Lesson 3. The Fall. A school on the foundations of the Christian faith that every Christian should know. The school consists of twelve lessons. The school was founded by the Christian Bible Institute.
The Bible does not explain how Satan initially opposed God and was cast down from heaven. Since God is absolute Goodness and Perfection, everything that is not in harmony with God or rebels against Him is evil. Therefore, the devil’s evil was not in his original nature, but in his response to God. The devil, being a created being, rebelled against God, attempting to take the place of the Creator:
Isa. 14:12 “How you have fallen from heaven, O morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cut down to the ground, you who conquered nations. 13 You said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God, and I will sit on the mount of assembly, on the far reaches of the north; 14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.’ 15 But you are brought down to Sheol, to the depths of the Pit.”
Temptation
The Bible describes how, sometime after the devil had been cast down from heaven, he approached humanity in order to tempt people to do what he himself had done—to rebel against God.
1. The purpose of temptation is war against God and His creation
The devil knew that humanity was the crown and ruler of creation. He tempted people so that he himself could become the prince of this world, seizing this dominion from humanity.
Eph. 2:1 “And you who were dead in trespasses and sins, 2 in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the will of the prince who rules in the air, the spirit who is now at work in the sons of disobedience”
John 12:31 “Now is the judgment of this world; now the prince of this world will be cast out. 32 And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to Myself.”
2. The form of temptation—a subtle deception.
When approaching the person, the devil did not openly reveal his plans. Instead, he disguised his actions as apparent concern for the person. Pursuing his cunning goal, the devil presented his actions in a very attractive form.
- The appearance of concern for the person (Gen. 3:6).
- “your eyes will be opened…”
- “you will be like gods…”
- “the knowledge of good and evil”
- The cunning of the devil’s deception.
A question casting doubt on God (an attempt to create an attitude that allows doubt in God): “Did God really say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?”
By asking this question, the devil suggested that the person doubt God’s absolute goodness. In effect, he was saying: Did God really forbid you true enjoyment in life?
The devil tempted the person very skillfully. Being persistent and subtle, the devil approached him in such a way that the person himself bore responsibility for his actions. The subtlety of the temptation followed this sequence:
- The devil offered the forbidden fruit to the person rather than imposing it on him and, even more so, did not force him to eat it.
- When tempting the person, the devil offered him the opportunity to view the world around him apart from God’s perspective. This perspective was presented as an “independent evaluation.” In reality, nothing in the world is independent. And as soon as the person refused to view the forbidden fruit from God’s perspective, he began to view it from the perspective of God’s adversary—the devil.
- By allowing this situation, the person set out on a slippery path that led to his destruction.
The Nature of the Fall
1. The Fall began with distrust of God.
The Fall is a violation of the harmonious relationship between a person and God. The devil offered the person a way out of the sphere of God’s peace and dominion and an attempt to judge God’s commands and prohibitions “independently”.
- Man allowed himself to view things not from God’s perspective (he allowed for another system of standards).
Gen. 3:6 “When the woman saw that the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and desirable for gaining wisdom...”
- Man allowed for the possibility that God had told a lie.
Gen. 2:17 “but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will surely die.”
Gen. 3:4 “You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman.
- Man allowed for the possibility that, by forbidding it, God wanted to deprive him of something better.
Gen. 3:5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
2. The Fall is rebellion against God
The Fall of man is not at all the harmless fact that Adam and Eve ate some fruit, as some try to portray it. The Fall is a step toward creation rebelling against its Creator. Man himself attempted to become God. But since there can be only one God, by this act man immediately entered into hostility with God.
The result of the Fall—death apart from God
In the beginning, when God had just created man, He warned him of the deadly danger of sin.
Because God is absolute, His absolute goodness, justice, harmony, and peace require absolute holiness—that is, control that allows no evil to be present. Therefore, it was impossible for sinful man to remain in the presence of God. He would have had to be immediately destroyed by the fire of God’s wrath; only because of God’s immense love for His creation does God preserve the world in order later, through the death of Jesus Christ, to save those who believe in Him.
Gen. 2:17 “but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will surely die.”
1. The essence of death is separation from the source of life.
Man is not self-sufficient in the absolute sense of the word. He is a created being and therefore needs God as the source of life. Warning the first people about the danger of sin, God told them that if they broke their harmonious relationship with Him, they would condemn themselves to death. The reason is that God alone is the source of life.
Ps. 36:9 “For with You is the fountain of life; in Your light we see light.”
John 1:4 “In Him was life, and that life was the light of mankind.”
2. Spiritual Death
By committing sin, a person first and foremost died spiritually. This means that they lost a harmonious relationship with their Creator—God. The Fall brought humanity into an atmosphere of shame, fear, lies, hostility, and decay. To understand the effects of the Fall correctly, we must remember what its essence is.
- At its core, the Fall is rooted in human pride—that is, the desire for independence from God.
Genesis 3:5: “For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil.”
Proverbs 16:18: “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”
Proverbs 21:4: “A proud look and a haughty heart, the lamp of the wicked, are sin.”
1 John 2:16: “For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world.”
- The Fall represents the desire to establish one’s own authority—that is, the right to do whatever a person’s uncontrolled desires or lusts drive them to do.
Genesis 3:6: “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate.”
- The Fall led humanity to false standards: false knowledge.
Ephesians 4:17: “This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, 18 having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardening of their heart.”
By leaving the sphere of God’s influence, humanity lost the most important thing—the reference point for evaluating what is happening. Without God, people lost the true and absolute ideals of truth and goodness, replacing them with their own values and ideals, which originated outside God and were therefore afflicted by death and destruction.
God, who is an absolute Person, possesses absolute knowledge. Above all, God absolutely knows all of Himself. He is never in the process of coming to know anything. He knows everything, about everything, and always. A person is limited in what they can know, as well as in their analytical abilities concerning the proper organization of their knowledge. Having sinned, humanity, desiring to possess knowledge, created its own system of knowledge outside God. The human ideal of knowledge is built on the assumption that humanity itself possesses the ultimate truth. This happened because people forgot that they are creatures, not the Creator. (Romans 1:20)
- The Fall led humanity to acquire a wrong master—the devil. People thought they would become God themselves, but in reality, by rebelling against God, they came out from under God’s influence and inevitably took the devil’s side—the leader of the camp opposed to God. Therefore, the devil became humanity’s actual ruler.
2 Cor. 4:4 “whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the Gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of the invisible God, should shine on them.”
John 8:43 “Why do you not understand My speech? Because you cannot hear My word. 44 You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning and did not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”
- The Fall leads to the inevitable result—eternal destruction apart from God.
Rom. 6:23 “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Apart from God, there is no source of life; therefore, everything outside God inevitably undergoes decay and dies.
Matt. 25:41 “Then He will also say to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.’”
- Spiritual death affects absolutely everyone living on earth.
Rom. 3:10 “As it is written: There is none righteous, no, not one; 11 there is none who understands; there is none who seeks God. 12 They have all turned aside; they have together become unprofitable; there is none who does good, no, not one. 13 Their throat is an open tomb; with their tongues they have practiced deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips. 14 Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. 15 Their feet are swift to shed blood; 16 destruction and misery are in their ways; 17 and they have not known the way of peace. 18 There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
Rom. 5:12 “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all people, because all sinned in him”
- The driving force of fallen humanity is selfishness—placing one’s own interests above everything else.
Rom. 1:21 “Although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened; 22 professing to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things—24 therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, so that they dishonored their own bodies among themselves. 25 They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator,”
Physical death
After humanity came out from under God’s sphere of influence and came under the devil’s influence, the earth, which is under humanity’s rule, was also subjected to the deadly effect of sin. Therefore, everything living on earth inevitably moves toward death. Decay and degradation are the natural state of the world after the Fall. The reason is the curse of sin.
Gen. 3:17 “Then to Adam He said: ‘Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, “You shall not eat of it”: Cursed is the ground for your sake; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; 18 both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the herb of the field. 19 In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you shall return.’”
Humanity’s condition after the Fall
A person cannot be neutral—there are only two positions: either acknowledging God's sovereignty and submitting to Him, or being hostile toward Him and submitting to the devil, who is the instigator and leader of this hostility.
The devil often acts as an angel of light, so he may allow his people to do much that is “good” while opposing God, and thus be servants of the devil.
After sinning, people did not lose the ability to understand that good and evil exist (on the contrary, the devil promised that they would learn this, Gen. 3:5). The problem is that people rejected God's one standard of good, and even His right to establish that standard, replacing it with their own standards. Without God, people create their own system of good and justice (and each culture and civilization has its own moral standards, differing from one another). What distinguishes all human systems of moral values and justice is that they are all built by people who have the final say and ultimate authority.
These systems of moral values often take into account certain principles of divine laws (for example, the principle “if anyone is not willing to work, neither should he eat” was taken by the Communists from 2 Thess. 3:10), but in essence they are all built on independence from God. Quite often, some elements of human standards of good coincide with God's standards (for example, some unbelievers sacrifice themselves or their interests for the good of others).
These actions are certainly good in themselves; the problem is only that they are carried out within a human system of moral standards by people who are hostile toward God. In other words, the people who do them have not acknowledged God's absolute right to define the entire system of moral principles for their lives. They have agreed with only some part of it, and most likely not because they wanted to obey God, but because they saw their highest human value in that action.
As a result of the Fall, people lost some elements of the image of God that had originally characterized them:
- Instead of the Spirit of God, they are now under the authority of an evil spirit.
Eph. 2:2 “in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience,”
- Instead of being a child of God, they became children of wrath.
Eph. 2:3 “among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind,”
- Instead of ruling, they became slaves
Rom. 6:17 “But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed.”
Homework: Memorize Rom. 3:10–12; Rom. 5:12
Source: Christian Bible Institute
