1/14 OUTLINE: II. Man’s Fall through Satan’s Corruption 3:1—11:32 A. The First Fall—from God’s Presence to Man’s Conscience 3:1-24 1. The Serpent’s (Satan’s) Temptation and Man’s First Fall vv. 1-7 GENESIS 3:1-7 3:1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any other animal of the field that Jehovah God had made. And he said to the woman, Did God really say, You shall not eat of any tree of the garden? 3:2 And the woman said to the serpent, Of the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; 3:3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, You shall not eat of it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die. 3:4 And the serpent said to the woman, You shall not surely die! 3:5 For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will become like God, knowing good and evil. 3:6 And 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 to be desired to make oneself wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband with her, and he ate. 3:7 And the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves. FOOTNOTES: 1,1a)serpent 2 Cor. 11:3; Rev. 12:9; 20:2 Man’s first fall was initiated by Satan through the deceiving by the serpent (2 Cor. 11:3). The crafty serpent was the embodiment of Satan, the Devil, the enemy and adversary of God (Matt. 13:39a; Rev. 12:9 and notes 3 and 4) and the tempter of man (Matt. 4:3; 1 Thes. 3:5). Immediately after the first two chapters of Genesis, Satan came in, and immediately before the last two chapters of Revelation, he will be cast out (Rev. 20:10). Between the first two chapters and the last two chapters of the Bible, Satan, the serpent, is constantly working to corrupt and damage humanity and to thereby frustrate God from carrying out His eternal purpose. In every generation the goal of God’s divine work is to build up the Body of Christ to express His Son, Christ, and also to eliminate the serpent. 1,2)woman The serpent contacted the woman, not the man, because the woman is the weaker vessel (1 Pet. 3:7). 1,3)Did In tempting the woman, Satan first touched her mind by questioning God’s word, causing her to doubt God’s word. The serpent’s question stirred up Eve’s doubting mind and prevented her from using her spirit to contact God. Satan’s evil thought entered into Eve and contaminated her mind even before she ate of the tree of knowledge. 2,1)said The outward cause of man’s first fall was the serpent’s temptation. The inward cause was the woman’s assuming the headship (vv. 2-3, 6). The woman represents man’s position in relation to God. God is man’s Husband (Isa. 54:5); man’s position is that of the wife. As the man should be under the headship of God, so the woman should be under the headship of man (1 Cor. 11:3). This is a safeguard against the subtlety of the enemy. Here Eve assumed the headship by speaking to the serpent directly, without the covering of her husband. Thus, she was ensnared by the serpent and was deceived (1 Tim. 2:14). Eve’s failure here typifies man’s failure in putting God aside and assuming the headship over God to act independently of Him, thus opening the way for Satan, the subtle one, to deceive man. See note 4-1 in Rom.7. 5,1)For This slanderous word from the evil one caused Eve to misunderstand God’s love and to doubt God’s heart in His forbidding man to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (2:16-17). It poisoned Eve’s emotion, causing her to dislike God. 5,2)God Or, gods. 6,1)took In the process of man’s fall, man failed to use his spirit to contact God, thus bypassing God and putting God aside. Instead, he exercised his soul, reasoning with the serpent in the mind, desiring the tree of knowledge in the emotion, and deciding in the will to take the fruit and eat it. 7,1)And The dreadful result of man’s first fall was manifold. First, man transgressed God’s commandment (2:17; Rom. 5:14) and thus fell under God’s condemnation (Rom. 5:16) and came under a curse (vv. 17-19). He also became estranged from God (v. 8) and alienated from the life of God (Eph. 4:18) in the tree of life (vv. 23-24). Not only so, in the fall Satan’s evil thought, feeling, and will were injected into man’s mind, emotion, and will, thus contaminating man’s soul (vv. 1, 4-6). Through man’s eating of the tree of knowledge, Satan entered man’s body and became the very sin within man (cf. Rom. 7:8, 11, 17, 20 and note 8-1). Thus the human body, which was created pure and sinless, was transmuted into the flesh of sin (Rom. 7:18a and note 2). As a consequence of the fall man’s spirit was deadened (cf. Eph. 2:1, 5 and note 1-2), becoming insulated from God and losing its function toward God. Hence, each of man’s three parts— his body, his soul, and his spirit— was damaged by the fall. Furthermore, fallen man was constituted a sinner (Rom. 5:19) and became a victim of death (Rom. 5:12b, 14a; 1 Cor. 15:22a). Consequently, man was spoiled from fulfilling God’s purpose, which is to express God in His image and represent God with His dominion (1:26). Finally, because of man’s fall all the creation is subjected to vanity and the slavery of corruption (Rom. 8:20-21). 7,2)knew This is the beginning of the function of the human conscience. The conscience, being a function of man’s spirit (see note 75, par. 3, in ch. 2), came into being at the time man was created by God. However, it was not until after man partook of the tree of knowledge that the function of the conscience was manifested. After the fall Adam was ashamed of his nakedness (cf. 2:25) because the function of his conscience was activated. From that time the conscience in man began to bear the responsibility of refusing evil and accepting good. See note 1-2 in Rom.9. 7,3)fig Fig leaves are of the vegetable life, which has no blood for redemption (cf. Heb. 9:22). The coverings of fig leaves represent man’s own works in attempting to cover his sinfulness. Such works are inadequate to cover man’s nakedness that he might be justified, accepted, before God (cf. Rom. 3:20a). See notes 21-1 and 21-2. https://app.box/s/it84khi3gludse55e5ra
Posted on: Tue, 13 Jan 2015 21:00:02 +0000
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