apple_snake Have you ever wondered why God threw Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden just because they ate a piece of fruit? Sounds a bit harsh, doesn’t it? Did God lose His temper? Was He being cruel?

On the surface it may look like God was just waiting for Adam and Eve to make one mistake so He could lower the hammer. Stick with me and I’ll show you why that isn’t true. First, though, we have to look at the big picture and understand what really happened in the Garden of Eden.

God created a perfect world and placed Adam and Eve in a lush, beautiful garden that even watered itself. The climate was perfect; the animals were peaceful; food was abundant; and Adam and Eve were individually perfect in every way. There wasn’t anything to complain about. There was no death, disease, or pain. That must have been amazing!

Wait, there is more. Adam and Eve also had a perfect relationship with their Creator. Every day God came into the Garden and spent time talking with Adam and Eve face to face. What more could you want?

Then God, in His wisdom, gave Adam and Eve a way to show their gratitude to Him.“The Lord God commanded the man, saying, ‘From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die’” (Genesis 2:16–17). Obeying God shows that we love God. That’s why Jesus said, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments” (John 14:15). When God threatened Adam and Eve with death, it meant that the perfect fellowship that they were enjoying with Him would end if they disobeyed.

In other words, God was giving Adam and Eve the opportunity to show how much they valued God’s personal presence. Sadly, instead of remaining loyal to their loving Creator, they believed Satan’s lies. Satan convinced them that they didn’t need God because they could become their own gods. Satan put it this way: “For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5). So far, all they knew was God’s goodness, but Satan convinced them that in order to be happy and fulfilled, they needed to experience evil as well. In other words, he told them that God was holding out on them. God wasn’t really good—there was more to life than what He was telling them.

You see, they didn’t just eat some forbidden fruit. They openly rebelled against their loving Creator. In their disobedience, they were saying that God’s goodness wasn’t enough for them. They wanted more.

The disobedience of Adam and Eve set a pattern that has been repeated over and over in the human race ever since. Instead of pursuing a close relationship with our loving Creator, we want to make our own rules. We don’t want God telling us what to do. By nature we choose “self” over God. That is open treason against the One who made us, and that has brought a curse on creation as well as on the human race (Romans 8:19-22). That is why there is so much suffering, even from things like tornadoes and hurricanes. Our choice to follow the evil one has ruined our entire planet.

Although the holy nature of God demands that rebellion against Him be punished, the next thing that God did in the Garden pictured His marvelous solution to this problem. God killed an innocent animal and used its skin to cover Adam and Eve. That death pictured the death of another Innocent that would someday fix what they had done. By trusting God’s solution Adam and Eve could escape the eternal consequences of their sin.

That innocent One was Jesus, and this story explains why He came to earth. God became a man so that He could endure the punishment for our rebellion that we deserve. “For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just

[Christ is sinless] for the unjust,[we are sinful] so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit” (1 Peter 3:18).

Our condition would be hopeless, if Jesus hadn’t stepped in and volunteered to endure the punishment that we deserve. That leaves us with a decision. We can either put our trust in Christ’s suffering on our behalf, or we can rely on our own efforts. “If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation” (Romans 10:9–10).

We must stop trusting in our own goodness, in our own religious good deeds. When we do that, when we trust God completely, our relationship with Him begins. There in nothing like the joy of knowing our Creator intimately like Adam and Eve did. Paradise can be restored.