspicuous absence of
peace and joy, a place of loneliness and troubles. It is a place where those
who are out of fellowship journey until they cross the 1 John 1:9 river back
into the fellowship land of peace and joy with God. If we ever return to the land
of separation we expect that peace and joy with the Father will not be there,
causing us to stay longer in the land of separation due to the hardness of the
heart. The more ins and outs we have there; the harder the heart seems to become.
Some get hung up in this land due to some insidious pride; it makes me wonder
about them.
This land of being
out of God’s will has no sense of satisfaction or fulfillment. Such terrain is barren
and useless. There are no rewards to be earned only fodder for the fire at
the Bema judgment. You know; the wood, hay, and straw stuff generated while in
the land of separation. Everything there is under the sun living. It is as
Solomon says it is,
“Then I looked on
all the works that my hands had done and on the labor in which I had toiled; and
indeed all was vanity and grasping for the wind. There was no
profit under the sun” (Eccl 2:11).
I could go on and
say this or that about under the sun living in the land of separation, a life
lived apart from God, having been there or sharing my experiences while there,
but I suspect if you are a believer; you already have a good idea about that
place because you’ve been there; maybe you have been there more times than you
are willing to admit. It’s a place that the flesh loves to visit, and the
demons delight in seeing us there. This is the place where the accusative
finger thrives; there is no fear of God or delight in His Word or will, only
backsliding and the three worldly delights (1 Jn 2:16, 17).
Why would we ever go
there? The sin of course, but when you read Romans 7, you get the impression that
even the Apostle Paul was stumped on the “why.” Why do we return there? It is
simply baffling. For being more than conquerors, we sure get whooped up when we
go south. Don’t go south, right? Precisely! It is only a place of temporality,
a place of grim discovery hiding behind the attractive fruit dangling on the
tree. Satan is mighty effective in marketing, “Get some of this!”
Here is the
sobering spiritual reality. For every action there is a reaction, right?
Remember that Adam’s sin is still reverberating today; what makes us so sure
after crossing back over the river that our acts of disobedience aren’t still
rippling though not in the magnitude or scale of the first Adam but coursing
nonetheless? Fellowship is restored as soon as we get our feet wet in 1 John 1:9,
but even with that said and done, the ripples keep on moving outward (Gal 6:7)
though we are forgiven. This is why we stay in love with Jesus and avoid
sinning against God at all costs; sin is the stuff that keeps on giving though
we are forgiven. Our actions have consequences. It’s just best to fear God and
keep His commandments and stay away from the land of separation. <><
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