Follow the 2013 Faithful Conference for Pastors and Leaders with us!View replays and read post summaries here on the blog. In this article, see the message “The Reality of Sin” by D. A. Carson:
THE GOD WHO DOESN’T ELIMINATE D. CARSON REBELS
Basic text: Genesis 3
You cannot properly understand your Bible until you fully understand this chapter. The reason is that problems and solutions are put together in this chapter. You cannot really understand the solution that the gospel offers unless you understand the problem facing the gospel. Sin cannot be understood unless the power of the gospel is understood. This is the first temptation and the fundamental root of all sin. Here are the roots of the biblical story that lead us to the person of the Lord Jesus Christ and the Cross.
Here we are introduced to the serpent, who is Satan or his representative. Verse 1 tells us two things. First, that Satan is a created being; in other words, the serpent is not a parallel god, an evil god, or a negative manifestation of God; The second thing God tells us is that he was the most cunning of all animals. intelligently translated can be both negative and positive. For example, when Pr 14:18 says that the wise man is crowned with knowledge, the same word is used. One can then imagine that Satan was created as a being of great prudence, but that this prudence has become spirit. The first two chapters emphasize that God has done everything right. The Bible does not teach how the Serpent became cunning, but it is assumed that Satan himself is rebellious and fallen.
He then approaches Eva with a question: “God really said you shouldn’t eat any of the trees in the garden. ” In other words, it does not start with a contradiction of God’s word, but only with a suggestion that He has the right to judge God. The question elicits pride and distraction at the same time: “Uh, the snake asks my opinion of God. ” More than that, the serpent exaggerates God’s prohibition. Chapter 2:17 says that God forbade humans to eat from a tree, but Satan asks them if they cannot eat from one of the trees. He tries to paint God as essentially against pleasure: “God is bad! He doesn’t want you to enjoy good food! What he does is say” no! No! No! “
The woman responds, and part of her answer is wise: she begins by correcting the devil’s lie. She says they can eat trees from the garden, but not from the tree in the middle of the garden, and then she slides. He also exaggerates God’s prohibition, saying they couldn’t even touch the tree. To answer how much the goal was lost, we must look at what it should have answered. I should have answered the question: “Are you crazy, snake?How can you imagine that God doesn’t know what he’s doing?It’s Eden!I have a fantastic husband who thinks I’m cute!We walk with God every day!were created in his image and likeness, and he said we shouldn’t do that, so it’s for our own good!You are crazy? That’s what she should have said, and the whole biblical story would be different.
However, she began to consider the possibility that God had done something wrong, so Satan casts his first true contradiction, in verse 4, saying that they would not die if they started the tree. Usually when people want to deny the authority of the tree. Word, begin by denying The Judgment of God, because after rejecting the doctrine of judgment, there is no fear of rejecting any other doctrine.
Now, in verse 5, we come to the great plane of the serpent, the great temptation; the heart of this proposal, which is totally misleading, lies precisely in the fact that it is partially true and totally false; this is partially true, in the sense that man and woman have succumbed to temptation, but in another sense what he says is completely false, note that this is an invitation with the suggestion of being like God, in the sense of defining what is good and what in chapters 1 and 2, God creates something and says that it is good; determines good and evil. When he’s done, he says everything’s fine. What human beings are asked to do is determine what is right and what is wrong. It would be like being God. Here is the root of all sin: the woman follows her impressions instead of her. Instructions.
Some of these consequences are clear in the narrative itself: God made man. The man made the woman. Man and woman must rule over the created order; However, what we have in the fall is a total change: the snake corrupts the woman, the woman corrupts the corrupt man before God. God had said and promised that if this fruit was ate, there would be death what kind of death?Augustine, an 4th-century African theologian, said, “If we were asked what kind of death God had threatened, whether it was bodily, spiritual, or second-century death, we would answer, “all!”It included not only the first parte. de the first death, in which the soul goes to God, but the second part, by which the soul leaves the body, and includes the second death, which is the worst of all. That’s why, when it comes to Genesis 5, genealogy talks a lot about death.
But the specific consequences listed here are: verse 7, the eyes were opened and they realized they were naked, they cooked fig leaves and made braces. So, of course, in a sense, Satan kept his promise. Their eyes were open, they knew what was right and what was wrong. But, unfortunately, it is knowledge from within, like a sinner. And the way the writer explains or tells us about nudity. How does Chapter 2 end? They walked naked and were not ashamed, that is, nudity is linked to shame after the fall.
You men. You want your mother or sister or daughter to know everything you’ve thought and imagined?Even asking that speaks to the depth of our shame. Woman: Would you like your father, brother or husband, or children to know everything you love?, fear or hatred? This question exposes our shame. The thing is, you and I have so many things that we have to hide, it wouldn’t do our family any good to know everything that goes through our minds, because it’s a cursed world. It’s not just guilt, it’s a disgrace, but at first there was no shame, there was no shame. Adam and Eve were able to experience the most intimate intimacy, because none of them had anything to hide, and nudity is a way to show this problem.
There’s a story about nudist colonies. The best nudist colonies, if you can say that, had some theory. The argument was that if we could be completely open in any of the areas, such as physics, we would eventually learn to be completely open in all areas, then we would return. to paradise Of course, it didn’t work, because there’s a lot of guilt and shame, and all nudity does is increase nudity and guilt.
Thus, although the scene is pathetic by covering himself with a fig tree, God says, after all, that instincts were right, and he himself covers them, not only that, but there is a rupture of communion with God. 10. They heard the voice of the Lord and instead of running towards him, they fled from him, it is God who persecutes them. When God asks: where are you?, it is not because you do not know it, but because you are trying to get them to respond because of their own guilt; exposes the futility and stupidity of hiding from God.
But Adam’s response hides the cause and reveals the symptom: he was afraid, and from that moment on the universal tendency of man is to try to hide from God and the part of God’s grace that drives us toward Him, what we are trying to do. is to hide from shame.
But there is not only a rupture of communion with God, but with others (11-13) Who let you know that you were naked?The man says: it is not my fault, it is the woman you created, it was not the last time a man accused his wife, but implicitly what they do is to criticize God: if he had given me a better wife, it would not have happened, Lord, the problem is yours, the woman is no better than the man: she blames the devil , it is not my fault, if there were no snakes here nothing would have happened, but the characteristic of Sin is the inability and reluctance to face sin itself. And you know that someone is about to meet God when he says, God, have mercy on me.
Verse 14-15: First for the snake. The curse takes place in two parts: “since you did this. “Some artists see this as a story of how snakes lost their legs. It’s possible, God can do whatever he wants. But we must understand that God sometimes adds new meaning to ancient activities. Later, God introduces Abraham and his posterity with circumcision. You may think that this has never happened before and that God invented it. But in fact, all the evidence shows that many tribes in the ancient Near East did, but when God does this to the Hebrews, it gives meaning to the covenant; in other words, it acquires a cultural phenomenon and gives it a new meaning, and so it can be here. Snakes can be snakes and ascended to the dog, and people even thought they were cute, but now a new meaning is added: there is something misleading, slippery.
The second part of the curse comes in verse 15 and this is called the proto-evangelical, which means the first proclamation of the gospel, God had already shown grace when He came to seek Adam and Eve, now shows grace in a spectacular way. Promise. The first proclamation of the gospel. ” I will put enmity between you and the woman,” God said. Does this just mean that a woman won’t love a snake?If so, my wife agrees. He can even handle a spider, rats aren’t afraid, he makes fun of bats, but snakes?Terrible! On the other hand, I know women who are experts in the care of snakes, it seems that this is not the best interpretation.
The text does not say that the woman and the snake would have enmity, but that the woman’s seed would have it: one day, the woman’s daughter would crush the snake’s head, and the snake would bite the heel of the one she wanted. Have you seen Mel Gibson’s Passion of Christ?If you never go to the movies, I will tell you: do you remember the opening scene, with Jesus praying in the garden of Gethsemane?, as he prays, a snake begins to climb for him. In the film, he slowly rises and passes over his head. Of course, there is no evidence that this actually happened, but the cinematographer took some poetic license to bring this verse to the film. When I saw such a scene, I wondered how many people knew the biblical text that served as the basis for that time, it is a way of saying that Jesus, in his passion, walks on the head of the serpent and, at the same time, is bitten and killed.
Then the curse also falls on the woman, in verse 16, it first says that it would increase the suffering of her pregnancy, from now on the human being is part of the created order, we were created in the image of God, but it came from the dust. We are not separate from the order of creation. And if we fall, there is a feeling that the entire order of creation lies under the Fall. What is most distinctive in the nature of a woman, which is to have children, and even this good and wonderful thing is now characterized by pain and death.
Second, God said that the woman’s desire would be for her husband and that he would dominate her. I’m sure some of you know that these two lines have been hotly debated in Church history and I don’t have time to clear it all up. So I’ll tell you the truth (laughs): it’s important to remember that the verbs here are only found in the Pentateuch: I’m sure when the first readers read this curse they thought 😕 I don’t know what it means. Then they got to chapter 4, verse 7, the only other place these verbs are found, and then they said, “Oh, that’s what it means. ” In these verses, God rebukes Cain, saying that sin will rule him. The woman’s desire would be for her husband in the sense that she would try to control her husband in the way sin wanted to dominate Cain. However, it is said that he would rule, that is, he would like to control the woman with a dominating force. So instead of a happy and living marriage, she tries to control and manipulate her husband. He, in turn, brutalizes his wife, which is an accurate description of many marriages.
Verse 20 says that Adam appointed Eve to be the mother of all human beings; In other words, this is the first act of fulfillment in verse 16, where it says that the seed would destroy the snake’s head. God knows that people would be covered in shame, so this covers us with something more permanent than fig leaves, uses the skin of an animal, which must die to cover the nudity of Adam and Eve, it is a typology of Christ’s sacrifice. who, to cover us from our shame, dies in our place, like the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. In the end, Chapter 3 shows us the root of the problem, but it also shows us the beginning of the solution.
A short video of the presentation of Grupo Logos, following the message of D. A. Carson.