Sin and Death (2) and the World

Several things happened to humans as a result of being excluded from the presence of God.

1. They lost access to eternal life. They were not changed, because they were already mortal. Even if they had not sinned, they could not live forever in their current form of existence. They would need to experience a resurrection of their bodies, just as we will, to enter eternal life. (Jesus lived a perfect life and was not affected by sin, but he still needed to be resurrected before he could ascend into the presence of the Father in the heavenly realms.) This resurrection life was represented by the tree of life in the garden. When they were shut out of the garden, they lost access to opportunity for the resurrection of the body, so they lost eternal life. They were not physically changed, but they got stuck in their mortality.
2. There perception changed.
   

   The eyes of both of them were opened, and they realised they were naked (Gen 3:7).

   This was not a physical change. Before they sinned, they saw everything in terms of God’s perspective. Once they had sinned, they saw everything in terms of their own categories and values. What they saw was the same, but their perception of it was different. From God’s perspective, their nakedness reflected his image, so it was beautiful, so they did not see it. From their perspective, their nakedness was inadequate compared to God’s beauty, (though it was in his image) so they were ashamed.
3. Away from the presence of God, Adam and Eve had no spiritual protection. God had given authority over the earth to humans, but by submitting to the tempter, they had surrendered authority over the earth to the spiritual powers of evil. This was a dreadful situation to be in. They had been sent out of the peaceful garden into a world that was controlled by the powers of evil. By sinning, they had given these evil powers permission to attack their lives, and separated from God, there was nothing they could do to resist their evil devices.
4. The evil powers went hard out to work to destroy God’s earth. This is why tilling the earth became hard physical work. The powers of evil had filled it with nasty weeds and harmed some of the ground. When God told Adam that the ground was cursed, he was prophesying what the evil powers would do. He did not have to do anything to make it happen, because the powers of evil did it anyway.
5. We are not told how and when this happened, but the spiritual powers of evil would have attacked Adam and Eve hard. They would have used their power to attack them physically and change them. We know now that injuries to the brain can change a person’s personality and character, as well as their ability to decide and choose. I presume that the powers of evil attacked Adam’s brain and changed him, so that he had a greater capacity to do evil and found it hard to do good.
6. The powers of evil seem to have changed the shape of Eve’s pelvis and its supporting muscles, so that childbirth became more difficult. This fulfilled the curse spoken in the garden.
   

   I will greatly multiply Your pain in childbirth,
   in pain you will bring forth children (Gen 3:16).

We have not idea how what a terrible place the world had becomes. These hundreds of thousands of evil spirits are still at work in the world, but they have to spread themselves across 6 billion people. Even with the benefit of the cross, some Christians can find it hard to deal with a couple of attacking spirits. Imagine if the entire host of fallen spirits all attacking one couple and their children, with no spiritual protections. Fortunately, they were divided, and some of them were more intent on messing up the world, but the onslaught faced by Adam and Eve would have been overwhelming.

Sin and Death (1)

When Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden, they were in unity with each and with God. They could perceive spiritually, as well as physically. They could talk with God, and they could see him, in a way that was real. They were free to choose how they would behave. God taught them his will, but they were free to disobey.

What Happened?

God had told Adam and Eve that if they disobeyed him, they would die.

You must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for in the day that you eat from it you will certainly die (Gen 2:17).

Yet after they ate from the tree, they carried on living. Adam lived for nearly a thousand years. This was not a sudden death, so what did happen to them? In what sense did they die? I will answer this question in the next few posts.

What did God did do?
God pronounced three curses" on the serpent, the woman and the man.

1. He physically changed the serpent, by removing its legs and modifying its body so that it would have to crawl upon the ground.
2. God is not recorded as changing Adam and Even in any way. He explained that their relationship to each other would be changed. This would be the natural outworking of their personalities, without the restraining influence of the Holy Spirit. The man’s strength would distort into domination. The women’s sociability would distort into fear.
3. The land would become hard to work and toil would be painful. However, God did not change the man, or the land. The land was changed by the powers of evil (more on that in a moment).

God withdrew from his people. His holiness meant that he could not be close to sin, so he had no choice but to withdraw from the sinful humans (Is 59:2). They had grieved the Holy Spirit, so he could no longer dwell with them in the way that he did.

The key thing that God did was to exclude Adam and Eve from the garden.

The Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden (Gen 3:23)
He drove the man out (Gen 3:24).

Although God had warned them that they would die, he did not put them to death. Instead, he drove them away from his presence, and out of the place where he had been working. Certain death manifested in exclusion.