Why did God prohibit only one thing from Adam?
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The first commandment God gave to Adam was in Genesis 1:28. It was a positive one.
And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
We call it Culture Commission. This commission has never been cancelled. We became deputy rulers. God created us in His image in His likeness.
And God gave Adam only one prohibition commandment. Why?
Ge 2:8-9, 16-17
And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
We can find a hint why God gave man this commandment in Genesis 3.
For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
The serpent's temptation to Eve reveals the implications of eating this fruit. "When you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." When a person eats of this fruit, it means that he wants to be like God. Until then, man's standard for judging good and evil had always been God's Word. Man, created in the image of God, was meant to do good if he lived according to God's character and word. But from the moment he ate the fruit, man decided to become his own judge of good and evil. He chose to become an independent being, no longer dependent on God. He chose to become an independent and autonomous being. Since God created man, it is proper for man to be under God's authority and to live according to his commands. His purpose for being was consistent with God's purpose for creation, but Adam and Eve rejected it. This is an act of rebellion.
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 to the tree of life.
Since man chose to be no longer under the authority of his Creator, but to be an independent and autonomous being, God decided to no longer place him in the Garden of Eden.
All God's commandments in the Bible are summarized in two main great commnadments.
And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
The first is “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” If you fail to keep the first commandment, you will not be able to keep the second. A prime example of this is Cain. Cain did not truly love God, and his failure to worship God led him to the crime of killing his brother. When one's desires are greater than his love for God, they become idols, and those desires create idols. People who are uncomfortable with a holy God, a righteous God, make gods who will grant their desires. In this way, they replace the real God with fake gods. After the fall of Adam, Adam and Eve hid themselves before God. And he blamed God and his wife. And Eve blamed the serpent. There were alienations among them.
When God gave Moses ten commandments, He wrote them on two tablets of stone. On the first tablet God wrote first 4 commandments and on the second God wrote next 6 commandments. The first tablet is like this.
“You shall have no other gods before me. “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain. “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates.
1. You shall have no other gods before me.
2. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything…
3. You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain.
4. Remember the Sabbath day.
These are summarized to this. "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”
The second tablet is like this.
“Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. “You shall not murder. “You shall not commit adultery. “You shall not steal. “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.”
For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
Why do they make idols? Because they do not want to have God in their hearts. So they replace the glory of the invisible, eternal, incorruptible God with images of men, birds, animals, and creeping things that will last for a short time and then pass away, and they call them gods. There is a saying. "What you love makes you what you are." If you love what is eternal, incorruptible, and precious, you become that. But if you love that which is fleeting, perishable, decaying, and false, you become that. Let's see the consequences.
Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.
The Apostle Paul listed all kinds of wickedness here. The root of all these evils is to be found in the fact that we have deemed it unworthy to have God in our hearts. This is the root of all our sins and misery.
As a result of Adam and Eve's violation of God's first prohibition commandment, they were driven out of Eden and denied access to the tree of life. But there is a way for us to regain access to the tree of life.
Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.
Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter the city by the gates.
"Blessed are those who wash their robes." Who are they? They are those who have had their sins washed away in the blood of Christ. They are those who have received the forgiveness of sins through faith in Jesus Christ and have become children of God. They have citizenship in the kingdom of God. They have accepted Jesus Christ's invitation to salvation by faith. They have realized the gravity of their sin and have turned away from sin and lived toward righteousness.
Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.
Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause. “Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.