When God punished Adam for his sin, it wasn’t over some trivial fault but a heinous crime. So we’re going to look into the nature of Adam’s sin and why God inflicted such a dreadful punishment upon all humanity. Some theologians believe Adam’s sin was merely giving into bodily urges. Such a view seems lackluster to me. It doesn’t seem that Adam merely gave into his appetite because the whole earth was yielding abudnace and endless vareity at the time. We must, therefore, look for something deeper than bodily appetites.

God’s command to Adam to not touch the tree of knowledge of good and evil was a test of obedience. If Adam obeyed it, he would prove his willing submission to the command of God. The purpose of the command was to keep Adam contented with the position that God had given to him and for Adam not to desire something beyond it. God promised Adam that he would have eternal life at some time if ate from the tree of life, and God also warned Adam of impending death the moment he ate of the tree of the knowledge of God and evil. God’s promise and warning were meant to test and exercise Adam’s faith. Therefore, it’s not difficult to understand why Adam provoked God’s wrath. Indeed, Augustine is not far from the mark when he says that pride was the beginning of all evil. If Adam’s ambition had led him to desire things beyond were permitted, he might have stayed in his state of innocence and bliss.

A further definition can also be derived from the kind of temptation that Moses describes in Genesis 3. The woman faithlessly abandoned God’s command because she was deceived by the devil. Clearly, her fall had its origin in disobedience. The apostle Paul confirms this when he says that by the disobedience of one man all were destroyed (Romans 5:18). At the time, we must observe that the first man revolted against the authority of God, not only in allowing himself to be tripped up by the schemes of the devil but also by despising the truth and turning aside to lies. When the word of God is despised, all reverence for Him is gone! God’s majesty cannot be honored among us, nor can we worship Him with integrity unless we depend upon His word. Therefore, infidelity was the root of Adam’s revolt. From infidelity sprang ambition and pride together with ingratitude. Adam despised God’s generosity, by longing for more than God had given to him.

It was surely a monstrous sin for a son of earth to despise being made in God’s likeness (Genesis 1:26) and desire to be made equal with God. We cannot excuse Adam’s sin or make it less serious, because he withdrew from the authority of his Maker and shook off his allegiance to God. Adam’s sin was not simple apostasy, either. His sin was accompanied by derogatory insults to God because the guilty pair believed Satan’s lies when he charged God with malice, envy, and falsehood. Infidelity opened the door to ambition, and ambition was the parent of rebellion, the casting off of the fear of God so that lust might have free reign. This is why Bernard rightly speaks about the door of salvation being opened to us when we receive the gospel with the ears which was the same entrance that brought death in the world when thrown open to Satan.

Adam would have never denigrated the command of God if he had not first disbelieved God’s word. The strongest curb against Adam’s own sin would have been the belief that there is nothing better to cultivate righteousness than by obeying God’s commands. There is nothing better than being loved by God. Therefore, Adam did his very best to annihilate the whole glory of God when he was carried away by the blasphemies of Satan.

“Blogging the Institutes” is my on-going attempt to paraphrase John Calvin’s work, the Institutes of the Christian Religion. You can find out more about the series in the Introduction. For all the posts in this series, check out the Master List.