Sin Matrix II: Genesis 3 The Fall of Man

Their eyes locked on one another as the juice dripped from her lips to her chin. A smile enveloped her face as she raised her hand to his mouth. She placed the fruit between his awaiting lips and without hesitation he took a bite and their eyes instantly illuminated from their choice. 

They looked around, mystified. Something changed. For as quickly as it opened their eyes, their smiles faded, and their countenance transitioned from joy to somberness as the world around them shifted from light to dark. Meanwhile, their deceiver, the scheming serpent, skulked into his surroundings.

I wonder how Adam and Eve felt when they ate of the fruit. Did they realize the serpent deceived them? Was their guilt immediate and intense? Or gradual as their world slowly transformed around them? Did they realize this choice would affect every generation thereafter?

The Fall of Man was swift. With one bite, sin altered humanity with the death code mutating the DNA of God’s creation. The Fall of Man from Genesis 3 is the first in-depth view of The Sin Matrix. 

In the Beginning

One day after another, for 6 days straight, God said, “It is good.” He was speaking of His creation. Let’s peek at each day.

• Day 1 (Genesis 1:3-5) Light and Dark, Day and Night – Light divided from darkness. God called the light day and the darkness night.
• Day 2 (Genesis 1:6-8) Firmament – Divided the waters under the firmament. The firmament He called Heaven. 
• Day 3 (Genesis 1:9-13) Seas and oceans, dry land on Earth, and vegetation according to their kind. 
• Day 4 (Genesis 1:14-19) Stars, suns, planets, and moons for signs and seasons, days and years.
• Day 5 (Genesis 1:20-23) Living creatures in the sea and sky according to their kind.
• Day 6 (Genesis 1:24-31) Living creatures on the land according to their kind, including humanity (the only creation created in God’s image).
• Day 7 (Genesis 2:1-3) God rested not because of physical exertion, but His rest showed His blessing and sanctification of the 7^th day of the week (Genesis 2:3). The Hebrew word for rested is also translated as ceased. Meaning, God ceased creating.

While God chose 6 days to speak the cosmos into existence (Psalm 33:8-9, John 1:1-3, Hebrews 11:3), it only took man one moment to:

• doubt God (thought)
• believe the lie (decision/action)
• corrupt creation (result)

The Fall of Man is spiritual warfare’s origin.

God’s Words to Adam

Good Stewards

On the 6^th day of creation, the Lord created humanity then bestowed upon Adam and Eve dominion over creation and the mandate to fill the earth and subdue it as told in Genesis 1:27-30:

So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

And God said, “See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food. Also, to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food;” and it was so. 

Until the sly serpent entered the garden. But first, let’s analyze the marriage of Adam and Eve, followed by the deception, temptation and sin.

The Marriage

After their creation, Adam and Eve married, as Genesis 2:22 says, God brought Eve to Adam, as a Father brings His daughter to her bridegroom. Genesis 2:24-25 shares:

Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

This becoming one flesh transcends the sexual union between husband and wife and describes the knitting together of their lives. No longer living independently, but complementing one another, with the sexual union expressing marriage’s exclusivity between husband and wife. Verse 25 exemplifies this, where they were both naked and not ashamed.

Jesus reaffirms this in Matthew 19:4-6:

And He answered and said to them, “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.”

But there was one who separated humanity from God.

The Fall of Man

The Deception and Temptation

The Lord spoke to Adam in Genesis 2:15-17:

Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

God, forever a gracious Father, said to eat freely from every tree in the garden except one. God focused on the positive but established a rule His image-bearers needed to heed.

Compare this to what the rebellious serpent spoke in Genesis 3:1:

Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?”

Now compare this to Eve’s retort to the serpent in Genesis 3:2-3:

And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.’”

Did Adam tell Eve what God said? Did he tell her word for word? Did the serpent scheme from Adam’s creation to deceive them? Was this the serpent’s first attempt? So many questions. The only answer is, Adam and Eve both allowed the serpent’s words to cast doubt upon God’s command; to not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil as we will encounter. 

The serpent spoke to Eve, not Adam. Did the serpent wait until Eve appeared alone? Did Adam overhear? If so, why did he not intervene? 

As shown above when comparing God’s statement to Adam in Genesis 2:15-17, to the serpent’s distortion of God’s words in Genesis 3:1, to Eve’s rebuttal in Genesis 3:2-3, Satan subtly altered God’s command to cast doubt; doubt on God’s Word and God Himself. The serpent reconstructed God’s words into a negative form. 

But God lovingly stated to eat of every tree, except one. Satan skipped the allowable trees and went straight to the restricted tree, implying God’s command restricted their freedom. He put the emphasis on the negative. Eve’s response included the Parental positive, but added to the restriction by including touch to the eat command. She deflected the serpent’s strike, not believing the serpent’s rephrasing of God’s Word. She wielded the Sword of the Spirit, God’s Words (Ephesians 6:17). But the enemy did not quit.

The Sin

The serpent’s relentless attack on God’s image-bearers continued.

As told in Genesis 3:4-5:

Then the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

The crafty snake, missing on his first try, went all in on this temptation by questioning God’s intent in His command to not eat the fruit. God was holding something back from her. God lied to her by saying she would die. God didn’t want Adam and her to be like Him. Satan called into question God’s character as a loving Father.

Here is temptation’s inflection point. Will Eve trust in God’s Words and continue to wield the Sword of the Spirit? Or will she succumb to the serpent’s deceit? Genesis 3:6 tells us:

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 tempter diverted Eve’s eyes from the Lord to the temptation. The forbidden fruit. Eve allowed this tactic to affect her situational awareness. The first sin originated with the three-fold temptation of the Sin Matrix, with its origin and overview shown below:

• Flesh: Eve saw the tree was good for food
• World: Eve saw the tree was pleasant to the eyes
• Spiritual: Eve saw the tree was desirable to make one wise

By exchanging the truth for a lie, Eve yielded to sin, relinquishing the Sword of the Spirit. Adam likewise abandoned God’s warning and ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Biting the fruit injected the serpent’s venom into all DNA, corrupting creation. The result; the disease of sin and death infected God’s creation.

Showing their wavering faith, and believing the lie, the temptation presented before them became sin, when they trusted the lie and bit the fruit forbidden by God.

The Aftermath

The consequences occurred at once; spiritual death and the birth of a conscience separate from God. This death and birth became obvious to Adam and Eve as Genesis 3:7 shares:

Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings.

These three actions indicate a conscience; a knowledge of good and evil:

1. Their eyes opened (knowing good and evil)
2. They perceived their nakedness (no longer covered by God)
3. They sewed fig leaves to cover themselves (experienced sin’s guilt, no longer covered by the Lord)

Before the fall, God was united with Adam and Eve’s conscience. Adam and Eve’s will coincided with the Lord’s will for their life. But by committing sin, their mind opened to the realities of good and evil, and they died spiritually (Ephesians 2:1). 

No longer covered by God, they became vulnerable because of this spiritual separation. This separation was the death God warned Adam about in Genesis 2:17. Not only for them, but all of creation, as everything lost their innocence (Romans 8:22).

Adam and Eve did not seek after God to confess their sin as they hid behind their own perceived righteousness. They sewed fig leaves to cover their shame and guilt. 

Not only did they cover themselves with fig leaves, but when they heard God walking they hid among the Garden’s trees as Genesis 3:8 says:

And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

Placing not only fig leaves but the Garden’s trees between themselves and God illustrates how their conscience displaced God, and pushed them to hide from Him, and not to seek Him.

The Interaction

The interaction between God and His image-bearers unveils Adam and Eve’s new found fallen ways in Genesis 3:9-13:

Then the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, “Where are you?”

So he said, “I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself.”

And He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?”

Then the man said, “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate.”

And the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”

The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

An attribute of God is His omniscience. He knew Adam and Eve’s sin, but He provided them an opportunity to come clean and confess. Instead, Adam blamed Eve. Eve blamed the serpent. Neither took responsibility for their actions.

Our choices lead to consequences and for God’s children, Adam and Eve, punishment was forthcoming as well as a plan to redeem His creation.

The Fallout

When a child is disobedient, a parent’s duty is to discipline the child. God’s children were no different. Adam and Eve were disobedient and their punishment affected creation. The following is the serpent, Eve and Adam’s punishment for the Fall of Man.

In Genesis 3:14-15, God meted out the serpent’s punishment for orchestrating his deceitful ruse in three ways:

Cursing The Serpent

1. Placing enmity between the serpent and the woman and between the serpent’s seed and her seed
2. Her Seed will bruise the serpent’s head
3. The serpent will bruise His heel

Eve’s Discipline

In Genesis 3:16, God’s discipline for Eve’s sin was also three-fold: 

1. Her sorrows and conception will multiply
2. Child birthing will be painful
3. Her desire will be for her husband and he shall rule over her

Adam’s Punishment

In Genesis 3:17-19, God’s punishment for Adam’s transgression included God’s disapproval towards Adam by letting Adam know he dropped the ball by placing his wife before God. His penalty was also three-fold:

1. He shall work all the days of his life
2. This is how he will obtain food
3. Death enters creation

After His dispensing punishment, God removed His earthly creations from His presence as disclosed in Genesis 3:22-24:

Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil. And now, lest he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever” — therefore the Lord God sent him out of the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken. So He drove out the man; and He placed cherubim at the east of the garden of Eden, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life.

This physical expulsion from the spiritual results from the Fall of Man. We are now separate from God because of sin. This separation prevents man from accessing God without God’s initiation. The Bible considers it a sin to access the spiritual through alternative methods.

The Lord’s sentence for the guilty parties shows the severity of the Fall of Man. But all is not lost as within His punishment, He placed hope. Hope in the form of a prophecy for creation’s redemption to rejoin Him through a Redeemer.

The Hope

Within his punishment, God warns the serpent in Genesis 3:15:

And I will put enmity

Between you and the woman,

And between your seed and her Seed;

He shall bruise your head,

And you shall bruise His heel.

This prophecy of the serpent’s defeat (He shall bruise your head) and the Victor’s injury (and you shall bruise His heel), points to a Savior. A Redeemer who will rectify the Fall of Man and reunite humanity with its Creator, the Lord God.

This enmity is shown throughout the Bible, as Satan does everything he can to delay this prophecy’s fulfillment through spiritual warfare. But the Lord provides believers with weapons in this spiritual war.

Now What?

The hope found in the Genesis 3 prophecy reveals man’s reconciliation with God, fulfilled through Eve’s seed, a virgin-birth. Eve’s seed, Jesus Christ, crushed Satan’s head by accepting the world’s sin upon Himself on the cross. His life, death, resurrection, and ascension conquered the grave and crushed the serpent’s head. As sin entered creation through Adam and Eve defying God by eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, so Jesus’ crucifixion upon the second tree of knowledge of good and evil defeated sin.

As Arthur W. Pink proclaims in Gleanings in Genesis page 30:

Where in all the world, or in all the Scriptures, do we learn the knowledge of good and evil as we do at the second Tree — the Cross! There we see Goodness incarnate. There we behold the Holiness of God displayed as nowhere else. There we discover the unfathomable love and matchless grace of Deity unveiled as never before or since. But there, too, we also see Evil — see it in all its native hideousness. There we witness the consummation and climax of the creature’s wickedness. There we behold as nowhere else the vileness, the heinousness, the awfulness of sin as it appears in the sight of the thrice holy God. Yes, there is a designed resemblance as well as a contrast between the two trees. The Cross also is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Believers are no longer bound by sin’s shackles. As Jesus freed us from the bondage of sin. No longer holding onto the guilt and shame of sin, believers now can access the Lord again. Through Jesus Christ, the second Adam. Paul states in 1 Corinthians 15:45-49:

And so it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being.” The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.

However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural, and afterward the spiritual. The first man was of the earth, made of dust; the second Man is the Lord from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are made of dust; and as is the heavenly Man, so also are those who are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly Man.

This is a gift to everyone who accepts Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior, as Paul professes in Romans 5:15-17:

But the free gift is not like the offense. For if by the one man’s offense many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many. And the gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned. For the judgment which came from one offense resulted in condemnation, but the free gift which came from many offenses resulted in justification. For if by the one man’s offense death reigned through the one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.

Revelation 20:10 reveals the final crushing of the serpent’s head:

The devil, who deceived them, was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone where the beast and the false prophet are. And they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.

The Old Testament contains over 300 references to a Savior. The Genesis 3:15 prophecy was the first, and Jesus Christ fulfilled all Messianic prophecies found in the Old Testament. 

This first look at the Sin Matrix, the Fall of Man, reveals the catastrophic consequences for God’s creation because of the serpent, Adam, and Eve’s sin. But God’s plan from the foundation of the world (Acts 2:23-24, 1 Peter 1:20-21), was, is, and always will be Jesus Christ. For Jesus is the author and finisher of our faith (Hebrews 12:2). And Acts 4:12 states, when talking about Jesus:

Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.

Furthermore, Paul clarifies this in Romans 10:8-13:

But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith which we preach): that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the Scripture says, “Whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame.” For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord over all is rich to all who call upon Him. For “whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

Freedom from sin’s shackles is as close as confessing with your mouth and believing in your heart that Jesus is your Lord and Savior. Are you ready to be free?

In the next installment of the Sin Matrix series, we will look at the Fall of the Angels found in Genesis 6.