We all know the story. In the beginning, God placed Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The Genesis narrative seems to say there were many trees inside this garden. God told Adam he may eat from any tree in the garden. But there was one tree in the garden where its fruit he may not eat.
But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die (Genesis 2:17).
What did it mean when God said to Adam, “you shall surely die”? How do you understand it? Does it mean that Adam would die physically? Or does it mean that Adam would die spiritually? Or both? Or neither? How do you answer?
At this point, I am quite curious what Adam even knew about death, and what it meant to surely die if he were to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. No one had ever died before this. Adam had most certainly never seen another person die. Sometimes I think it is possible God had explained to Adam right there and then what it meant for him to surely die. But even if he had explained, I wonder just how much he really understood. At the minimum, can we all agree that even though Adam didn’t know much about what death was, he understood it was not something desirable. Dying had to mean something bad if it were to be the result of doing something he was not supposed to do. Maybe.
Some say that when God said to Adam he would surely die, that it meant Adam would die physically. He ceased to have life. But we know from the Bible that this didn’t happen. Adam did not stop breathing, and die physically. The Bible said he continued to live. He went to sleep, and he woke up the next morning, just like he had always done before. As a matter of fact, we know from the Bible Adam lived for many more years.
Genesis 5.5 So all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years, and he died.
We know from the Bible there was a day Eve saw that the tree of knowledge of good and evil was good for food. When the serpent tricked her into thinking that the tree was desirable, she took the fruit and ate it. Then she gave it to Adam, and he ate it also. As a result, both Eve and Adam realized they were naked, and they hid from God. When God discovered that Adam and Eve had sinned, Adam and Eve did not cease to exist, and die. Interestingly, God said a few more things about each of their future to the both of them. To the woman, he said among other things, he would greatly multiply her pain in childbirth, and to the man, he cursed the ground and caused him to eat the plants of the field by the sweat of his face. This shows that even after Adam and Eve had sinned, God still had some sort of plan for them, even though he said to them they would surely die. They did not die physically on that day, and cease to exist.
Genesis 3.16 To the woman He said,
“I will greatly multiply
Your pain in childbirth,
In pain you will bring forth children;
Yet your desire will be for your husband,
And he will rule over you.”
Genesis 3.17 Then to Adam He said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’;
Cursed is the ground because of you;
In toil you will eat of it
All the days of your life.
Genesis 3.18 “Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you;
And you will eat the plants of the field;
Genesis 3.19 By the sweat of your face
You will eat bread,
Till you return to the ground,
So what did it mean for God to say to Adam on the day he ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, he would surely die? Perhaps it meant there was going to be physical death, but that it was postponed. In other words, it is still a true statement that physical death came into Adam at the moment he sinned, but it didn’t happen right at that moment. He would surely die didn’t mean he would immediately die. Death was delayed. The death process only began the moment Adam and Eve ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Though they did not immediately die physically, they began to die. One may say Adam’s physical death only began to die because of God’s grace.
If you didn’t know this, I don’t enjoy gardening. My wife is the one who has the green thumb in our family. If you let her, she will spend the whole day in the garden today, and another whole day in the garden tomorrow. But even though gardening is not my thing, there is one thing I am eager to do very much. I like to pull out weeds, any kind of weed. When I pull out a weed, the weed still looks green and quite healthy, but I usually like to leave it on my sidewalk so it may slowly cook itself to death under the blazing sun. But when I return to look at it after a few hours, the weed looks like it is struggling, and it is not doing well. Already one of the ugliest living thing on the planet, it gets even uglier, and uglier. The weed is dying slowly. In the same way the weed did not die instantly, but slowly over time, Adam and Eve did not die instantly, but they were both dying slowly over time.
<To be continued>