I remember growing up and thinking after I heard the story of Adam and Eve that God must have been super angry and in His anger punished Adam and Eve by not letting them stay in the Garden of Eden. In my eyes, as a child, I thought that banishing them from the garden was no different than getting your gameboy taken away because you slapped your sister. The interesting thing is that was not understood in my part was the fact that God's love in the punishment of Adam and Eve was the most evident of any of His attributes.
Genesis 3:22-24 is the passage at hand here. It says, "Then the Lord God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever--" therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way of the tree of life..."
The first thing that we understand from this passage is that man had sinned and it was for this reason that they were banished. "Knowing good and evil" means directly disobeying God's command not to eat of the fruit. Man was now stained with sin and it turns from there into a downward spiral for the rest of mankind. The "curse" of sin, as it is called, affects every aspect of the human life both physical and emotional. You see this in the form of "pain of childbirth" and "in pain you shall eat" in 3:16,17. Sin is painful. Physical pain and hardship are thus a result of the fall of man. Think of what this means in regards to man being banished from the Garden. We'll come back to that.
Another thing that we know as a result of the fall of man is physical death. 3:19 says "By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return." Think of what this means in regards to man being banished from the Garden!
How is it a loving thing that God banished man from the Garden, having trees and provision for food, and making them live outside of it and work the ground for food and deal with the pain of sin and eventually die? First thought, do we deserve anything better than that? No. Disobedience doesn't merit entitlement. Second thought, what does the passage say why God did this? God did not banish man from the garden for those reasons, he banished them from the garden so that they wouldn't do something stupid by eating from the tree of life! "Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever..." The key phrase in there is the "live forever" phrase. What's so bad about that? Here it is: Living forever in their current state, would be AWFUL. Why? because they are sinful. Forever sinful means no possibility for deliverance from sin.
No one can look at the book of Genesis, much less this passage specifically and say that God didn't have a plan for salvation from the beginning! Genesis 3:15 is a direct reference to Christ's defeating Satan, but this passage 3:22-24 is the first move by an omnipotent God in the chess game of life that points towards Christ. It was as if God said... "you're not going to like this, but I love you so much that I can't bear to allow you to ruin your chance to meet my son and live forever indeed, but WITHOUT sin!"
What I thought long ago was God's way of punishment out of anger was actually God's love in prevention. The Grace of God that prevents us from Death is seen here in this passage and revealed throughout the rest of scripture leading to the most magnificent act of grace: Jesus Christ's sacrifice.
How much better would life be if we understand God's LOVING intentions on all of His works, and forget of our ill-conceived ideas of the "big guy who punishes people." Let us live our lives today knowing that every circumstance that we go through, be it trial or vacation that we would see God's loving plan of salvation through it all and constantly be reminding ourselves of what he did on the Cross. Always come back to the Cross of Christ where our sins as scarlet were washed away making us white as snow.
Glory to God
~Moellerd
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