"What is this that you have done?" Genesis 3.13

Anyone who has ever got caught doing something wrong can remember being asked, usually by some authority-figure, “what did you do?” It was not always a question asked in ignorance. More often than not, the person asking us this question knew full-well what we had done. Now, what if the person asking this question “what have you done?” is God Himself? That is exactly what happened in the Garden of Eden after Adam and Eve had eaten of the Forbidden Fruit. God, it seems, sought them out even though they were trying to hide. God confronted them, though He surely had to know what they had done and knew ahead of time that they would do it. So if God already knew what they had done, why ask them the question?

But before we answer that question we have to ask another question first. Why did God set up the circumstances that brought about the fall of mankind? I am referring of course to that Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Why did God put that tree in the Garden in the first place? So much sorrow and misery could have been avoided if the possibility of evil had not been allowed. Why give evil a chance? This may be a dangerous path because we are beginning to speculate and that is not the reason for Biblical revelation. The Bible is not concerned about the “what if?” The Bible is concerned about what is. The Bible gives us the truth about the way things really are. This is what makes the Bible different from a work of philosophy. Philosophers are always asking questions, but not always arriving at answers. The Bible is not just raising questions for us to think about if we find the time. The Bible is causing us to face certain realities that are not very pleasant and that we might otherwise choose to avoid altogether.

And the first reality the Bible is causing us to confront is God Himself. That is the point of this entire Creation account. “In the beginning God…” Everything starts with God. So let’s start there too. That Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil has something to do with God and our relationship with Him.

God had given the commandment concerning that tree. And so the knowledge of good or of evil has something to do with God. I don’t think there were poison apples on that tree. The tree was not off-limits because it was inherently bad. Everything God created was called “good” by God Himself. God doesn’t make bad trees or bad fruit! Adam and Eve were immediately confronted with the option of good or evil which was defined for them and made concrete by the commandment of God and nothing else.

And then the Serpent appears in Eden. We know from other Scriptures who and what the Serpent is, but Genesis does not tell us anything except that the Serpent is crafty or subtle. That description of the Serpent becomes the most important feature of the very first account of temptation. The Serpent just wants to talk. But it doesn’t declare its intentions. Deceivers never tell you what the real game is until they have won and you have lost. The game the Serpent was playing with Eve was that of poisoning the mind. It has to do with changing the way one person thinks about another person. It is usually used by someone who wants to disrupt a relationship and separate friends, lovers, or spouses. All you have to do is introduce a thought that causes doubt in one person’s mind about the intentions of the other person. When this seed of doubt is sown it begins to grow if not immediately uprooted and produces suspicion and distrust. Suddenly the other person begins to seem selfish or manipulative. Maybe everything they do is for some ulterior motive. Maybe they don’t care about you at all and are just using you. The person who introduces this thought knows that if the strategy works, you will do yourself what he or she could not have ever forced you to do. The Serpent’s poisonous thought is introduced into Eve’s mind in this way:

“God is keeping you from something that is really good. He is withholding a wonderful experience from you because He wants to keep you down. God cannot really be trusted. He is just pretending to care about you and really just wants to control you. You need to break free and do your own thing. Take what you want. Determine your own destiny and don’t let yourself be ruled by this Tyrant” (See Gen. 3.4-5).

Strangely enough, it is the Serpent’s words that come true when they eat the fruit and not God’s word. They did not die, at least not immediately or visibly, but they did experience a new kind of knowledge. That knowledge was the experience of shame. At first they were naked and unashamed. Now they are naked and ashamed of themselves. But what are they afraid of? They are the only two people alive on earth! Who is going to see them naked? In whose presence were they ashamed to be caught naked? They were hiding from God. That relationship had been forever changed, which was exactly what the Serpent had wanted. But it seems that the man and the woman did not get what they wanted or expected, which is often the case when we sin. There were unforeseen consequences. Now there was shame, guilt, fear, and alienation between man and God. And mankind has been hiding from God ever since, trying to avoid Divine scrutiny and accountability.

But God will not allow them to remain hidden from His view. He will not let them go or let them off the hook. God pursues them and there is a confrontation there in Eden between God and the entire human race. God begins by asking that question that every guilty conscience fears more than anything else: “What is this that you have done?”

The response of Adam and Eve to God’s question should not surprise us because it is something that any of us could have done and probably have done in similar situations. Adam and Eve tried to blame someone else for what they had done. Eve blamed the Serpent. Adam blamed Eve, and indirectly he also blamed God who had made him a wife. They did not take full responsibility for their actions. Do you see how much like Adam and Eve we really are? Modern people have become adept at blaming everyone and everything for what is wrong in their lives and in the world. No one wants to take responsibility and say “it’s my fault.” We should be able to see ourselves in Adam and Eve. I think that is the point of the text. We are truly sons of Adam and daughters of Eve. The Apostle Paul argued that Adam represents the entire human race so that his sin has impacted all of us (See Rom. 5.12-21). What Adam did is what all of us would have done if we had been there. In some sense we were there, in the loins of our father Adam.

In our individualistic culture it seems unfair to be held responsible for what someone else did. But we have all done what Adam did. We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Rom. 3.23).

Not only have we sinned like Adam, but we also tend to try to hide it, avoid God, and transfer the responsibility to someone else, just like Father Adam did. Being honest and truthful about sin (our own sin not someone else’s sin!) is one of the hardest things to do. It is no wonder that the whole concept of sin has all but disappeared from the modern vocabulary. We speak ourselves in psychological terms now and seek self-actualization and self-esteem. Modern people eschew guilt. We go to therapy and get counseling to get rid of guilt like we might go to the doctor to get rid of an infection or the dentist for a tooth-ache. We want to silence that annoying conscience rather than get to the source of the problem.

But God will not let us get away so easily. God does not choose to ignore our sin but to confront it directly. Until we are truthful and acknowledge what we have done there can be no reconciliation and healing. Salvation does not amount to God ignoring sin and pretending like it is not there. In His questioning of Adam and Eve after they sinned, God is teaching us about the importance of confessing our sins and acknowledging the truth about what we have done. Until this happens we remain in a state of alienation from God. But it is God’s good purpose to bring us to a point of salvation and reconciliation.

The account of the Fall of Man is really about alienation and what has caused it. Mankind is alienated from God, from the Creation, and from each other. They were cast out of Eden. This act of being cast out or exiled is another way of showing this fundamental alienation that pervades human life. We seem to sense that there is something wrong. Life is not what it should be. We find that life is frustrating and we never really get what we want, no matter how hard we try. And then there is the sentence of death that hangs over us all of our lives. Where did this alienation begin? That is the question the Genesis account of the fall of man is answering. What Adam and Eve did is the source of this alienation. And the human race has continued what they started.

The idea of alienation is taught throughout the Bible in various ways. I will mention two examples here:

1. Alienation is taught by Solomon in the entire book of Ecclesiastes. Solomon was blessed with more earthly wisdom than any other man. And here was Solomon’s astute observation about human life: “Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity” (Ecclesiastes 1:2).

2. Alienation is also taught by Paul, echoing this theme of vanity, frustration, or futility: “For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it…” (Romans 8:20).

Solomon is really giving a commentary on the effects of sin on human life. Life is vanity because of what happened in Eden. And the Apostle Paul is also commenting on what happened in the Garden of Eden. The Creation has been subjected to futility or frustration because of Adam’s sin. In other words, life is inherently flawed and imperfect because of our alienation from God. Apart from God life is simply not what it was meant to be and we seem to be able to sense that, even without the revelation of the Scriptures. Frustration is just a part of life. We were not created to be independent from God and so in a state of alienation life simply does not make sense. We can’t understand ourselves apart from God and we can’t understand the meaning of life. We have gained our independence from God, but have become like a ship that has lost its mooring and is drifting aimlessly at sea.

But the world did not start that way. When God had created everything He said that it was good, very good. What made everything so good? I don’t think this goodness was simply a description of the natural beauty of Eden, though I am sure it was very beautiful. The original goodness of Creation was not just the outward beauty that pleases the physical senses, the world still has that even in its fallen condition. The original goodness (the Hebrew word is “shalom”) of creation is a state of being that is completely wholesome. Nothing is missing. Everything is full and complete.

And at the center of it all is the presence of God Himself. With God everything is good. It is really impossible to even understand what “goodness” means without God. Goodness is not some philosophical abstraction. God is good. His presence sanctifies everything else and makes everything good, as it was meant to be.

But take God out of the equation and life loses its quality. That is not to say that human life is devoid of everything good. That would literally be Hell. God has not completely withdrawn. You might say that there is still a scent of His presence, but it can be very faint and fleeting.

In spite of the alienation, life is still good because God has not completely abandoned the human enterprise. Things are not as they were. But that does not mean we should despair of life. In the darkness of sin and alienation, even in death, the goodness of God continues to shine through. God’s goodness is seen in how He deals with Adam and Eve even after they had disobeyed. God is incredibly patient with them. His questioning of Adam and Eve is not done harshly or in an adversarial fashion, as if God is trying to drag a confession from them, like on a poorly played TV detective show. God does not beat a confession out of them. God is not simply trying to point out their sin, gather the evidence, and then thunder forth His verdict of swift justice. If God had wanted to simply find fault and punish Adam and Eve He could have done that.

But what Adam and Eve did was not the end of God’s dealing with humanity. The fact that God had any dealings with them at all after their disobedience is a revelation of God’s goodness and His good purpose. Why not just dispose of the disobedient rebels and start over? Clearly God had something else in mind for humanity. What God wants to do and what He wants to reveal about Himself would not be accomplished if God were only looking for a reason to find fault or destroy. God is already beginning to reveal something of His mercy and grace.

From what we know about the fall of Satan and his angels God had not given them any mercy. They were cast out and that was the end of the matter, until the Day of Judgment when they will finally be cast in the Lake of Fire. There is no record of God coming to Satan to ask him “what have you done?” There is no hope held out to Satan and his fallen angels after their rebellion in heaven.
But there is hope for fallen man on earth, though he has also rebelled against God. Surely the angels are watching God’s dealings with fallen mankind (1 Peter 1.12).

In God’s dealing with mankind, He is not just looking for a reason to condemn and to destroy. God is not harsh, hard, uncaring or unkind. It is important that we understand this about God. God is not a cruel and heartless tyrant. The closest God came to destroying the human race was the Flood. We should not think that God is soft on sin. He does have His limits. But even before the Flood came it said that, as God surveyed the wickedness of that antediluvian world, “The LORD regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart” (Genesis 6:6). Sin grieves God in His heart. Do we think of God in these terms or is God something like a cool, calculating judge who renders an objective verdict without any personal feelings in the matter? God is the judge of all the earth and He will do what is right. But God is also a Father who cares for His wayward children. How different would our lives be if God had no care for us and only treated us as our sins deserved? Not only would we be unredeemed, but there would be things about God that would never be made known. In redemption more about God is being made known than would have been possible if God had simply cut us off in His wrath.

God’s desire and purpose was to overcome sin and its effects and to bring reconciliation. That is why God has not completely cast off humanity. But God cannot bring reconciliation by simply ignoring our sin. That is why God confronted Adam and Eve and asked “what have you done?” You don’t bring reconciliation by ignoring the cause of the alienation and enmity. It is wrong to think that forgiveness means ignoring or tolerating sin. That is denial, not forgiveness. Being in a state of denial and ignoring the truth does not heal a relationship.

In fact, it will only make things worse because now there is not only the original offense but also a fundamental dishonesty. You can’t have a relationship that is based on lying. There must be honesty and truthfulness for there to be a healthy relationship. Now we know that God is incapable of lying. God never misrepresents Himself and He demands that we also be honest. But this can be difficult for us.

Why do we lie and misrepresent ourselves?

1. First, we are trying to make ourselves look better than we actually are. We are ashamed of ourselves and trying to cover ourselves. This is exactly what Adam and Eve did with the fig leaves.

2. Secondly, we may want to try to avoid the consequences of what we have done. There may be some very unpleasant consequences that we would rather avoid and so we lie. Many times we are more concerned about the consequences of getting caught than about the nature of the wrong that we have committed! In other words, we are not really all that guilty about what we have done, we just don’t want to get caught!

3. Thirdly, we may actually be afraid of the person that we have wronged and we lie to stay in their favor and good graces. Perhaps we don’t think the person will be fair with us and we are afraid their punishment and anger will be too much to take. Adam and Eve probably reasoned that it would be easier to hide from God and avoid the truth because they did not really know what God would do. Was it not reasonable to assume that if God is the creator then He can also destroy?

We may conclude that God is hard and harsh, like a man with a really bad temper, and we don’t want to provoke Him to anger. Some people have had an earthly father who got angry and lashed out and so it becomes easy to think that God is that way too. You don’t want to make Dad mad, and you certainly don’t want to make God mad!

Men who are fathers may lose their tempers and lash out at their children without thinking about what is best for them. But God is not like that. God can get angry, but He is slow to anger. And while God’s wrath can be aroused it is not God’s first intention to just blow us away in His anger. God’s intention is to bring salvation, healing, and reconciliation.

And that is why God does not leave just us alone in our alienation. God pursued Adam and Eve as they hid among the trees of Eden: “Where are you?” And then: “what have you done?” This is a loving God asking these questions, not some angry tyrant.

Most people don’t really know what they are asking for when they want God to love them! Sometimes I think people just mean they want God to leave them alone. But that is not God’s nature. We have to learn to trust God and believe that His intentions toward us are good and that He wants what is best for us. If we don’t trust God then we will keep hiding from Him and avoiding the truth.

I don’t think Adam and Eve really knew that much about God. There is no timeline in Genesis so we don’t know how much time had passed since God had created the man and the woman before they took of the forbidden fruit. But it does not appear to have been a long time. Though Adam and Eve were in a state of innocence when they were created, this does not imply that they really knew that much about their Creator. I am of the opinion that we know much more about God than Adam and Eve knew, though we have never lived in a state of sinless innocence. We know more about God simply because we have more revelation. We have certain precedents we can consider because of the record of the Scriptures. We have the greatest revelation of God in Christ and the Gospel. Unlike Adam and Eve, we know the rest of the story and what would happen following the fall of man in Eden.

There were some immediate consequences for their sin in Eden. Not only did they realize they were naked and hide from God, which was a picture of shame and alienation, but God Himself announced some more far-reaching consequences (Gen. 3.14-24). These consequences included a disruption and inequality in human relationships, a frustrating and toilsome relationship with the natural world, and then the final curse of physical death. The way to the Tree of Life was blocked. This looks like a very bleak future for the human race.

But if we read about the fall of man with the Gospel in mind we can see a couple of bright spots where God gave some hope:

1. First, there is the prophecy that God gave to the Serpent, with the man and the woman listening in: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel” (Genesis 3:15). A member of the human race would come and defeat the Serpent and his malevolent intentions toward humanity. God’s purpose was to overcome the evil and the alienation that the Serpent had wrought by his temptation. A man would overcome the Serpent and crush its head. God would have the last word. This was not the end of the matter. The power of sin and death would be undone.

2. Second, this is not the last time we will see the Tree of Life. The next time we read about the Tree of Life in the Bible is in John’s vision of the New Heavens and Earth (Revelation 21-22). In Genesis access to the Tree of Life is blocked because of what the man and his wife had done. Death would rule the human race. (Even this was a kind of mercy in that God was not making man live in perpetual alienation.) But God imposed the sentence of death in view of bringing life. In the World to Come death is no more and there is access to the Tree of Life. What made the difference? Remember how the Tree of Life was guarded? There was a flaming sword, flashing back and forth. Anyone who got to the Tree of Life had to pass under the sword. Death would be the price for access to the Tree of Life.

By sending His Son into the world to die it was God Himself who suffered the death necessary to open up the way to the Tree of Life. “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23).

Receiving the gift of eternal life begins by answering this question: “what have you done?” God is still asking humanity this question. Confessing our sins is necessary if we are going to be saved. Those who do not know they are sick, or who will not admit it, do not think they need a doctor. If we do not acknowledge the problem then we will not receive the solution. Those who are not convinced of sin will not receive the Savior. Self-righteousness or legalism is an attempt by man to undo or atone for his own sin. It is like we are sewing together fig leaves to cover our nakedness. God will not receive this. We cannot make-up for what we have done. Only God can correct the problem and we must receive His remedy. As uncomfortable as it might be to admit that I am a sinner who cannot save himself, that is exactly where we must be to receive the gift of salvation.

God is greatly pleased with honesty and truthfulness as opposed to lying and pretense, which He hates. God wants us to be honest and truthful about ourselves. The opposite of this would be to lie and practice hypocrisy. Real change begins here. Without honesty there is no hope of salvation. Blaming others for our sin is also a form of dishonesty.

God wants us to trust Him that He has our best interests in mind and that He is good. This is true even if the truth is painful for us. God’s desire is for our salvation and transformation and not just a temporary or superficial fix. God always wants to get to the real issue. This is not so that He can condemn us, but so that He can save us.