Genesis 3:1-7, The Process of Temptation (Part 1)

Eve was given a direct commandment, and she disobeyed it. Simple and straightforward. Or is it?

For instance, why shouldn’t they eat of this tree? The commandment seems so arbitrary, doesn’t it? If the commandment is truly arbitrary, then God can be painted as capricious, simply commanding things to test obedience. Does this fit our picture of God? It doesn’t fit mine. How can we resolve this?

Contrary to popular myth, the commandment about the tree wasn’t the only commandment God gave Adam.

And God blessed them. And 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.” -Genesis 1:28

Somehow, eating the tree relates to the proper care and control of the Earth in some way —to put it in more modern terms, use and misuse of the resources God has given. The commandment is not arbitrary; God designed the Earth for a purpose (a final end), and he designed man to fit within the overall purpose in a particular way. These commandments can almost be described as an explanation of God’s purpose, and a path on which man must stay to make that end come about.

This is more than simple disobedience, it is a breaking of trust within a relationship. To put it in stronger terms, Eve’s sin wasn’t in eating some unknown fruit, it was in breaking a trusting relationship between creator and creature.

This puts an entirely new spin on the idea of obedience and disobedience, original sin, and the need for salvation.

Christians often think about sin, avoiding sin, what sin does in their lives, etc. But we rarely think about the process of sin —how does temptation work? In this series of posts on reading Genesis 3:17 I’m going to talk about four different possible ways to see the process of Eve’s acceptance of Satan’s invitation to sin: obedience/disobedience, challenge to God, need/fulfillment, and the dialectic process.