and became a stranger, a wanderer in the earth. This was not the purpose for God creating man. Something went wrong to sabotage the original purpose in the Garden of Eden. Here, God having placed man to dress this garden which God himself had planted, God instituted a commandment to man to eat of every tree of the garden except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil which he said they should not eat.
Genesis 2:9 showed that the tree of life was also planted in the midst of the garden close to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This means prior to Adam’s (man’s) disobedience, he has been partaking of the tree of life. For the commandment in Genesis 2:17 referred only to the tree of knowledge of good and evil. God demanded and expected obedience from man to live forever (in holiness) and therefore had access to the tree of life as long as man obeyed the injunction of Genesis 2:16–17. But when man disobeyed, this right to eat of the tree of life was denied him because man in his new state of iniquity, if he partakes of the tree of life, will live forever in wickedness and sin. Therefore, no plan for his salvation can work since like wicked spirits, he cannot repent. So another reason (which is most important) why God created man was for man to obey him (God).
Chapter 3
The Fall and Its Consequences
Man therefore disobeyed and lost being in the image (the truthfulness and the holiness) of God. In other words, God’s spiritual attributes embedded in man during the time of creation was lost due to man’s disobedience. Man was now left with the physical attributes alone. Man rejected the substance (spiritual) and accepted the shadow (physical). But God in his mercy began man’s redemption from here in Genesis 3:14–15.
Before this, God made certain pronouncements to show that man had become spiritually dead. Let’s look at Genesis 3:15–19. Here, you find seven terrible disadvantaged positions Adam’s sin placed him based on God’s pronouncements. Reading through these verses, we find that in:
verse 15, man inherited enmity;
verse 16, man inherited sorrow as pains in birth;
verse 17a, man inherited curse to the ground or his capital;
verse 17b, man inherited sorrow as dissatisfaction in achievements;
verse 18, man inherited thorns and thistles or much labor and less productivity;
verse 19a, man inherited sweat of face or suffering;
verse 19b, man inherited death.
If you compare the above verse with Genesis 1:28–30, we see a contrast from man created in God’s image to have seven positive, divine attributes to seven negative, satanic oppressions, from grace to grass. So man lost being in the divine form (Spiritual) but took the repressive form, subjected to satanic attacks, oppression, domination, and possession to being a slave instead of a master which God originally ordained for him. Mercifully, God still allowed man to retain his image in the physical. Man had all the attributes of a physical being to enable God’s divine plan to restore man be effected at the fullness of time. The human body and the five senses were allowed to continue so that man can have a chance to taste and see divine redemption.
For the pronouncement of God against man was meant as corrective measure and not punitive. Otherwise, man would not only have died spiritually (separation from God in the spirit); in the Garden of Eden, man would have also died physically. There would have been an immediate termination of life, and man’s (Adam’s) existence on this planet earth would have ended, thus providing no hope of redemption. For once one dies, there is no more remission for sins. So we see this death in the immediate as being spiritual (separation from God until the initiated time when Genesis 3:15 would be fulfilled), but man still died physically after a period of time.
This was because the death sentence in Genesis 3:19b. “In the sweat of thy face, shalt thou eat bread till thou return unto the ground, for out of it was thou taken, for dust thou art, and unto dust, shalt thou return” was to effect and confirm the Word spoken in Genesis 2:17 as real. Real in the sense that prior to the disobedience, man was to live forever. But on the fall, a day was involved thereupon which the covenant of life was annulled because man disobeyed God. Since then, no man has ever lived to fulfill his day after the fall.
To explain more, the Bible says in 2 Peter 3:8, “But beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day.”
Since this is the case, from the day that Adam sinned, one thousand years (a day in God’s sight) is the day that the fallen man had within which he would live and die. From Adam, this passed unto all men as an inherited problem, Adam being the progenitor of all men. So based on God’s word, man never lived to fulfill that day, for Adam died at the age, 930. He never completed that day (one thousand years) according to God’s reckoning. He (Adam) died the same day. “The day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die” (Gen. 2:17). So it is with any other man born of Adam. From the day he is born, he is born in iniquity and according to God, man should die that same day. Therefore, one thousand years is reckoned to him before God (one day), and no man has ever lived to fulfill that day: even the longest living man (Methuselah) died at 969 years, thirty-one years short of that day. So we see, the deterioration of the human body to grow old and die below one day because of separation from God (spiritual death) who is man’s life and substance to live forever.
Thank God that through Jesus Christ our redeemer, man now has hope to live forever by the power of God as found in Revelation 21:3–4:
Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them and be their God, and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death neither sorrow nor crying. Neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things are passed away. Behold I make all things new.
Consequences of the Fall in Generalized Terms
And it came to pass when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair, and they took them wives of all which they chose.
And the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh, yet his days shall be a hundred and twenty years.”
And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every imagination of the thoughts of the heart was only evil continually. (Gen. 6:1–3 and 5)
From Genesis, chapter six, we see the consequences of Adam’s sin of disobedience in generalized terms. It was not limited to any particular tribe or people. Noah was the only emerging personality that was a just man, perfect in his generations and walked with God; hence, he found grace in the sight of God (Gen. 6:8–9). The flood promised in Genesis 6:17 was fulfilled in Genesis 7:10–24. This was the sixth hundred year of Noah’s life on earth. Noah and his family of seven became the only survivors of the flood, used for the destruction of the old world, perpetrated by wickedness as a result of the Adam’s disobedience. After the flood, Noah built an altar and offered a burnt offering unto the Lord of every clean beast and fowl.
The sweet savor so pleased the Lord that the Lord said in his heart, “I will not again curse the ground anymore for man’s sake.” Consequent upon which the Lord made a promise that “while the earth remaineth seedtime and harvest and cold and heat and summer and winter and day and night shall not cease” (Gen. 8:22).
In chapter 9:11, God blessed Noah and his sons and said unto them, “Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth.”
God even went further to reestablish a new covenant with Noah (see Gen. 9:8–17). Before this event, I want you to compare Genesis 9:1–3 with Gen. 1:28–30 and see the similarity of the divine injunction mandating man to reestablish his authority but this time, with additional laws of “don’ts” because of the excesses by which the heart of man can run to if not checked (Gen. 9:4–6). Before we discuss the controversy about the black man being cursed as propounded by some Bible scholars, I want you to look at Genesis 9:18–19 in relation to Genesis 9:1