We’ve spent the last few
posts covering divine sovereignty and human responsibility, and how these two
elements are essential building blocks for a sound theodicy. In other words,
you can’t defend the righteousness of God in a theodicy if you don’t take into
account divine sovereignty and human responsibility.
In this post, I’m back to
put Genesis chapters 1-3 into perspective for us, as we proceed with our
discussion. What can Genesis chapters 1-3 teach us about the concepts of divine
sovereignty and human responsibility? How can we appropriate these chapters
into a sound theodicy – which then makes its way into a sound theology?
We can learn a few things
from Genesis 3 about divine sovereignty and human responsibility:
· God’s sovereignty remains intact – the Lord, as sovereign, comes to the scene of the sin and
punishes all parties involved (Adam, Eve, and the serpent). At the same time,
however, He proclaims hope in that, despite the sin and stain upon humanity and
creation, the seed of the woman (Jesus) would crush the head of the serpent
(Satan), Gen. 3:15. Notice that the Lord refers to “He” when discussing the
seed of the woman and the “you” and “your” when referring to the serpent.
Scripture tells us that Satan is “that serpent of old” (Rev. 12:9). The seed of
the woman refers to Christ, “The God of peace” who will “crush Satan under your
feet” (Romans 16:20). God’s sovereignty can also be seen through the fact that
He expels man and woman from the Garden and places a cherubim angel with a
flaming sword to guard the Garden.
· Man’s responsibility remains intact – despite man’s sin, he must still cultivate the ground, even
after he is expelled from the Garden (Gen. 3:17-19, 23). Man does gain the
knowledge of good and evil in the encounter, but he must now encounter evil –
something that hadn’t happened prior to Genesis 3. All the consequences that
occurred in the Fall were bad, and man must now live with these consequences
while still having to work the ground, produce childbirth, and live in
marriage.
· Man is the author of Sin – Sin enters the world and stains creation because of man.
Although Satan was in the Garden that day, it is not Satan (the serpent) who is
blamed for the Fall; rather, the ground is cursed “because of you,” which was
God’s response in making Adam responsible for it (Gen. 3:17). In addition, the
Lord tells Adam that he disobeyed the divine command: “because you have
listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I
commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’” (Genesis 3:17) God’s
statement to Adam shows that the Lord is absolved of guilt because He
forewarned Adam about disobeying Him, and Adam listened to the voice of his
wife against the word of God (which makes Adam guilty all on his own).
· Divine sovereignty comes back in full force, even
after human responsibility fails – If Open
Theists were right, God would have claimed ignorance after Adam and Eve sin in
the Garden. Instead, the Lord tells the serpent that, not only will he crawl on
his belly for the rest of his life, but that his head will be crushed by the
seed of the woman. We know from progressive revelation that this refers to the
cosmic battle of the Lord over Satan and his demons (cf. Luke 10:18; Romans
16:20). In the end, the Lord will rule over all, and He would claim the victory
over Satan through His death and resurrection on the cross (Colossians 2:13-15).
· Death enters the human family – It’s a sad thought indeed, but Adam and Eve’s sin brings
death into the human family. The Lord had forewarned Adam of death (“the wages
of sin is death,” Paul said in Romans 6:23), but Adam decided to disobey God in
the face of the divine warning. The sentence for not just Adam, but all of
mankind, is death (Romans 5). I mentioned in the last post that the Lord
forewarns of death despite the fact that death didn’t exist with mankind prior
to the Fall, but it reminds us that the Lord, while being the Giver of Life in
Genesis, always had the power to take life, too.
· The environment is cursed because of the fall of man – “Cursed is the ground because of you,” the Lord says to Adam
in Genesis 3. Adam’s decision to sin affected not only Adam and Eve, but also
their descendants (Romans 5:12) as well as creation, including the ground
(Romans 8:19-22). In other words, we see the implications of the Lord making
Adam and Eve to “rule over the earth”: their sin would result in the curse of
all creation, not just themselves and humanity. Adam and Eve could not have
foreseen that their sin would impact their children (Cain and Abel), as well as
the remainder of humanity. By the time of the Flood, sin had so pervaded
humanity that the writer could say “the wickedness of man was great on the
earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil
continually” (Gen. 6:5). In response to the evil, the Lord could say, “The end
of all flesh has come before Me; for the earth is filled with violence because
of them; and behold, I am about to destroy them with the earth” (Genesis 6:13).
Even Noah’s name was linked
to the curse of the ground: “Now he [Lamech] called his name Noah, saying,
‘This one will give us rest from our work and from the toil of our hands
arising from the ground which the Lord has cursed’” (Gen. 5:29).
When Jesus dies on the
cross, Matthew notes that creation responds to the Lord who made it: first,
darkness falls upon the land (Matthew 27:45); then, the earth shakes and the
rocks split (Matt. 27:51). This was to show that the Lord of creation was dying
on the cross and that the Lord’s crucifixion and resurrection would have an
impact on creation.
These lessons gleaned from
Genesis show us that Adam and Eve’s decision to sin had far-reaching impacts
that the couple could never have foreseen in Genesis 3. Man’s rule over the
earth plunged the earth into the curse when man disobeyed God.
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