Was it God’s punishment or God’s love that barred the fallen Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden? Or was it proof of God’s unshakable, eternal love for the ones He created: mankind? If we were the Creator, wouldn’t we have wiped them out and started over?
God’s Foreknowledge
God knew what Adam would do before He created Adam. Predestined does not mean we do not have a free will, Romans 8:29. It is simply that God is omniscient. He knows everything from the end and before the beginning. He will accomplish all His good pleasure, Isaiah 46:10. For I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord. Plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope, Jeremiah 29:11.
God’s plan is eternal, beyond time, matter and space. Where God is, is ever present. For a thousand years in Your sight are like yesterday when it passes by. Or as a watch in the night, Psalm 90:4. When God cast Adam out, Adam was already complete and perfect, for God was, is and is to come all at the same time, Revelation 1:8. Only man lives in the ‘time zone’.
God had an eternal plan for Adam that is difficult for the human mind to comprehend. However, time is but a blink of an eye in terms of eternity. A testing place for the creature with a free will. A time to experience the love and mercy and judgement of a holy and righteous, loving heavenly Father. Time is our opportunity to become an overcomer.
Adam’s Perspective
Imagine yourself having walked an unknown time in a perfect garden, and with a perfect nature. Suddenly, you fail and are cast out of perfect utopia. You are highly intellectual as you had the ability to name all the animals.
Now you live in a land that is totally alien to you and against you. From having every need met, you find yourself scrabbling in the dirt just to survive, Genesis 3:17-19. The shock and endless grief Adam would have experienced are unimaginable.
The person Adam would become as an overcomer, was beyond value. A diamond can only be produced through intense heat and pressure. God’s people are diamonds produced by God or His good pleasure, Philippines 2:13. There is a value to pain and the fires of adversity, as was seen at Calvary. We need not fear hard times, for God goes through them with us, Isaiah 41:10. God was with Adam, but in a different relationship to the garden.
Judgement or Love
Was it love or judgement that thrust Adam out of his comfort zone? It was both, yet far more. Adam was put out of the garden for his own protection, Genesis 3:24. Had they eaten of the tree of life they would have been eternally damned and so would all his descendants. That means us.
The wonder is that we are not all eternally damned. Only through Christ’s death and resurrection do we have the Way into the kingdom of God, John 14:6. The cost was beyond our understanding, Isaiah 53. It is no wonder those who reject so great a salvation will be forever lost to the presence of God.
More than that, God disciplines us for our good so that we may share His holiness. All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful. Yet, to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness, Hebrews 12:10, 11.
The Reverse
Adam went from total perfection to total imperfection. Those who truly accept Christ as their Lord and Saviour go from total imperfection to total perfection. Our life is hid with Christ in God. Born Again people are a new creature, 2 Corinthians 4:17, designed to be other-worldly, John 25:19.
Just as the perfect Adam could not comprehend what life would be like outside the garden, we only get glimpses of what eternity will be like. For now we see in a mirror dimly but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know just as I also have been fully known, 1 Corinthians 13:12. Notice the past tense ‘have been fully known’.
All Things
Do we truly believe Romans 8:29? All things work together for good to those who love God. To those who are called according to His purpose.
Was there a purpose in allowing Adam to sin and be thrown out of the garden? Adam was God’s own possession and God’s personal treasure on earth. Just as followers of Jesus Christ are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation. A people for God’s own possession, 1 Peter 2:9.
We can imagine a heartbroken Adam returning many times to the garden he had lost, to view it from a distance. He knew he could never return to that perfect state. His grief would have been overwhelming. Yet, God’s promises are sure. He never leaves us or forsakes us, Deuteronomy 31:6.
The Silence
Adam lived a long life of 930 years after he sinned, Genesis 5:5. He would have shed many tears as he remembered the precious times when God had walked with him in the garden in the cool of the day, Genesis 3:8.
We know lots of things about the lives of Abraham, Moses and other Bible greats. Yet, we know absolutely nothing of Adam’s sojourn. There is a resounding silence about Adam’s life, but there are glimpses in the genealogy of Adam, Genesis 5.
God’s Purpose
Adam had walked face to face with God. What sort of things did he have to share with his eight generations of descendants as they sat around the fire? A careful study of Genesis 5 reveals that Adam died when Lamech, from the 7th generation, was 56 years old. 126 years before Noah was born.
For 930 years Adam witnessed to his descendants of the wonders of what he had known. Noah, the 9th generation from Adam, was named as the one who would give them rest from their work from the toil of their hands, arising from the ground which the Lord had cursed in Genesis 3:17. Noah would have witnessed the total degeneration of mankind. What a long way from a walk in the garden with God. Did the godly line of Seth intermarry with the line of Cain?
God’s Punishment or God’s Love
Was Adam kicked out of the garden as God’s punishment or God’s love, mercy and grace. Adam had no idea his life was prophetic and it is a treasure we are privileged to dig out. It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings to search out a matter, Proverbs 25:2.
Genesis 5 is a glorious prophetic picture of Genesis 3:15, when God’s great gift of salvation was declared. Also, it points to the time we are living in. Adam’s death was the sign that God was about to bring judgement upon the earth, for He will not be mocked, Galatians 6:7.
A one-sided coin has no vale. To have undying love, you must have unending judgement. They are two sides of the same coin. God has an eternal plan that embraces God’s judgement and God’s love. You and I are part of that plan in ways we cannot comprehend. Let us continue to be God’s treasure on earth.
Dr. Wendy Stenberg-Tendys is a servant of the Lord who enjoys researching Biblical topics and sharing words of encouragement from the Word of God. She asks the hard questions.
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