2:16
¶ And the LORD God commanded the man,
saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: 17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou
shalt surely die.
This
barrier, so to speak, of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, a real
literal, tree, is very important. Mankind was not to reach beyond that barrier.
Obedience to God presents blessings and eternal life. Disobedience was a
barrier to the fellowship with God that eternal life depended on. God told
mankind’s first representative, Adam, not to eat of it. God would grant all
things to him and, by extension, to us but we were to obey. There was no law,
no rules, no restrictions, no commandments, save this one thing, along with
being fruitful and multiplying which seems more of a permission as it carries
more obvious benefits, joys, and pleasures.
For
a Christian to obey God requires belief, faith, and an expectation of things to
come, which benefits are not always apparent. Our choices, our pleasures and
entertainments, our professions, and those things and people we surround
ourselves with often appear to us to be simply a matter of our own will.
However, if we do not choose based on our obedience to God, if our free will is
not harnessed to what God has ordained, then we will give the illusion of the
goodness of our own will power over us. The end result of our own will, being
corrupted by sin, is more sin, and disaster. Of course, this can be complicated
by a so-called man of God dictating his will to a congregation as a substitute
for God’s, even saying that the so-called man of God is repeating something
that God has laid on his heart when it is his own prejudices, bigotry, fear,
and self-righteousness that is being expressed. This is done for the purposes
of control and self-justification. It is very important, therefore, to know
what the Bible says so you can compare everything said to God’s word.
God
said that Adam would die if he ate of the tree and he began dying that very
moment he ate of it. The penalty for his disobedience was death. Dying is a
process. In a way, we begin dying as soon as we are born. With each cell
division and in each generation mankind passes on more and more deleterious
mutations, so much so that some researchers into genetics have been alarmed at
the accumulated damage and amazed that human beings have not become extinct
because of it.[1]
We will see a statement in a few verses that shows that future generations have
the image or appearance of God that Adam had lacking in respects in them. The
process of dying, mutations, decay, old age, disease, and death are the
profound consequences of this disobedience. Death is the great plague of life.
Hebrews
2:15 And deliver them who through fear
of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.
To
eat of this particular tree was disobedience to God. Disobedience to God is
sin. Death is the result of sin.
Romans
6:23 For the wages of sin is death; but
the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
[1]
Alexey S. Kondrashov, “Contamination of the Genome by Very Slightly Deleterious
Mutations: Why Have We Not Died 100 Times Over?” Journal of Theoretical Biology, (1995) vol. 175, pp. 583-594. James F. Crow, “The High Spontaneous Mutation
Rate: Is it a Health Risk?” Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences, (Aug 1997) vol. 94, pp. 8380-8386.
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