Meditation Text: Genesis 3:1–7
Suggested Reading: Psalm 1
There’s a battle going on in these opening verses of Genesis 3, and it’s not going well. On the one side is Satan voicing seductive thoughts through a serpent and on the other side is the woman who, though accompanied by her husband, is responding alone. Adam offers no help and Eve asks for none, and together they are losing ground to the devil’s attacks. On the surface of things it looks like a conversation about a forbidden fruit but underneath it all is a war for the allegiance of man’s heart. Will mankind, headed by Adam, keep the covenant God had made with them in the garden or will they turn away and give themselves to another master? Will man choose the way of life or the way of death? 
Lethal Strike
After the first interchange between the devil and the woman, Eve is left in a vulnerable position. She has not only allowed the serpent to suggest evil things about God without objecting, but also she herself has cast the Lord’s instructions in a much more severe light than they were given: “but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die’” (Gen. 3:2, English Standard Version). She has opened herself up to believing that God could be something other than He is, and in that moment the devil advances with a bold strike: “You will not surely die” (v. 4). Faster than a rattlesnake Satan strikes at the heart of the woman with lethal force. Satan has moved from raising a question about God’s integrity to now emphatically contradicting God’s word in a brazen lie. He even takes the words of God’s original command and turns them upside down—you absolutely won’t die!
Do you see how deception lies at the core of who the devil is? Later the Lord Jesus points back to this event and warns us about Satan’s nature: “He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44). We should be on the lookout for deceit in its many forms, from very soft and sly to very bold and in your face, and be prepared to withstand it by putting on the armor of God, starting with the belt of truth (Eph. 6:14). Deception can be outed and withstood only by knowing and clinging to the truth of God’s Word, turning neither to the left nor to the right.
Power of the Lie
Satan follows up his bald-faced lie with an alluring reason: “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (v. 5). Isn’t Satan so ingeniously wicked? Now that Eve, as well as Adam, who is passively taking all of this in, are disposed to thinking less of God than they should, Satan capitalizes on their wavering faith and casts an even darker shadow over God. He paints a picture of the Lord as a stingy God who is selfishly holding something back from His creatures: the knowledge of good and evil. Satan openly calls God a liar and makes Him out to be a mean-spirited despot who uses ignorance to keep people in submission to Himself while enjoying certain things that He withholds from humans. Then, after casting aspersions on God’s motives, Satan holds out to man the enthralling possibility of being like God—oh, what a deviously devastating temptation!
And isn’t that still the main attraction for mankind and the primary lie believed by many all over the world today? Man loves the idea that he can be like God, equal to Him in knowledge and even in power. There are examples of this throughout Scripture. Later in Genesis we see mankind rallying together to build the tower of Babel as a monument to their own name, not the Lord’s (11:1–9). Generations later, Pharaoh king of Egypt claims sovereignty over God’s people Israel by denying that the Lord is God (Exod. 5:2). Some hundreds of years after that, Nebuchadnezzar exalts himself as god by taking all credit for his kingdom and his power (Dan. 4:30). The Roman emperors thought they were gods, as did King Herod (Acts 12:21–23). And is it not the case today that man thinks he is in control of his own destiny? Doesn’t man think he can solve all the world’s problems through science, medicine, and technology? Disney and so much of the media teach that every person has power within himself so that all you need to do is believe in yourself and you can do anything. By tapping the power within, you can solve your problems at work, at home, and in society. Much of mankind still believes the devil’s lie that they can be like God or worse: be their own god.
Two Choices
Now we can see more clearly that Adam and Eve’s sin here is not a light matter. Some might wonder how such a simple mistake like picking a forbidden fruit could be so offensive to God and lead to such brutal consequences in this world. But this was not a simple mistake. Eve didn’t randomly take the wrong fruit from the wrong tree one day—it’s not even really about the fruit, is it? It’s all about trusting God and His word.
Eve gave careful consideration to her actions. We read, “So 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 to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate” (v. 6). In the course of this conversation she showed that she knew exactly what the Lord had commanded, as well as all that the devil had promised. The choice before her was her covenant God and His word over against the devil and his word. And the devil’s lies are so convincing, aren’t they? Look how good that fruit is! Look how lovely that tree is! His lies appeal to our physical bodies, to our sense of beauty, and even to our intellectual appetite—the fruit was desirable for gaining wisdom, don’t forget. How many times haven’t we stood at a fork in the road and the one path looks so good to follow, so easy, so nice, so pleasant and harmless, while the other so small, narrow, rocky, and difficult? The devil is not an idiot. He knows exactly how to appeal to our basic instincts, but in all these choices let us be fully aware, just as Eve was: it’s a choice between God and His promise versus Satan and his promise—whom would she believe? Whom would she follow? Whom will you believe? Whom will you follow?
Those are really the only two choices in life, aren’t they? Psalm 1 teaches us this quite plainly. We can either in faith embrace the Lord and His promise of salvation and live the righteous life into eternity or reject Him and walk the pathway of wickedness into everlasting punishment. Sometimes we fool ourselves into thinking that life can be neutral. We imagine that we can live life more or less for ourselves and that doing so is not necessarily against God. But that too is the devil’s deception. The Bible teaches that in the end either you trust and obey God or you trust and obey Satan—there is no other alternative. Sin is rebellion against the Lord and carries with it a terrible toll.
Terrible Toll
Sin always has devastating consequences. No one breaks God’s commandments and doesn’t pay a price, sooner or later. We find that toll coming out in verse 7: “Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked.” From Genesis 2 we know they were already naked, but the difference now is that they became aware of it and instantly felt ashamed of their nakedness. So powerful and pervasive was this sense that they scrambled to sew fig leaves together and cover themselves so they could at least bear to look at each other. Something had come between the man and the woman, and they were filled with shame.
And that something is a broken relationship. Mankind had just broken the covenant God had so graciously made with them in paradise, and the symptom of that brokenness is shame. Soon they will hide from the Lord when He comes, but already now the guilt of their sin pressed upon their hearts. Their own consciences accused them of rebellion against God and brought them low in their guilty shame, so low that also the relationship between the two of them was deeply affected. They hide themselves from one another under the fig leaves.
Have you ever noticed that? When your relationship with God is broken, then your relationship with people, even with your spouse, begins to break down too. Soon the gap between husband and wife will be widened as the blame game begins (3:12–13).
It’s a dreadful cost—the misery and shame of sin. What a relief to know of that other Adam who took on our sin and shame, nailing them to the cross. Adam and Eve’s sin was not isolated to the two of them, for Adam is the head of the entire human race, and when he fell, we fell in him (Rom. 5:12). Every human descends from these our first parents and shares in their corruption (Job 14:4). What we read in Genesis 3:1–7 is the account of our own rebellion against God, a rebellion which pitched us and all of God’s good creation into death and decay. And so we confess with Scripture, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way” (Isa. 53:6). But we also confess faith in the Savior Jesus, who “was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows” (53:3–4). Your shame and mine was placed upon His shoulders as the Lord “laid on him the iniquity of us all” (53:6) so that in the end “everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame” (Rom. 10:11).
A little while ago we asked: What happened to the beauty of God’s good creation? The simple, sober truth is that we ruined it by breaking covenant with God. But God in His grace has restored His relationship with us in Jesus Christ. Faith in Jesus is all you need to enter into this renewed covenant of love with God in which His peace fills your heart and your heart wants only to serve Him in grateful devotion. And isn’t that the heart and the start of renewed beauty?
Rev. Peter H. Holtvlüwer is minister of Ancaster Canadian Reformed Church (ON) and editor of Christ’s Psalms, Our Psalms.