School of the Fundamentals of the Christian Faith “The Creator and His Creation.” Lesson 16. The Result of the Fall—Death. The school consists of 22 lessons. The school’s founder is the Christian Bible Institute.
We have already discussed how God created people for happiness. Adam and Eve lived in Eden. They had everything they needed. God was their friend; they loved Him and were happy. If Adam did not know what to do, he could simply approach God and ask His advice on how best to act in order to achieve the best result. Adam and Eve never had problems with money, because money did not exist then. Everything they needed had been prepared for them. They did not quarrel or hurt each other. They had wonderful relationships with God and with each other.
But at the end of the third chapter of Genesis, everything changed tragically. Deceived by Satan’s cunning scheme, Adam and Eve wanted to become independent of God. This fatal decision plunged humanity into catastrophe.
At the very beginning, when God had just created man, He warned him that the consequence of sin in his life would be death. Thus, man knew well that disobedience to God’s command would bring destructive consequences into his life.
God is the absolute God; therefore, His absolute goodness, justice, harmony, and peace require that God also be absolutely holy—that is, that He allow no evil in His presence. Therefore, a person who had sinned could no longer remain in the presence of God. He should have been immediately destroyed by the fire of God’s wrath, and only because of His great love for His creation does God preserve the world so that in the future, through the death of Jesus Christ, He may save those who believe in Him.
See how the Book of Genesis describes God’s warning about the consequences of sin:
Gen. 2:17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for on the day you eat from it, you will certainly die.”
I. The Essence of Death—Separation from the Source of Life
Look at a branch separated from a tree. It does not die immediately after being broken off. For some time, it remains green. However, after a while, you will see its leaves begin to dry out and turn brown. Why? The process of dying has begun because it has been separated from the tree—the source of life.
The same thing happened to Adam and Eve. Because of sin, their living connection with God was broken, and they were cut off from the Source of life. Human beings are not self-sufficient, in the literal sense of the word. We are created beings and therefore constantly need God as the source of life. Warning the first people about the danger of sin, God told them that they would condemn themselves to death if they broke their harmonious relationship with Him. For God alone is the source of life:
Ps. 36:9 For with You is the fountain of life; in Your light we shall see light.
Why did the sin of disobedience separate humanity from God?
Isa. 59:2 But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He does not hear.
The holy and righteous God will not maintain friendship with those who do not obey His commands.
Illustrate: Imagine how terrible it would be if your best friend turned away from you and took the side of someone who hates you and wishes you harm.
Compare: This is what happened when Adam and Eve rejected friendship with God and followed Satan. They lost their unity with God and became His enemies.
Separation from God led to serious consequences. Death, sorrow, hostility, and fear entered the world.
1. Spiritual Death
Adam and Eve did not fall lifeless after tasting the forbidden fruit. They continued to walk, talk, and think, but they were immediately separated from God. The Fall led them to spiritual death. They lost their harmonious relationship with their Creator.
By stepping outside the sphere of God's influence, people lost the most important thing—divine truth by which to evaluate what is happening and make vitally important decisions. Having been left without God, people lost true and absolute ideals of truth and goodness, replacing them with their own values and ideals, which originate outside God and are therefore afflicted by death and destruction.
God is an absolute Person, and therefore He possesses absolute knowledge. He always knows everything and knows everything about everything. Human beings are very limited in their knowledge and abilities.
Having sinned, people, wishing to present themselves as wise, created their own system of knowledge existing outside God. The human ideal of knowledge is built on the assumption that people themselves possess ultimate truth. This happened because people lost the understanding that they are creatures, not the Creator (Rom. 1:20).
The Fall caused people to suddenly become slaves to a master who had initially promised them freedom. That master was the devil.
How did this happen?
People thought they would become God, but in reality, by rebelling against God, they stepped out from under God's influence and thus took the devil's side.
2 Cor. 4:4 For unbelievers, the god of this world has blinded their minds so that they cannot see the light of the Good News of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
John 8:43 Why do you not understand what I am saying? You cannot even hear My words. John 8:44 You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to fulfill your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and did not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his nature, because he is a liar and the father of lies.
The Fall led people to a devastating and inevitable result—eternal destruction without God.
Rom. 6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in union with Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Outside God there is no source of life, and therefore everything outside God is inevitably subject to decay and death.
Spiritual death extends absolutely to all people living on earth.
Rom. 5:12 Sin entered the world through one person, and with sin came death; thus, everyone became mortal, because everyone sinned in him.
Thus, selfishness, or placing one’s own interests above everything else, became the driving force of fallen humanity:
Rom. 1:21 For although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God or give thanks to Him, but became futile in their reasoning, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Rom. 1:22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools Rom. 1:23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal human beings, birds, four-footed animals, and reptiles. Rom. 1:24 Therefore God gave them over to the sinful desires of their hearts, and they themselves dishonored their bodies with impurity. Rom. 1:25 They exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is worthy of eternal glory, amen.
2. Physical Death
After humanity left the sphere of God’s influence and came under the influence of the devil, the earth, which was under human rule, was also subjected to the deadly effects of sin. Therefore, everything living on earth is moving toward death. Decay and degradation became the natural condition of the world after the Fall. The reason for this is the curse that human sin brought into the world.
Gen. 3:17 And to Adam He said: “Because you listened to your wife and ate the fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat from it all the days of your life. Gen. 3:18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. Gen. 3:19 By the sweat of your face you will eat your bread until you return to the ground from which you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you will return.”
Humanity was created to live forever. But when Adam and Eve disobeyed God, He forbade them to eat the fruit of the tree of life. Now, separated from God, they had to die physically. Genesis 3:22 says that God drove Adam and Eve out of the garden so that they could no longer eat from the tree of life and live forever. Over time, Adam and Eve began to notice the consequences of this prohibition. Wrinkles began to appear on their skin, and pain entered their bodies. They realized that the death God had spoken about was a terrible reality.
3. Knowledge of Evil
At the very beginning of the Book of Genesis, God commanded people not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This command, like all the other commandments, was an expression of God’s love and care for humanity. God created everything “good,” and that was all Adam knew.
But in fact, that was not all. Evil was already at work in the universe, although Adam had not yet experienced its influence. By forbidding Adam to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, God wanted to protect him from the destructive power of evil. However, despite the strict prohibition, Adam and Eve developed a strong desire to learn about the evil that existed. They did what God had commanded them not to do. They came to know evil and suffered the terrible consequences of that knowledge. After Adam and Eve disobeyed God, people on earth have lived in constant fear of the evil around us. We all experience this.
II. The Human Condition After the Fall
Humanity cannot be neutral—there are only two positions: either acknowledging God’s absolute sovereignty and submitting to Him, or being hostile toward Him and submitting to the devil, who is the initiator 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 therefore serving the devil.
After sinning, man did not lose the ability to understand that good and evil exist (this was the essence of the devil’s promise—Gen. 3:5). The catastrophe was that man rejected God’s absolute and singular standard of goodness; he even rejected God’s right to establish that standard, replacing it with his own standards.
Without God, man created his own system of goodness and justice (moreover, every 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 were created by people who assign themselves the right to have the final say and ultimate authority.
These human systems of moral values often include certain principles from God’s laws (for example, the principle “If anyone is unwilling to work, neither should he eat” was taken by the Communists from 2 Thess. 3:10), but in essence these principles claim complete independence from God.
Quite often, some elements of human standards of goodness coincide with God’s standards; for example, some unbelievers sacrifice themselves or their interests for the benefit of others. Such actions are undoubtedly good in themselves, but the problem is that they are carried out within a human system of moral standards, by people who are hostile to God, and therefore they cannot be considered good. In other words, the people who perform such acts have not acknowledged God’s absolute right to determine the entire system of moral principles in their lives. They have agreed only with some of them, and most likely not because they wanted to obey God, but because they saw their highest human value in that action.
Conclusions
Man was created in the image and likeness of God, but as a result of the Fall, this image and likeness were destroyed.
- He is now under the authority not of God, but of an evil spirit.
Eph. 2:2 and followed the ways of this sinful world, obeying the ruler of the powers of the air—the spirit who is now at work in those who oppose God.
- Instead of being a son of God, he became a child of wrath.
Eph. 2:3 We were all once like that and acted according to our natural desires, following our own lusts. Like everyone else, we were subject to God’s wrath.
- Instead of ruling, he became a slave.
Rom. 6:17 But thanks be to God that, although you were slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly followed the teaching you received.
Source: Christian Bible Institute
