Sin 2

3. God in the third person.

If the woman really wanted to know if the goods were the right ones, if the woman wanted to know if the warped view of reality that she now has is the right one, she could have talked to God.

In this part of the story, you have God talked about a lot but never spoken to.

When we are going through the justification of our actions that deep down we know are selfish, the one thing that we normally don’t want to do is stop and pray about it and ask God if it really is the good thing to do.

God’s power to help us overcome temptation is much stronger than our power.

4. Order of goods confused.

Little g goods over the big G Good.

What tempts the woman is not bad, but good. The things the woman lists are real goods. They just aren’t the right goods at that moment.

Food, beauty, wisdom are good things. Right and loving relationships with God are the greater things.

This is kind of like when people feel that they know the truth and justify hurting others with truth. They might be right, but even truth used in an unloving way is still a disordering of goods.

5. Acts on the misperception.

Her view is distorted, and she winds up acting in a way that is self-oriented, not relationally, lovingly oriented.

The goods get oriented and acted upon. That is where the disorder, the chaos comes from.

Aftermath

What happens as a result? Notice that they are naked.

Naked and ashamed isn’t just about being uncovered. I can guarantee you that Adam was aware that Eve was naked. And visa versa. That wasn’t the problem.

It is the sudden movement of focus and attention from God and others to ourselves. It is a self-orientation that doesn’t lead to feeling fulfilled and like God, but rather insecure and ashamed and a need to hide.

Where do we see this relational break first? Who do they hide from first?

They hide from each other. God hasn’t even shown up yet to confront them in the story. They put figs leaves together to hide their nakedness.

When God shows up, the fig leaves aren’t enough. They don’t just want to hide their shame; they want to hide themselves from God.

What is supposed to happen at this point is that God comes in as an angry God to enforce His laws and get revenge. He’s supposed to show up and see the disobedience immediately and take people out. That is what happens in the ancient world when you mess with the gods.

That isn’t the vision of God that we have here. God asks rhetorical questions to get a response

Where are you?

Trying to get a response.

Who told you that you were naked? Did you eat of the tree? Invitation to repentance.

But they don’t. Instead they are ashamed, they are insecure, and instead of acting out of love for the other, they act out of their shame and insecurity at the expense of the other.

Sin is the attention on self that breaks relationship, that inhibits love.

It wasn’t me, it was them. It is never my fault; it is the other fault. “The woman that You gave me!” So you here in Adam’s voice that it is really God’s fault.

Punishments: result of the breaking of the boundary lines.

The story doesn’t end there. They’re still hiding in the trees. They can’t stand in front of God anymore.

The story should have gone that God let the man and woman go if they chose to move away from God. There is a problem with that. If God lets go, really takes Himself out, the One who upholds creation and sustains it as the source of life... what would happen to humanity if when they rejected God, God just simply let them go? We would die.

But they can’t stand before God in the state that they are in. The plants don’t even seem to do it in the way this story is told.

God has to make coverings for them. Out of skin. Skin of something that was killed.

From the beginning here, the connection between sin and sacrifice and death is present.