The Story of Redemp­tion, Part II: The Fall

Why was redemp­tion neces­sary? Where does evil and suf­fer­ing in the world come from? What is human­ity’s fun­da­ment­al prob­lem? What is God’s plan to solve it? What answers do we find to these ques­tions in Genesis?

1 In the beginning…

In the begin­ning God cre­ated the heav­ens and the earth. (Gen­es­is 1:1)

God cre­ated man in His own image, in the image of God He cre­ated him; male and female He cre­ated them. (Gen­es­is 1:27)

God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was even­ing and there was morn­ing, the sixth day. (Gen­es­is 1:31)

Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nos­trils the breath of life ; and man became a liv­ing being. The LORD God planted a garden toward the east, in Eden ; and there He placed them whom He had formed. Out of the ground the LORD God caused to grow every tree that is pleas­ing to the sight and good for food ; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the know­ledge of good and evil. (Gen­es­is 2:7–9)

The LORD God com­manded the man, say­ing, “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely ; but from the tree of the know­ledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.” (Gen­es­is 2:16–17)

These verses shed light on the begin­ning of the his­tory of the world and of man­kind — but not in the sense of a sci­entif­ic report. This was not the inten­tion of the inspired author. God wants to show us the spir­itu­al mes­sage that we can find in his cre­ation. He did it through a man who wrote under the con­di­tions provided by his era, his cul­ture, his lan­guage, his own way of think­ing and view of the world. But the truth expressed in his words can be under­stood by all people of all ages, espe­cially if they open them­selves for the work of God’s Spir­it.^[1]

God saw that all he had cre­ated was very good! This included humans.

What happened then? What dis­turbed the order of cre­ation and des­troyed its harmony?

2 The Fall of Man

2.1 The Temptation

We can find the answer in the fol­low­ing verses:

Now the ser­pent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, “Indeed , has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?”
The woman said to the ser­pent, “From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat ; but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.’ ”
The ser­pent said to the woman, “You surely will not die! “For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, know­ing good and evil.”
When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desir­able to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate ; and she gave also to her hus­band with her, and he ate.
Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves togeth­er and made them­selves loin coverings.
They heard the sound of the LORD God walk­ing in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid them­selves from the pres­ence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.
Then the LORD God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?” He said, “I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked ; so I hid myself.” And He said, “Who told you that you were naked ? Have you eaten from the tree of which I com­manded you not to eat ?”
The man said, “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate.”
Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this you have done ?”
And the woman said, “The ser­pent deceived me, and I ate.”
The LORD God said to the ser­pent, “Because you have done this, Cursed are you more than all cattle, And more than every beast of the field; On your belly you will go, And dust you will eat all the days of your life; And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed ; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel.”
To the woman He said, “I will greatly mul­tiply Your pain in child­birth, In pain you will bring forth chil­dren ; Yet your desire will be for your hus­band, And he will rule over you.”
Then to Adam He said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I com­manded you, say­ing, ‘You shall not eat from it’; Cursed is the ground because of you;In toil you will eat of it All the days of your life. “Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; And you will eat the plants of the field ; By the sweat of your face You will eat bread, Till you return to the ground, Because from it you were taken ; For you are dust, And to dust you shall return.”
Now the man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the moth­er of all the living.
The LORD God made gar­ments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.
Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, know­ing good and evil ; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever “- there­fore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cul­tiv­ate the ground from which he was taken. So He drove the man out; and at the east of the garden of Eden He sta­tioned the cher­ubim and the flam­ing sword which turned every dir­ec­tion to guard the way to the tree of life. (Gen­es­is 3:1–24)

We can under­stand from the pas­sages men­tioned in the begin­ning of this art­icle (Gen­es­is 1–2), that cre­ation includes the free will of man, which is the pre­con­di­tion of inde­pend­ent exist­ence and of the dia­logue of love. In oth­er words, God, in his love, cre­ated man to be cap­able of love. How­ever, for this to become real­ity, man has to deal with this gift he received in accord­ance with the order of cre­ation. That is, he must accept the gift of life with joy and not treat it like stolen goods, cling­ing to it as if it were his own prop­erty. Instead we are to give it back to our Cre­at­or vol­un­tar­ily, as our response in the dia­logue of love. Only in this self-giving depend­ence on the Fath­er can a per­son’s own unique per­son­al­ity, his “self”, devel­op through love to be as noble, rich and inde­pend­ent as God planned it to be.

In this way he can live in har­mony with his Cre­at­or, with oth­er people, with his sur­round­ings and with him­self. But this did not happen.

2.2 The Rebellion

Man real­ized that he was a unique “self”, dis­tinct from his Cre­at­or. This real­iz­a­tion how­ever did­n’t lead him to bow down in front of his Cre­at­or as the Source of Life, as his Lord. He did­n’t want to become an “adult” by con­tinu­ally hold­ing onto the hand of God who wanted to lift him up to Him­self, but instead developed a wish to become like God, that is, he wanted to be God. He listened to some­body who called his atten­tion to this “great oppor­tun­ity”, to that which is a delight to the eyes and desirable.

The ser­pent said to the woman, You surely will not die! For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, know­ing good and evil. (Gen­es­is 3:4–5)

When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desir­able to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate ; and she gave also to her hus­band with her, and he ate. (Gen­es­is 3:6)

That’s “all” I have to do—to decide that I will not listen to God? (Well, what kind of god is he, who jeal­ously with­holds his know­ledge from us and pro­hib­its us from gain­ing it?) Wheth­er or not we put it into words, by want­ing to real­ize myself inde­pend­ently of God, I put myself in his place. What’s more, I oppose him dir­ectly when I make my own will the abso­lute stand­ard of good and bad. With this decision man­kind (the first humans, as well as you and I) rebelled, turned away from life, from joy, hid from God—died. The ava­lanche star­ted. Sin had caused the tragedy of man­kind to begin.

There­fore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned. (Romans 5:12)

3 The Con­sequences of the Fall

The encounter between God and man in the garden expresses their near­ness to one anoth­er, the close rela­tion­ship between them. Man’s life has an aim and a call­ing. By work­ing in the garden he was to rule—in a good way—over all that was entrus­ted to him. He was to guard it, to bene­fit from its fruit by liv­ing in har­mony with him­self and his envir­on­ment and by tak­ing care of his rela­tion­ship with God.

3.1 Ali­en­a­tion from God

The con­sequence of the first sin is that man hides from God. He becomes ali­en­ated from him. Fear falls on him. Fear which nobody taught him. Where does it come from, then? Is it a strange by-product of mat­ter or a twist of fate? No. It is a nat­ur­al reac­tion fol­low­ing from the order of cre­ation. Man “feels” that he has done some­thing bad! But because nobody likes to be afraid or acknow­ledge that he is bad, one sin fol­lows the oth­er: he tries to explain his sin. He shifts the blame to oth­ers and ulti­mately blames God.

The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.” Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” The woman said, “The ser­pent deceived me, and I ate.” (Gen­es­is 3:12–13)

- the woman you put here with me (why did you give such a woman?)
— the woman gave me
— the ser­pent deceived me (well, some­times we real­ize that we deceived ourselves or oth­ers deceived us, but it is often too late)

3.2 Ali­en­a­tion from Oth­er People and from Ourselves

Through sin­ning man ali­en­ates him­self from oth­er people. He degrades them to be the aims or objects of his own interests.

Yet your desire will be for your hus­band, and he will rule over you. (Gen­es­is 3:16b).

Since man con­tra­dicts his Cre­at­or, he con­tra­dicts his own being as well. His ori­gin­al being  is divided.

What does it mean to be divided? Man received his spir­it from God so that he can rule over him­self in cooper­a­tion with God in a sens­ible way, main­tain­ing the physical-spiritual unity of his per­son. How­ever, when our will is dir­ec­ted towards some­thing finite (i.e. towards ourselves) or oth­er less import­ant things instead of towards the infin­ite Good (i.e. God), then we become slaves of our own idols instead of find­ing God who offers us the free­dom of love. But at the very latest we will lose all these things at the moment of death. Then what remains is noth­ing but our exploited ego. This is Hell.

It’s like being born into a roy­al fam­ily. No-one earns this right by his own mer­it. You are born the heir of the king. Then, as if it was a mat­ter of course, you say, “Give me my inher­it­ance, it is mine! I’ll do with it what I want. I will show you how one should treat it.” Just like the example of the prod­ig­al son:

There was a man who had two sons. The young­er one said to his fath­er, ‘Fath­er, give me my share of the estate.’ So he divided his prop­erty between them. Not long after that, the young­er son got togeth­er all he had, set off for a dis­tant coun­try and there squandered his wealth in wild liv­ing. After he had spent everything, there was a severe fam­ine in that whole coun­try, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired him­self out to a cit­izen of that coun­try, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. He longed to fill his stom­ach with the pods that the pigs were eat­ing, but no one gave him any­thing. When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father­’s hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my fath­er and say to him: Fath­er, I have sinned against heav­en and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men.’ So he got up and went to his father.
But while he was still a long way off, his fath­er saw him and was filled with com­pas­sion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him. The son said to him, ‘Fath­er, I have sinned against heav­en and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the fath­er said to his ser­vants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his fin­ger and san­dals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and cel­eb­rate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to cel­eb­rate. (Luke 15:11–24)

Yes, he made it as far as the pigs’ trough because he stub­bornly fol­lowed his own ideas. And we do the same. As the Scrip­ture says: we have all sinned, “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way …” (Isai­ah 53:6).

This is not the fate God wanted us to have. We caused it ourselves.

3.3 Ali­en­a­tion from Creation

A fur­ther con­sequence is that when man behaves as if he were sov­er­eign instead of being depend­ent as a creature, his own interest becomes his very first aim. In this way he ali­en­ates him­self from his sur­round­ings because he sees the gifts of nature which God gave him first of all through his interests, too. That means he does not live with them in har­mony, rul­ing over them in a sens­ible way accord­ing to God’s ori­gin­al plan, but he often abuses or des­troys them as a tyrant.

So the thing that causes the tragedy of man is sin, i.e. con­tra­dict­ing God and his will.

3.4 Man’s Asser­tion of Independence

But why did God not hinder it, why did’t he do some­thing about it? He did!

… but from the tree of the know­ledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die. (Gen­es­is 2:17)

We have all heard the voice of our con­science speak­ing to us many times, “Don’t do it!”

Nev­er­the­less we did it. Not because Adam did it. Not because oth­ers deceived me. All these things do influ­ence us, but they do not make me sin; I sin because I want to.

This, how­ever, con­tra­dicts the order of cre­ation. The only way for a cre­ated being to live a ful­filled life is by remain­ing in com­plete depend­ence on his Cre­at­or (like a child depends on his par­ents). Every single sin we com­mit expresses and con­firms this striv­ing for false inde­pend­ence of God. This is the way sin spread through­out human his­tory (Romans 5:12–21). A sin­ful sur­round­ing came to exist­ence that influ­ences every­body and in which people mutu­ally strengthen each oth­er­’s sin­ful inclin­a­tions. Sin became a power that formed history! 

3.5 A Brief Excursus: Are We Utterly Incap­able of Good?

At this point we do not want to provide a detailed refut­a­tion of the false teach­ing of Total Deprav­ity which claims that man is totally incap­able of doing good. Although the first human’s sin ruined him, it did not des­troy his free will. Though weakened, he is still cap­able of choos­ing to do good. Indeed, this is the very found­a­tion of our mor­al respons­ib­il­ity. Cain’s example should suf­fice here: “… Be care­ful, sin is crouch­ing at the door ; and its desire is for you, but you must mas­ter it.” (Gen­es­is 4:7) God did not lie when he said this to a man after the fall. That means he had the capa­city to do good. Cain sinned because he wanted to.

The fact that one can choose what is good and live a god-fearing life (which does not mean being sin­less but does show that man is not totally depraved), can be amply seen in the exem­plary lives of Enoch (Gen­es­is 5:22–24), Noah (Gen­es­is 6:8–9), Abra­ham, Moses, the proph­ets (Hebrews 11), as well as Elisa­beth and Zachari­ah (Luke 1:5–6), and many others.

4 The Way Back

4.1 The Confrontation

But why are we talk­ing about this dark tragedy, about death, about the ava­lanche which was brought about by sin when what every­body is look­ing for is hap­pi­ness and bliss? If we want to find true hap­pi­ness, we first have to under­stand the depth and the weight of our sins. We have to abhor them in order to start long­ing for a Saviour. If people real­ize how much misery and destruc­tion their sins cause, some, at least, start to make a des­per­ate attempt to change. Then we learn how weak we are, even if we some­times achieve par­tial suc­cess. We sigh:

Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death ? (Romans 7:24)

Where is he, why does the Saviour delay? Not every­body would put it like this. A god-fearing Jew per­haps would. An athe­ist may describe his unspoken search for God as a search for the mean­ing of life and long­ing for good. Oth­ers search for the pur­pose and mean­ing of life, des­pite the uncer­tainty of their exist­ence, in the unfriendly dark­ness of the infin­ite uni­verse, as a tiny creature:

My heart sits on the twig of nothing,
its little body shiv­er­ing, dumb.
In calm unbroken gathering,
star­ing, star­ing, the stars come.
— Józ­sef Attila: Without Hope^[2]

A dif­fi­cult pro­cess starts: facing real­ity. Will I escape or con­tin­ue to face it? The shreds of my con­science get stronger through the long­ing for the good and testi­fy: I can­not make my sins undone. A dis­tress­ing result.

(Of course we often look for and “find” accept­able explan­a­tions for our sins and “warm-heartedly” for­give ourselves. Sup­press­ing our con­science, wish­ing for false peace. But it is NEVER the same as the peace com­ing from the for­give­ness of God.)

4.2 For­give­ness

I feel like some­thing has happened that I can­not restore, how­ever hard I try. When I have lost the trust of a close friend, I can­not reclaim it, no mat­ter how hero­ic­ally I try. It depends exclus­ively on the good will of my friend. This is also plainly illus­trated in the above-mentioned par­able of the prod­ig­al son. Only his fath­er can accept him again and give him back his rights.

How much more it is like this with God? I can nev­er come to him with the excuse that he should actu­ally exam­ine him­self a bit, like I might do with a friend. But what can I say to the heav­enly fath­er who is patiently wait­ing for me — the stub­born, way­ward son, to come back to him. (Luke 15). What could I tell him? He is per­fectly good. He him­self is love.

I can do noth­ing here but bow down and say, “Fath­er, I have sinned against you.”

4.3 The Deliver­er and the Deliverance

He alone—the one whom I des­pised, from whose love I turned away, from whom I ali­en­ated myself—he can make me free, he can heal our rela­tion­ship, restore the trust, my son­ship. He him­self will be the Saviour.

This prom­ise can already be found in the his­tory of the Fall.

And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your off­spring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel. (Gen­es­is 3:15)

The off­spring of the woman, the last Adam crushes the ser­pent’s head. This is the seed that grows from the root of Dav­id (Isai­ah 11:1–2!), it will be a small flower, a small shoot who will be able to stop the ava­lanche of sins with his sin­less­ness; He will tear out sin’s sting by his obed­i­ence till death; He will bring us etern­al life, restore what sin des­troyed: per­fect joy, har­mony with God, with ourselves, with each other …

Yes, Jesus Christ has done it!

The first man for­feited what God gave him because he wanted to be like God. The last Adam, Jesus Christ became the begin­ning (first fruit) of a new man­kind, the author of new life by renoun­cing equal­ity with God and empty­ing himself …

… who, although He exis­ted in the form of God, did not regard equal­ity with God a thing to be grasped, but emp­tied Him­self, tak­ing the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the like­ness of men. Being found in appear­ance as a man, He humbled Him­self by becom­ing obed­i­ent to the point of death, even death on a cross. For this reas­on also, God highly exal­ted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heav­en and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will con­fess thus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Fath­er. (Phil­ip­pi­ans 2:6–11)

Only by fol­low­ing him in his humil­ity can we walk with him on the path to etern­al life.