Jesus’ death on the cross as the payment for the sins of the world leads us to the story of the first sin, the “original sin” in the garden of Eden. The scriptures describe how Jesus’ “obedience to death on the cross brought righteousness to many which counteracts the condemnation that came to mankind through Adam’s trespass in the garden.” (Romans 5:15-19). Why was Adam’s eating of the forbidden fruit worthy of death? Isn’t capital punishment a bit severe for petty theft? What was the significance of ingesting the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil?
“you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.” Genesis 2:17
Why then, would God prohibit Adam and Eve from partaking of such fruit?
There are actually two ways of looking at the prohibition that God laid out – one focusing on an object, the other is focusing on an action. If the prohibition was chiefly concerned about an object, it would clearly be the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But if God did not want Adam (and Eve) to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil, why did God create the tree and the fruit in the first place? Couldn’t God have just omitted creating the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil and spare Adam and Eve of the possibility of transgression? We know that everything God created, including all the plants and vegetation was good. So why would eating that which was created good, be all that bad? Without an understanding of good and evil, how could anyone fathom God’s goodness? It would seem that wisdom would be something God would want to share with the very creatures who could appreciate the qualities of his goodness.
When we focus exclusively on the fruit (the commodity), it is easy to miss other more important dynamics which can lead us to fall prey to the same error that befell Adam and Eve. A critical underlying question is, did God originally intend for Adam and Eve to gain wisdom (the knowledge of good and evil)? And if so, how were they supposed to obtain it?
Things begin to make a little more sense if the intent of the prohibition was not an object, but an action. Ingesting food is the way we internalize an external source of power and make it a part of ourselves. What if the real focus of the prohibition was against eating the fruit, not just having possession of the fruit. If there were a different mechanism for obtaining wisdom than through eating, then perhaps it was the act of eating, or metaphorically ingesting as the means to obtain the prized commodity of knowing good and evil that was the problem. Eating fruit can be done by one’s self, in solitude, and certainly in this case was done apart from God’s presence. What if there were a different mechanism that God intended to use for passing on to Adam and Eve the knowledge of good and evil? What if wisdom were intended to be transmitted through daily walks and conversations in the garden, fully within God’s presence. If this were true, then the emphasis of forbidden could apply to the eating in solitude, apart from God, rather than on obtaining the fruit itself.
If this were true, ingesting fruit would symbolize man’s attempt to obtain a valued commodity apart from its creator. Could it be that the “original sin” at its heart was really Adam (and Eve’s) choice for independence from God instead of dependence, trust, and communion with him? In fact, every sin can trace it’s roots to this dynamic – an attempt to improve one’s lot apart from God – and often at the expense of those around us. This striving for independence goes beyond the striving for emotional independence we often see in children, “Leave me a lone, I can do it myself, I can do it myself…” and into a spiritual independence where we think we (mankind) can be the ones to define the parameters of what constitutes right-ness (or good-ness) and therefore work our way into achieving that righteous state by our own efforts. Indeed every single religion in the world that prescribes a path of specific behaviors to reach to heaven, nirvana, or some form of “enlightenment” falls into the same fallacy of the “original sin” – that it can be up to man’s effort to define and also reach rightness.
The reason why this is deadly was hinted at in the story of creation, when after a string of proclamations that what God had created was good (including the fruit trees in the garden of Eden), the scriptures said “it was not good for man to be alone.”
If God created man (and woman) with an innate problem to address of aloneness, any time man(kind) chooses to be independent of God, it would exacerbate that aloneness. In fact, it is such a serious problem, God equates the move toward self sufficiency and away from dependence on him as death.
The very first question asked in the entire Bible, is “where?”, “Where are you hiding, Adam and Eve ?”and it also is the most important question in the Bible – even more important than “Why?”. This question of “where” also becomes the ultimate question that man will ask of God when man encounters suffering and evil. “Where is God in the midst of suffering and injustice?” and it becomes even more poignant in light of the fact that much of the suffering and injustice of the world comes about due to someone’s choice toward self sufficiency and independence from the Creator. Whenever our focus shifts from the Creator toward self sufficiency and grasping at that which was created, mankind inevitably begins to harm one another and even the environment.
This started even in the Garden of Eden, when Eve blamed the serpent instead of owning up to her disobedience, and Adam blamed Eve instead of confessing his own culpability, which destroyed any semblance of trust they could have for each other and proved that the two of them were not sufficient for addressing each other’s aloneness problem.
In this light, the Biblical concept of sin might be viewed not as a deviation from a perfect standard of behavior, (theft of forbidden fruit) but as a move toward self sufficiency and independence from God often at the expense of our fellow man and our environment. Sin and righteousness should not be viewed transactionally (imperfections that accumulate and which must be purged or covered over to restore perfection), but relationally, where one is either moving toward God in dependence and trust or away from him towards self sufficiency and independence. The difference may be easier to understand if we see sin not as a noun – a quantity that exists outside of us that we try to avoid accumulating, but as an preposition – a descriptor of how our actions and appetites are placing us in closer proximity to and dependence on God, or farther away from him toward independence.
Consequently, the result of death from eating the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil (and by extension, every other sin) is not so much a punishment for infraction, but a consequence of choosing independence from the source of life. If it is God who gives us life and sustains us, our choices towards independence from him will leave us with nothing but increasing aloneness and ultimately death.
This also could illuminate what happened on the cross when Jesus died and took on the sins of the world. If sin is defined as independence from God, then Jesus became the Aloneness that everyone deserved as the natural consequence of their choices towards independence from God. It also explains why, in that moment of Aloneness on the cross, Jesus cried, “Oh my God, why have you abandoned me?” For the first time, one member of the triune Godhead was split off from the other two. And died.
Why did a part of God have to die?