Why THIS Rule? Part 2 of Why All the Rules?

We’ve looked at the why of God’s first commandment to man. This post looks at the what.

Then the LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and tend it. The LORD God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may freely eat; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for on the day that you eat from it you will certainly die.” – Genesis 2:15-17

Those three verses are innocuously wedged in between the geographic details of the garden and the statement that it wasn’t good for man to be alone. Am I the only one that finds that frustrating? I mean, of all the instructions He could give,

Why that one?

Why did God go with something that seems so harmless? How about, “Don’t murder?” That seems a little more serious than eating fruit from a forbidden tree. Granted, Adam was the only human at that point, but Eve was the next item on God’s agenda. For context, one of the first things God tells Noah and his family after they get off the ark was essentially, “Don’t kill each other.”
How about–Don’t commit adultery, don’t covet, honor your parents? Those didn’t apply, either-yet.
But God could have said, “Don’t abuse the animals in your care.” My 10-year-old self felt like it should have been something more serious than, “Don’t eat that fruit.” (These are questions I had for a long time, you can tell.)

I didn’t understand, so I swept that question under the rug for a long time.

My next objection was a little more serious.

Why would God put a tree in the garden that was a death trap?

That’s akin to letting a downed power line lie unattended in your backyard and telling your child, “I’m going to the store. Don’t touch that wire while I’m gone. It will kill you.” What’s the first thing a child wants to do when you tell them no? Hint: I was onto something.

Oh, wait a minute. We talked about that in the last post. Sin was already in the world. God gave a commandment in order to deal with the sin that was ALREADY a problem.

For until the Law sin was in the world, but sin is not counted against anyone when there is no law. -Romans 5:13

And the wages of sin is death.

For the wages of sin is death, but the gracious gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. – Romans 6:23

Adam was a dead man walking.

By the way, I didn’t get answers to these questions until I’d already come to accept that God is trustworthy and good, and everything He does is in accord with Romans 8:28. For those of us who love Him, He works out everything for our good, according to His purpose.

Fine. God had a plan, but I still didn’t understand it.

So what’s a “Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil,” anyway?

I haven’t seen that fruit in the produce department, have you? There’s no “Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil Fruit” nestled between the citrus and the apples at HEB. Whatever it was, we learn from the serpent, of all things, a little more about it.

The serpent said to the woman, “You certainly will not die! For God knows that on the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will become like God, knowing good and evil.” Genesis 3:4-5

The most effective lies aren’t outright fabrications. They’re distortions of the truth.

Did Adam and Eve die when they ate the fruit? Yes. The spirit died immediately. The mind, will, and emotions–the soul–became corrupted. It was no longer in perfect harmony with God. And the body began a long process of decay.

And what about their knowledge of good and evil? In sinning, their eyes were opened to evil. Perhaps, before they openly disobeyed God, they did not fully comprehend good because they had no knowledge of evil.

But we know that afterward they understood evil and shame and guilt. When they heard Yahweh Elohim walking in the garden, they hid. Classic shame response.

Yahweh didn’t leave them in their desperate state, though. He gave them the hope of restoration. That’s next.