Genesis 3:1-
1 Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?
2 And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:
3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.
4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:
5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
6 And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.
7 And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.
Genesis 2:16-
16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:
17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
The forbidden tree was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Obviously it was not the tree of freedom of choice. They already had that. It appears that primarily it opened mans eyes and senses to evil in a new way. Man was created in Gods’ image, and after creation the bible confirms the fact that man was good; “and behold it was very good.”
God could not have created evil and pronounced it good. Man already had a grasp of what was good because he had a blessed relationship with his creator, so apparently the primary change this forbidden fruit brought was a new consciousness of evil and propensity to practice it.
The only change that is mentioned is that they saw that they were naked. It changed their view of nakedness. Was it through a new found self consciousness? Logically people made in Gods’ imaged and pronounced very good could not be inherently selfish, so it seems here is where selfishness was born. The me, myself, and I, mentality. The sense of their own nakedness suggests a new body consciousness. Since the body is a part of the material realm, I believe it was only one aspect of captivation by the Kosmos. The fall was where worldliness was born, and brought mankind under the direction of the god of this world which is Satan.
Now man can see and serve his creator only by faith which must be developed, because anything observable by the five senses seems so much more real then the realm of the spirit. This was only heightened by the fact that God was forced to withdraw himself from man, ending the walks in the garden; due to mans’ sin.
Before the fall sin was foreign to man. They didn’t know what it looked like. For Adam and Eve to function as adults and not sin at all before the fall; no unkind word, no smoldering anger, nothing to initiate sin, is proof in itself that man was created with a nobler nature than he possesses today even from birth.
Since the fall sin is native to us. That is why James says (James 1:14-
14 But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.
15 Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.
The lust here originates within the man himself, Satan only capitalizes on mans nature to destroy him. His job is much easier than the challenge he faced in the garden. He needed to deceive a being that was not predisposed to do wrong. Eve had a free will obviously as well as an imagination, but having never sinned before she needed to be totally deluded before she could allow herself to partake of the forbidden. Sin today has an element of deception as well, to be sure, but man sins today largely because he lacks the moral strength to resist his own passions.
David affirms our sinfulness by birth in Psalm 51:5 (KJV)
5 Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.
Was David conceived out of wedlock? No. This is a direct reference to mans’ inherent sinfulness.
Jeremiah 17:9 (KJV)
9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?
The scriptures that speak of the fallen nature of man use universal language. Either they use inclusive words as “all” or they are unqualified blank statements that are totally inclusive like this passage here. Neither the context nor the statement itself suggest that it’s speaking about an especially wicked person.
Romans 7:17-
17 Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.
18 For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not.
19 For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.
20 Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.
The apostle here declares that nothing good at all resides in his flesh and asserts twice that sin is not only something one does but rather it inhabits him. It’s like it oozes out of his pores.
Ephesians 2:3 (KJV)
3 Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.
The Greek word translated nature here suggests what we are naturally from birth without outside influences. Naturally we were evil just like “the rest”,(literal translation)
Then Jesus is said to have taken on only “the likeness of sinful flesh”.
Romans 8:3 (KJV)
3 For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh:
Human flesh is innately sinful, else scripture would not say so, but notice that Jesus being the “last Adam”, son of God and son of Mary; not son of Joseph, had a body like Adam, that could be tempted like Adam, but was not naturally sinful like the off-
1 Corinthians 15:45 (KJV)
45 And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.
If his body would have been sinful he would not have been a fit sacrifice for the world. Like the unclean animals under the Law, he would have been rejected as a sacrifice creature.
Furthermore Adam’s sin is presented as a sin that stands in a class by itself, since no one between Adam and Moses sinned a sin like Adam did.
Romans 5:14 (KJV)
14 Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come.
Adam’s sin may have been the monster of all sins; simply because he sinned without being predisposed to sin. If, as some suggest, due to the fact that Eve could be tantalized by the forbidden, our first parents were no different than we, every descendent of Adam would have sinned a sin just like he did.
Philippians 3:21 (KJV)
21 Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself.
The expression “vile body” here literally means “body of the humiliation”. It is open to speculation as to exactly what makes it humiliating. It could be sinfulness or other negative aspects of humanity. So while every passage needs to be analyzed to determine what the inference really is, there is a vast body of scripture that teaches the depravity of man. To doubt mans’ sinfulness, based on technical arguments alone is to ignore the entire tenor of scripture on the subject. It is like Yankee Doodle saying he couldn’t see the town for all the houses.
One aspect of the fall is the way Satan has corrupted God’s good gifts, turning them into evil things. Perhaps at the top of this list is man’s sexuality. While God designed it for the propagation of the race, and for the happiness of marriage, Satan has turned it into every form of perversion. Adam, when created, was a one woman man, but since the fall men have been driven and controlled by their bodily passions to the destruction of the race.
A secondary foundation for the doctrine of the fall of man is the types of the old testament.
Leviticus 11:1-
1 And the LORD spake unto Moses and to Aaron, saying unto them,
2 Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, These are the beasts which ye shall eat among all the beasts that are on the earth.
3 Whatsoever parteth the hoof, and is clovenfooted, and cheweth the cud, among the beasts, that shall ye eat.
4 Nevertheless these shall ye not eat of them that chew the cud, or of them that divide the hoof: as the camel, because he cheweth the cud, but divideth not the hoof; he is unclean unto you.
5 And the coney, because he cheweth the cud, but divideth not the hoof; he is unclean unto you.
6 And the hare, because he cheweth the cud, but divideth not the hoof; he is unclean unto you.
7 And the swine, though he divide the hoof, and be clovenfooted, yet he cheweth not the cud; he is unclean to you.
8 Of their flesh shall ye not eat, and their carcase shall ye not touch; they are unclean to you.
One of those types is the fact that certain animals were born clean and others through no fault of their own, just like man, were born unclean.
The types of the Old Testament foreshadow New Testament truth. Like the case of 1 Corinthians 9:9-
9 For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen?
10 Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope.
It naturally followed that unclean animals were not fit animals for sacrefice.
Leviticus 27:11 (KJV)
11 And if it be any unclean beast, of which they do not offer a sacrifice unto the LORD, then he shall present the beast before the priest: —––-
The anti-
The donkey was one of those animals that was naturally unclean, like man, and was the only creature other than man that had the option of redemption in Old Testament law. In Exodus 13:13 (KJV)
13 And every firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb; and if thou wilt not redeem it, then thou shalt break his neck: and all the firstborn of man among thy children shalt thou redeem.
The first born of the donkey faced an ultimatum, either redemption or death; same as unregenerate man, (“born once die twice, born twice die once”)
So for man, made sinful by the fall and doomed to eternal death God offers salvation via redemption and new birth.
Ezekiel 36:25-
26 A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.
27 And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them.
This is what Jesus said to Nicodemus in John 3:3 (KJV)
3 Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
John 3:5 (KJV)
5 Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
Born of water, first birth?; born of the Spirit, second birth.
The unclean animals were unclean because they either didn’t have the split hoof or didn’t chew the cud or both. To spiritualize that, consider this interpretation. The message of the split hoof is the separated walk as in separated from ungodliness or the fallen world. That is holiness in practical living or as we say where the rubber meets the road, or here where the hoof meets the road.
The message of chewing the cud might be the new thought processes of the born again believer who constantly meditates on the Word of God, the Bible. Like the cow who has 5 stomachs, a clean animal, it regurgitates the same food many times in the digestion process. Both aspects of these are taught in Psalm 1:1-
1 Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.
2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.
3 And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.
This is the picture of man, born sinful because of the fall of man, redeemed like the unclean donkey could be, by the sacrifice of the spotless lamb, and by brokenness transformed into a useful creature for God. (Listen to the sermon, Donkeys and People)
To be considered clean the animal had to be clean on two counts. Both the split hoof and chewing the cud. (Lev. 11:1-
Wow! God didn’t miss much in the Old Testament types did he?
Romans 11:33-
33 O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!
34 For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counsellor?
35 Or who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again?
36 For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen.
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