2 And the woman said unto the serpent, We may
eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: 3
But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God
hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. 4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall
not surely die: 5 For God doth know that
in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as
gods, knowing good and evil.
Satan makes the woman, whom we later know as Eve, part
of his deception, his con-game. We learn in verse 6 that Adam is with her, even
though it is often told by preachers that Adam could not possibly have stood by
and watched his wife get sucked into the con but later we also see that Adam is
quick to blame even God for his actions. Adam is not tricked here, as we understand
by what Paul said in a letter to Timothy. He stands by and watches what his
wife is being pulled into.
1Timothy
2:14 And Adam was not deceived, but the
woman being deceived was in the transgression.
Eve
acknowledges that she and Adam are permitted to eat of every tree but one. In
fact, she goes beyond what God actually said, in neither shall ye touch it. We often do that with doctrine. God
ordains a thing and we go beyond what He said to satisfy our own imaginings,
making our new-improved rule God’s standard, when in reality, we have played
the part of Eve.
Here, then, Satan makes a shocking statement, calling
God a liar or calling into question what God meant by what He said. This is one
of the most profound examples of wickedness in history, repeated by every drunk
and drug addict before they take their first drink or shoot-up the first time,
every sexually immoral person considering their lust, every teenaged boy with a
heavy foot on the gas pedal, and every hot-tempered man of violence. Ye shall not surely die. Oh yes, you
will, Sparky.
Some people might claim that Satan is telling Eve that
they have misunderstood what God meant by what He said but what God said was so
clear as to not be uncertain at all. Satan simply denies that what God said was
true.
Satan basically tells them that God has tricked them
and what He is doing is preventing them from being as gods themselves, having a
knowledge of good and evil. Their eyes would be opened. But, while what he is
suggesting seems desirable, being as gods, knowing good and evil comes at a
price too horrible to contemplate, for death is at the end of that road. To
disobey God when there was only one thing you could do on earth that
constituted disobedience and the consequence of that one thing was too high a
price to pay for such knowledge was the great tragedy of history.
We believe that we must have what we want and to get
it we are willing to either deny that what God says will happen will actually
happen, or as in the following passage, we simply justify it in our mind.
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