Day 3: The Fall

If we did not have Genesis 3, we would not have an explanation for all the heartache in the world. Genesis 3:1 tells us that "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"?'" (Genesis 3:1). Obviously, this creature was not a mere serpent. He is the super-being behind all the heartache in the world: Satan. He immediately went to work on Eve, the woman God made, and consequently Adam, the man, to disrupt God's creation.

Up to this point, man was given only one negative command. God told Adam and Eve that they could freely eat anything they wanted from any tree in the garden of Eden except the fruit from one single tree: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (see Genesis 2:16-17). Yet here, Satan questioned God, God's word, and God's motives. And he wasn't obvious about it. He had no horns, no pitchfork, no tight little red suit. Satan was—and is—all about deception. Sixty-six books later, in Revelation, God affirmed the identity of "that serpent of old, who is the Devil and Satan" (Revelation 20:2), who deceived Adam and Eve and continues to deceive the world.

First John 2:16 says, "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." That describes exactly what transpired between Satan and Eve: she "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" (Genesis 3:6). This marked the darkest day in the history of the human race. 

A constitutional change happened the moment Eve and Adam surrendered to Satan's suggestion: man went from innocence to sinfulness. This was the beginning of sin entering the world. The Bible says that every person is born with a bent toward evil because of what Adam did in Genesis 3. "Through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men" (Romans 5:12). Sin entered. Death entered. And death spread to the entire human race.  

How serious are the consequences of the fall? They're so serious that we are blinded to how serious they really are. We're so blinded to how bad our condition is that we don't even see it for what it. Sin is death. It has the power to separate us from God forever. But here's the good news about realizing you're a sinner: it causes you to seek a Savior. 

Everything Adam messed up, Jesus came to restore. In Genesis 3:15, God said to the serpent, "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 is the first Messianic prophecy—the first mention of Jesus the Messiah—in the Bible. Right after the fall, God's plan for Satan's doom and man's restoration was announced: as this enmity continued between the woman and Satan, the woman would have a Seed (an offspring) that would eventually crush Satan. This is the beginning of redemption.