- Gen 3:6-13 The Consequences of Sin
Last week we examined the temptation of Eve and then Adam. We learned that faith empowers us to overcome temptation. We also learned that unbelief makes us vulnerable to temptation.
As we have mentioned, every world view has three components: a theory of origins, an explanation for evil and suffering, and last some hope that it will be fixed. Today we continue with last week’s theme, the biblical explanation for what is wrong with the world.
Although there is much happiness, overall the world is not what it is supposed to be. War, oppression, poverty, sickness, stress, and death have been the main characteristics of world history. Because we live in the wealthiest, freest nation in history, it is hard for us to completely appreciate what this means.
God made the world free of suffering and pain, but the Fall turned that upside down.. Adam’s sin didn’t just affect Adam. It has affected each of us profoundly. That is our thesis. The emphasis in Gen 3:6-13 is on the consequences of sin for both Adam and ourselves.
- The Immediate Consequence of Sin
Sin has many consequences. Today’s text describes three that occurred immediately—1st in relationship to God, Spiritual Death, 2nd In relationship to Self: Pride, and 3rd in relationship to others, blame shifting—a desire to blame others rather than take personal responsibility. Adam experienced these consequences and we have experienced them in Adam. Since the Fall they have been the universal human experience.
- Consequence—God-ward: Death: (8-10)
8 And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” 10 And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid,because I was naked, and I hid myself.”
God warned Adam, “On the day you eat of it you will die.” The spiritual death that God threatened has come. Adam’s relationship with God is dead. He did what we would all do in the same circumstances— He hid from God. He fears God. He is a sinner, and he fears God’s fierce displeasure.
Last week we learned that the fear of God is an appropriate expression of saving faith. It is important to note that there are two kinds of fear. The first makes us hide ourselves from God. It lacks confidence in his goodness. It is only aware of its sin and God’s justice. This is the fear of some unbelievers on their death bed. (Tragically: Many are so proud they have no fear of God).
The second “fear” is experienced by believers. Like the first, it also fears God’s displeasure. It believes his threat to punish. It believes that sin always has consequences. However, it is also deeply aware of God’s mercy, God’s grace, and God’s infinite love. It lives in the constant knowledge of forgiven sin. Therefore, this fear does not hide from God. Rather, it pursues God. It chases him down. This is the fear of God that comes with New Birth, and it matures the saints.
Adam and Eve sinned because they failed to fear God in this saving way. Spiritual death followed. Cut off from communication from God, Adam and Eve lose all confidence in God’s goodness. Instead, they are hyper-aware of their inadequacies. They run from God. In other words, because Adam and Eve fail to fear God in this right way God gives them up to this unhealthy fear.
The right preaching of the gospel restores a healthy fear of God to God’s people.
(Jeremiah 32:38–39) "38 And they shall be my people, and I will be their God. 39 I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear me forever, for their own good and the good of their children after them."
In summary, Adam’s eyes were opened, but not to his godlikeness. They were opened to his failings. God has withdrawn from him. Spiritual death has come. He senses God’s enmity. He hides himself. Since he failed to fear God rightly, he must now fear him improperly.
- Consequence—Self-ward: Pride (7)
The last verse in chapter two summed up all of God’s benevolence with these words, “And the man and his wife were both naked and they knew no shame.” However, after the Fall we have chapter 3 vs 7—
7 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.
Shame is the first symptom of a new element—pride. Remember, the serpent had told them that when they ate their eyes would be opened, and they would be like God. What made the Serpents temptation so potent is that it contained an element of truth. God had made Adam and Eve in his “image and likeness,” to share his moral glory—in other words, to “be like him.” However, they were to achieve that status God’s way—by obeying God, by abiding in close dependence upon him, by doing things God’s way.
But, Adam bought the Serpent’s lie that he could become like God by doing things his own way, by disobeying God. In the words of Frank Sinatra, “I did it my way.” Spiritual death followed immediately! (The end never justifies the means). God’s judgment was simple. Adam would suffer the delusion that he could be like God through naked human effort. This is how pride entered the human family. Its symptoms are either a deep consciousness of personal inadequacy, or a great striving to be more, or both.
In other words, Adam and Eve wanted to be more than they were. That made them feel their nakedness. They were ashamed, so they covered themselves. Deep and profound feelings of inadequacy are a symptom of pride. Pride is the heart and soul of original sin. A synonym for “nakedness” is self-consciousness. We could restate vs 7, “Their eyes were opened and they became conscious of themselves. This made them feel inadequate, so they sewed fig leaves together….”
Before the fall they were God conscious. They didn’t think of themselves except with contentment and gratitude. They were naked but they knew no shame. They were completely content. They had no desire to be anything but what they were, no dissatisfaction with self, and therefore, no selfish ambition. They were not restless or discontent. They did not compare themselves with others.
God judged Adam by giving him up to the deception that he actually is what he lusted to be. This is the root of all insecurity. A woman puts on her make-up and all she can see is imperfections. “I should be better. I need to be more beautiful. Others are more beautiful,” she complains. Then she looks down on an old friend who has lost her beauty to age.
A father puts his identity in his son’s athletic performance. He looks down on parents with less talented children, but feels insecure around parents with smarter and more talented children. He is sewing fig leaves(his children’s performance) in order to cover his nakedness.
A teen doesn’t have enough friends. She feels her inadequacy. She should be popular. She compares herself to others. What is wrong with me? She feels naked and ashamed. She tries to cover the shame of her nakedness with excuses and alibies.
Welch: “That’s the paradox of self esteem: Low self-esteem usually means that I think too highly of myself. I’m too self-involved, I feel I deserve better than what I have. The reason I feel bad about myself is that I aspire to something more. I want just a few minutes of greatness. I am a peasant who wants to b king. …This is the dark quieter side of pride—thwarted pride.”[1]
Self-ward, Original Sin has another expression— a feeling of superiority—looking down on others. Everyone looks down on someone at some time. It is a function of the desire to be like god apart from God. The young look down on the old. The old look down on the young. The educated look down on the illiterate. The mechanic looks down on the person without mechanical ability.
Plantinga “The proud envier keeps running for the office of God but never gets elected”
The proud always feel that they deserve good treatment from God and man. When they don’t get it, they descend into self-pity.
Scott: “But what about those who are caught up in self pity, who are self absorbed with a sense of failure? This too is pride. They are just on the flip side of the pride “coin.” People who are consumed with self-pity are focusing on their own selves too much.”[2]
In summary, a lust to be like God infected Adam. He was naked, He felt ashamed. The fruits were insecurity, boasting, looking down on others, jealousy, and selfish ambition. The affect of pride is either self-hatred or looking down on others. Where are you sewing up fig leaves? How and where are you not grateful for all that God has made you?
- Consequence—Man-ward: Blame Shifting (12-13)
12 The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” 13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
Proud people see the sins of others with 20/20 clarity, but they are blind to their own sins. Therefore, Adam blames Eve, and Eve blames the serpent. And so, a third symptom of Original Sin appears—an unwillingness to take responsibility for our actions. Again, the culprit is pride. Why?
Anecdote: Political Spinning; Evnironmentalism; Marriage. The Menendez brothers murdered their parents and then asked the court for mercy. Why? They were orphans.
Pride admits no wrong. It can’t. Why? The nature of pride is blindness, and the first thing to which we are blind is our own sin. By contrast, pride sees the sins of others with 20/20 clarity.
Humility is different. It suspects itself first. It is gracious and compassionate toward the weakness of others. Why? Humility sees things as they are, and the first thing humility sees is its own failings. It is also deeply aware of God’s mercy toward itself and how little it deserves that mercy. Therefore, a humble person is quick to take responsibility and slow to shift the blame to others.
- Application
1.Sin has Dire Consequences
As I have mentioned before, the great failing of God’s people is the inability or unwillingness to take sin seriously. However, our sin is against One who is infinite in dignity and majesty. Therefore, our sin is infinitely serious. Two facts confirm this truth. They rest on the truth that God is inflexibly just.
First, the penalty for unforgiven sin is torment in Hell for an infinite duration.
Second, it took a Being of infinite value and majesty, God himself, to atone for our sin.
Today’s text adds fuel to this fire. One sin, not many, and just the sin of stealing forbidden fruit, brought spiritual and physical death, and social and moral chaos, to Adam and all of his posterity. They exited the Garden with Original Sin—the inward corruption of pride. The immediate fruit was ominous. Pride motivated Cain to murder his brother. Within a few generations it is so bad that God destroys the earth with a great flood.
All of the sorrows since—cancer, still born children, birth defects, tragic accidents, Alzheimers, dementia, famine, Lou Gehrigs’s disease, war, pestilence, political oppression, etc.—are all the fruit of this one seemingly minor sin. This is what God’s justice decrees.
Seeing sin this way is important. It opens all the riches of the gospel to us.
Failure to see sin this way obstructs our ability to know the “joy inexpressible and full of glory’ that Peter describes.
2.Union With Christ Reverses Adam’s Sin
Under the inspiration of the HS, Paul gives us important information not disclosed in Genesis. It is this: Adam acted as our representative. We were all in Adam (See Rom 5:12-21).
So, when Adam took of the fruit, we all took of it with him. When he ate, we ate. When God expelled Adam from the Garden, we went with him. In fact, our union with Adam is so profound that we even share his guilt for his transgression.
Because of our Union with Adam we are born spiritually dead. Our union with Adam explains why self-ward we are insecure and boastful. It explains why we constantly blame others for our failings. We die because Adam died.
This principle of “Union” also works for the Christian’s benefit. It means great hope. Why? A Second Adam has come, and faith in the gospel unites us with him in the same way that birth unites us with Adam..
(1 Corinthians 15:21–23) "21 For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. 22 For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. 23 But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ."
All who put their trust in the atoning work of the Second Adam, Jesus, become all that Christ was and is. Our union with Christ radically reverses the three symptoms of sin that we have observed in this passage.
1st Christ became our death. On the cross he died physically and spiritually. “My God, My God why have you forsaken me?” God-ward the consequence of Adam’s sin was death.
2nd Christ became our humility. Self-wardthe consequence of Adam’s sin was pride—the sin of self exaltation. God always humbles the proud.
But, God so loved you and I that he humbled his Son in our place. Look at the cross. There we see Jesus stripped naked and crucified in great shame. He bears the insecurity and shame that our sin deserves, but he has no fig leaf with which to cover himself. People pass by mocking and jeering.
Jesus was our substitute. All who believe the gospel are united with Christ. That is why he was crucified naked in great shame. He was naked and ashamed of the sins he bore. He accepted the curse that our sin deserves.
He did this in order to clothe us in his righteousness. He did this to cover our guilt and shame.
In other words, when we believe the gospel God transfers our arrogance to Jesus and punishes it with the humbling it deserves—crucifixion. Then God imputes Christ’s humility to us so that we can receive the exaltation Christ’s humility deserves.
In addition, God designed the gospel to increasingly humble us in daily experience. Faith in the gospel helps us grow in humility.
3rdChrist took the blame for our sin. The consequence of sin man-ward was blaming others—transferring our guilt to others. But, the only sinless man that ever lived said, “Father, transfer their guilt to me.” In other words, the only man who could have boasted, “I am completely innocent,” forsook that boast and said, “I will take their sins upon myself.”
“Our second Adam,” writes Kent Hughes, “was the one man in history who never tried to pass the buck, because as a sinless man he never needed to pass on the responsibility for sin. Rather, as our sinless God-man and Messiah and Savior he said, “Pass the blame to me.” The buck stopped with Jesus.[3]
The gospel restores Accountability. It motivates us to say like David when the prophet Nathan confronted him, “I have sinned against the Lord,” (2 Sam. 12:13).
Closing Questions:
Is the gospel motivating and helping you to reverse the consequences of sin?
Is the gospel helping you to overcome insecurity and shame? Is the gospel helping you put to death the propensity to look down on others?
In light of the gospel are you daily clothing the shame of your nakedness with the righteousness of Christ?
Are you letting the gospel humble you?
Is the gospel motivating you to be grateful for how God made you?
Is the gospel teaching you to suspect yourself first and others second?
Are you letting the gospel restore to you the fear of God? Are you increasingly aware of your sin and God’s mercy?
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[1] Welch, Ed, When People are Big and God is Small, pg 32, (Phillipsburg, P&R, 1997)
[2]From Pride to Humility, Stuart Scott, pg 5 (Focus Pub. Bemidji, MN, 2000)
[3]Hughes, Kent R. (2004-10-26). Genesis: Beginning and Blessing (Preaching the Word) (p. 82). Good News Publishers/Crossway Books. Kindle Edition.