The Last Enemy to be Destroyed

By Amie May

Many assume that disobedience was the first sin, and representative of every bad choice that we might do thereafter.  Maybe.

Adam/Eve didn't know that to disobey was bad though, remember? They didn't make any knowing choice and by all standards were therefore unaccountable.

The only knowledge that they had existed in the form of a command given by God:

"Eating you may eat of every tree in the garden; but of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil you may not eat, for in the day that you eat of it, dying you shall die." (Gen. 2:16, 17)

The fruit of that knowledge will have been the conclusions that were drawn based on it. They internalized that fruit, while seemingly having no knowledge of unconditional love concerning themselves (evidenced by shame) and or concerning God (evidenced by fear).  How could they have put faith in something that they knew nothing about? Having God's love and acceptance beforehand in no way means that they were aware that love is regardless of poor choices and mistakes.  

Rather, they will have concluded that they were bad. Later their offspring would seek a way to earn God back and to keep God because of this feeling of not being good enough - this feeling of shame.  Nothing that they would do would be good enough for them to feel clean again.  They couldn't love themselves through their mistakes, so they didn't expect God to either.

Or maybe they concluded that they were good.  Maybe they felt that the things they did was proof that they were wise.  Maybe the hole in their heart was filled with their abilities, their accomplishments, and their high positions so much, that they lost sight of love all together.

But their beliefs that they were good, or that they were bad did nothing for their relationship with God.  Not really.  It actually fueled the feeling of disconnect, and distanced them from God who is love (1 John 4:8).  Their hearts were bured beneath a stony sepulchre and they were long dead - just as God had warned.  

Back in the garden, God, who is represented as a loving father biblically, then is strolling in the cool of the day and doesn't see his children anywhere. Concerned (NOT enraged), he inquires (NOT booms), "Where are you?" If your own children were hiding because they had just painted their rooms with ketchup, you would still wonder where they were. If you were accustomed to their little voices and laughter, you might grow concerned by their silence.

They were disabled and did not reveal their true selves to God, they did not stop believiing what they were telling themselves. They didn't truly come clean and open up.  They were unable to see hope beyond their error and in their minds, this death was eternal.

Rather than shouting "What have you done!!", God will have immediately known the consequences for their actions. If our children drank poison, we wouldn't flare our nostrils and shout. We would sound concerned and plugged in, "Oh no! What have you done?!" Why wouldn't God who paints himself as a parent sound loving and soft in his concern as well?

Are the struggles found in our own childhood interfering with our hearing God in a functional way?

God then tells them what was going to happen because of what they had done. Always concerned for them, and knowing the fig leaves not to be such a great covering for his shame ridden and fear filled children, he dressed them in animal skins.  And so that they wouldn't live forever in the state that they were in, God sent them out of the garden and away from the Tree of Life.  Perhaps after humanity grew up a little, we would be ready.  Through Ezekiel, God says to his love that one day..

"I will remember My covenant with you in the days of your youth, and I will raise up to you an everlasting covenant.  Then you shall remember your ways and be ashamed, when you shall receive your sisters, the older than you to the younger than you, and I will give them to you for daughters, but not by your covenant.   And I, even I, will raise up My covenant with you. And you shall know that I am Jehovah, so that you may remember and be ashamed. And you will not any more open your mouth, because of your humiliation, when I am propitiated for you for all that you have done, declares the Lord Jehovah." Ezekiel 16:60-63)

One day God would be known..

"I will put My Law in their inward parts, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.   And they shall no longer each man teach his neighbor, and each man his brother, saying, Know Jehovah. For they shall all know Me, from the least of them even to the greatest of them, declares Jehovah."  (Jer 31:33, 34. Heb 8:10,11)

"And at that day, says Jehovah, you shall call Me, My husband; and you shall no more call Me, My Baal." (Hosea 2:16)

"The one who does not love has not known God, because God is love." (1 John 4:8)

Yet from the beginning, Adam and Eve will have passed their own dysfunctional thinking on to their children. In 1 John 3:11-14 the people were compelled by the author to love one another, and not to be as Cain, who killed his brother because his own works were evil. Hebrews 11:4-6 says that Abel's sacrifice was offered by faith..It was this faith that made his offering righteous; but what faith? Faith in what?  Whatever it was, it was something that Cain lacked and so his offering was a lesser sacrifice. In Jude 1:11, the "way of Cain" was to err in the likeness of Balaam - for gain.

Remember Balaam?  His "ass" spoke to him, after he beat it. Balaam was originally interested in lying to gain Balak's wages yet he would find himself reciting words that very closely resembled that which God said to Cain at one time:  

"God is not a man that He should lie, or a son of man that He should repent. Has He said, and shall He not do it? And has He spoken, and shall He not make it good?" (Numbers 23:19).

("If you do well, is there not exaltation? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is toward you; but you should rule over it." Genesis 4:7)


Cain would take the life of his brother so that he could have God for himself.. and whatever having God for himself meant to him.   Did it make him good?  Did it cure his badness?  Whatever it was, the disconnect from love became apparent along with a grave need for an awareness of it.

A universal resurrection would take place - just as death entered the world through one man, life would enter through another (Romans 5:12). Just as "all died" in the work of Adam, so "all" would be given life through and by Jesus (1 Cor 15:22).

The world would not be disconnected from God because of the ignorance of love eternally, a Savior had come.

Law condemned and "puffed up". Humanity was bound to sin and death through it. The entire point of the law of Moses was to make sin known, so that love might be known in comparison to it. It served its' purpose, so we are freed from it, and even by it.

The law was understood as right living. It was the measuring stick for which humanity determined itself "good" or "bad". Love transcends "good" or "bad" in the very same way that we love our own children through their mistakes.

Did God not demonstrate the same?

The mistakes that humanity makes out of ignorance were long since forgiven.  And the ones that we become aware of, we are able to learn from because God reached into the depths of our hearts, shattering the stone and God wrote love on them.  

Adam and Eve feared God and were ashamed of themselves, and that was just the beginning of knowing God.  What is it that we know now?  In love's embrace, are we able to come to terms with our errors and to learn from them?  Are our hearts now warm and beating?  

"And Jesus said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.. You shall love your neighbor as yourself."" (Matt 22:37, 39. Deut. 6:5. Lev. 19:18 )

Is there a thing that we could ever do, to overthrow the word of God?  "You shall do it", says the Word of God, would it not be so?  Or is God a man that he should lie?

"For what if some did not believe? Will not their unbelief nullify the faith of God?" (Rom 3:3)

Love was there from the beginning.   God has exchanged one of our eyes, for another. We have eyes to see now. If only for a fleeting moment, we might all feel it.