FROM SIN TO SALVATION
- Fallen from glory
- Lifted up by grace
The striking contrast between our shameful sinfulness and God’s glorious grace is well-documented. There are countless passages in Scripture that explain in awful detail the horrible nature of sinful human beings and the wickedness that our inbred contamination produces. But there are also countless passages in Scripture that talk about the perfectly pure nature of God’s unending grace as well. There are even passages that place our sinfulness side by side with his grace so that we understand the magnitude of the situation. Both the Old and the New Testaments are filled with people and events and situations that demonstrate this truth in dozens of different ways. But if there were one story in the Bible that had to be chosen as the ultimate example of the contrast between our sinfulness and God’s grace, it would the story in Genesis chapter three: Adam, Eve, the serpent, the tree, and that miserable piece of fruit. There, on the last day the Garden of Eden was ever occupied by human beings, sin and grace met face to face for the very first time. And in the span of just a few short verses of Scripture, the entire human race went all the way from perfection down to sin and back to salvation. Humanity fell from glory in an instant, but was lifted up by grace just moments later. It is a remarkable story. It is a true story. And the details of this account are worth every bit of our attention.
Our reading from the Old Testament picks up in verse eight of Genesis chapter three. But already in verse seven we see the ugly effects of sin taking place. “Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.” Adam and Eve knew they were naked before that point, of course. But after they ate from the tree they were not supposed to eat from, “their eyes were open” and they saw their nakedness through the lens of their sinful nature for the very first time. And they noticed that their thoughts were no longer completely pure; their thoughts were selfish and dirty and embarrassing. And then their sinfulness led them to foolishness. They took fig leaves (fig leaves!) and somehow sewed them together to cover those parts of the body that they suddenly found so awkward to look at. Sin took no time at all to infect those very first human beings to the core. And that was just the beginning.
Soon after they managed to tie some leaves together, God came down to see them. And when they heard the Lord walking towards them, “they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden.” They hid from the Lord?!? They knew better than that! They understood very well that God knew everything, saw everything, and was present everywhere at every time. But their sinfulness blinded them with guilt to such an extent that they actually tried to hide from God behind the trunk of a tree! And if that weren’t bad enough, then came the excuses. “I heard you in the garden,” Adam said to the Lord only after he had been called out, “and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.” But that’s not the real reason Adam had tried to hide from the Lord. Adam didn’t hide because he was naked; he hid because he knew he had sinned. He was trying to avoid the real problem in hopes that God would somehow not notice and just move on!
Of course, the Lord was not fooled by Adam’s foolishness, and he demanded an explanation. But instead of admitting his sin and confessing his guilt, Adam tried to shift the blame. “The woman you put here with me - she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.” “It’s really kind of your fault, Lord! You were the one who gave me this woman! I didn’t ask for her! She’s the one to blame if anyone is going to get in trouble here. She’s the one who tricked me into taking a bite of that fruit. I was really just an innocent bystander.” Adam’s ugly and pitiful sinfulness was fully on display the moment he fell from glory. And Eve’s sinfulness was no less obvious. “The serpent deceived me, and I ate” she says when questioned. Eve tried to pass the blame on to someone else just like her husband did. “Lord, you created all creatures. And I don’t want to say that you’re responsible, but one of your creatures deceived me - I didn’t know any better! Maybe that serpent is the one you should be talking to instead of to me.”
Adam and Eve’s sinfulness is so ridiculous, isn’t it? This story almost reads like a day in the household of any young family: the children do something wrong, and then they try to come up with any and every excuse possible to convince their parents that they aren’t the ones to blame, that it’s somebody else’s fault, that they shouldn’t be punished, that they are innocent despite the way things might look at first. This account of the fall into sin might be a little humorous if it weren’t so sad, and if it didn’t effect us with eternal consequences! Because this pathetic and sorry scene from Genesis 3 not only reveals the sinfulness of Adam and Eve, but ours as well. We are all infected with real and damnable sin at the moment we are conceived because of what happened there in the Garden of Eden. And not only that, Adam and Eve’s words and actions are also a mirror image of what we do every day.
Our first parents tried to hide from the Lord, pretended as if a sin had never been committed, and then tried to shift the blame. That sums up my life right there! I’ve noticed throughout the years that I constantly try to convince myself that those things I did and those words I said and those thoughts I let wander through my mind weren’t really sins after all. They may have been borderline, they may have gotten close to going against one of God’s commands, but they were excusable considering the circumstances. Don’t you think that way sometimes or is it just me? We conjure up every possible excuse why we would have done that or said that or thought that so that we don’t have to admit that “Yes, it was a sin against the Lord. Yes, it did contradict his clear words of Scripture.”
But even then, even when we are forced to admit that it was undoubtedly a sin, we still don’t want to take the blame for it! And we take our cue from Adam and Eve: “It was the woman you gave me…” “It was the serpent who deceived me…” “If those things weren’t always on tv, I wouldn’t have those inappropriate thoughts.” “I wouldn’t have to say those disparaging things about that person if he weren’t such an idiot all the time.” “That person is really the one to blame for me getting so angry and upset the other day.” “If those people acted more in line with Scripture then I wouldn’t have to hate them so much.” Our natural reaction when we sin is to shift the blame to someone else. It is never our first thought to admit that we are solely responsible for what we have done and completely deserving of whatever consequences may come because of it. We are sadly very much like our original father and mother. And we are every bit as guilty.
I want to go back to the beginning of our story again. Not to rehash the ugliness of sin that we’ve already seen, but to contrast that sinfulness with the grace of God. Because at the very beginning of the very first verse, God’s grace is clearly on display. See how much God loves them just as much as he did before: “The man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day…” The Lord knew what they had just done! He had told them what the consequences would be if they were to eat from that forbidden tree, and so he could have simply struck them dead at the very moment they fell from his glory. But he doesn’t do that. Instead, he comes down to the Garden of Eden. And not only that, he also allows them to hear him walking through the trees. This was their first chance to repent. The Lord was giving them a little bit of time to think about what they had done and to come clean. He loved them! He wanted them to be honest with him. But, of course, they weren’t. They hid from their loving God instead. And so he calls out to Adam, “Where are you?” even though God knew right where Adam was! And God was not interested in pretending to play some absurd game of hide and seek either. He was giving them yet another chance to repent, to confess their sins, to cling to him for his mercy and compassion and love. But they didn’t take him up on his offer here either. Instead Adam blamed Eve, Eve blamed the serpent, and neither of them took responsibility for their actions.
Notice that Adam and Eve never admit their guilt in this entire story. Nowhere in these verses do they finally repent of their sins and plead for forgiveness - even though they were caught red-handed and everyone there knew it! They were as sinful as sinful human beings come! But what does God do? How does he respond to their hiding and their excuses and their finger pointing? He forgives them. He immediately and unconditionally forgives them! He takes his children who had fallen from his glory and he lifts them up by grace. Without them asking, without them even thinking about it, he forgives them. He offers to them salvation from the sins that they were still in the middle of denying! And he does that by promising to send them a Savior.
Genesis 3:15 is the very first prophecy of the coming Christ in all of Scripture. And interestingly enough, the Lord gives this promise of Jesus to Adam, Eve, and every one of their descendants, while speaking to Satan. After God declares that the snake would forever crawl on its belly, he speaks to the devil directly. “I will put enmity (hatred and hostility) between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head and you will strike his heel.” The “he” is Christ - the ultimate offspring from Eve’s line. Jesus would crush Satan’s head by his death and resurrection even though Satan would strike Jesus’ heel when the Lord suffered on the cross. And although this is admittedly a vague prophecy of the salvation Christ won for us on Calvary, it is also a very important prophecy. Because it gave Adam and Eve hope. It gave them the understanding that the Lord had just forgiven them, and that he would send someone in the future to save them from the eternal punishment of sin. It gave them something in which to believe. Because this was a prophecy of God’s grace. It was an act of his love. And it came not in response to their repentance or regret or remorse, but this promise came in response to their sin! The Lord loved them just as much after the Fall as he did before!
And the Lord loves us now just as much as he loved Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The Lord is patient with us just as much as he was with Adam and Eve. The Lord forgives us just as often as he forgave Adam and Eve. Even though we are sinners! Even though we hide from our sins and try to deny our sins and pass the blame for our sins, that prophecy of the coming Savior was for us too! It was for our forgiveness. It was to guarantee our eternal life. And so we are just like Adam and Eve: we are just as sinful, but we are also just as saved. Saved not because of anything we have ever done or will ever do. We are saved because God’s grace overrules our sinfulness. And we have been carried from sin to salvation - just like Adam and Eve were - on the beams of the cross.
Of course, Adam and Eve probably never knew about the cross. Unless the Lord gave them insights that are not recorded for us in Scripture, they probably weren’t aware of the suffering and the pain and the torture and the agonizing death that their Descendant would one day have to go through for their sins. But they believed in that coming Savior, nevertheless, and now they are in heaven because of him. We have an advantage over our first parents. We know exactly what happened to our Savior on this earth. And the more we know about what Jesus did, the more we understand what he had to suffer, the more striking the contrast becomes between our sin and his grace. Even though God knew what his Son would have to experience when he made that promise in Genesis chapter three, he made it anyway. Because his love for Adam and Eve and for every other sinner after them was that strong. His grace was that immovable. And it still is. That same grace preserves you now. That same grace provides for you and protects you now. That same grace will keep you connected to his promises and will one day take you home. For the last 6000+ years God’s grace has never changed, and so we can be certain that we who have fallen from his glory because of our sin, will by his grace see that glory again. The glory Adam and Even lost. They glory they now enjoy. The glory that their Descendant and our Savior won for us, and for all mankind.
Amen.
“The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you.” - Romans 16:20
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