Creation - Man in the Garden of Eden - The Fall. (GENESIS 1-3) Part 3

Of all His works God only "created man in His own image: in the image of God created He him." This
expression refers not merely to the intelligence with which God endowed, and the immortality with
which He gifted man, but also to the perfect moral and spiritual nature which man at the first possessed.
And all his surroundings were in accordance with his happy state. God "put him into the garden of
Eden* to dress it and to keep it," and gave him a congenial companion in Eve, whom Adam recognized
as bone of his bones, and flesh of his flesh. Thus as God had, by setting apart the Sabbath day, indicated
worship as the proper relationship between man and his Creator, so He also laid in Paradise the
foundation of civil society by the institution of marriage and of the family. (Comp. Mark 10:6, 9)
* Many different views have been broached as to the exact locality of Eden, which it would scarcely be
suitable to discuss in this place. The two opinions deserving most attention are those which place it either
near the northern highlands of Armenia, or else far south in the neighborhood of the Persian Gulf. We
know that two of the streams mentioned as issuing from Paradise were the Tigris and the Euphrates, and

we can readily conceive that the changes subsequently produced by the flood may have rendered theother descriptions of the district inapplicable to its present aspect.
It now only remained to test man's obedience to God, and to prepare him for yet higher and greater
privileges than those which he already enjoyed. But evil was already in this world of ours, for Satan and
his angels had rebelled against God. The scriptural account of man's trial is exceedingly brief and
simple. We are told: that "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil" had been placed "in the midst of
the garden," and of the fruit of this tree God forbade Adam to eat, on pain of death. On the other hand,
there was also "the tree of life" in the garden, probably as symbol and pledge of a higher life, which we
should have inherited if our first parents had continued obedient to God. The issue of this trial came only
too soon. The tempter, under the form of a serpent, approached Eve. He denied the threatenings of God,
and deceived her as to the real consequences of eating the forbidden fruit. This, followed by the
enticement of her own senses, led Eve first to eat, and then to induce her husband to do likewise. Their
sin had its immediate consequence. They had aimed to be "as gods," and, instead of absolutely
submitting themselves to the command of the Lord, acted independently of Him. And now their eyes
were indeed opened, as the tempter had promised, "to know good and evil;" but only in their own guilty
knowledge of sin, which immediately prompted the wish to hide themselves from the presence of God.
Thus, their alienation and departure from God, the condemning voice of their conscience, and their
sorrow and shame gave evidence that the Divine threatening had already been accomplished: "In the day
that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." The sentence of death which God now pronounced on our
first parents extended both to their bodily and their spiritual nature - to their mortal and immortal part. In
the day he sinned man died in body, soul, and spirit. And because Adam, as the head of his race,
represented the whole; and as through him we should all have entered upon a very high and happy state
of being, if he had remained obedient, so now the consequences of his disobedience have extended to us
all; and as "by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin," so "death passed upon all men, for
that all have sinned." Nay, even "creation itself," which had been placed under his dominion, was made
through his fall "subject to vanity," and came under the curse, as God said to Adam: "Cursed is the
ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns also and thistles shall it
bring forth to thee."
God, in His infinite mercy, did not leave man to perish in his sin. He was indeed driven forth from
Paradise, for which he was no longer fit. But, before that, God had pronounced the curse upon his
tempter, Satan, and had given man the precious promise that the seed of the woman should bruise the
head of the serpent; that is, that our blessed Savior, "born of a woman," should redeem us from the
power of sin and of death, through His own obedience, death, and resurrection. And even the labor of his
hands, to which man was now doomed, was in the circumstances a boon.
Therefore, when our first parents left the garden of Eden, it was not without hope, nor into outer
darkness. They carried with them the promise of a Redeemer, the assurance of the final defeat of the
great enemy, as well as the Divine institution of a Sabbath on which to worship, and of the marriagebond
by which to be joined together into families. Thus the foundations of the Christian life in all its
bearings were laid in Paradise.