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Essay 2: The Initial Test

Copyright © 2005-2025 by Terry E. Manning

The Lord God took the man and placed him in the garden of Eden to work it and watch over it. And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree of the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for on the day you eat from it, you will certainly die.” Genesis 2:15-17 HCSB

Therefore, as sin came into the world through one man, and death as the result of sin, so death spread to all men, [no one being able to stop it or to escape its power] because all men sinned. [To be sure] sin was in the world before ever the Law was given, but sin is not charged to men’s account where there is no law [to transgress]. Yet death held sway from Adam to Moses [the Lawgiver], even over those who did not themselves transgress [a positive command] as Adam did. Adam was a type (prefigure) of the One Who was to come [in reverse, the former destructive, the Latter saving]. Romans 5:12-14 AMP

When tempted, Adam, chose to disobey our Creator (Prov. 3:5-8). He flunked his initial test and the consequences have been disastrous. Adam and Eve were created as special beings in the image of God. They were the first living souls, dwelling in the light while enjoying a face-to-face relationship with the Lord God. Both had free access to the Source of eternal life.

Their mission placed them between the Creator and their future descendents. God commanded them to be fruitful, filling the earth with their offspring while subduing it. Adam and Eve were also being prepared to exercise delegated authority over the animal kingdom. They were to remain vitally connected to the Lord God and subject to His sovereignty and will. Their obedience to God was a matter of life and death.

Concerning their initial test, the first couple chose to disobey the Lord God’s commandment. Satan slithered into the garden in Eden in the form of a serpent (Rev. 12:9, 20:2). He deceived the woman with lies about the character and nature of God and distorted what God has said the consequences would be if she ate the fruit of the forbidden tree (Jn. 8:44). Eve was tempted by her own desires. Adam had known and interacted with the Lord God for a longer time than Eve. He wasn’t deceived like the woman, but was also tempted by his desires. When the woman offered him the fruit, Adam chose to sin by disobeying the Lord God.

Adam and Eve’s self-serving choices involved a very effective three-fold temptation that later thoroughly tested Jesus and challenges men and women of God to this day (Matt. 4:10, Mark, 1:13, Lk. 4:8, 1 Jn. 2:16). For his part, the serpent was cursed and would eat dust for the rest of his existence. It is interesting to note that “man was taken out of the ground and is dust and shall return to dust (Gensis 3:19, Ecclesiastes 3:20, 12:7)."

Adam and Eve’s choices have plunged billions of their descendents into spiritual darkness. A significant outcome has been the fact that mankind ended up on the wrong side of a rebellion against the sovereign rule of God. The serpent didn’t break any bones or twist any arms; Adam and Eve were tempted by him to distrust their Creator, disobey His command and serve themselves (Proverbs 1:7).

Before they had any children or had subdued any of the earth, Adam and Eve made their fateful choices and became human casualties in the ongoing spiritual war. In the perfect environment of the garden in Eden, neither "held the line" against evil, instead they questioned God's character and challenged God's authority and Word. They were unfaithful to and rebellious toward their Creator.

Becoming like God, knowing good and evil and having their eyes opened, wasn’t as majestic as the serpent had advertised. Initially, Adam and Eve sewed fig leaves together to cover their shame. After the Lord found Adam and the woman hiding among the trees, Eve blamed the serpent and Adam blamed the woman that God gave him. The Lord God demonstrated the necessity for shed blood by sacrificing animals to clothe their nakedness.

God prophesied that an offspring of the woman would deal with the serpent – the "father of liars" named Satan. Adam and the woman were expelled from the garden and effectively blocked from the Tree of Life in its midst. Their relationship with their Creator was dramatically changed as was their relationship with each other. Until they died; separation from God, barred access to the Tree of Life, hard labor, cursed ground, thorns and thistles, emotional anguish, pain, darkness and death marred their mortal existence.

After being driven out of the garden, Adam called the woman Eve – the mother of all living. She bore a son for Adam and then another. Adam and Eve may have thought that Cain, their firstborn, would become the promised offspring of whom the Lord God had prophesied. It didn’t work out that way.

We read that Cain and his younger brother Abel brought offerings to the Lord. “The Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but did not regard Cain and his offering.” Like his parent’s fig leaf aprons, the fruit of Cain’s self-righteous efforts were rejected by his Creator. Faith in God and a blood sacrifice were required to please God. Cain was upset. After being warned by the Lord that sin was crouching at the door, Cain chose anger over repentance and brutally murdered his brother Abel.

Adam and Eve must have suffered terribly. They lost both of their sons – Abel to a shocking act of violence and Cain to Satan. This event was a direct consequence of the parents’ disobedience and the first example of the conflict between the wicked, who choose to sin and the righteous (because of their faith in God). When Adam was a hundred and thirty, Eve bore a third son in Adam’s image and likeness. Adam named the child Seth. Later, when Seth’s son Enosh was born, “people began to call upon the name of the Lord.”

Cain started a separate line of descent from Adam in the land of Nod (east of Eden). The Scriptures reveal that Cain’s offspring lived in tents, were "full of themselves" and prone to violence. People from both branches of the Adamic bloodline began to multiply on the earth. Within a few generations of Seth’s birth, all flesh was corrupt in God’s sight and the earth was filled with violence. Wickedness stemming from man’s continually evil motives, thoughts and choices caused our righteous and holy God to regret making man – it grieved Him in His heart!

The stories of Noah (and his three sons) and the Tower of Babel give us more insight into the problem (to better understand the problem, into which all are born, I recommend a prayerful study of the first eleven chapters of Genesis). At every point in mankind’s sorted history; the degradation, ungodly values and unrighteous operating principles of Adam’s race have been revealed in the many wicked, self-serving and self-annihilating expressions of human civilization. The natural spiritual condition of every person born into this fallen world (with the exception of One) has been "dead on arrival" and alienated from their Creator.

Prior to the events in the garden, Satan and a third of the angels had challenged God’s divine authority. Angelic leaders, powers and authorities were among the angels that joined him in a mutinous conspiracy against God (Col. 2:15, Eph. 6:12). Satan, the leader of the rebellion, must have thought that his success with Adam and Eve had effectively ruined God’s plans for mankind. He was dead wrong. The instant it happened, Father God could have crushed this heavenly rebellion and bound its participants – but it served His divine purposes to wait (Revelation 12:7-12:12).

Until He has finished preparing a remnant of mankind to become God’s holy dwelling place, the righteous judgment and wrath of Almighty God are being held in reserve for all of the fallen angels and for human beings whose names are removed from the book of Life. Like Adam and Eve, the angels are free to choose their Creator’s will or their own – with significant consequences. The Scriptures state that one third of the angels failed their tests.

Adam was a son of God who was created for God’s purposes. By disobeying God’s command, Adam broke God’s covenant of life with him. Adam was unfaithful to his Creator. Adam relinquished the high ground of dwelling in the Light of God’s Presence and forfeited eternal life. Adam's choice and the consequences from it plunged humanity into spiritual darkness, oppression and death.

This all-encompassing problem serves Father God's purposes perfectly. The challenges of the consequences that immersed a world in darkness are used to test and refine the elect’s faith in God and faithfulness to God. From the beginning, God foreknew what would transpire in the Garden. The Scriptures reveal the unfolding of Almighty God's plan for redemption and Jesus, our Messiah and eternal Solution (Matthew 6:13, 2Thessalonians 3:3, 2 Timothy 4:18).

 

Think about the two trees in the Garden. Every soul is born into this world eating from the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Each believer may grow in Christ to have free access to the tree of Life. The challenge for the believer called to follow Him, is to seek Jesus as Lord and to learn to eat from the tree of Life while fasting from partaking from the other tree. This may sound easy.

Today,overcoming the problem by learning to embrace God’s only Solution and His righteousness is still the challenge of the difficult and narrow way of the Lord. Men and women of God follow Jesus to learn to stop relying on their own human nature and resources and to pursue righteousness and holiness through their faith in God and obedience.

Consider the pattern that Father God used with the Son. It was faith, obedience, suffering, crucifixion, death, burial and resurrection. If you seek to go as far and as deep in Christ as is possible, you will discover that your spiritual transformation into the image and likeness of Christ is progressive and that Incrementally your flesh is crucified on the crosses that God provides. The life of Christ is resurrected within you as you persist. Embrace Lord Jesus and value your relationship with God above all else. Adam failed. Jesus was faithful and succeeded. It is only in Him that you will overcome all that is required of you in this life.

In the Bible, Satan is called "the god of this world" (Lk. 4:6, Jn. 12:31, 14:30, 16:11, Eph. 2:2, 2 Cor. 4:4, 1 Jn. 5:19, Rev. 13:2). All of Adam’s descendents have come under the curse of sin – subject to Satan’s oppressive rule. Adam’s choice, in the garden of Eden, placed all who have been born since in a fallen state of spiritual darkness and death – for mankind, an unrelenting problem as the rebellion against God continues to run its course. At your life's end, will you be found as still overcome by this glaring spiritual problem or as a faithful part of the Solution?

— Terry E. Manning
 

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Copyright © 2005-2025 by Terry E. Manning. All rights reserved.