Implications of the Possession of the Image of God in Humans For Adam’s Choice to Disobey God in the Garden

God gave Adam and Eve everything they required for a happy, healthy, and upright life.

God gave Adam the necessary knowledge and abilities to pursue that happy, healthy, and upright life.

God maintained a close relationship with Adam, so that Adam would always know God, have no reason to forget either Who God was or what God had done and provided for him.

God provided a world and life completely free of corruption, and insulated from corrupting influences, as well as a warning against considering the engagement with a corrupting desire, should it arise. “Do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for in the day that you shall eat of it, dying you shall die.”

Therefore, Adam and Eve had everything they could ever need, and every benefit available in creation; they lacked nothing and everything was at-hand. No struggle was required for them to acquire any life need, or meaningful benefit.

Both Adam and Eve knew the prohibition, and the consequence that the violation would bring.

And yet, Eve was tempted by the appeal of something she knew was wrong, which knowledge was evident in her answer to the serpent who suggested that she should think about disobeying. Her disobedience was wilful, not ignorant; she had more “faith” in the lie of the serpent than she had in the word of the God Who had created her and given her life.

Scripture records that Eve “…perceived that the tree was good for food, pleasing to the eyes, and a tree desired for making one wise”. She perceived something contrary to what God clearly warned Adam, which means that she no longer believed what God had said about consuming this particular fruit. She had entered unbelief, the root of all sin. (Contrary to popular teaching that pride is the root of all sin. Unbelief cost humanity their eternal life; faith is the only means of receiving eternal life again.)

Moreover, God originally had spoken directly to Adam. The record appears to indicate that God’s words to Adam preceded His provision of a “comparable helper” for Adam; Adam was therefore the messenger of God to Eve in this matter. He himself was the first-hand recipient of the words of God, directly from God’s mouth. Since Adam was the first human to encounter God, to have a relationship with God, to recognize that God was the Creator of all things, and to experience God’s creative power directly when God put him to sleep in order to create his “comparable helper” directly as a “bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh” (Gen 2:23), Adam had no excuse whatsoever to fail to recognize God’s sovereignty or, God’s trustworthiness. Notably, Scripture records that Eve was deceived, but Adam sinned. (1 Tim 2:14; 2 Cor 11:3a; Rom 5:14,17) In fact, in Paul’s letter to the Romans, he early records that men who “knew God” were without excuse because they did not find it convenient to retain the knowledge of God, preferring to pursue their sin, thereby becoming vain (worthless, futile, empty) in their thinking. Adam was without excuse. He chose to disobey God’s clear instruction – God’s sole instruction – given with a severe warning of the eternal consequences. Adam knew what he should not do, and he knew what he was doing when he disobeyed. Upon Adam’s disobedience, sin entered a world which to that moment in time, was flawless, unblemished, and beautiful. Into God’s perfect universe, his privileged image-bearer introduced evil and corruption. The sentence for treason was always death. God had warned him. Adam sinned, and brought death into the living world.

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