The Fall of Man
3: 1-24
Bersheit Chapter Three opens with Adam and Eve living happily together with themselves and with their God, working faithfully in the Garden, and performing the responsibilities with which the Lord entrusted them. All they knew, both by experience and otherwise, was God’s perspective on life. After the six days of creation ADONAI, God, said that everything was very good. It was a perfect world. There was no pain, no disease, no suffering, no struggle for survival, no sin, and especially no death.
But, the storm clouds were about to roll in. All of this was about to change. Mankind was about to embark on an incredible journey. How our world has changed. In the physical domain, everything runs down and wears out. In the animal world, each animal struggles against other animals and against disease. In the spiritual domain, people find it easier to do wrong than do right, easier to think of self than others. All of us face the universal process of aging and death. The world is full of hatred, crime, war, pollution, selfishness, corruption, and evil of every kind. And if you have watched the news lately, things are getting worse, not better. Something has gone terribly wrong with God’s perfect world.
Thus, a Second Kingdom was born: The Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Satan. Notice how both Kingdoms have a direct comparison to each other:
The Kingdom of darkness vs. the Kingdom of light
The reign of sin and death vs. the reign of grace.
The ruler is Satan vs. the ruler is Yeshua.
The power of death vs. the power of life.
God’s wrath vs. God’s favor.
Slaves to sin vs. slaves to righteousness.
The existence of evil in a world created by a holy, loving God is the problem of the ages. If God is truly loving, holy and all powerful, why does He permit such a thing? Maybe even more to the point, how could evil ever have appeared at all?
There are no easy answers to these questions. The atheist solves the problem by denying the existence of God. The agnostic solves the problem by believing that these questions are beyond our reach. The dualist tries to solve the problem by proposing two eternal opposing forces in the universe, one good and one evil. But these answers are neither Scriptural nor do they satisfy the needs of the human heart. Elohim is all powerful and He is righteous. Only His Word, therefore, can help us to understand the source of evil in the world.
The only true answer to this problem is found here in the third chapter of Genesis. Rabbi Sha’ul, referring to this chapter said: Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, in this way death came to all mankind, because all sinned . . . for the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God (Romans 5:12; 8:20-22).
Before one man could bring sin into the world, he would need to be tempted. Would he obey Elohim, or go his own way? Any of us who have ever felt a sense of guilt for something we should not have done will understand the events of this chapter. It relates how sin entered the world and ruined the Paradise God had provided in the Garden of Eden.53
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