In the begin­ning God cre­at­ed the heav­ens and the earth. (Gen­e­sis 1:1)

God cre­at­ed man in His own image, in the image of God He cre­at­ed him; male and female He cre­at­ed them. (Gen­e­sis 1:27)

God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morn­ing, the sixth day. (Gen­e­sis 1:31)

Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nos­trils the breath of life ; and man became a liv­ing being. The LORD God plant­ed a gar­den toward the east, in Eden ; and there He placed them whom He had formed. Out of the ground the LORD God caused to grow every tree that is pleas­ing to the sight and good for food ; the tree of life also in the midst of the gar­den, and the tree of the knowl­edge of good and evil. (Gen­e­sis 2:7–9)

The LORD God com­mand­ed the man, say­ing, “From any tree of the gar­den you may eat freely ; but from the tree of the knowl­edge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will sure­ly die.” (Gen­e­sis 2:16–17)

These vers­es shed light on the begin­ning of the his­to­ry of the world and of mankind — but not in the sense of a sci­en­tif­ic report. This was not the inten­tion of the inspired author. God wants to show us the spir­i­tu­al mes­sage that we can find in his cre­ation. He did it through a man who wrote under the con­di­tions pro­vid­ed by his era, his cul­ture, his lan­guage, his own way of think­ing and view of the world. But the truth expressed in his words can be under­stood by all peo­ple of all ages, espe­cial­ly if they open them­selves for the work of God’s Spir­it.¹

God saw that all he had cre­at­ed was very good! This includ­ed humans.

What hap­pened then? What dis­turbed the order of cre­ation and destroyed its har­mo­ny? We can find the answer in the fol­low­ing vers­es:

Now the ser­pent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, “Indeed , has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the gar­den’?“
The woman said to the ser­pent, “From the fruit of the trees of the gar­den we may eat ; but from the fruit of the tree which is in the mid­dle of the gar­den, God has said, ‘You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.’ ”
The ser­pent said to the woman, “You sure­ly will not die! “For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, know­ing good and evil.“
When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desir­able to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate ; and she gave also to her hus­band with her, and he ate.
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 loin cov­er­ings.
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.
Then the LORD God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?” He said, “I heard the sound of You in the gar­den, and I was afraid because I was naked ; so I hid myself.” And He said, “Who told you that you were naked ? Have you eat­en from the tree of which I com­mand­ed you not to eat ?“
The man said, “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate.“
Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this you have done ?“
And the woman said, “The ser­pent deceived me, and I ate.“
The LORD God said to the ser­pent, “Because you have done this, Cursed are you more than all cat­tle, And more than every beast of the field; On your bel­ly you will go, And dust you will eat all the days of your life; And I will put enmi­ty Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed ; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel.“
To the woman He said, “I will great­ly mul­ti­ply Your pain in child­birth, In pain you will bring forth chil­dren ; Yet your desire will be for your hus­band, And he will rule over you.“
Then to Adam He said, “Because you have lis­tened to the voice of your wife, and have eat­en from the tree about which I com­mand­ed you, say­ing, ‘You shall not eat from it’; Cursed is the ground because of you;In toil you will eat of it All the days of your life. “Both thorns and this­tles it shall grow for you; And you will eat the plants of the field ; By the sweat of your face You will eat bread, Till you return to the ground, Because from it you were tak­en ; For you are dust, And to dust you shall return.“
Now the man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the moth­er of all the liv­ing.
The LORD God made gar­ments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.
Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, know­ing good and evil ; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live for­ev­er “- there­fore the LORD God sent him out from the gar­den of Eden, to cul­ti­vate the ground from which he was tak­en. So He drove the man out; and at the east of the gar­den of Eden He sta­tioned the cheru­bim and the flam­ing sword which turned every direc­tion to guard the way to the tree of life. (Gen­e­sis 3:1–24)

We can under­stand from the pas­sages men­tioned in the begin­ning of this arti­cle (Gen­e­sis 1–2), that cre­ation includes the free will of man, which is the pre­con­di­tion of inde­pen­dent exis­tence and of the dia­logue of love. In oth­er words, God, in his love, cre­at­ed man to be capa­ble of love. How­ev­er, for this to become real­i­ty, man has to deal with this gift he received in accor­dance with the order of cre­ation. That is, he must accept the gift of life with joy and not treat it like stolen goods, cling­ing to it as if it were his own prop­er­ty. Instead we are to give it back to our Cre­ator vol­un­tar­i­ly, as our response in the dia­logue of love. Only in this self-giv­ing depen­dence on the Father can a per­son­’s own unique per­son­al­i­ty, his “self”, devel­op through love to be as noble, rich and inde­pen­dent as God planned it to be.

In this way he can live in har­mo­ny with his Cre­ator, with oth­er peo­ple, with his sur­round­ings and with him­self. But this did not hap­pen.

Man real­ized that he was a unique “self”, dis­tinct from his Cre­ator. This real­iza­tion how­ev­er did­n’t lead him to bow down in front of his Cre­ator as the Source of Life, as his Lord. He did­n’t want to become an “adult” by con­tin­u­al­ly hold­ing onto the hand of God who want­ed to lift him up to Him­self, but instead devel­oped a wish to become like God, that is, he want­ed to be God. He lis­tened to some­body who called his atten­tion to this “great oppor­tu­ni­ty”, to that which is a delight to the eyes and desir­able.

The ser­pent said to the woman, You sure­ly will not die! For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, know­ing good and evil. (Gen­e­sis 3:4–5)

When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desir­able to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate ; and she gave also to her hus­band with her, and he ate. (Gen­e­sis 3:6)

That’s “all” I have to do—to decide that I will not lis­ten to God? (Well, what kind of god is he, who jeal­ous­ly with­holds his knowl­edge from us and pro­hibits us from gain­ing it?) Whether or not we put it into words, by want­i­ng to real­ize myself inde­pen­dent­ly of God, I put myself in his place. What’s more, I oppose him direct­ly when I make my own will the absolute stan­dard of good and bad. With this deci­sion mankind (the first humans, as well as you and I) rebelled, turned away from life, from joy, hid from God—died. The avalanche start­ed. Sin had caused the tragedy of mankind to begin.

There­fore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned. (Romans 5:12)

The encounter between God and man in the gar­den express­es their near­ness to one anoth­er, the close rela­tion­ship between them. Man’s life has an aim and a call­ing. By work­ing in the gar­den he was to rule—in a good way—over all that was entrust­ed to him. He was to guard it, to ben­e­fit from its fruit by liv­ing in har­mo­ny with him­self and his envi­ron­ment and by tak­ing care of his rela­tion­ship with God.

The con­se­quence of the first sin is that man hides from God. He becomes alien­at­ed from him. Fear falls on him. Fear which nobody taught him. Where does it come from, then? Is it a strange by-prod­uct of mat­ter or a twist of fate? No. It is a nat­ur­al reac­tion fol­low­ing from the order of cre­ation. Man “feels” that he has done some­thing bad! But because nobody likes to be afraid or acknowl­edge that he is bad, one sin fol­lows the oth­er: he tries to explain his sin. He shifts the blame to oth­ers and ulti­mate­ly blames God.

The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.” Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” The woman said, “The ser­pent deceived me, and I ate.” (Gen­e­sis 3:12–13)

- the woman you put here with me (why did you give such a woman?)
- the woman gave me
- the ser­pent deceived me (well, some­times we real­ize that we deceived our­selves or oth­ers deceived us, but it is often too late)

Through sin­ning man alien­ates him­self from oth­er peo­ple. He degrades them to be the aims or objects of his own inter­ests.

Yet your desire will be for your hus­band, and he will rule over you. (Gen­e­sis 3:16b).

Since man con­tra­dicts his Cre­ator, he con­tra­dicts his own being as well. His orig­i­nal being  is divid­ed.

What does it mean to be divid­ed? Man received his spir­it from God so that he can rule over him­self in coop­er­a­tion with God in a sen­si­ble way, main­tain­ing the phys­i­cal-spir­i­tu­al uni­ty of his per­son. How­ev­er, when our will is direct­ed towards some­thing finite (i.e. towards our­selves) or oth­er less impor­tant things instead of towards the infi­nite Good (i.e. God), then we become slaves of our own idols instead of find­ing God who offers us the free­dom of love. But at the very lat­est we will lose all these things at the moment of death. Then what remains is noth­ing but our exploit­ed ego. This is Hell.

It’s like being born into a roy­al fam­i­ly. No-one earns this right by his own mer­it. You are born the heir of the king. Then, as if it was a mat­ter of course, you say, “Give me my inher­i­tance, it is mine! I’ll do with it what I want. I will show you how one should treat it.” Just like the exam­ple of the prodi­gal son:

There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’ So he divid­ed his prop­er­ty between them. Not long after that, the younger son got togeth­er all he had, set off for a dis­tant coun­try and there squan­dered his wealth in wild liv­ing. After he had spent every­thing, there was a severe famine in that whole coun­try, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired him­self out to a cit­i­zen of that coun­try, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. He longed to fill his stom­ach with the pods that the pigs were eat­ing, but no one gave him any­thing. When he came to his sens­es, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired men have food to spare, and here I am starv­ing to death! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heav­en and against you. I am no longer wor­thy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men.’ So he got up and went to his father.
But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with com­pas­sion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him. The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heav­en and against you. I am no longer wor­thy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his ser­vants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his fin­ger and san­dals on his feet. Bring the fat­tened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and cel­e­brate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to cel­e­brate. (Luke 15:11–24)

Yes, he made it as far as the pigs’ trough because he stub­born­ly fol­lowed his own ideas. And we do the same. As the Scrip­ture says: we have all sinned, “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way …” (Isa­iah 53:6).

This is not the fate God want­ed us to have. We caused it our­selves.

A fur­ther con­se­quence is that when man behaves as if he were sov­er­eign instead of being depen­dent as a crea­ture, his own inter­est becomes his very first aim. In this way he alien­ates him­self from his sur­round­ings because he sees the gifts of nature which God gave him first of all through his inter­ests, too. That means he does not live with them in har­mo­ny, rul­ing over them in a sen­si­ble way accord­ing to God’s orig­i­nal plan, but he often abus­es or destroys them as a tyrant.

So the thing that caus­es the tragedy of man is sin, i.e. con­tra­dict­ing God and his will.

But why did God not hin­der it, why did’t he do some­thing about it? He did!

… but from the tree of the knowl­edge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will sure­ly die. (Gen­e­sis 2:17)

We have all heard the voice of our con­science speak­ing to us many times, “Don’t do it!”

Nev­er­the­less we did it. Not because Adam did it. Not because oth­ers deceived me. All these things do influ­ence us, but they do not make me sin; I sin because I want to.

This, how­ev­er, con­tra­dicts the order of cre­ation. The only way for a cre­at­ed being to live a ful­filled life is by remain­ing in com­plete depen­dence on his Cre­ator (like a child depends on his par­ents). Every sin­gle sin we com­mit express­es and con­firms this striv­ing for false inde­pen­dence of God. This is the way sin spread through­out human his­to­ry (Romans 5:12–21). A sin­ful sur­round­ing came to exis­tence that influ­ences every­body and in which peo­ple mutu­al­ly strength­en each oth­er’s sin­ful incli­na­tions. Sin became a pow­er that formed his­to­ry!

At this point we do not want to pro­vide a detailed refu­ta­tion of the false teach­ing of Total Deprav­i­ty which claims that man is total­ly inca­pable of doing good. Although the first human’s sin ruined him, it did not destroy his free will. Though weak­ened, he is still capa­ble of choos­ing to do good. Indeed, this is the very foun­da­tion of our moral respon­si­bil­i­ty. Cain’s exam­ple should suf­fice here: “… Be care­ful, sin is crouch­ing at the door ; and its desire is for you, but you must mas­ter it.” (Gen­e­sis 4:7) God did not lie when he said this to a man after the fall. That means he had the capac­i­ty to do good. Cain sinned because he want­ed to.

The fact that one can choose what is good and live a god-fear­ing life (which does not mean being sin­less but does show that man is not total­ly depraved), can be amply seen in the exem­plary lives of Enoch (Gen­e­sis 5:22–24), Noah (Gen­e­sis 6:8–9), Abra­ham, Moses, the prophets (Hebrews 11), as well as Elis­a­beth and Zachari­ah (Luke 1:5–6), and many oth­ers.

But why are we talk­ing about this dark tragedy, about death, about the avalanche which was brought about by sin when what every­body is look­ing for is hap­pi­ness and bliss? If we want to find true hap­pi­ness, we first have to under­stand the depth and the weight of our sins. We have to abhor them in order to start long­ing for a Sav­iour. If peo­ple real­ize how much mis­ery and destruc­tion their sins cause, some, at least, start to make a des­per­ate attempt to change. Then we learn how weak we are, even if we some­times achieve par­tial suc­cess. We sigh:

Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death ? (Romans 7:24)

Where is he, why does the Sav­iour delay? Not every­body would put it like this. A god-fear­ing Jew per­haps would. An athe­ist may describe his unspo­ken search for God as a search for the mean­ing of life and long­ing for good. Oth­ers search for the pur­pose and mean­ing of life, despite the uncer­tain­ty of their exis­tence, in the unfriend­ly dark­ness of the infi­nite uni­verse, as a tiny crea­ture:

My heart sits on the twig of noth­ing,
its lit­tle body shiv­er­ing, dumb.
In calm unbro­ken gath­er­ing,
star­ing, star­ing, the stars come.
- József Atti­la: With­out Hope²

A dif­fi­cult process starts: fac­ing real­i­ty. Will I escape or con­tin­ue to face it? The shreds of my con­science get stronger through the long­ing for the good and tes­ti­fy: I can­not make my sins undone. A dis­tress­ing result.

(Of course we often look for and “find” accept­able expla­na­tions for our sins and “warm-heart­ed­ly” for­give our­selves. Sup­press­ing our con­science, wish­ing for false peace. But it is NEVER the same as the peace com­ing from the for­give­ness of God.)

I feel like some­thing has hap­pened that I can­not restore, how­ev­er hard I try. When I have lost the trust of a close friend, I can­not reclaim it, no mat­ter how hero­ical­ly I try. It depends exclu­sive­ly on the good will of my friend. This is also plain­ly illus­trat­ed in the above-men­tioned para­ble of the prodi­gal son. Only his father can accept him again and give him back his rights.

How much more it is like this with God? I can nev­er come to him with the excuse that he should actu­al­ly exam­ine him­self a bit, like I might do with a friend. But what can I say to the heav­en­ly father who is patient­ly wait­ing for me — the stub­born, way­ward son, to come back to him. (Luke 15). What could I tell him? He is per­fect­ly good. He him­self is love.

I can do noth­ing here but bow down and say, “Father, I have sinned against you.”

He alone—the one whom I despised, from whose love I turned away, from whom I alien­at­ed myself—he can make me free, he can heal our rela­tion­ship, restore the trust, my son­ship. He him­self will be the Sav­iour.

This promise can already be found in the his­to­ry of the Fall.

And I will put enmi­ty between you and the woman, and between your off­spring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel. (Gen­e­sis 3:15)

The off­spring of the woman, the last Adam crush­es the ser­pen­t’s head. This is the seed that grows from the root of David (Isa­iah 11:1–2!), it will be a small flower, a small shoot who will be able to stop the avalanche of sins with his sin­less­ness; He will tear out sin’s sting by his obe­di­ence till death; He will bring us eter­nal life, restore what sin destroyed: per­fect joy, har­mo­ny with God, with our­selves, with each oth­er …

Yes, Jesus Christ has done it!

The first man for­feit­ed what God gave him because he want­ed to be like God. The last Adam, Jesus Christ became the begin­ning (first fruit) of a new mankind, the author of new life by renounc­ing equal­i­ty with God and emp­ty­ing him­self …

… who, although He exist­ed in the form of God, did not regard equal­i­ty with God a thing to be grasped, but emp­tied Him­self, tak­ing the form of a bond-ser­vant, and being made in the like­ness of men. Being found in appear­ance as a man, He hum­bled Him­self by becom­ing obe­di­ent to the point of death, even death on a cross. For this rea­son also, God high­ly exalt­ed Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heav­en and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will con­fess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glo­ry of God the Father. (Philip­pi­ans 2:6–11)

Only by fol­low­ing him in his humil­i­ty can we walk with him on the path to eter­nal life.

1. Thus we do not con­sid­er it sen­si­ble in this con­text to dis­cuss the ques­tion of “how” man’s exis­tence began or the loca­tion of the Gar­den of Eden etc. ↩
2. tak­en from https://www.magyarulbabelben.net/works/hu/József_Attila/Reménytelenül/en/3543-Without_Hope ↩