Throughout the Bible what this man did is called sin. We often think of sin as doing bad things - really bad things. But this first sin was not so much about eating the fruit of a forbidden tree, as it was about the man choosing to value his relationship with his wife more than the one he had with his Creator. This is why, as we have noted above, Jesus taught that just two commandments sum up everything that His Father looks for from us. The first is to love Him above everyone and everything else, whilst the second is to love those around us as much as we love ourselves. All those nasty actions and attitudes for which we reserve the word “sin” are nothing more than examples of failing to love Him first and foremost, and not loving family, friends and neighbours as much as we love ourselves.
One of the saddest things about the choice this man (who was called Adam) made was that He did not ask his Creator-Father for help. When he saw that his wife Eve had eaten the fruit, he feared that he would lose her. Adam chose to follow her lead when he could have asked His Father if there was some way He could rescue her. Before he ate that fruit, Adam was a sinless son of God and as such he could have asked His Father if there was some way to redeem the wife He had created for him. Interestingly, as we read on through the Bible we discover that this is exactly what Jesus (the only other sinless Son of God) did, but that is for later.
The consequences of Adam’s wrong choice have passed on to us all. Things escalated dramatically there and then. Adam should have died that day, but The LORD was already prepared for such an eventuality and provided a substitute to pay the cost of Adam’s sin. However, the life he was left to live became a struggle, both to keep alive and to keep his family loving one another. Their eldest son, though warned by God to take great care, ended up killing one of his brothers. Today, whilst every one of us would love to live in Utopia, endless laws and educational philosophies have failed to take sin out of life. Our newspapers and televisions are filled with the bad things people do. The consequences of our wrong attitudes and actions continue to ruin all our lives.
It really doesn’t matter if we think we have sinned less than the person next to us; we have all failed to love our Creator as we should and therefore we fail to love one another sufficiently. We all resist accepting that we constantly get things wrong, but that is the reality. Being a sinner doesn’t necessarily mean that we are exceptionally bad, but it does mean that we need help.
Next: What sin does