It’s not enough to say that God loves us and expects us to love Him. We cannot fully understand the love of God until we understand also His hatred of sin. We cannot encompass all that God is without also recognizing that sin does exist and that sin is that thing that prevents our personal relationship with the Loving God we described in the previous paper.
When we hear the word “sin,” our first reactions are usually that we are not really “sinners,” and that sin is some horrific act against mankind and nature in general in such a way that it is repugnant to humanity as a whole. Hitler with his Holocaust, Stalin with his purges, Osama Bin Laden with his ruthless attack on the United States. We reserve the term “sinner” for people such as this.
Unfortunately, God does not hold sin in reserve for only the most barbaric of actions. We need look no further than Genesis 3 to understand what sin is and why God detests it so.
Genesis 3 is the description of the first sin and the Fall of Adam and Eve. When God placed Adam in the Garden of Eden, He told Adam the following: “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die” (Genesis 2:16-17).
It is shortly after that condition that the Bible records the creation of Eve as a help-meet for Adam. Genesis 2:18 reads, “The Lord God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make him a helper suitable to him.” God’s creation was not complete, was not very good, until the creation of the woman we know as Eve. Genesis 1:31 says that with the creation of man and woman in His own image God deemed His creation very good.
Genesis 3 takes place in the idyllic world of the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve have lived their lives in blissful fellowship with each other and with God. It is during this time that the serpent craftily approaches Adam and Eve and begins to raise doubts about their relationship with God. The dialogue between the serpent and Eve (with Adam standing silently by) takes place in the first five verses of the chapter.
Serpent: “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” Notice the seed of doubt being planted in the mind of Eve and Adam in the way the question is asked. Only one tree was forbidden, yet the serpent brings into question the justness and fairness of the condition. In other words, “Are you really free in this Garden?”
Eve’s response: “We may eat from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die’.” Eve’s response is correct and yet allows the seed of doubt to grow. She has added to God’s restriction in that she has now stated they are forbidden to even touch the fruit. This little addition can have major consequences later on down the road.
Serpent: “You will not surely die, for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be open, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” The serpent’s words now openly challenge God and His integrity, His love, His intentions—everything that makes the relationship between Adam and Eve and God special. The serpent asks, “You can’t trust God to know and want what’s best for you; He’s manipulating you both to keep you subservient to Him.”
The serpent’s words caused Eve to look at the forbidden fruit in a different light. Was God trying to hide something from them, from her? Was He really trying to keep them in the dark so He could continue to lord it over them? The fruit looked tasty. It had an appealing look to it, and it held forbidden powers within—the gaining of wisdom. She took the fruit. She touched it, and she didn’t die. The addition Adam and Eve had put to God’s condition simply reinforced Eve’s questioning of God. Since she was still alive after touching it, she believed eating it would do her no harm, either. She took it, she ate it, and she gave some to Adam, who noticed that Eve was still standing, so he ate it, too.
The effect of their willful action in violation of God’s condition was that their innocence was stripped from them. Seeing themselves exposed to the world, they immediately took steps to cover up their guilt and their nakedness.
When they hear God’s presence in the garden, Adam and Eve hide. When confronted by God, Adam admits they hid because they were naked. When asked how they knew they were naked, Adam admits the disobedience, but he lays it as much at God’s feet as Eve’s. “The woman You put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.” Adam’s defense is twofold: But for Eve, I wouldn’t be in this predicament. But she wouldn’t have been here if You, God, hadn’t put her here.
Eve passes the buck to the serpent. God then pronounces a curse on the serpent, on Eve and on Adam. Little did Adam and Eve know it, but the moment they ate the forbidden fruit, they did die. Their innocence was stripped away and sin had entered into their lives. No longer would their relationship with God be as it had been. Theirs was a spiritual death.
God knew this, hence the banishment from the garden. “The man has become line one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever.” (v.22) So Adam and Eve, clothed by God with the skins of animals (physical death coming into the world through the act of disobedience), are sent out of the garden, never to return.
Really? Isn’t that pretty harsh treatment for stealing fruit from a tree in a garden filled with fruit? Eat two fruit and spend the rest of your life cursed of God and banished from your home? That sounds like God is both vindictive and jealous. The first words of vs. 22 seem to bear out the serpent’s accusation of God not wanting Adam or Eve to become His equal. But look at the events between the awareness of their nakedness and the banishment. God, who is all knowing, takes the time to ask Adam where he is. This wasn’t asked to reveal Adam’s presence to God, but was asked to cause Adam to confront his disobedience. Adam, to his credit, and Eve to hers, after trying to pass the buck, did confess their guilt in the matter. The result of their confession is that they will suffer the consequences of their actions through the curses, but then God’s love is shown in that it is God that clothes them. The banishment was an act of love as well.
Just because Adam and Eve know the difference between good and evil did not make them equal with God. What Adam and Eve lacked was the omniscience and omnipotence of God; they were the created, He is the Creator. The banishment was to protect Adam and Eve from an eternity of sin, but it was also fitting punishment.
What Adam and Eve did was not simply steal a fruit from a tree. They instead decided that they didn’t need God, didn’t need His protection. As they listened to the serpent, they came to the self-realization that God wasn’t interested in their best, but that He was hiding something from them. Determining that God could not be trusted, Adam and Eve willfully declared their independence from God, symbolized by the eating of the forbidden fruit.
And that’s why God hates sin. Sin is the rejection of God. It is turning our back on Him, telling Him by our actions that we don’t need Him, that we know what’s best for us. We try to set ourselves up as God, and in doing so we set ourselves against God. We become His enemies (see Rom. 5:10) by our own choices and our own actions.
God’s desire was, is and always has been that we would have fellowship with Him. The walking in the Garden of Eden was God’s time spent with Adam and Eve. It was a loving God who placed Adam and Eve in the garden to begin with. It was a loving God who cast them out as a consequence of their sin in order to prevent them from living an eternity in sin and rebellion.
Paul, writing in Romans, lets us know that God will not prevent us from sinning. What kind of relationship can we really have with God if we are incapable of walking away from it? But God does allow us that freedom. Romans 1-3 talks about God’s dealing with a sinful people. He speaks about immoral people (Rom. 1:18-32), moral, non-religious people (Rom. 2:1-16) and on moral, religious people (Rom. 2:17-29). The conclusion is that no one has a claim to being righteous in the eyes of God. Romans 3:10-18 is very clear that God considers all who have sinned to be unrighteous.
As long as we rebel against God, there can be no fellowship. And that’s why God hates sin. And that’s why God’s love is so profound in knowing that the loving God took steps to redeem us while we are still in rebellion, while we are still sinners. The depth of God’s love exceeds the depth of His hatred of sin. And that love is expressed in John 3:16—God so loved the world that He gave His One and Only Son as deliverance from our sins and restoration of the fellowship.