Why did Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit?
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Soon in our studies we’ll be coming to Genesis 3:1-6. We’ll see Eve in the garden. She has everything she could possibly want: a perfect home, a perfect husband, a perfect environment. And what does Satan tempt her with? “If you’ll eat the forbidden fruit, you’ll be `like God.'” And she falls for it!
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We’ve seen in earlier lessons that God extended His love to the human race and expected or wanted our love in return. Knowing that we (his future bride) were in bondage to a cruel master (Satan), Jesus was willing (like the Hebrew slave-husband in verses 5 and 6 of Exodus 21) to come in the form of a man in order to win our freedom through His death on the Cross. And there has never been a more cruel or vicious form of death ever devised by man than death by crucifixion! Jesus was willing to suffer and go through that for us. He didn’t have to – it was His choice because of His great love for us. Go back to Genesis 3:6. Adam loved his Creator; but he loved his beautiful helpmeet more, and he thought he was about to lose her. So he had to choose, and he decided he’d rather eat the forbidden fruit and violate the Word of God than lose her and remain obedient.
….. And that’s what he did – he ate the fruit that she offered him. Immediately upon his taking that first bite of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the process of death began not only in him, but in the entire creation. Immediately, he lost communion and fellowship with his Creator. Immediately, his soul, (his mind, will and emotions) took on the sin nature – a rebellious attitude toward God. We’re not sinners because we’ve sinned, we’re sinners because we’re children of Adam.
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RESULT OF ADAM’S SIN
Let’s begin again at Genesis 3:6. As we closed last week, we saw that Adam had just eaten of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Paul, writing to Timothy, said that Adam was not deceived as Eve had been, but he knew exactly what he was doing and what the consequences would be.
I Timothy 2:13,14:
“For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.”
Adam had to make a choice between obeying his Creator and losing his beautiful helpmeet, or disobeying his Creator and remaining with the woman. After contemplation, the last few words of Genesis 3:6 tell the whole story, “He did eat.”
The moment he ate, a lot of things began to happen. It’s necessary for us to clarify this point, because some preachers, teachers and theologians teach that there wasn’t an original sin or fall, and our only problem is with the sins we commit personally.
However, Paul writing in this “Age of Grace” or Church age to the brethren in Rome who were primarily Gentiles, declares with certainty that there was an original sin. Turn to
Romans 5:12:
“Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:”
Before Adam ate, nothing died – there was neither sin nor death on this lovely earth home God had created for His man. But both sin and death entered this world with Adam’s fall. Death came upon all by his sin.