These are the notes from the third week in the choose series. Again I want to give credit to Gregory Boyd for the content. I have gleaned much from his book. More of the notes should be in quotes as it is a direct quote from time to time.
For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. (Genesis 3:5-6)
“Everything that does not come from faith is sin.” (Romans 14:23)
The Lie About Ourselves
Last week we discussed the lie that Adam and Eve bought into when they ate the forbidden fruit. This was a lie about God. They believed (and passed onto all of mankind) the lie that God was not trustworthy and completely loving. The false judgment about God then is followed by a false judgment about Adam and Eve and thus all of humanity. The heart of this lie is that we humans are not okay simply living in union with God. Our lives cannot simply just revolve around enjoying God’s provision – the Tree of Life and honoring God’s prohibition – the Tree of Knowledge. We can, and we must, provide for ourselves.
“Originally man was made in the image of God, but now his likeness to God is a stolen one…. What God had given man to be, man now desired to be through himself.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Satan in essence had Adam and Eve believe that God had duped them. In their innocence they did not realize that there was more to life than what God had provided. To experience this they alone must get it.
When Eve turned from God, she broke fellowship with God and created a vacuum in her heart where there had been fullness. The lie she believed about God created its own truth. The thought that Eve was on her own, caused her to be on her own. The thought that she was deficient in what God had provided created its own deficiency. Believing a lie we judge God to be untrustworthy or inadequate to fill us completely with love and life. Our judgment then blocks God’s fullness and makes us fill empty on our own. Our emptiness then makes other things seem desirable to fill the vacuum. Things like religion, sexual pleasure, riches, fame and power take on a god-like appeal when viewed with hungry eyes of our vacuous (empty) souls.
Our emptiness makes it seem like these things can actually fill us. But they are never truly satisfying and certainly never permanent.
Oddly enough Adam and Eve were trying to acquire what they already had. They were made in the image of God (Gen 1:26-27) and yet they believed the lie that by taking the forbidden fruit they would be made like God. The difference is that they have to do so by their own efforts.
The knowledge of good and evil is a curse for finite individuals like you and me because it blocks the unsurpassable life-giving love of God flowing to us, abiding in us and flowing through us to others. This can only be known by relationship and reliance upon God Almighty.
The choice resulted in:
Hiding & Performing
The first manifestation of Adam and Eve living under judgment was their hiding and shame. They accused God but they also accused themselves and each other. As soon as their ‘eyes were opened’ and they heard God coming to spend time with them they were threatened. The same presence that was once enjoyable and pleasant now threatened them (Gen 3:8). Before God and each other they were ashamed. They covered themselves and hid.
This is the story of all of us. Instead of being able to relate to God and each other open and honest we choose to hide. In our ‘enlightenment’ we cannot relate to God and each other in love. We can no longer be open, vulnerable and ‘naked’ as it were. We now feel the need to evaluate ourselves, others and God.
The full truth is that we all fall short of God’s glory (Rm 3:23). And we are in bondage to this judgment. We cannot be free from this fact by performing better. Instead we must be set free from the need to perform. We must come to the Lord (2 Corinthians 3:17-18). There we will be freed, and there we can be changed into God’s likeness. This glory can be revealed more and more day in and day out as we unite with the life-giving source.
Deflecting Responsibilities by blaming others
Blaming others is another manifestation of Adam and Eve living under the curse (Gen 3:10-13). It was another attempt to hide. Adam and Eve’s statements were technically true, but they were intended to conceal rather than reveal. They had taken on the character of the serpent that is the Accuser (Rev 12:10). We too will deflect attention away from ourselves by blaming others. We point out other’s dust particles rather than deal with the log that is in our own eye (Matt 7:3).
This is once again a misjudgment about the nature of God. Rather than being open and honest before God and realizing that He would defend them and cover them, they blamed. The beautiful story of God’s heart is found when God made garments for Adam and Eve (Genesis 3:21). God’s heart is always to cover us.
We are so quick to judge God and we miss His true character every time. Like Job and his friends we ‘condemn God to justify ourselves’ (Job 40:8). We miss the true heart of the God that would cover us. We miss the beautiful heart of Jesus that would be our advocate (1 John 2:1-2).
Banishment from the garden (toil, stress and separation from God)
Adam and Eve were banished from the garden. Again, the serpent had told partial truth. God did not want man to try to be like Him in exercising judgment and being the source of truth and what is good.
22 And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever. 23 So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life. (Genesis 3:22-24)
Man is incapable of fulfilling the need for good and love without God. If God had allowed Adam and Eve to eat of the tree of life after eating of the forbidden fruit, he would have in effect sentenced them to eternity without God, without true love and life. If Adam and Eve had chosen to respect the boundary between themselves and God that was the center of paradise, they could have freely eaten from God’s provision for the deathless life that was at the center of that provision. But to enjoy God’s provision at the center they had to respect God’s prohibition at the center.
God loves you so much that He will not allow you to try to be god. God will not share His glory not out of jealousy for himself but rather for jealousy for you. God desires for you and me to know what it is to be the recipient of His good pleasure, his great love. To be the recipient of God’s love we must allow God to be God!
The Curse and Conquering Love
Out of the fullness of life that we were to receive from God, humans were given the authority and responsibility to mediate this provision on earth (Matt 6:10). We were created in the image of God (Gen 1:26). We surrendered this authority over to Satan, God’s adversary when we accepted his lie (Luke 4:6). Now Satan is
described as the god of this present world system ( 2 Cor 4:4) the principality of the air (Eph 2:2) the ruler who exercises his destructive influence over everyone and everything (John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11 and 1 John 5:19) All of creation is subject to this futility (Rom 8:20) It was our sin that opened the floodgates of this corruption.
This is the curse. We were created in love to live under and exercise the love God in this world. Despite the fall and this curse one thing remains: GOD IS LOVE. God’s nature did not change with our failure. Listen to me today, God’s nature does not change with your failure. God’s nature does not change when another one fails. God is love. And God demonstrated that love for us that in while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8).
This God of love does have an adversary. And he is our adversary. Listen how God in the midst of pronouncing the curse also tell of the victor over this adversary.
15 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.”
Satan will always be striking at mankind’s heal, but the offspring of Eve shall strike his head. This was fulfilled in Christ (Rev 12:13-17). Through the death and resurrection of Christ a fatal blow was struck at the Accuser who made us accusers. (Rev 12:10-11) When Christ allowed himself to be struck down by the oppressive powers of this age Christ defeated these powers (Eph 2:6-8) In becoming a curse, Christ in principle broke the curse (Gal 3:13).
13 When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, 14 having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. 15 And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.
(Col 2:13-15)
God’s love has to take on the form of judgment and mercy now that man filters everything through the prison bars of our knowledge of good and evil. But for all who will accept it, his mercy always triumphs over judgment (James 2:13). And to as many who believed on his name he gives (restores) the right to be called sons of God (John 1:12).
New Hope 
Pastor Matt, I am so thankful you have these notes on here. I just got them printed out. Couldn’t be at church last week and God knows this lesson ‘must be hammered home… looking forward to being changed more & more for His Glory and usefullness! Thank you. God is so Great.