After Adam and Eve had sinned, they could never become innocent again. They had sin in their hearts, and they also had the knowledge of what was right and what was wrong. That is called conscience. Since that time everyone has had a conscience—that which tells him whether he is doing right or wrong.
The first test that God gave to men was in the Garden of Eden. God created the first man, Adam, perfect, without any sin in his heart. He had no old nature, such as you and I have. Eve was also perfect. The Garden home must have been a very happy one, with no sin to disturb it.
Perhaps you can remember when you were very small and were not allowed to go outdoors without some older person, much less cross a street. Now you go to school alone. When you were little, you had to be fed. Of course now you take care of all such things yourself. Mother does not always treat you the same way, because you grow older and more able to do things for yourself. God has not always treated the people in the world exactly the same way either.
We cannot study about the fall of man without studying about God’s way of saving men, for He planned that even, before He created the world (Ephesians 1:4). And just as soon as man sinned, God came offering the remedy for sin. When God spoke to the serpent, or really to the Devil who was in the body of the serpent, He spoke of a Coming One Who should be the “Seed of the woman.” This referred to Jesus, for you know He was the Son of Mary, a woman, but had no earthly father. God tells us in the New Testament that when He used the word “seed” in the singular instead of “seeds” in the plural, He was talking about Christ and not about mere children (Galatians 3:16). God in Heaven was His father. God said that this one should bruise the serpent’s head—and when a serpent’s head is bruised he is destroyed, so that this means that He should destroy Satan. But He added that the serpent should bruise His heel. This Satan did at the cross, for it was he who caused Christ to be put to death, by giving his hatred to the wicked men who delivered Him to die. But it was Christ, made sin for us, Who becomes the Deliverer for us, and the One Who destroys Satan.
The thorns and thistles and the pain and suffering were the least part of the bad things which came as a result of the fall. They seemed bad enough, but there were some things that were worse. Back in Genesis 1:27 God had told Adam that in the day that he ate of the forbidden fruit he would surely die. When he did eat the fruit, and yet did not fall dead, he may have thought God had deceived him. But God had not, for Adam was really dead, in a much worse way than if he had suddenly fallen over and died. For his soul was dead. “The soul that sinneth, it shall die,says the Lord” (Ezekiel 18:20). A dead soul is one that is separated from God, just as a dead body is one which is separated from the soul. As soon as Adam sinned, he was separated from God, for God is too righteous even to look upon iniquity (Habakkuk 1:13).
