This morning, as my husband and I were reading our daily
devotionals, he posed the interesting question, “What if, once Adam and Eve had
sinned, they confessed their sin to God and asked for His forgiveness? Would
that have eliminated the curse of sin and death?
As we know from Scripture, Adam and Eve’s first reaction
was not to repent, ask for forgiveness, and seek restoration of their
fellowship with God, even though they had known the blissful existence of
perfect peace and joy, intimate fellowship with God in the garden, and every
blessing one could ever imagine, all lovingly provided by God’s grace (Genesis
1-2).
Quite the contrary. Once they had eaten the forbidden fruit
(Genesis 3:6), lost their innocence, and realized they were
naked, they tried to hide from God’s presence and to cover up their sin by
sewing aprons of fig leaves (Genesis 3:7). (If you’ve ever seen a
dry fig leaf, which crumbles if you even look at it askance, you’ll know how futile
that was!)
Once God confronted them (Genesis 3:8-11),
things went from bad to worse. Rather than admitting their disobedience and
begging God for His forgiveness, they played the blame game. Adam, whom God had
designated as the spiritual head of his household (Genesis 2:18-25),
should have taken responsibility for his wife’s transgression, and certainly
should not have followed her in her rebellion. Instead, Adam blamed Eve for
tasting the forbidden fruit, and even worse, he indirectly blamed God, as the
One Who had given Eve to him as his wife (Genesis 3:12).
Not to be outmaneuvered, Eve blamed the serpent for having
deceived her (Genesis 3:13), rather than owning up to her
weakness as she yielded to the temptation of lust of the eyes (the tree was
pleasant to look at), lust of the flesh (the fruit would surely taste good),
and pride of life (the devil’s lie that eating the fruit would make them wise
so that they would become gods themselves; Genesis 3:6; 1 John 2:16).
As far as we know in Scripture, Adam and Eve did not repent
of their sin before God pronounced judgment. Eve and her successors would now
experience great pain in childbirth and submission to their husbands (Genesis
3:16), while Adam and his offspring would have to labor intensely to provide
their food from the sin-cursed ground (Genesis 3:17-19).
And yet, we later see some evidence that the hearts of Adam
and Eve turned back to God, for Eve believed in God’s promise that her seed
would one day defeat the devil (Genesis 3:15; 4:1,25). Once
God had expelled Adam and Eve from the garden (Genesis 3:22-24),
they must have taught their children what God had told them about the need for
animal sacrifice to please Him. Abel brought such an offering to God, even
though his brother Cain rebelled and pridefully offered crops he had worked
hard to grow (Genesis 4:2-16).
So what if Adam and Eve had immediately repented of their
sin and begged God for mercy? Would that have reversed all the dire consequences:
expulsion from the garden, physical death and sin nature as the new destiny for
all mankind, pain in childbirth, and sorrow in eking out a living?
We know that God is faithful and just to forgive our sins
and cleanse from unrighteousness, if we confess them (1 John 1:9).
There is no sin so heinous that it cannot be forgiven, thanks to Jesus Christ
paying our sin debt in full (Hebrews 10:10-14). Whosoever, whether
Mother Theresa or Adolf Hitler, trusts in the death, burial and resurrection of
Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 15:1-4) as the only Way to Heaven (John
14:6) will be saved to eternal life (John 3:16).
And yet we cannot escape the consequences of our sin. God
gave us free will to choose to accept or reject His Son, and to obey or disobey
His commandments. Either way, there are consequences – blessings or curses.
Imagine a saved man who flies into a jealous rage upon
discovering his wife in another man’s bed. Without thinking, he picks up a
heavy vase and bashes in her skull. Immediately he is filled with grief and genuine
remorse, realizes how wrong his actions were, and pleads with God to forgive
him and accept him back into fellowship with Him.
Surely God will forgive him. He will not lose his
salvation, and God will restore their broken fellowship (John 10:29; Romans
8:35-39). Yet the consequences of his sin remain. His wife will not be
resurrected from the dead, nor will he escape legal punishment for murder.
Sometimes the consequences of our sin are delayed, yet they
relentlessly pursue us until they are fulfilled. Consider a long-time alcoholic
who gets saved; realizes that he has been sinning by abusing his body, which is
now God’s temple (1 Corinthians 3:16-17); and asks God to forgive
him. From that day on he remains sober and glorifies God through his testimony
and witness to others who struggle with addiction.
Yet one day, as he gazes into the mirror, he notices a
sallow tint to his complexion. Tests and doctor’s visits soon reveal that he is
dying from alcoholic cirrhosis of the liver. Could he rightfully blame God for
allowing this consequence of his former sin to finally catch up with him? I
believe not, for God is holy and just, and there are inevitable consequences of
breaking His laws.
Back to Adam and Eve. Had they asked God for forgiveness
and sincerely repented, seeking His face instead of running away and blaming
others, I believe He would have forgiven them and immediately restored their close
relationship with Him and with one another. Yet He still would have had to
address their disobedience by judging their sin. He had warned them not to eat
of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, for if they ate it, they would
surely die (Genesis 2:17).
God cannot lie (Titus 1:2), and even if Adam
and Eve had immediately confessed, the punishment of physical death could not
be taken off the table. God in His infinite knowledge and wisdom (Psalm
139:1-6) knew from before the beginning of time that man would disobey
Him, and He had the perfect plan to restore mankind by sending His Son to pay
for our sins, so that all who trust Him would have eternal life (John 3:16).
Even if Adam and Eve repented, death still would have
entered the garden and the world, starting with the animal God slew to cover
Adam and Eve’s nakedness (Genesis 3:21). Yet God showed the first
instance of His repeated cycle of judgment and mercy. He softened the blow of
physical death, pain and sorrow by expelling them from the garden before they
could eat of the tree of life (Genesis 3:22-24). Had they done
so, they would have been doomed to live forever in a sin-corrupted world in
sin-corrupted bodies.
The second such recorded cycle was when Cain took out his
anger at God not accepting his offering by killing Abel, his brother. God judged Cain for his sin of fratricide by removing his farming prowess and making
him a fugitive and vagabond. Yet in His mercy, God marked Cain to warn others
not to slay him (Genesis 4:2-16).
I believe Adam and Eve were saved despite their
transgression, for they knew and trusted God before the fall, and their words
and actions after the fall showed their faith in His plan. So, like the rest of
us who are saved, they would have to cope with sin’s consequences, but once
their earthly life ended, they enjoyed eternal life in Heaven.
Praise God that in His mercy, He not only forgives our sins
and restores our fellowship with Him, but He gives eternal, abundant life to
all who trust Him!
© 2023 Laurie Collett
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