What was the first sin? Careful, that isn’t as easy of a question as you might think. No, I am not thinking of how most people would answer, “when Adam and Eve ate the forbidden apple” when the Bible doesn’t say it was an apple, only a piece of fruit. (By the way, somewhere along the line I heard the theory that it was a pomegranate. Can’t remember the support of this theory, but I kind of like it for some unknown reason.) No, I am talking about Adam and Eve eating the fruit versus deciding to eat the fruit.
You see, I would argue that the first sin occurred before Eve took a bite of fruit and gave it to Adam who was with her and he did the same. I would suggest the first sin occurred when Eve decided to eat the fruit, as did Adam. Extending a hand, plucking a piece of fruit from a tree, and digging one’s incisors into it, was the external proof of the internal sin—a heart that failed to believe and trust God and pursued what it wanted rather than God’s glory.
The Myth of Falling into Sin
Here’s where I am going with this. We often will throw around the phrase, “I fell into sin” but rarely is that the case. Adam and Eve’s teeth didn’t just “fall into the piece of fruit.” Those choppers were guided into that piece of fruit. The Fall was not a product of an accident, but intentional rebellion against a holy God. And that is most often how we sin too. We aren’t victims; we are culprits. We aren’t the prey of sin most often, but rather predators, seeking after sin.We War Against Sin Inside Us
We have to come to terms with this so that we can deal with sin as it deserves, by dealing with ourselves as we deserve. The antidote to sin is not completely wrapping ourselves in toilet paper (remember those commercials?) to keep us safe from that which is outside of us, but rather to recognize that death resides within is—in our hearts. That is where we must go to war. But even then, only after recognizing that we lack the military might to win that war, or even a single battle. We need Christ to war on our behalf and to put to death the sinful impulses and desires of our hearts. Because when He does—when He rips the heart of stone out of our chest and replaces it with a heart of flesh and when He puts the phantom desires of those dead hearts to death as well—we find victory over sin. When our hearts don’t want the forbidden fruit, but rather our faithful Father, our incisors will remain clean and white. This is the key to defeating sin: it’s more of a matter of who we love than what we do. Our hands are merely our heart’s accomplices.There is more mercy in Christ than sin in us.” — Richard Sibbes (1577-1635) [1]Preschool Tip: Be careful to remember this week that sin is a “church word.” Rarely, if ever, will you hear this word in our culture, so with all “church words,” we need to be careful to supply definitions, especially for our preschoolers. As you define sin this week, I want to encourage you to use the phrase “wrong” choices instead of “bad” choices. I am prone to use this example as a reason why: Choosing the fish entrée over the chicken or steak entrées at a wedding is a bad choice. Rebelling against a holy God is a wrong choice. While that is slightly tongue-in-cheek, it hopefully illustrates an important point. Our preschoolers will hear the word “bad” used in a multitude of settings that might confuse their understanding of sin. But generally, “wrong” is used the way we want them to come to understand sin—any rebellious action or posture of the heart against God. Kids Tip: We don’t know how long it took Adam and Eve to rebel against God, but we can see how quickly and deeply sin wreaked its sinister havoc after they did. In the chapter after this one, we see Adam and Eve’s son kill their other son. From perfection to fratricide in one generation. Then later in that chapter we see Lamech bragging about killing a young man for injuring him. Turn the page to Genesis 5 and we see a genealogy with the refrain “then he died” over and over again. God was not a liar, as He had said, when sin entered the world, death reigned. Then, in Genesis 6 we read of the wickedness of humanity that was so pervasive that God flooded the world. As we read these early chapters of God’s story, we ought to feel a heaviness of heart. We ought to read with a sense of despair, and this is what we want our kids to feel in this session. We want them to understand the true and full consequences of sin and their inability to do anything about it. Because when they do, they are primed to understand the grace-filled work of Christ on their behalf. [1] Richard Sibbes, The Bruised Reed (First Rate Publishers, 2014), 6. https://vimeo.com/279048379
I have been using the Gospel Project with 3rd-4th graders for the past 3 years, and I love it! Recently we began with new materials and are currently doing Unit 1. I am having trouble, however, with finding some of the resources that I believe are supposed to accompany it. For example, in Unit 1, Session 3 on p. 52 it has an activity that uses a printable for Thaumatrope Discs. I have not been able to find it, however, on any of the DVDs that were part of the kit. Is there some other place I should look for this?
Hi, Sharon. The activity printables are on the Enhanced CD that comes in the Leader Kit and also here on the Additional Resources page.
Hi Brian, I believe the answer to the type of fruit is much more simple than we make it out to be. Apple trees produce apples. Orange trees produce oranges. Knowledge of good and evil trees produce knowledge of good and evil fruit. I know that sounds facetious but I say that with all sincerity. As a people of The Book we believe the record of Adam and Eve and the fall is not a made up parable but that it actually took place in history. We believe that God really did place them in the garden and that they really did pick fruit from a real tree called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and they really did sink their teeth into that fruit and they really did receive wisdom that they did not previously have before eating that fruit. We also believe that when God said there was also a tree of life in the garden and that they were banished from that garden so they wouldn’t eat from that tree and live forever, we believe that tree really did exist and that God was not deceptive in speech and that if they were to eat from that tree then they would have lived forever. If you deny the reality of one tree you also have to deny the reality of the other. We also believe that these two trees were unique and if not by the hand of God before then, at least were destroyed in the destruction of the earth during Noah’s flood. Because we believe these trees were real, and because we believe that what God said about these trees were real, we believe these trees do not exist for people to eat from today, hence it could not have been an Apple tree or pomegranate tree or any other tree that we can eat from. God did not want Adam and Eve to eat the knowledge of good and evil fruit from the knowledge of good and evil tree, and He did not want them to learn evil, but He allowed it and we also know that after that He did not want them to eat from the tree of life because they would have lived forever on this broken planet and He had a much better future for them that they could enter into only through death, into His presence and out of this broken world. So we must believe that If Adam and Eve then ate from the tree of life they would be living on this earth with us today, which would be AWFUL. So we must accept that these trees were indeed real and unique and not known to us today because eating from these trees would indeed impart to us knowledge or life because God made them that way and allowed the imparting of those qualities even though He didn’t want us to receive them. If we deny that those trees really existed or if we deny that the taking of the fruit from those trees would impart those qualities to us, even against God’s desire for us to receive those qualities then the whole story falls apart as make believe. Jesus spoke of them as history. So there was a knowledge of good and evil tree with knowledge of good and evil fruit and there was a tree of life, or life tree with life fruit. Trees ultimately lost in the flood and only one to return Revelation 22:1-3 “Then he showed me the river of the water of life, clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the city’s Main Street. The tree of life was on each side of the river, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit every month. The leaves of the tree are for healing the nations, and there will no longer be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will worship him.”
If God named the fruits, we do not know their names but we do know that no one has access to those real trees on this earth today and so they are not fruits that we eat today.
I hope this post doesn’t come across as argumentative or divisive, I hope it is informative.
Hi, John. Thanks for sharing. I don’t take you being argumentative at all!
We would surely agree of the literal reality of the trees and of the Genesis account, but I don’t believe that it is required that the same kind of fruit that the tree of knowledge produced is no longer existing today. What we know is that God singled out one tree, but the Scriptures don’t tell us that tree was the only one of its kind. So while you may indeed be correct, I don’t believe we can know that you are for sure.
Thank you Brian. I believe your original post about sin was spot on. I wish you the best of luck on your doctorate.