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Genesis 3:11, Revelation 3:17

Adam Knows He’s Naked

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
July 18, 2022

The exact nature of the “knowledge of good and evil” has been argued since the beginning of the church. Still today, it’s a subject of debate at seminary student centers and during church potlucks, as well as from many of the pulpits around the world. We have to admit though, the text never really tells us what that knowledge is. Johnson says, “Some claim that it’s omniscience or moral knowledge or even means that someone has gone through puberty. However, the story only relates one aspect of their new knowledge: “They knew that they were naked.”[1] That was the knowledge that God addresses when he finds Adam and Eve hiding amongst the trees in the Garden of Eden covered with fig leaves. Again, we see God use rhetorical questions. He’s not asking in order to “learn” something. He’s asking in order to reveal something. Genesis 3:11 says, “He said, ‘who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?’”

Some commentators consider Adam’s answer suggests he’s still hiding his guilt. Now, I realize that the fig leaves were a response to their shame and an attempt to cover their sin, but I’m of the opinion that Adam knew, and admitted his nakedness. This isn’t by any means a complete confession of his need for God, but it seems to be a step in the right direction. Not everyone will admit that they are naked and need God. John indicts the Church at Laodicea in Revelation 3:17. He tells them, “For you say, ‘I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing,’ not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.”

I can’t speak for everyone, but I’m surely conscious of my “nakedness” and I openly confess that I need God. Spurgeon once preached on our condition of nakedness and how God has provided for that need in Jesus Christ. He said, “For, first, in the Lord Jesus Christ, there is covering for your nakedness. The garment covers the man; he is hidden, and his garments are seen. Come, then, poor sinner, and take by faith the Lord Jesus Christ to be a covering for your soul. You are naked, but he will be your robe of righteousness. There is in the Lord Jesus a complete and suitable apparel for thy soul, by which every blemish and defilement shall be put out of sight…”[2] Then, this prince of preachers, says in a different sermon, “If you are hungry, you are fit to eat; if you are thirsty, you are fit to drink; if you are naked, you are fitted to receive the garments which charity is giving to those who need them; if you are a sinner, you are fitted for Christ, and Christ for you; if you are guilty, you are fitted to be pardoned; if you are lost, you are fitted to be saved. This is all the fitness Christ requireth, and cast every other thought of fitness far hence; yea, cast it to the winds. If thou be needy, Christ is ready to enrich thee. If thou wilt come and confess thine offences before God, the gracious Saviour is willing to pardon thee just as thou art. There is no other fitness wanted.”[3]

[1] Johnson, Dru. 2018. The Universal Story: Genesis 1–11. Edited by Craig G. Bartholomew, David Beldman, Doug Mangum, Joel Wilcox, and Danielle Thevenaz. Transformative Word. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press; St. George’s Centre.

[2] Spurgeon, C. H. 1881. “Dressing in the Morning.” In The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons, 27:468. London: Passmore & Alabaster.

[3] Spurgeon, C. H. 1916. “Coming to Christ.” In The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons, 62:196. London: Passmore & Alabaster.

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Genesis 3:10

God’s Footsteps!

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
July 17, 2022

Finally, we hear from Adam. Eve and the serpent have been doing all the talking. Adam seems to have passively sat back and let Eve interact with the Devil without comment. The last thing we heard from Adam was his pronouncement of his wedding vows, so to speak, when God brought him Eve. He hasn’t said anything since. But God addresses him specifically after they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God asks Adam, “where are you,” and in Genesis 3:10, Adam replies, “And he said, ‘I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.’” The UBS (United Bible Societies) Handbook for translators says it might be best to translate this as “I heard your footsteps in the garden.”

I have no idea how many movies or books I’ve read where someone is walking down a dark alley or narrow street and all you can hear is footsteps coming from behind them. We all know that something bad is going to happen. Jack the Ripper is coming for me! Some murderer is stalking me to kill me and rob me. I’ve lost sleep as a youngster over those movies. But the most ominous of footsteps were the ones I heard when my mother came down the basement steps and caught me and a neighbor girl when we were about 8 years old, showing each other our differences! We just knew what we were doing was wrong. I don’t remember my folks talking to me about any of that at that age, but something in me knew it was wrong and so did little Suzy (Not her real name). We got caught with our pants down doing our best to cover ourselves us. As we listened to the footsteps and scrambled to put ourselves together we knew we were done for. Walton sees the possibility of a different kind of translation for “the sound of God walking in the garden.” He says, “The Akkadian term is used in connection to the deity coming in a storm of judgment. If this is the correct rendering of the word here in Genesis 3, we can translate verse 8 in this way: ‘They heard the roar of the Lord moving about in the garden in the wind of the storm.’ If this rendering is correct, it is understandable why Adam and Eve are hiding. I do not offer this as the right translation.” He then adds, “…the logic of the context makes this new rendering a possibility, but one that can only be held tentatively.”[1]

Adam’s answer had to do with his fear of the sound of God coming coupled with their nakedness that they were trying to cover up with fig leaves. Briscoe recognizes that “The fact that nakedness and fig leaves were so much a part of the shame felt by fallen mankind has led many to suppose that the original sin was in some way sexual. In fact, some older commentators seem to suggest that the forbidden fruit was sex.”[2] But this is most unlikely because of God’s creating each of them “male and female” and then commanding them to be fruitful and multiply. I expect everyone has some kind of experience of being caught “red-handed.” God was about to cover their shame with something more substantial that fig leaves and he does something similar with us. Ross explains, “People disobey God’s word and then, because of their guilty fears, hide themselves. But God searches out the sinners, draws a confession from them, and then covers their guilt and shame with a symbol of his gracious provision. The gospel explains this symbol fully: In the fullness of time God accepted the death of Jesus for our sins, and on the basis of that sacrifice, he clothes us with righteousness.”[3]

[1] Walton, John H. 2001. Genesis. The NIV Application Commentary. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

[2] Briscoe, D. Stuart, and Lloyd J. Ogilvie. 1987. Genesis. Vol. 1. The Preacher’s Commentary Series. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Inc.

[3] Ross, Allen, and John N. Oswalt. 2008. Cornerstone Biblical Commentary: Genesis, Exodus. Vol. 1. Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers.

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Genesis 3:9, Various

Adam, where are you?

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
July 16, 2022

God is really good as asking “rhetorical” questions. He already knows the answers to these, but wants to see how the guilty party will answer. In Numbers 22 we’ll see God ask Balaam, “what do these people want from you?” He already knows the answer. He does this with Cain when he asks him where his brother Abel is. When Moses hesitated to accept God’s call to lead the children of Israel out of Egypt, God asks Moses, “What is that you have in your hand?” God knows it’s a staff!  Also in Genesis 18 we’ll see God ask Abraham “where is your wife Sarah?” All the while, he knew that she was in the tent. In Genesis 3:9 we see the first of such questions when we read, “But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, ‘where are you?’” God knows that Adam is hiding from him. He was calling out to bring to our attention that the couple had never hid from him before. It might be understood as a question regarding “why” they are hiding. Well, that’s the way Adam will answer the question.

Back in Genesis chapter two, God had given Adam the instructions about all the food in the Garden. Only Adam heard the restriction against eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. So, when God came to confront them, he called out to Adam alone. In the Hebrew text, the expression ‘the man’ and the pronouns ‘him’ and ‘you’ are all singular. Although it’s being heavily criticized today most commentators still see Adam as the responsible party. Dennis Rainey, in his family ministry says, “Even though Eve had sinned first, God first summoned Adam to give account for what had happened. This suggests that Adam was the one primarily accountable for what had happened in his family. …By contrast, the serpent spoke to Eve first (Gen. 3:1), trying to get her to take responsibility for leading the family into sin, thus inverting the order that God had established at creation.”[1]

Many see the question itself as an accusation. But I think it has a different overtone. God is calling out to man with Grief. In Genesis six we read that God looked down upon the world of mankind and saw the wickedness and “it grieved him to his heart.” Gowan argues, “If the story is to have its proper effect on us, we ought to see ourselves there among the trees. That is, we ought to recognize our own pitiful defenses thrown up to attempt to justify ourselves against a God of whom … the relationship has not been broken off completely, for it is maintained by a sorrowing God.”[2] In Hebrew the name “Adam” can refer to the entire human race. Neusner says to the question that God asks Adam, all “…human beings must render an answer. Any person can answer that question, and in that answer each one defines himself or herself as religious, atheistic, agnostic, or pantheistic.”[3] Today, we can hear God calling to us in the universal invitation of Jesus. Wallmark writes, “Thus God’s call ‘Where are you?’ to the first Adam, becomes universalized in Jesus, the second Adam, through whom his redemptive pursuit of the entire race is consummated. That salvific mission is also revealed in the name Yeshua/Joshua/Jesus—’Jehovah is salvation’ (Matt. 1:21).”[4]

[1] Rainey, Dennis, ed. 2002. Building Strong Families. Foundations for the Family Series. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.

[2] Gowan, Donald E. 1988. From Eden to Babel: A Commentary on the Book of Genesis 1–11. International Theological Commentary. Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co.

[3] Neusner, Jacob, Alan J. Avery-Peck, and William Scott Green, eds. 2000. In The Encyclopedia of Judaism, 2:1020. Leiden; Boston; Köln: Brill.

[4] Wallmark, Leonard S. 1996. “Name.” In Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology, electronic ed., 551. Baker Reference Library. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House.

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Genesis 3:8, Romans 1:18-29, Galatians 3:13

Where Ya Gonna Run to?

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
July 15, 2022

Shame and guilt lead to fear of God! We escape him by hiding just like Adam and Eve did. Genesis 3:8 continues the story, “…and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.” Today we hide in our intellectual atheism or philosophical agnosticism. Evolutionary science and other human disciplines often deny the existence of a great designer of any kind and think we made ourselves as we are! The result of all this is that man tries to make himself the center of all things. In other words, he makes himself to be God. I’m convinced that with all the fancy intellectual footwork going on in the world to dance around the reality of God it really comes down to the fact that we cannot hide from the shame of our own sinfulness. We cover it up with the fig leaves of science or philosophy. Paul is right when he says in Romans 1:18-29 that the existence of God and his magnificent glory is obvious to everyone. He says, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them.  For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.” Just like Adam and Eve, instead of becoming like God, we run and hide from Him.

The fig leaves that Adam and Eve wore weren’t enough to hide them. They knew it and slithered deeper into the woods to hide “among the trees” of the garden. Hughes says, “What a pathetic delusion for anyone, then or today, to imagine that it is possible to hide from God.”[1] The Psalmist understood the futility in such an effort and wrote in Psalm 139:7-12, “Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence?  If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!  If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,  even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me. If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,’ even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you.”

It’s no coincidence that Adam and Eve hide among the trees. Sailhamer observes, “Throughout this chapter (Genesis 3) and the previous one, the trees play a central role in depicting man’s changing relationship with God. First, in chapters 1 and 2 the fruit trees are the sign of God’s bountiful provision. Then, at the beginning of the third chapter, the trees become the ground for inciting the man and the woman to rebellion and the place where the rebellious man and woman seek to hide from God. Finally, when the man and the woman are cast out of the garden, their way is barred from ‘the way to the tree of life.’”[2] But there is going to be another tree that  figures in the story of the redemption of mankind. Paul tells us about it in Galatians 3:13, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.”

[1] Hughes, R. Kent. 2004. Genesis: Beginning and Blessing. Preaching the Word. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.

[2] Sailhamer, John H. 1990. “Genesis.” In The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, edited by Frank E. Gaebelein, 2:53. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House.

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Genesis 3:8, Ephesians 2:1-2, Various

Here Comes the Judge!

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
July 14, 2022

They tried to cover their shame because of subjective guilt because of their sin. But they also knew that a day of reckoning was going to come. At the beginning of Genesis 3:8, they hear it coming. It says, “And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day…” The sound of the Lord coming is a frightful thing for sinners. I expect that the first people to ever read Moses’ account of Adam and Eve’s failure in the Garden would have understood this better than most. In Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, we see the people “hear the sound of the Lord” and are afraid and send Moses to speak to God on their behalf because as Deuteronomy 5:25 says, “If we hear the voice of God we will die.” They were right; death was on the line!

The “cool of the day” translation is misleading. Many commentators have observed that it should read “wind” rather than “cool.”  Sailhamer explains in his commentary, “In light of the general context of the picture of God’s coming in judgment and power, the ‘wind’  that the author envisioned resembles that ‘great and powerful wind’ that blew on the ‘mountain … of the Lord’ in 1 Kings 19:11. Thus the viewpoint of the narrative would be much the same as that in Job 38:1, where the Lord answered Job ‘out of the storm.’”[1]

Paul tells us in Romans 6:23 that “the wages of sin is death.” In the previous chapter, 5:12 he wrote, “sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.” (Romans 5:12). In writing to the Ephesians, he explains how we too are in the same predicament. Ephesians 2:1-2 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.” Hughes says, “We, too, entered the world dead and depraved, since sin colors every part of our existence, so that we hide from God rather than seek him. In an instant, the original couple passed from life to death, from sinlessness to sin, from harmony to alienation, from trust to distrust, from ease to dis-ease. It did not take a day. It happened in a millisecond! Adam and Eve, as our parents, were genetically, historically, and theologically every man and every woman. They are paradigmatic of all of us—not only in their original sin but because the way they attempted to deal with their sin is the pattern with which we attempt to deal with it today. And the way that God dealt with Adam and Eve is the way he deals with us. So there the first couple was, in their ridiculous fig leaves, slouching around paradise lost. God then confronted them in a graciously gentle, remedial way. And in their confrontation, we see our confrontation.”[2] But God had in mind a different covering for us. It would come from the shed blood of a sacrificial lamb.

[1] Sailhamer, John H. 1990. “Genesis.” In The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, edited by Frank E. Gaebelein, 2:52. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House.

[2] Hughes, R. Kent. 2004. Genesis: Beginning and Blessing. Preaching the Word. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.

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Genesis 3:7, Mark 11:12-14

The First Coverup!

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
July 13, 2022

After eating of the forbidden fruit they noticed they were naked. It’s interesting to notice that awakening to their shameful state did not occur until Adam ate himself. This may, or may not, be associated with the fact that God had given the instructions regarding the forbidden fruit before Eve was created. However, Kissling informs us, “According to Jubilees 3 Eve clothed herself with fig leaves before she gave the fruit to Adam, who ate and then made his own garment of fig leaves. But Genesis says that only after both of them ate were their eyes opened.”[1] Regardless, they both had shame because of the guilt they felt for what they had done. They tried to cover their shame. Genesis 3:7 says, “And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.”

I failed to mention when writing about the “fruit” that Eve and then Adam ate was traditionally understood by Jewish Rabbis to be figs. As one web writer says, “Traditionally, in Judaism, the fruit is described as a fig. Even in Michelangelo’s famous painting of the tree on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, we find that the fig tree won the day when it came to depicting the tree of the forbidden fruit. The depiction of this fruit as a fig is fairly natural from the description in Genesis 3:7 of what immediately follows the eating of the fruit.” They used the fig tree leaves to make loin clothes. Maybe this is why Jesus seems to have inexplicably cursed a Fig Tree in Mark 11:12-14. It says, “The next day, as he left Bethany, Jesus was feeling hungry. He noticed a leafy fig tree in the distance, so he walked over to see if there was any fruit on it, but there was none—only leaves (for it wasn’t yet the season for bearing figs). Jesus spoke to the fig tree, saying, “No one will ever eat fruit from you again!” If this was the fruit tree from which Adam and Eve ate, and thus disobeyed God for the first time, Jesus’ statement might be prophetic looking forward to his eventual reign upon the earth where there will be no more sin against God. Notice that Mark’s passage also mentions that the tree is described as a “leafy fig tree.” Thus, the coverings of shame and guilt that Adam and Eve used are suggested.

They used the fig leaves and tried to cover up their shame because of their guilt. But it seems that at this time it was “subjective guilt” rather than a declaration of a verdict, i.e., judicial guilt. One of my Seminary classmates wrote an article for the Michigan Theological Journal and said, “The biblical text does not show a connection between Adam and Eve’s experience of subjective guilt and God’s personally causing these specific emotions of guilt. Subjective guilt is more precisely a post-fall natural human response to original and personal sin. Moreover, this experience of subjective guilt is not presented in a positive or motivational sense. The text does not indicate that these feelings came from God, nor did these subjective guilt feelings motivate Adam and Eve to contrition or repentance. Their immediate actions were to cover themselves with fig leaves. They felt an inner experience of self-accusation and shame apart from an immediate external threat. Adam and Eve subsequently did develop an external fear of God’s wrath which must be seen as distinct from their subjective feelings of guilt.”[2] Exell wraps up his thoughts with this comment: “Sin is able to make the most excellent and glorious of all God’s creatures vile and shameful:—1. It defaces the image of God. 2. It separates man from God. 3. It disorders all the faculties of the soul. Men are more apt to be sensible of, and to be more affected by, the outward evils that sin brings upon them, than with the sin that causeth them.”[3]

[1] Kissling, Paul J. 2004–. Genesis. The College Press NIV Commentary. Joplin, MO: College Press Pub. Co.

[2] Restum, John A. 1990. “Genuine Guilt or Self Atonement: A Theological Assessment.” Michigan Theological Journal 1, no. 2: 180.

[3] Exell, Joseph S., and Thomas H. Leale. 1892. Genesis. The Preacher’s Complete Homiletic Commentary. New York; London; Toronto: Funk & Wagnalls Company.

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Genesis 3:7

The End of Innocence!

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
July 12, 2022

In Genesis 3:7, we are introduced to the consequences of sin. It says, “Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked.” Anyone with any spiritual awareness is made very uneasy by the thought of God’s searching gaze. Remember the scene in the garden after Adam and Eve had first sinned. In their original state, before they fell into sin, they were “naked and were not ashamed” (Gen. 2:25). With no sin to condemn them, they delighted in the gaze of their loving Creator. But after the fall, they hid their shame even from one another, pathetically sewing on fig leaves for garments. Even more, they dreaded the presence of God, fleeing and hiding from him as he approached. This is how many Christians feel in their relationship with God. The thought of his gaze chills their bones. They are willing to do anything but deal with God himself, skulking around the edges of his light rather than drawing near to him. They struggle to pray and seldom do unless forced by circumstances. It is this paralyzing fear that the writer of Hebrews now addresses. As Philip Hughes explains: “Sinners are no longer commanded to keep their distance in fear and trembling, but on the contrary are now invited to draw near, and to do so with confidence.”[1]

Of course, it is merely a popular misunderstanding to imagine that ‘because their eyes were opened,’ they had been created blind. Actually, Adam saw the animals he named and Eve ‘saw that the tree was good to eat, and fair to the eyes, and delightful to behold.’  Augustine continues, “Their eyes, then, could see, but they were not open enough in the sense that they themselves were not observant enough to realize in what a raiment of grace they must have been robed to have been unaware so long of any war between their members and their will. But, once the raiment of grace was removed, they were taught the lesson that disobedience to God is punishable by disobedience to oneself. A strange and irrepressible commotion sprang up in their bodies that made nakedness indecent. They realized the rebellion and it made them ashamed.”[2]

Matthew Henry has some well-written words on this subject. He notes that their eyes were opened. “Now, when it was too late, they saw the folly of eating forbidden fruit. They saw the happiness they had fallen from, and the misery they had fallen into. They saw a loving God provoked, his grace and favor forfeited, his likeness and image lost, dominion over the creatures gone. They saw their natures corrupted and depraved and felt a disorder in their own spirits of which they had never before been conscious. They saw a law in their members warring against the law of their minds and captivating them both to sin and wrath. They saw, as Balaam, when his eyes were opened (Num. 22:31), the angel of the Lord standing in the way, and his sword drawn in his hand.… They saw themselves disrobed of all their ornaments and ensigns of honor, degraded from their dignity and disgraced in the highest degree, laid open to the contempt and reproach of heaven and earth, and their own consciences.”[3]

[1] Phillips, Richard D. 2006. Hebrews. Edited by Richard D. Phillips, Philip Graham Ryken, and Daniel M. Doriani. Reformed Expository Commentary. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing.

[2] Augustine of Hippo. 1952. The City of God, Books VIII–XVI. Edited by Hermigild Dressler. Translated by Gerald G. Walsh and Grace Monahan. Vol. 14. The Fathers of the Church. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press.

[3] Boice, James Montgomery. 1998. Genesis: An Expositional Commentary. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books.

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Genesis 3:6, 1 Timothy 2:13-14

Adam Ate!

Filed Under: Devotions by Chuck
July 11, 2022

Freeman says, “Somewhere in history, a story was started that when Adam took the first bite of the ‘apple’ and tried to swallow it, the piece of forbidden fruit stuck in his throat because he felt so guilty. So ever since then the slight projection at the front of the throat formed by the largest cartilage of the larynx, which is usually more prominent in men than in women, has been called the ‘Adam’s apple.’”[1] According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, “The etrog is also called ‘Adam’s apple,’ or ‘paradise apple.’ …the etrog is suggested as having been the forbidden fruit of which Adam and Eve ate in the Garden of Eden.”[2]

Well, Genesis 3:6 concludes with the solemn words, “…and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.” Mark Twain said, “Adam was human; he didn’t want the apple for the apple’s sake; he wanted it because it was forbidden.” Well, regardless of  what Adam wanted, he ate of the fruit and as Smith observes, “The sin did not stick in his throat; it went deeper down into the very springs of his being. The heart is deceitful. It is still the belief of many that a man may have a good heart and a bad life.” But it feels that the character of the heart will determine the character of one’s life. It won’t determine the length of his life, his status in this world, or the size of his bank account but in God’s eyes it is the true measure of success. Jeremiah 17:9 teaches that “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick…” Proverbs 4:23 says “Out of the heart are the issues of life” (Prov. 4:23).[3] This is why Jeremiah and Ezekiel promise those who come to faith in Jesus, the New Covenant will get a “new heart.”

Paul seems to suggest that Adam’s sin was somewhat different from Eve’s sin. He writes in 1 Timothy 2:13-14, “For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.” Many commentators seem to use this passage to reduce women to something less than men. This is especially true of older commentators. But, I think Shedd is more accurate. He says, “This implies that Adam did not believe the tempter’s assertion that a good would follow the eating of the forbidden fruit and that death would not be the consequence. According to St. Paul, Adam was seduced by his affection for Eve rather than deceived by the lie of Satan. He fell with his eyes wide open to the fact that if he ate he would die.”[4] Culver takes this understanding and connects it with Christ’s love for the church. He writes, “it has been argued that he ate the fruit out of immense love for her, being unable to think of going on in integrity without her. Many sermons have argued thus and compared Adam’s love for lost Eve with God’s (Christ’s) love for lost humanity even to the point of death in each case.”[5] These sermons have at their heart the phrase in Romans 5:14 which says that “Adam… was a figure of him who was to come.” This was obviously referring to Jesus.

[1] Freeman, James M., and Harold J. Chadwick. 1998. Manners & Customs of the Bible. North Brunswick, NJ: Bridge-Logos Publishers.

[2] Singer, Isidore, ed. 1901–1906. In The Jewish Encyclopedia: A Descriptive Record of the History, Religion, Literature, and Customs of the Jewish People from the Earliest Times to the Present Day, 12 Volumes, 5:262. New York; London: Funk & Wagnalls.

[3] Smith, James, and Robert Lee. 1971. Handfuls on Purpose for Christian Workers and Bible Students, Series I–XIII. Five-volume edition. Vol. 1. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.

[4] Shedd, William Greenough Thayer. 2003. Dogmatic Theology. Edited by Alan W. Gomes. 3rd ed. Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R Pub.

[5] Culver, Robert Duncan. 2005. Systematic Theology: Biblical and Historical. Ross-shire, UK: Mentor.

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