In considering the fall of man we are apt to concentrate on the dire consequences for the human race, and to lose sight of what that dreadful event meant for God. The consequences of the entry of sin were certainly enormous, and this is seen as we find almost the whole human race swept away at the flood because of the corruption and violence that filled the old world, and as we see the condition of the world today even where there are the external benefits that have been brought by Christianity. Sin brought with it a guilty and defiled conscience, alienation from God and enmity with Him, the principle of sin in man’s nature, and all the sorrow, suffering and death that fill the world. What man did to the Son of God in putting Him on a malefactor’s cross showed what man in his nature, and in his disposition towards the God who has showed him nought but good.
God’s Word Rejected
Man had been created by God and set up in a wonderful garden where there was everything to sustain the life God had given him, and to gratify his nature and affections. God had only reserved for Himself one of the trees in that great estate, that one tree signifying that the garden belonged to God, and the commandment forbidding the eating of it was but the maintenance of God’s right to have the obedience of His creature. The commandment of God was simple, “Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it;” and the sanction was plain, “for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Gen. 2:16-17).
It was a most solemn matter that Eve should listen to one that called in question the word of God, and even more solemn that Adam with Eve should accept the word of a stranger that virtually made God a liar, and implied that God was not good in keeping from them the knowledge of good and evil. How this must have grieved God at His heart! His creature had turned against Him, having wrong thoughts of Him, and accepting the word of His enemy as truth, and His word as false.
Since that time the great test for man has been the acceptance or rejection of the word of God. Without doubt it was the acceptance of God’s word that caused Abel to bring in sacrifice to God “of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof” (Gen. 4:4), for it is written, “By faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain” (Heb. 11:4), and “faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Rom. 10:17). Abraham was blessed by believing God (Rom. 4:3), and blessing today is through believing what God has sent in the Gospel. What a wonderful triumph God has achieved in this, for in the very world where man, at the first, refused to believe God, He has been “believed on in the world” (1 Tim. 3:16).
God’s Rest Broken
Having finished His work in preparing the earth and heavens, and making the inhabitants of the earth, it is written, “And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made” (Gen. 2:2). The entry of sin into the world broke into the rest of God, and God set to work again, not to restore the conditions that had been marred by sin, but to work in view of another world into which sin could not enter, and where He could find His eternal rest in the blessing of all those who would share that rest with Him.
Although the children of the generation of Israel that left Egypt entered into the land of Canaan, they did not enter into God’s rest. Their father’s had rejected the word of God concerning the land of promise, and because of unbelief did not enter the land flowing with milk and honey. Hebrews 4:7-8 shows that Joshua did not lead Israel into God’s rest, and that David spoke of it as being yet future, so that it could be written, “There remains therefore a rest to the people of God” (verse 9). There will be rest for Israel in the millennial day, but the rest of God will be in the eternal state as brought before us in the opening verses of Revelation 21.
To bring in this new scene where all things are new the Son of God came into the world to work, even as He said, “My Father works hitherto, and I work” (John 5:17). God’s triumph will be manifested in the new scene that He will bring into being, and which will be founded on the work of His Son at the cross. The sin of the world will be removed by the Lamb of God (John 1:29; Heb. 9:26); and those who are God’s workmanship in new creation will be with God in His rest, set free from all that they were as derived from Adam, and associated with His own Son, the Last Adam, as His brethren, and as His body and His bride, and as sons with Him before the face of the Father.
God’s Name Dishonoured
In Eden, Adam had been established by God as the head and centre of the lower creation, and he was made in the image and likeness of God. When Adam fell the lower creation fell with him, as it is stated in Romans 8:20, and because of this “the whole creation groans and travails in pain together until now” (verse 22). How very sadly disfigured became God’s image on man, and the likeness was lost. God’s glory in man by sin was brought down into the dust, and God’s holy Name dishonoured before the face of the heavens. The angels must have wondered why God had allowed all this to happen.
God was not taken aback by the entry of sin, or by all the dishonour brought upon His Name by sin, for He had resources to meet it all, and to bring greater glory to Himself, and greater blessing to men than all that was lost in fair Eden. When the Second Man came into the world he was able to say before He left the world, “I have glorified Thee on the earth, I have finished the work which Thou gavest me to do” (John 17:4). If the image of God was defaced in the first man, the Last Adam, who “is the image of God” sets forth in glory what God is, and in a new way, and in connection with a new world into which God brings those who believe in Him.
God’s Enemy Triumphs
There can be no doubt that for the time being the enemy had triumphed. He had brought sin into the world, he had turned man against God, and had caused God to drive man out of the garden of Eden. The first order of things connected with Adam was ruined, and was ruined beyond recovery. It did indeed appear to be a mighty triumph for Satan, who had become the god of this world, and who had through sin acquired the power of death with which he terrorised the human race. What could God do in the face of all this?
God did not manifest immediately what He would do, but He indicated right away that He had resources to “undo the work of the devil” and to utterly defeat him. After pronouncing His curse on the serpent, the Lord said to Satan, “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel” (Gen. 3:15). This must have been an enigma to the enemy of God, but it brought hope to man in all his sin and ruin.
It was the woman the enemy had used, beguiling her, to ruin the work of God, and from the woman would come One who would utterly crush the serpent’s head, thus destroying his power, and destroying him. In Luke’s Gospel the genealogy of Jesus is traced right back to Adam, and there too we read concerning His birth by Mary, “that holy thing, which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God” (1:35).
Satan attempted to triumph over the Seed of the woman as he had triumphed over the first man, but discovered that He was quite another kind of Man. The conditions in which the first man failed were in marked contrast to those in which the Second Man triumphed, for the garden of Eden was very different from the desert in which Jesus was hungry after fasting forty days. Adam ate of forbidden fruit to be as gods, Jesus refused to satisfy His hunger without a word from God. The sight of the fruit allured Eve, but not all the glory of the kingdoms of the world could bring Jesus under the devil or take Him from His place of subjection to God. The first man desired to acquire a wisdom that he knew not of, but Jesus refused what would make Him an object of admiration to man after the flesh.
The triumph of Jesus in the wilderness, and from the mountain top and the pinnacle of the temple, was but the beginning of the enemy’s downfall; it was necessary for Jesus to go into death “that through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil” (Heb. 2:14). Coming out of death “He led captivity captive” (Eph. 4:8; Col. 2:15), and laid the basis for the complete destruction of the devil and the powers of darkness. It was when He went into death that His heel was crushed, but His resurrection evinced His mighty triumph, and the triumph of God. Soon the devil will be bound for a thousand years, and after this period is over and he shows his influence over men for a little while, he will be cast into the lake of fire for ever, his head completely crushed as announced in Eden after the fall of man (Rev. 20:1–3, 7–10).
God’s Paradise
After man had sinned he was sent “forth from the garden of Eden,” yea, driven out so that he might not eat of the tree of life and live for ever in the world as a sinner far from God. Adam had robbed God, and the sentence of death was upon him, so that he left Eden a dying thief. How very wonderful it is that the first man to whom the news was given of the heavenly paradise was a dying thief. What a triumph for God and for Christ that such an one should be able through the work of Christ upon the cross, to enter the heavenly “paradise of God.”
The cross of Christ brings before us good and evil in a very blessed way. There the evil of man rose to its height in the rejection and crucifying of God’s own Son, but it was there that the goodness of God met and triumphed over all the evil, so that the cross becomes for the believer a tree of life. It is by feeding upon the death of Christ that the believer receives divine life (John 6:53–56), and soon we shall eat of the tree of life in the paradise of God (Rev. 2:7).
Because of Adam’s sin the ground was cursed, and he was sentenced to toil and death, but in the heavenly paradise “there shall be no more curse,” and God’s servants “shall serve Him; and they shall see His face” in that cloudless rest (Rev. 22:3-4). There too is the tree of life with its fruit and healing leaves (verse 2), removing the effects of sin from the earth beneath. When God spoke to Eve he said “I will greatly multiply they sorrow…in pain thou shalt bring forth children” (Gen. 3:16), but the day is surely coming when in God’s eternal rest, where all things are new, “there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall their be any more pain” (Rev. 21:4).
How wonderful is the triumph of God over all that Satan brought into Eden, and this divine triumph, with all its blessing and joy for those who believe, rests upon the work of the Seed of the woman who crushed the serpent’s head through going into death. It was at infinite cost to God, and to His Son, that the victory was secured, but its results will be seen for all eternity in the rest of God that never can be broken.
R. 28.2.69