Humanity was created by God after He spoke into existence the world and all that is in it. “The Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.” (Genesis 2:7) Then God planted a garden in Eden and made that the perfect home for this man and the woman God gave him.
At creation, God’s Edenic COVENANT placed Adam as the representative head of humanity with his actions attributed to everyone that came after him. The covenant was this:
God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth . . . Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. (Genesis 1:28–30)
This covenant included joyful work and only command: “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, ‘You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.’” (Genesis 2:15–17)
This made the responsibilities and blessings God gave Adam conditional, a test to determine if he would respond to God’s will or assume exemption because he was given all that authority. The result of disobedience could have been extinction; God could have started over. Instead, those first humans were expelled from that perfect environment and separated from God — which the Bible calls spiritual death.
At this point, sin was already in existence. Satan had been created perfect but decided, “I will be like the Most High” and tried to usurp God. He tempted Eve in the same three areas described in 1 John 2:16. His strategy included taking her eyes off all the things God gave her to enjoy and focus on the one thing forbidden. He also minimized the consequences by focusing her attention on the tree, and by mislabeling what he wanted her to do. He said she would be ‘expanding her consciousness and become more complete’ making disobedience sound like a necessity. She saw the tree as good for food, mixing good and evil, the fruit as nice to look at, mixing sin with beauty, and misunderstood the implications by seeing the fruit would give her wisdom. Instead she was calling God a liar and thinking Satan was more interested in her welfare than God was. Her actions and Adam joining her, the Edenic covenant came to an end.
But God was not finished. In Genesis He promised a seed of the woman that would undo the mess created. That promise was fulfilled in Jesus Christ.
Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned— for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come. But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. And the free gift is not like the result of that one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ. Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous. (Romans 5:12–19)
GAZE INTO HIS GLORY. God’s glory shines in the life, death and resurrection of His Son. When He is central to everything I think, say and do, all else becomes unimportant. Because of Jesus, the curse is reversed. I am in the presence of God. He has freely given me forgiveness, all that I need here, and eternal life with and the assurance of spending forever with Him. This world is not Eden yet God will place His people in a new paradise with complete assurance in His covenant promises.
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