Lord, Throughout These Forty Days...15

Some final observations about our First Parents as it relates to the temptation of the Lord in the Wilderness.

In Genesis 2.9 declares that all the trees that God made were "pleasing to the eye and good for food." This is exactly what Eve and Adam saw in the forbidden fruit as well. In other words, there was nothing about the forbidden fruit to distinguish it from all other fruit. It had no intrinsic evil residing in it. Things are never the problem. Evil is the relationship of how we use things and God's directives for their use.

Also in Genesis 2 "the LORD God commanded the man, '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 from it you will certainly die.'” Death follows eating.

But in Genesis 3 Eve says of the fruit of the forbidden tree, "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.’” Death follows touching.

Somehow Eve added a second prohibition. God NEVER said they were not to touch the fruit. Fruit benefits us when we eat, not when we touch. I find it interesting that the command came directly to Adam. Eve was not yet created. She received a mediated command through Adam. Did he add the secondary no? Did they together add the no touching rule to keep them from breaking God's command?

I think that this misquote contributed to the willful violation of God's clear command not to eat in two ways. First, it shows that our First Parents were already toying with adding to the perfect. They violated their creature-ness by assigning commmandments of usage to the Creator's world. This indicates a heart-desire to advance beyond their scope of rulership. When Eve attributes this MAN-MADE rule to God, the Tempter catches a glimpse of their heart and where they might be vulnerable. [BTW, I do not believe Satan is omniscient. He cannot read minds. But that evokes another, theology post.] Then he leads them down the road of desire, enticing them. This temptation conceives and give birth to sin, which when fully grown produces death -- a la James 1.14-15.

Secondly, the Adam-Additive contributed to the rebellion by creating false confidence about the consequences of violating the commmands. Eve touched the fruit. Taking the fruit in her hand did not result in death "when" she touched it. Now how much time passed between touching and tasting is not clear. But I suspect that surviving the touch emboldened the First Family's next move. The thinking might have been, "We did not die when we touched, although there was a command and a consequence attached to it. Let's try eating. That consequence now seems uncertain."

The secondary boundary, rather than strengthen the primary boundary, weakened it. If touching doesn't cause death, tasting might not either. Maybe God did misrepresent this yummy-looking, fruit-ishly beautiful thing to them. Perhaps He did have alterior motives for keeping it from them. Touching added to the doubting. Religion -- man making a way to please God -- begins and right relationship fades.

Jesus, on the other hand, clearly quotes the Word with out additive, editing or omission. He trusts God's directives alone to guide His actions under temptation. He will follow Father's directions alone to guide His life's work and life's sacrifice. He knows exhibits internalized knowledge of Scripture. He live by that Word.
In so living and dying [and resurrecting] according to the Scriptures, He restores right relationship and religion fades.

May we as Christ-followers take ample warning here. Wrong does not present itself very differently from right. David's "snare" analogy works here. The danger comes camoflaged. Guide us, o Thou great Jehovah.

We also need to see the danger of making up rules for living that are not clearly connected to or directly derived from Scripture. Our words about the Word will most likely make failure more frequent. We are not God and should not delve in His directing His world. Well-intentioned legalisms or regulations could cloud the consciencness of consequences for ourselves or others.